The buttery cookie melted in his mouth. He took another bite. “Mom has never given this recipe to anyone. I think that’s what started the feud between her and Aunt Lilian. Uncle Robert wanted these cookies, but Mom wouldn’t give it up. My mother can’t cook worth beans, but she loves to bake.” He looked around. “Where’s Pete?”
Megan took another cookie from the cooling rack. “Your mom made me leave him as a deposit on the cookie press. I can’t get him back unless I take her a plate of cookies, so don’t eat them all.” She put a corner of the cookie in her mouth and offered him the other corner.
He took the corner and nibbled his way to the sweetest kiss he’d ever had. “Does that mean we’re alone?” He licked the crumbs off the corner of her mouth.
“We are. How should we entertain ourselves?”
“Do you have to ask?”
“There’s always the possibility you’ve changed your mind.” She ran her finger inside the waistband of the sweatpants he wore. “You look much better in these than I ever did, but I don’t think we’re going to need them now.” She untied at the drawstring and let the sweatpants hit the floor.
“They’re yours?” He stepped out of the pants and kicked them aside.
She grimaced. “I got pretty big toward the end of my pregnancy. I practically lived in these.”
He stood there totally naked. “What’s wrong?”
She gently caressed his length. “This is the first time since I had Pete. Things might be a little...”
BJ groaned with anticipation. “Snug?”
She lifted a smudge of raspberry jam from the side of his mouth with her thumb and licked it clean, then ran her thumb in a slow, soft circle over him. “I’m not sure he’s gonna fit. The doctor said it might hurt.”
BJ moaned in pleasure. “He’s a gentle giant; he hasn’t killed anyone yet. It’ll be like you’re giving me your virginity, and the caveman in me likes that idea. Was there anything on the top shelf of the linen closet?”
Megan purred in his ear, then ran her tongue inside his ear. “Four boxes.”
BJ let out a long, slow hiss of pleasure. “And?”
“They’re in the nightstand drawer on your side of the bed.”
My side of the bed. He had a place next to the woman he loved. The woman he was finally going to make love to. “I haven’t gone this long since I was in Middle School, so I can’t guarantee how long I’ll last the first time.” He unbuttoned her blouse, pushed it off her shoulders, and let it flutter to the floor next to the sweatpants. “But that’s what the second,” he kissed her deeper, reaching around to unclasp her bra and pull it off, “the third,” he unbuttoned her jeans and lowered the zipper, “even the fourth times are for.” He ran his tongue over her lips. “I have a lot of pent up energy to burn.” He hooked his thumbs under her panties and pushed them down with her jeans.
Megan shimmied, let them fall to the floor, and stepped out of them. “I have ten times more energy to burn. What do you say we take this somewhere more comfortable and see if we can’t scorch some sheets?”
Megan molded herself against him and tilted her head up for a kiss. He framed her face with his hands. How many times had this played out in his imagination? He wanted it to be perfect. He wanted it to be everything she ever hoped it could be and more. But it would all start with the kiss—the tender “I love you” kiss that was still new to him. The soft caresses, the gentle nips, the long, slow build-up. He was going to have to make sure she was ready to take all of him. He knew no matter how careful he was, it was going to hurt. And he wanted this to be nothing but pleasure.
He swept her up into his arms. Her half-frightened squeal fueled his desire. With each step he took, her ass brushed the tip of his impossibly swollen and sensitive erection. A swift opening act? At this rate, he wouldn’t make it that far. With a growl, he hiked her higher, welding her to his chest as he lengthened his stride, desperate to deposit her on her bed before he exploded.
He forced his thoughts to the not-so-friendly competitive workouts he’d shared with his brothers; forcing his body to do his bidding. One more sit up. One more rep. One more lap. One more step. This was a contest he would not lose.
Her scent, heavily influenced by brown sugar and raspberries, wrapped around his still foggy brain, pulling him deeper under her seductive spell. Hell, can you be seduced into going where you couldn’t wait to be? Damn these stupid questions. He didn’t know the answers and he didn’t care. He dropped her onto the bed and artlessly plopped next to her. Style points? It was way too late to worry about that.
He reached for the drawer, but she stopped him.
“No, let me take care of you first. Take some of the pressure off. We have all afternoon.”
Her lips captured his cock as her tongue traced slow circles on the tip. His hips rocketed off the bed. “Jesus, woman, I’m not going to last another minute if you don’t slow down.”
Her giggle vibrated against him as stars danced in his head.
She grasped a ball in each hand, gently massaging him as she continued to work her magic. Holy hell, this was sexy. He’d had some world-class sex in his life, but nothing like this. It was like he was the only other person on the planet. That his pleasure was paramount. The intoxicating brew of emotions and chemicals mixed in him as his orgasm drew near. This woman. His woman. His forever woman.
She pulled back, tilting her head up to him. “Watch me do this to you. Look into my eyes. I want to see you lose your mind.”
Her eyes, yeah, that wouldn’t be a problem. The swirls and tendrils that made her eyes so hypnotically beautiful danced in rhythm with her tongue—a tongue that stroked his length from bottom to top before taking him into her mouth. He shouted her name.
She pulled back to let his eruption paint her body.
“I am so buying you a pearl necklace to commemorate this occasion,” he joked. But all kidding aside, BJ knew that from this moment forward, there would never be another woman for him. Could never be another woman for him.
He rolled over, pinning her to the mattress. “That was amazing. I love you, Megan Mystery.”
“I love you too, Brian Mathias.”
No one had ever called him that. Unless he was in trouble. But he didn’t care. She could call him whatever she wanted. Because he was in trouble. Trouble of the best and finest kind.
* * *
She lay next to him, savoring the sensation of bare skin on bare skin. She had never felt so powerful, so sexy, so feminine in her entire life. The memory of watching the man she loved succumb to her, listening to him shout her name, would burn in her forever.
She was loved, and this time, there would be no surprise wife lurking in the background to derail her bliss.
His hands glided down her body, pausing briefly to tease her nipples, until he reached her navel. He blazed a lazy trail to her dark triangle and finger-combed through it.
Suddenly, embarrassment flooded her. “I should’ve gotten waxed.” She felt inadequate, somehow less sexy, less polished than the sophisticated Brazilian babes he was used to.
BJ played with her curls. “Please don’t. That’s never been much of a turn on for me. Free and natural, baby. Always be yourself. You are more than enough for me. More than I deserve. I love you, and you are the only woman, and I mean only woman, who has ever heard those words from me.”
He loves me. And no one else has ever touched that part of him. Her discomfort and inadequacies vanished as her feelings of power returned, this time tinged with humility.
After last night, she knew how raw he was, how vulnerable. She wanted to feel him pushing his way in and taking her hard, but she pulled back. She had fantasized about this for months. She had been this way before, but he hadn’t. She relaxed and let him explore the joys of lovemaking because this was not sex, this was lovemaking. In this, she was the expert and he was the novice. It was best to let him find his own path.
His fingers found her opening as his thumb circ
led her clit. “Tell me what you like,” he whispered into her ear before nibbling on her lobe.
She closed her eyes and let the waves of pleasure wash over her. “Perfect.”
“Oh, baby, this is the opening act. An appetizer to get you ready for round two,” he mumbled as he kissed his way down her body.
He gently blew on her nub, announcing his intentions a split second before a tender nip sent her tumbling into paradise.
CHAPTER 50
It was a day he didn’t want to remember, much less tell his parents about, but it had been more than twenty years, and Megan had helped him crack the wall he had built around the memory.
It was time.
Since that morning with Megan, BJ had planned, practiced, revised, and polished his speech until he was sure he could deliver it without passion or emotion getting in the way. It would be a straightforward retelling of the facts, one minute, eight seconds and done.
It didn’t work out that way.
Sunday afternoon. BJ knew his parents would be home from their weekly brunch with friends following morning mass. They would have indulged in more than a few mimosas and have settled down to a peaceful respite to get ready for the week to come.
BJ let himself in the front door. “Anybody home?” He wandered into the living room and paced. No one ever used the living room.
So why do we call it a living room?
BJ struggled to keep his mind focused, but it wasn’t working.
We should call it the ‘it’s for company so stay the hell out of it’ room.
For BJ, it was basically a blank room, a room without significant memories. It seemed like the perfect place to talk. Once he was done, he could avoid the room and the memory of the conversation that was about to take place.
“Living room?” his mother asked. “Wow, you’ve had a rough week if you need to be in here.” She took a seat on the couch and waited for his father to join them. Father. Yeah, he’d reclaimed the word.
“What’s up, son? Get it...son up,” his father joked. No one laughed. He exchanged a quizzical look with his wife, then joined her on the couch. They waited quietly.
BJ continued to pace, then stopped to look out the window into his mother’s cutting garden. The mums were in bloom— autumnal shades of rust, orange, and yellow. He was grateful the roses weren’t in bloom like they had been that day. Where his mother had been when the school nurse had driven him home and chatted before returning to school.
He hadn’t quite made it to the nurse’s office before he’d emptied his stomach, and her iron-clad rule was once that happened, you were immediately driven home with a trashcan between your knees.
BJ had been in no mood to argue. Home was the only place he’d wanted to be.
He turned to face his parents. “Remember in the sixth grade when I couldn’t stop growing?”
His mother smiled. “At first I was so frustrated because it seemed like every Saturday I had to take you shopping for new clothes or shoes. Then your father reminded me how tiny you’d been when you were born and how hard we’d prayed for you to grow. After that, I was deeply thankful to have you to shop for. To tell you the truth, I kinda miss it.”
BJ turned to stare out the window. “When I was an altar boy, I grew out of my cassock too,” he started. “One Friday after the altar boy lunch, Father Clancy took me to the storage room to find a bigger one. Father...” BJ stopped to quell the panic pushing up from his toes. He took a deep breath and blew it out. “Clancy...uh...molested me in the church basement.”
He struggled to remember the rest of his speech, but his mind went blank. He leaned his head against the window and stared at the mums.
His mother gasped and immediately crossed the room. She put her arms around him. “Sweetheart, why didn’t you say anything?”
He soaked in her comfort. “I was afraid. I was ashamed. I had four younger brothers to look out for. Shane was in kindergarten. Everyone loved Father Clancy, and I didn’t think anyone would believe me. It was better to hold it all in than risk being the kid who spread lies about the most popular man on campus. I stayed an altar boy and kept an eye on the others. But he left soon after that, so I figured why bother.”
“He didn’t leave,” his dad, beet red and seething, spoke from the couch. “We essentially fired him. Sent him to the Cardinal for reassignment. The last I heard, he was out west somewhere. Arizona, possibly New Mexico.”
“You...you knew?” BJ’s voice echoed around the room and thundered back to him.
The color drained from BS’s face. It was like watching the temperature fall on an old-fashioned mercury thermometer. “I knew it was someone. I didn’t know it was you. If I’d known it was you, I would have killed the son of a bitch with my bare hands. I was on the parish council then. There were privacy issues and the school’s reputation. A predator priest at an exclusive all-male academy wasn’t exactly something we wanted to advertise.”
“You sacrificed me for the reputation of the school?” BJ saw red, everything in the room covered in a haze of fury.
“I didn’t know it was you!” BS protested.
BJ exploded. “What the fuck difference did it make? You knew it was one of the boys at the school. With five of us there, the odds were pretty good it was one of us, or one of our friends—boys who spent weekends here, slept on your floor, emptied your refrigerator. Didn’t any of that matter to you, old man?”
The old man stood and started to pace. “You’re right. I should have come home and grilled each of you immediately. I didn’t want to think it could be one of my boys.”
“So, you passed the trash, isn’t that what they call it? Packed up the problem priest and sent him on to a new parish. At least he won’t be hurting our kids anymore, right? Never mind the fact that he’ll end up hurting someone else’s kids. How many times did other parish councils do the exact same thing before you did? How many times did good, decent people have the opportunity to take a stand and do the right thing? Those are the people I blame for what happened to me, not you. They’re the ones who need to ask my forgiveness because they are the ones who failed to protect me. But, old man, the kids he hurt after me, those kids are all on you. You may as well have ass-fucked them yourself.”
“Brian Mathias Tobin, Junior, watch your tone!” his mother cried.
“How’s this for tone, Mom? Father Clancy had his entire finger jammed up my ass and was yanking on my dick so hard I thought he was going pull it off. I was twelve, and I didn’t have the courage to tell anyone. I’ve lived all these years terrified I was gay and set out on a rampage to prove to myself I wasn’t.”
His father hung his head. The room was silent except for his mother’s soft sobbing.
“I need to get out of here before I say or do something stupid. I’ll call you in a few days.”
He bolted through the door and into the bright afternoon sun. Hell, it might as well have been midnight for all he knew or cared. The brisk autumn breeze rippled over him, but it did little to cool his anger. He gulped in gallons of fresh air to purge the putrid aroma of decaying anchovies that lingered from revisiting that wretched day.
As if he could outrun the overwhelming sense of betrayal pulsing through him, he sprinted to his car, cranked the engine, and hit the gas.
CHAPTER 51
Strains of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata filled the air as Megan let herself into BJ’s condo with the key Deb had given her. She set a pan of brownies on the kitchen counter, slipped a gallon of milk into the fridge, and stowed a half-gallon of BJ’s favorite Death by Chocolate ice cream in the freezer. The perfect meal to soothe his troubled spirit.
Creeping into the room, she perched herself on the bench next to him. She threaded her left arm around his waist, laid her head on his shoulder, and slid her right hand under his. He withdrew his hand and let her take over as his right arm encircled her. After a few miscues, they finished the piece together.
“You are amazing,” he whispered.
“I had ten years of piano lessons and couldn’t have managed that. Where did you learn to play?” he asked.
“A few of our foster mothers gave me some lessons. I picked up a little here and there. Sometimes, a music teacher would let me play at lunchtime, so I learned a little more that way. When I have the time and energy, I fool around with a small electric keyboard. But nothing like this. It’s a beautiful instrument. Somehow, you don’t strike me as the baby grand kind of guy.”
He shrugged. “Impulse buy.”
She couldn’t stop the wince. “I once bought a red leather purse on impulse. It was on the clearance rack, but still way out of my budget. We’ve led very different lives.”
He blew out a sigh and dropped his head. “Look, you said it yourself. I didn’t do anything to deserve where I was born. Please don’t punish me for something that was out of my control. Regardless of our past, I’m a man and you’re a woman. You can’t get much different than that. But this Martian...” he put his hand over his heart... “is very glad that this Venusian....” he placed his hand between her breasts... “came into his life.”
Why wasn’t she surprised he’d read that book? Were men truly from Mars and women from Venus? Gender wasn’t their only difference, but did their pasts matter at all? No. Here and now was more important than what had been. What was yet to come beat everything.
Fly Boy: A Friends to Lovers Standalone Romance (Tobin Tribe Book 2) Page 19