I raced down the aisles, determined to get everything I needed, and get back to CJ as soon as I could. My anxiety increased because there were at least five varieties of everything on that list. I grabbed one of everything and dumped the basket in front of the cashier, who eyed my mountain of teething gel, toys, and baby Tylenol before muttering under her breath, "Typical."
My chest was heaving when I kicked the door closed and tossed the bags on the couch. CJ and Lisa were no longer in the kitchen. Fuck. I called CJ's name and then, remembering he couldn't talk, called Lisa's name instead.
“Shhhhh,” she answered in a loud whisper from the second floor. “We’re up here.”
I followed the sound of her voice, taking the stairs two at a time. She was in CJ's room, leaning over his crib, watching him sleep. He was actually sleeping in his crib at night. He wasn't in his stroller or draped across my chest.
“Holy shit,” I whispered. “How did you do that?”
She let out a soft chuckle that made my chest warm. "I think the ice did most of the work. I just rocked him a little, sang a couple songs, and he was out." She shrugged like she hadn't just performed a miracle.
"Thanks," I said. Lisa lifted one shoulder and let it drop with a little smile.
Damn.
5
lisa
“Holy overkill, Batman!” I was sifting through the bags from Rite Aid.
"Well, there were so many choices, and I didn't want to bring back the wrong thing."
"Okay." I chuckled, holding up a teething ring. "Try these first. If that doesn't work, you rub a little bit of this on his gums." I held up the Orajel. "And as a last resort, the liquid Tylenol."
“Okay, how do I know how much to give him?”
I showed him how to calculate the correct dosage of the Tylenol and a couple of other teething tricks.
“How do you know so much about babies?”
"I'm the oldest of five kids, and I did a lot of babysitting growing up in Charlotte."
“You’re from Charlotte?” he asked.
I'd inadvertently shared personal information about myself, and he soaked it up like a sponge. My cheeks flushed with heat. I needed to stop talking.
“Yeah.” I turned away from him and started lining the small packages of Tylenol and Orajel up on the countertop. “My parents and my siblings still live there.”
“So, what brought you to New York?”
"I…" I wasn't sure how to answer that question, and I felt like I shared too much already. "I just needed a change."
He nodded, and to my relief, it seemed like he was done with his probing. "So, what brought you here tonight?" He chuckled. "Or this morning?"
“Well.” I turned to face him, smiling, relieved for the change of subject. “It would seem that the men in your family are determined to keep me from getting a decent night’s sleep.” I laughed.
Cole seemed to lose his train of thought for a moment, and I wondered what he was thinking. He quickly refocused with a slight flush to his face before answering me.
“Thanks. You might have saved my life. You’re so good with him.”
"So, are you saying you think I'd make a good mother someday?" I raised an eyebrow. It was clear in all of our subsequent meetings that what Cole said to me the night we met was an alcohol-induced one-off and was in no way related to the kind of person he really was. Still, something inside me, silly as it seemed, needed validation. I wanted him to erase those words, even if he didn't know he was doing it.
“Weird question, but yeah. I think you’d make an awesome mother.” He shrugged.
My chest warmed, and my lips curled in a small, satisfied smile.
Cole noticed my reaction to his words and took a step closer. "I mean, you did something in fifteen minutes that I've been trying to figure out for a week."
"You're not doing so bad." I smiled at him, took a step closer, and rested my small hand on his large warm one. My heart started to race.
“I really can’t thank you enough.” He took another step closer.
I smiled and tilted my chin up at him. This man was incredibly tall, and he smelled delicious.
He leaned forward. “Lisa?” he whispered.
“Yes, Cole?” I looked up at him and blinked, then took a step closer, his hand still resting on mine.
“I wanna kiss you. Can I kiss you?” he asked.
I giggled, causing him to pull away.
I’d never been asked for a kiss before. It was adorable, silly, but also somehow incredibly sexy.
“What?” he asked. I could see the look of apprehension on his face.
“Are you as good at seducing as you are at apologizing?” I reached up and stroked his cheek. Oh, shit. I swore I meant to say kissing, but seducing came out instead. A kiss would have made me happy, but seduction sounded so much better. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I’d been seduced.
"I'm very good at seducing." He scooped me under my thighs and lifted me onto the kitchen island like I was a doll. Up here, his lips were more accessible. "I'm a little out of practice." He swept my hair over my shoulder, exposing my neck before he gently pressed his lips to the soft skin below my ear. I moaned, though I didn't mean to, and Cole's body—at least one part of his body—responded.
"Good," I sighed. "I'm a little out practice, too." I wrapped my legs around his waist and pressed my body into his. He was rock hard, and I found myself grinding my hips into his erection. The fact that we were both wearing thin pajamas meant that I felt every contour of his dick. I flashed back to my thoughts upon seeing him earlier today, pushing the stroller. Why were men with babies so fucking sexy?
He kissed his way down my neck and gently lowered me onto the countertop until I was fully reclined with my hair hanging over the edge. He lifted the hem of my shirt before pressing his lips to my soft belly and swirling his tongue into and around my navel.
I no longer had the body of the fifteen-year-old cheerleader my ex fell in love with or the twenty-one-year-old bride who spent months leading up to her wedding doing P90X workouts and cussing out her sister Tania for trying to tempt her with hush puppies from Cook Out. My ex-husband referenced that girl in too many of our arguments, but Cole didn't seem to care about chichos or stretch marks. His adoration of my body made me feel something I hadn't felt in a long time. Cole's hungry kisses and desperate fingers made me feel desirable.
His head traveled below my belly button, and I gasped.
“Cole, what are you doing?” I asked as his lips traveled to places no one’s lips had been before.
“I told you I wanted to kiss you.” He shot me a mischievous smile and slowly stroked the skin under the elastic of my pajama pants, soothing the indentation marks of the waistband. “I didn’t say where I wanted to kiss you.”
"Oh," I whispered. "I thought you meant…" I trailed off and tucked my bottom lip between my teeth. He smiled, leaned forward, and pressed his lips to mine. Then he planted a kiss on my nose, then my cheek before tenderly sucking my earlobe between his teeth and nibbling. I moaned again.
“Well, now that you know what I meant, do you want me to stop?” he whispered in my ear.
My body pulsated heat in a current that traveled up and down my arms before it settled in the place where Cole was eager to visit. “No,” I half sighed, half moaned while shaking my head. His lips brushed the shell of my ear. “Don’t stop.”
“Good.” He let out a soft chuckle and began to make his way down my body, again hooking his fingers into the waistband of my pajamas and my panties, slowly pulling them over my thighs, ghosting a kiss or a lick on every inch of newly revealed flesh. “Because I’m just getting started.”
"Oh my God," I moaned. "You're torturing me." He was, but it was a delicious kind of torture. I writhed and wriggled on the countertop, helping him slide my legs out of my pants.
“I haven’t begun to torture you yet.” The palms of his hands slid over my knees and pushed them apart.
I gazed at him expectantly, still gnawing on my bottom lip. He lowered himself onto one of the bar stools. He'd succeeded at putting his mouth at just the right height to kiss me. Leaning forward, he pressed his soft lips to my inner thigh, and I shuddered.
“You still with me?” he whispered.
My eyes were closed, my bottom lip was still tucked between my teeth, and I was practically panting. "Yes," I whispered while nodding, giving him the verbal confirmation he seemed to need. The soft cotton of his t-shirt brushed my inner thighs as he leaned in closer.
“Fuck, Lisa,” he whispered before I heard him inhaling the scent of my arousal. He dragged his tongue through my lips to separate them and wrapped his lips around my clit, sucking gently.
"Oh, Cole. Oh my God, yes." My moans echoed through the empty first floor of the house, I hoped I wouldn't wake the baby, but I couldn't stop myself from crying out.
His lips left my sex, ushering in a cool breeze, making me shudder. My eyes were still closed, and I was panting in anticipation. He slid a finger into my crevice, then two. I moaned again. He began twisting his fingers and feeling his way around, massaging me from the inside until I felt him rubbing a spot that made my body still.
I let out a low keening sound, and I knew I was primed for an explosion, and I'd never felt anything like this before. Cole began to swipe his thumb over my clit, slowly at first before picking up speed and intensity. My head lolled from side to side, and my moaning increased. I was silently begging CJ not to wake up because I was so fucking close. He increased the pressure on my clit, and three things happened at once. My back arched, I let out a deep guttural grunt, and my knee jerked up, making contact with something hard.
“Shit!” Cole and I screamed in unison.
“Oh my God, Cole,” I said in a sigh. “That was… Cole? Oh my God!”
Cole was still sitting on the bar stool with his hands covering his nose and mouth. He looked like he was in pain, and I realized that the hard something that my knee came in contact with was Cole's face.
I sat up, scooted myself back on the counter, and leaned forward, taking his face in my hands, inspecting the damage.
"I am so sorry. Oh my God. Are you okay?" I touched the side of his nose, and he winced. "You're bleeding. Let me get something…" My ass made a loud squeaking sound as I slid off of his countertop and began fluttering around his kitchen like a hummingbird.
Though he was bleeding and seemed to be in an immense amount of pain, his brain hadn't sent the rest of his body the message that we were in the middle of a medical crisis, and it was incredibly distracting. It was summer in New York, but in Cole's brownstone, it was definitely sweatpants season, and I was fighting to remain focused.
I gathered two dish towels: one was wet and one was wrapped around a Ziploc bag filled with ice. He was standing, leaning against the island, and holding his nose when I returned. I rose up on my tiptoes and tried to wipe his face.
“Um, you’re really tall. Would you mind sitting?” I asked.
He pulled up the bar stool and dropped into it. I stood between his legs and gently dabbed at his upper lip with the wet cloth. I was dying of embarrassment, and I felt terrible. This was definitely not the way I hoped this night would turn out. I felt even worse because I couldn't stop thinking about the mind-blowing orgasm I'd just had, right before I rewarded the person who gave it to me with a kick to the face.
I was trying to be as careful as I could while cleaning the blood off of Cole's nose and upper lip when, to my surprise, he started laughing. Then I thought about why I was dabbing his face with a damp rag at three in the morning, and I started laughing too.
“I am so sorry,” I apologized again when I finally stopped laughing long enough to speak. “That has never happened before.”
"You don't break the nose of every guy that goes down on you?" He smirked at me, making me flush. "Now, I feel special."
"I don't think your nose is broken, but you should put some ice on it." I pressed the ice pack to his face, and he jerked, digging his fingertips into my still bare hips, causing me to flinch. I'd forgotten I was naked from the waist down. He pulled his hands away.
“Sorry.” Cole curled his hands into fists and placed them on his thighs.
“No, it’s fine.” I placed the hand that wasn’t holding the ice pack on top of one of his fists, making my heart race and briefly reminding me how we ended up like this in the first place. “I think I forgot I wasn’t wearing pants.”
"Did you want to…" He trailed off, motioning to my pajama pants and panties, lying in a heap on the floor.
“No, I can wait a minute until I’m done here.” I paused. I wasn’t sure exactly how to express this, but I missed the feeling of Cole’s large warm hands on my bare flesh. “Unless you want me to…” I trailed off, raising my eyebrows.
“No,” he said quickly, making me chuckle. “Um, as long as you’re okay with it. I’m fine.” He shrugged in an unconvincing act of indifference.
I moved the ice pack and began dabbing at his face again. He winced, and his hands, once again, flew to my waist. Instead of letting go, he only loosened his grip and looked at me, eyebrows raised in question. I gave him a small smile and the tiniest nod. His hands stayed in place.
“So when I said that's never happened before, I meant no one's ever gone down on me before.” I bit my lip and scanned his face for a response.
“Seriously? Never?” he asked. As if what happened on his counter was an everyday occurrence. I briefly wondered how many women Cole had spread out in his kitchen before me. There was no way he’d never done that before. It was too… I quickly refocused.
“No,” I replied and began dabbing again, maybe a little too forcefully.
"Ah, easy!" He winced again. "So, you didn't know that you weren't supposed to knee me in the face because you haven't been taught proper cunnilingus courtesy.”
“Are you really teasing me right now?” I giggled, pulling my hand away and placing a fist on my hip.
“Um…” He pointed to his nose and glared at me pointedly. “Yes.”
I laughed even harder. Cole responded with the adorable lopsided smile I'd been trying to protect myself from for the last couple of weeks. I was clearly failing miserably.
“So, none of the other guys you've been with have eaten you out?”
"Well, there's only been two. There was my husband and—" He cut me off before I could tell him about the terrible drunken one-night stand I'd had six months ago.
“You're married?” He loosened his grip on my hips.
"Ex-husband," I said in a sigh. "Our divorce was finalized almost a year ago. It's still weird to say 'ex.' We were high school sweethearts, married after I graduated from college, and were happy for a few years until we weren't." I shrugged and continued to clean his face.
“I'm sorry.” He sounded like he really meant it.
"You know, I asked him to go down on me once, and he said no because he thought it was disgusting." I had no idea why I was suddenly confiding in Cole, but it felt comfortable. I'd never discussed the intimacies of my marriage with anyone besides a therapist.
“Are you serious? Did you ever go down on him? If you don't mind me asking.”
“Yes. Every year on his birthday and sometimes when I had my period.”
“Damn. I hope you don't mind me saying this, but your ex sounds like a selfish asshole.”
“Well, he cheated on me and left me for a younger woman, so I'm inclined to agree with you.” I held the ice pack to his face again.
"Younger? How old are you? Shit. I'm sorry. That was rude. You don't have to tell me."
I laughed again. “I did knee you in the face. I think you could ask me anything at this point.” I smiled. “I'm twenty-nine.”
"Twenty-nine, like actually twenty-nine or twenty-nine like my mom was twenty-nine every year until she had a forty and fabulous party?"
I laughed again, even harder, and Cole grinned in response. He seem
ed to like to see me laugh, and it gave me a warm feeling. "That sounds awesome, but I'm twenty-nine, like actually twenty-nine. How old are you?"
“Twenty-five.”
“You're a baby.”
“Seriously?” He chuckled. “I'm an old twenty-five-year-old.”
“What do you mean by that?”
"That's a story for another day." Cole was talking about the future, and I was suddenly annoyed at myself for getting this close and intimate.
“Yeah, you're probably right. It's getting late—or early—I should get home.” I picked up my underwear and pajama pants and began to get dressed.
“No, I didn't mean you should go. Stay.”
"Cole, I really should go. This was amazing, but..." I bit my lip and looked up at him through my lashes. He raised his eyebrows. "I'm obviously very attracted to you, and I'm glad we were able to move past our disastrous first meeting…and CJ is a great kid." I sighed. "I come with a lot of baggage. I just got divorced. I'm still trying to figure things out, and I'm not into casual hookups."
The throbbing between my thighs would beg to differ.
He paused, seeming to consider my words before speaking again. "That's fair." He nodded. "I come with a little of my own baggage."
He held the ice pack to his nose and walked me to the door.
"Hey, how about a goodbye kiss?" he asked, and I glared at him incredulously.
“A kiss? Cole, you’re holding an ice pack to your face. Maybe we should quit while we’re ahead.”
"I may never get this opportunity again. I'm willing to take the risk." He grinned down at me and waggled his eyebrows. I burst out laughing before nodding. He was making excellent points though I was sure it wasn't clear-headed logic that made me nod.
“But this is it. One last kiss.”
“One last kiss.” He smiled. “You’re not going to headbutt me, are you?”
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