by Claire Kent
“But,” Lori croaked, her eyes blurring and her heart exploding with feeling. “But...how many?”
“All of them. From the very beginning.”
“But...You didn’t ...” Her hands were shaking and she couldn’t catch her breath.
“I didn’t fall in love with you that first time, no. But something about the money made me uncomfortable. So I didn’t spend it. Just stuck it in the drawer. And then I stuck the others there too. I can’t tell you how much I hated them. Sometimes I would sit and glare at them. When you decided to date Rothe, I came so close to burning the envelopes in my fireplace. But you emailed me for a new engagement just in time. And I started to hope. I never wanted this money, Lori. The sex was never about the money. Not with you.”
“Oh.”
Ander had been speaking with admirable composure, but now his mouth twisted in discomfort. “I bare my heart and all you say is ‘oh’?”
Lori swallowed hard. “I’m glad.”
His mouth twitched.
And, for the moment, everything was all right.
She stretched out her arms to him. “Can you please kiss me now?”
With a guttural exclamation, Ander moved quickly over to the floor beside her. He gathered her in his arms, and their lips found each other’s with passion, tenderness, and need.
At first, the kiss was more about an overflow of feeling than anything else. But eventually it became deeper, Ander stroking his tongue into her mouth and Lori rubbing her breasts against his chest eagerly.
And before she knew it she was lying on her back on the floor, the hardwood thankfully softened by the Asian rug and scattered envelopes and piles of cash all around her.
Ander was on top of her, pushing against her groin with the bulge of his growing erection. His mouth played along her neck while his hands fondled her body with shameless entitlement.
Lori moaned as an arousal built inside her, quicker than she would have expected after her flood of emotions earlier. But it had been two weeks since she’d made love to Ander and her body craved his touch.
His face moved down to her neckline. He nipped around her cleavage, giving one erect nipple a tweak with his finger and thumb through the thin fabric of her dress.
She gasped and shifted restlessly at the jolt of pleasure. Then he did it again and she whimpered. Then he took her breast in his mouth and fluttered his tongue around her sensitized nipple, dampening the fabric and making her mew helplessly.
While he teased her breasts, she stroked his smooth scalp, knowing how much it turned him on.
“Fuck, Lori, I love you,” Ander mumbled against her breast, sliding his hands up to stroke the line of her bare arms. “So beautiful. So sweet. I always want you so much.”
“Me too,” she panted, already too far gone for extended conversation. Her body squirmed beneath his, desperate for friction, for release. “Ander, me too.”
“Are you ready for me, baby?” he asked, slipping his hand beneath her skirt and between her legs. He found her hot, swollen entrance easily enough.
She wasn’t wearing panties.
“Oh fuck,” he bit out, his eyes igniting with heated possessiveness. He penetrated her with two fingers, spilling her collected moisture and rubbing deliciously against her inner walls.
Lori stretched like a cat and moaned again, half-shutting her eyes as the sensations spun out from his massage.
She mewed with disappointment when he withdrew his fingers.
“Sorry. It’s been a while and I’m not sure how long I can last.”
Smiling at him with sensual affection, Lori sat up and reached over to feel his crotch. She rubbed the hard bulge until Ander let his head fall back and groaned.
Delighted with this reaction, Lori would have continued. But Ander recovered enough to take her by the shoulders, ease her back down to the floor, and gently turn her over onto her stomach.
She knew he loved his position, and she was rather fond of it too.
Gazing at him with both love and desire from over her shoulder, she watched as he unfastened his trousers and freed his cock. “Feeling like a caveman tonight? Or do you still insist you’re immune to such primitive impulses?”
He shot her a warm, amused look, despite the tension on his face. Then he straddled her legs, pushed up her skirt to bare her bottom, and lifted her hips until her entrance was exposed.
Lori braced herself with her arms and let out a wet sigh as he pushed his erection into her wet, pliant channel.
Ander exhaled too, his almost gravelly as they adjusted to the penetration. Then he leaned over and said against her ear, “Me big strong man. Me take woman from behind.”
Caught by surprise, Lori broke into rippling laughter, her body shaking beneath his and the vibrations spreading deliciously through her body. “I knew there was a caveman in there somewhere.”
Because she was looking back as she laughed, she saw his gaze take on a new intensity, a depth that took her breath away.
“I love you, Ander,” she whispered, stretching her neck back for a kiss.
His lips found hers and they kissed deeply as he started to thrust.
So they made love on a floor strewn with discarded envelopes and thousands of dollars of cash.
They kissed for a long time, Ander’s hips moving with short, rhythmic pumps. But soon the stimulation and the emotions coalesced with deep power, and it felt so good she had to tear her mouth away.
“Oh, God,” she panted, “Oh, Ander.” Her body began to shudder as an orgasm built up quickly.
His rhythm intensified, as if in response to her coiling pleasure. He bumped his pelvis against her bottom with accelerating speed, his cock sliding slickly in her tight, heated clasp. “Fuck, Lori. I love you. Come for me, baby.”
She made soft, sobbing sounds as she worked up toward climax. She was washed with alternating waves of heat and cold as her vision started to blur.
Each of his tight strokes connected with her g-spot and he’d started to grunt as he unleashed his own need.
He ducked his head down again and nuzzled her hair away from her neck. Then he bit down on the hollow between her shoulder and throat.
“Ander!” she choked, her body clenching up brutally before it all released in waves of sensation. She eagerly rode out her climax around his cock, extending the duration of the spasms.
As soon as her channel clamped down around him, Ander made a gruff burst of sound. His motion became jerky, clumsy, uncontrolled as he thrust hard and fast.
She found the energy to turn her head back to watch him again, loving the sight of his barely reined passion, his face twisted with effort, his fiery, tender eyes. His obvious love and need for her affected her so much that another climax swelled up without warning.
She shook helplessly as Ander froze for a moment inside her. Then he came in a series of twitches and twists, muttering a long, thick exhalation of, “Love you, love you, love you, love you, love you.”
Lori came too on the words. Her body convulsed with another round of spasms, and this time she cried out from the pleasure of it.
They rocked together until they finally came down. And then they collapsed together onto the floor.
Ander’s weight was hot and heavy on top of her, and Lori’s belly was pressed against the rug, a few hundred-dollar bills sticking to her damp skin. But she didn’t really want to move.
He pressed kisses into the spot he’d bitten, occasionally murmuring out gruff endearments.
Her body was relaxing deliciously, and she could feel Ander’s softening too. And finally the discomfort caught up to her.
She shifted beneath him until he rolled off. But instead of getting up he just rolled them both over on their sides so he could spoon up behind her.
“You all right, baby?” he asked softly, inhaling against her hair, like he was smelling it.
“Yeah.” She knew what he was talking about. “We haven’t worked through all our issues. But we’re doing goo
d.”
Absently stroking her belly over the fabric of her dress, he said, “I think so too.”
“Sorry about the meltdown earlier.”
“Don’t be.”
“At least it led to the discovery of all this money you had socked away.” Lori giggled, feeling absurdly giddy. “What should we do with it all?”
“Spend it, I guess.” His kissed her hair a few times. Then added, almost diffidently, “Maybe we should use it to buy an engagement ring.”
Lori sucked in a little breath but managed not to stiffen. Her heart beating wildly, she drawled, “Do you have any idea how much money there is here? If we spend it all on a ring, I wouldn’t be able to lift my hand.”
Ander chuckled. “Then an engagement ring, wedding rings, a wedding ceremony, and a honeymoon.”
Trying to contain her smile, Lori said, “That would probably cover it.”
His hand grew still on her belly. “Lori?”
“Yes.”
“It might have been indirect, but that was a proposal.”
“Was it?” She still tried to keep her tone light, but her smile burst out in a blaze of joy.
“Yes,” he said, sounding grumpy. “It was.”
Laughter rippled out as she rolled over to face him. “Yes, I’ll marry you, silly.”
“Oh.” Ander blinked. “Good.”
She hugged him and it only took a few seconds before he was hugging her back. Then they lay for a long time, half-dressed and tangled up on the floor, in the throes of embarrassing bliss neither would admit to even an hour later.
Lori had just done her little, irresistible tapping-the-shoulder routine—feeling now was an appropriate time—and Ander had laughed with delicious warmth, when she heard herself murmuring foolishly, “I love how you laugh.”
Ander’s blue-gray eyes were softer than she would have believed possible when she’d first met him in that coffee shop and thought him to be the coolest man she’d even seen, burdened with the weight of experience. “You should. You taught me how.”
Feeling overwhelmingly sentimental, Lori tried to temper it with an ironic drawl. “Did I? Well, I’ve got you beat. You taught me how to have sex, how to have an orgasm, how to use my trusty vibrator, how to get myself off, how to use dozens of sexual positions, how to give a blow job, and how to ice skate.”
Ander shook his head, his lips twitching a little. “Lori, are you serious? You taught me how to be with someone genuinely, how to enjoy sex, how to express emotion, how to value myself, how to feel, how to love, how to trust. How to live. You’re never going to win this game.”
Her mouth parted as she stared at his face, just a few inches away. When she could finally get past the lump in her throat, she whispered, “Well, maybe we taught each other.”
“Maybe so.”
They kissed again until Lori started to feel sleepy. Then she snuggled up against him and stroked the back of his head. “Now we get to teach each other how to be married.”
It was a clear sign that she’d suffered an overload of sap when she didn’t even think that sounded stupid.
“Hmm,” Ander agreed, nuzzling her hair. “And then later on maybe we can teach each other how to be parents.”
“Yeah,” she murmured. “All kinds of stuff to learn. I’m looking forward to it.”
Then she processed exactly what Ander had just said.
Lori gulped. “I think.”
If you would like to contact Claire, please email her at [email protected].