A Cold Blue Call

by A. J. Downey

  “Come on, man. It ain’t gonna dry out any out there.”

  “Fuck me, that’s the truth.”

  “Hell of a lot warmer and dryer between the sheets,” he declared, going for his door handle.

  I smirked. “Then you’re doing it wrong.”

  “Ha ha, fuck you,” he said, deadpan.

  “Not into twincest, how many times I gotta tell you that?”

  We dashed up the steps and he went to unlock the door saying, “I should leave your ass out here.”

  “Better not, mofo. Nobody gets between me and my woman.”

  He laughed and said, “You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear you say something like that, man.” He shook his head and shoved open the door. “I’m really happy for you.”

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I followed him up the stairs and when we parted ways at the second floor, he gave a little salute and made his way up to the top floor and the master suite where Lys waited. I grinned and crept quietly past Manolo’s room and went to the guest room, where I found Claire fast asleep despite the storm outside.

  I didn’t wake her. Instead, I grabbed out a clean pair of underwear from the bag I’d packed and went for a hot shower to warm up. Last thing I wanted to do was get into bed and put my chilled skin against her. Actually, it was the first thing I wanted to do, but I didn’t think Claire would appreciate it much, so a hot shower first. I rushed through it, wanting her so badly I sported a hard-on through the whole shower, and the closer I got to getting into that bed with her, the harder I got.

  I dropped off my damp uniform and things by the chair my bag was sitting on and shoved them out of the way up under it to keep them from being a tripping hazard. I tried to keep quiet, but Claire was out, so fast asleep she was dead to the world. I stood back up carefully and went around the bed to get in with her, lifting the blankets and easing in behind her.

  “Huh? What?” She woke with a start, her tone startled and demanding, and I chuckled.

  ”Just me, baby.”

  “Hmm.” She snuggled back into the curve of my bigger body and I spooned her, the rub of her ass against my cock tantalizing, to say the least.

  She wriggled again a moment later and I kissed her behind her ear, growling into it, “Do it again, you’re getting fucked.”

  “Hmm.” She made that noise again, sultry and rich, her slight laugh throaty and sexy as she ground her ass against me one more time.

  “Fuck me,” I murmured.

  She laughed again, a lighter, more amused noise, and murmured seductively, “Don’t mind if I do.”

  I was already raising her leg, lifting it back over the top of mine. I’d already freed my cock by shoving my boxer briefs down and out of the way. I laughed a little, in a ‘You’ve got to be kidding me’ sort of way when my fingertips delved along her front and found she didn’t have any panties on… just one of my shirts.

  I didn’t think about anything, forgot a condom completely, and slipped inside of her. She gasped and drove her hips back and down to meet my thrust as my hand skated under my shirt that she wore and grasped the soft mound of one of her perfect tits.

  Her body wrapped around mine like hot, wet silk. Slick velvet heat stroked up my shaft and teased the head of my cock with a warm press of her walls. She was getting wetter, slicker by the moment, and I loved how enthusiastically her body took me in.

  While I loved to talk a good game, tell her things like how much I wanted to fuck her, I never really did. No matter how passionate it got, no matter how hard I thrust, no matter how much her nails bit into my back or my ass, we never fucked. We always made love, but right then had to be my favorite time with her so far. I loved her, low and slow, thrusting sensually, listening to her soft panting breaths in the close dark. Her body, moving in rhythmic counterpoint to my own, met me with an easy sinuous roll of her hips, stroking down to meet my every upward stroke into her.

  It was calming, soothing, and utterly hypnotic, and I couldn’t tell you how long we were like that together, making love. Minutes or hours, it was like time stopped, for us to have this eternal moment together and I loved that about her, too. I loved that we lost ourselves in each other so completely that time just stopped making sense and neither of us cared.

  “Oh, God, Angel.” Her voice was a low whispered caress in the dark as she writhed against me. Her orgasm caused her to shiver, her legs trembling uncontrollably as her body milked my cock for everything it was worth. I couldn’t hold out against that if I wanted to, driving into her one last time and letting her have all of me.

  Shit! No condom.

  “Fuck!” I muttered aloud, and she stiffened and I felt our first fight may be on the horizon and she had every fucking right to be pissed the fuck off at me.

  It was like she read my mind. She went very, very still and asked, “You didn’t put a condom on, did you?”

  “No, I meant to stop, to –“

  “Angel,” she said gently, “You’re a medical professional, since when is pulling out a responsible method of birth control?”

  “No, you’re right, I… fuck! You’re totally right.”

  She shuddered with an aftershock and moaned a little and it was torture waiting for the lecture or dressing down that I knew I richly fucking deserved.

  “It’s too late to really be mad about it,” she said after a minute, but I could tell she was disappointed, which fucking killed me.

  I sighed and kissed the back of her shoulder. She cuddled back into me and I was swept with a modicum of relief. She was pissed, she had every right to be pissed, but she wasn’t so pissed that she didn’t want me touching her. She still wanted me close.

  “I’m not sure I could feel like any bigger of a steaming pile of dogshit if I wanted to, right now,” I told her.

  She chuckled softly, “You kind of deserve it just a little, but I think I knew somewhere that something was missing and I didn’t exactly stop you.” She shivered again and said, “It is what it is, now. What will be, will be and we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked.

  “I’m sure that if we aren’t pregnant I should probably get an IUD until we want to be.”

  “You’d want that?”

  “What? Kids?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” I swallowed hard. I’d always wanted kids. It would be a bit of a blow and take some adjustment if she didn’t.

  “With you? Someday, maybe. I mean, I never thought I would be in one place long enough to make having a child a thing I should do. The circus life isn’t exactly child-rearing friendly… but yeah. If it happens, it happens, and I can’t and won’t be sad about it.”

  Her voice was so very serious, the veracity of her words ringing clear in my skull and I loved her so fiercely then, was so moved by her and those words, I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I simply wrapped both my arms around her and dragged her back against my body, kissing every available inch of her that I could reach with my lips until she couldn’t help but giggle and laugh.

  “I love you so much, mi alma.”

  “I love you, too,” she murmured and leaned so she could kiss me back. Which, of course, eventually led to more of that timeless love making of ours, only this time she initiated it, turning in my arms and straddling my hips, peeling my shirt off over her head as she slid down over my cock.

  “Babe!” I cried softly and she shushed me.

  “Too late now, might as well make the most of it,” she whispered in my ear before capturing the lobe lightly with her teeth.

  Fuck, she drove me wild.

  22

  Claire…

  I leaned back, his cock deep inside of me, as much to change the angle of penetration to get him stroking over that spot deep inside that woke up my insides, as to give better access to my clit from the outside. He licked the pad of his thumb, all the while keeping direct eye contact with me, and went for it.

  That firs
t electric jolt of pleasure when he made contact with the sensitive bundle of nerves at the top of my sex sent me to heaven. I rolled my hips, getting it going on inside, and I was afraid I wasn’t going to last very long like this. That was a small tragedy, but at the same time, not too terrible, it just meant I got to ride this ride all over again.

  One of the things I loved about Angel was that his sex drive was just as high as mine. After he came, just give him a few minutes and he was ready to go again, and could go until we were both exhausted and satisfied. Sometimes, that could take some doing for me. Pleasure was one of my favorite drugs, and Angel could keep me high for days.

  “That’s it, baby. Just like that,” he said, his voice strained and on the edge. I loved that. I loved that I had that effect on him. I loved that he wasn’t afraid to express how good I made him feel, that he gave himself over to the sex and the energy we raised between us just as readily as I did. I ground on him, and the feel of him against my walls, hot and stiff and touching every bit of the most intimate, sensitive, and sensual parts of me, had me unraveling in no time.

  It was hard to keep my voice down; in the end, I bit my bottom lip to keep myself from crying out. The orgasm that swept through me was so strong that the added little edge of pain enhanced it, and when I found myself laying over the top of Angel, his hands smoothing over my skin, stroking every bit of my exposed body that he could reach, I realized I could taste the sweet copper tang of blood. I’d bitten my lip so hard it’d split slightly in all the excitement.

  Angel reached up and drew me down, kissing me, then grunting and pulling back slightly, asking, “What’d you do?”

  “I bit my lip,” I said, with a slight laugh. “Sorry.”

  “Does it hurt? Are you all right?”

  I gave a sultry little purr and said, “Mm, I’m better than alright,” and giggled when he sucked in a sharp breath as I contracted my pelvic floor muscles around his cock.

  “Do that again,” he all but begged, and I did. I don’t think he even had a chance to go completely soft yet, and he was already twitching, growing inside me again.

  “Round, three?” I asked.

  “And four, five, and six – if not more,” he said with a dark little chuckle of his own. My pussy throbbed of its own volition at that sound and I felt my own breath rush out in a sigh, but then his mouth was on mine and we were making love all over again.

  “There she is,” Golden declared from the kitchen table when I made it down the next morning. I’d woken up to an empty bed and was so tired, all I wanted to do was go home and sleep for real.

  I’d showered and dressed before going downstairs and honestly? I felt like I’d been fucked on horseback, with how sore I was. My abs hurt from all of the orgasms and my legs felt like I’d had them ripped out of the sockets and popped back in on the wrong sides. Sometimes, there was such a thing as too much of a good thing. I’d sailed right on past ‘deliciously sore’ and was just plain sore this morning.

  I sort of hated how Angel looked up from his cup of coffee and looked perfectly poised, like absolutely nothing was wrong with him at all. How did he get off so easy? I wondered. Because you were on top most of the rest of last night, another inner voice chased the first and then yet another was like, Oh, yeah.

  “Oh, my God, I want it, I need it, put it in my mouth,” I groaned and Golden started laughing, while Lys blinked at me with a look like she really wanted to know what the hell just happened. Angel handed me his cup of coffee and I swallowed some.

  “Oh, yes!”

  Lys, finally catching onto the joke, laughed with Golden. Angel just sat there shaking his head with an amused smile on his face and a levity I rarely got to see in his deep brown eyes. He was usually so serious.

  I smiled from around the rim of his coffee cup and said, “A suitable sacrifice has been made.”

  “Does that mean I just lost my coffee?”

  “It does,” I affirmed, and he got up to go make himself another. To carry on the tradition of stealing things, I took his seat. He huffed a laugh and shook his head.

  “I love you,” I declared and he smiled softly and said, “I love you, too.”

  “Oh, please!” an exasperated voice declared. I turned to Manolo entering the kitchen, rubbing sleep out of his eyes as he proclaimed, “You guys are gross.”

  Golden went off in a litany of Spanish. I’m afraid my Italian was better, and my grasp of the Spanish language came from Spain more than it did Mexico. Still, my understanding between the Spanish and Mexican dialects of the language was that they weren’t much different. The pronunciation being key and the fact that Mexican Spanish pronounced the letters ‘Z’ and ‘S’ the same while in Spanish Spanish, they were differentiated.

  Mostly I was just having trouble with the speed and fluidity with which Golden and his nephew communicated. Still, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Manolo was getting a lesson in respect. Parenting translated clearly and quickly across a litany of languages. Manolo tried to defend himself and looked to Angel for help. Sadly for him, he wasn’t getting any.

  “What your Tío Rodrigo said.”

  “Aw, man!”

  “Hey!” Lys barked, and Manolo came up short. She raised an eyebrow at him, and with all three adults in a unified front, his slim shoulders dropped in defeat.

  “Now, what do you say?” Golden demanded, gently but firmly.

  “Sorry I was rude, Claire.” Manolo’s apology was as sullen as any nine or ten-year-old’s when forced to apologize when they weren’t really sorry.

  “Hey, it’s no problem. I usually can’t deal before my first cup of coffee either.”

  “I don’t drink coffee, that stuff is nasty.”

  Golden snorted, “Wait ‘til you get to be our age, kid. You’ll change your tune.”

  “That’s if I even get to live to be your age,” he said, getting onto his own chair at the table, rolling his eyes and huffing out a sigh.

  “Manolo, why would you even say something like that?” Lys demanded, bringing over a plate of a steaming stack of pancakes.

  What followed was a stark conversation about his latest active-shooter drill at school, the happenings on the nightly news, and some very adult anxiety for a kid his age to have. It was a fairly heavy conversation for the breakfast table and a deeply uncomfortable one for the adults at that table.

  When he went upstairs to get ready for school, the four of us exchanged some haggard looks.

  I drew a deep breath and let out a cleansing sigh, and said with a heavy heart, “We need to do better.”

  “Shit, Angel and I are out doing what we can every day,” Golden said, leaning back in his chair. Lys and I exchanged looks.

  “I don’t think she was saying it like that, babe. Correct me if I’m wrong,” Lys said. I shook my head.

  “You’re not. I mean ‘we’ as in ‘we the adults of this nation’ period. We all need to do better than what we’re doing.”

  “Yeah, we all do, we all see that we do, but good luck getting people to do it,” Golden said bitterly.

  “Amen,” Angel said with a heavy sigh of his own.

  “Well, that was a perfect way to start the day,” Lys said flatly.

  “If it’s any consolation,” I said, “you guys did good.”

  “Thanks,” Golden said. “I think we always worry we aren’t doing enough or right by that kid…” he trailed off, his gaze keen on the hall Manolo had disappeared through to go back upstairs. I smiled a bit sadly and thought about my mom and her own struggles when it came to us.

  “I think when you stop worrying about things like that is when you’ve lost your grip on the whole parenting thing.” I know, that was rich, coming from me, she who was childless and spent like zero time around kids unless they happened to be in our audience. Still, my mom had never given up worrying about Carter and me. Never. She’d worried about us right up until the bitter end. Some of her last words to Carter were about making sure he to
ok care of me.

  “Right, well, I’m going to get Manolo to school and then I need to open up the shop.” Lys got up and kissed Golden on the way by. “See you guys later,” she said with a smile.

  “Thank you for breakfast. Have a good day at work,” I murmured.

  “Thanks for taking us in, Lys.” Angel’s thanks echoed not far behind mine.

  “Yes, that too,” I agreed, slightly mortified I hadn’t thought to thank her for that first. I mean, geeze.

  “You guys headed to the gym?” Golden asked.

  Angel and I exchanged a look. I really didn’t want to go, but at the same time, I did.

  “I didn’t think to bring my silks,” I murmured. It was a lame excuse, but it was the best I could think of without out-and-out blurting that I’d had too much good sex the night before and wanted to do as little actual walking today as possible. I might be flexible as all get-out, but even I had my limits!

  “That’s okay, get some cardio in, it’s good for yah,” Golden said with a grin, and I just got the sneaking suspicion that somehow he knew.

  I snorted and said, “More like cardi-no. I hate cardio.”

  His grin grew. “Then consider me your accountability buddy.”

  Fuck. He really wanted to go with us this time. Fine. Okay. We’d have it his way.

  “Just let me digest some, we can go.”

  Angel was trying not to laugh the whole exchange and I was trying to think of a myriad of ways to get back at him. Truthfully, he’d made me feel so good last night, I couldn’t get a single idea to stick.

  Oh well, I guess I should consider this karma cashing in for every time I’d done a little shit kind of a thing to someone else. Your brother, perhaps? Except I literally couldn’t think of a thing I’d done to him, except maybe not call as often as I should have for a good sister. To be fair, though, I hadn’t wanted to listen to the oftentimes thinly-veiled criticism and little jabs at my profession. The, ‘Have you decided to come home yet? and the ‘You’re still going strong in this phase, aren’t you, Claire?’