“I have Christmas dinner on the stove for you,” Cap said with a wink.
Leah's eyes expanded to twice their normal size. She took a deep breath and then turned to Bob, silently urging him to go check out the fudge in the employee lounge. Fortunately, he got the message and disappeared within seconds. Great, Cap just made it sound like I live with him or something, Leah thought, desperately hoping that Bob wasn't the gossipy type.
After expending the mental energy to coax Bob to the lounge, Leah realized she hadn't come up with a response to Cap's winking revelation. She stood behind the front desk counter, one hand on her hip, deciding silence was golden as she waited for him to elaborate.
“So are you coming or what?” he asked, a boyish grin spread between the two legendary dimples.
I guess he didn't find some lonely single swinger to spend the night with after all, Leah observed. What the hell, right? I mean, it's Christmas. Aimee would be so mad at me if I didn't go. “Can I stop by home and get Glory first?”
“I'd have it no other way,” Cap replied chivalrously. He took a little mock bow and ushered her out the door. “Parked around back?”
Leah nodded just as the scowling wind whipped around and bit into her cheeks. She instantly regretted her decision not to wear her wool winter coat, opting instead for a soft cashmere cardigan. Her hair was flying all around her face as Cap pulled her body close to his, his arm draped over her shoulder. He was dressed for the elements in a thick Carhartt jacket. She felt his warmth envelop her, soaking into her bones and then abruptly vanishing just as he steered her to her Jeep, which was, of course, frozen. She fired it up and watched him climb into his behemoth navy blue truck. He rolled down the window, “I guess I'll follow you back to your place to get Glory and then you can follow me to my place?”
She felt weird telling him she already knew where he lived. “You're down a block from the boardwalk, right?” she verified, trying to seem a little nonchalant and not-at-all-stalkerish.
He nodded, “That's right. You can park on the street in front of the shop if you know where it's at.”
Leah shivered as much from nervousness as from cold as she put her Jeep in gear and drove the three short blocks to her apartment complex. She could tell Glory had been asleep but was trying to muster up the energy to welcome her owner home in full-on happy beagle style. Leah grabbed a bag with food and small dishes for Glory and led the puppy downstairs and out into the frozen grass to empty her bladder. She was finally able to coax the dog into the Jeep and then went flying down Coastal Highway toward Cap's shop.
He was waiting on the porch. She recognized the swing immediately from his picture on the dating site. There were some beat up tackle boxes and old rods leaned against the dark siding. The neon signs in the window were switched off and only a faint glow emanated from inside the building. “My apartment is around back,” he explained, taking her by the hand that wasn't holding Glory's leash. “It's pretty small and it's going to be cramped with the two dogs up there, but you know, it's just me usually so I don't need much space.” She wondered what happened when his daughters came to visit, but she didn't ask.
Keeper was standing guard at the door and Leah could hear him whining all the way up the stairs. She was trying to focus on that and not the smell of years of accumulated fish odors that oozed from the walls and floors in the stairwell. I'll get used to it...probably...she convinced herself as she switched over to mouth breathing. She thought briefly about the foul odors she associated with her childhood in Nebraska, where she'd first learned to breathe through her mouth or hold her shirt up to her nose when she encountered a hog farm. Out here on the coast, it was a different stench but required the same action.
“Sorry about the smell!” Cap apologized as he pushed the unlocked door open. “I don't even notice it anymore but I see the way your nose is wrinkling up!”
“It's okay,” Leah assured him. “I'm starting to get used to it already!” She scanned the perimeter of the small space. They'd entered through the kitchen, which was galley-style with a bar and two stools on the far end between the kitchen and the living room. She saw a cat dismount from her window perch and slink past them, trying to escape Glory's notice, but it was too late. Glory bounded after her and nearly sent Leah sprawling to the floor, much like the time she'd met Cap on the beach and lost her shoes in the surf.
“That's Marlina,” Cap introduced her. “Like marlin the fish, but with an A.”
“All your pets have fishing-related names. I get it,” Leah smiled. “Very creative.”
“Why do I get the feeling you're making fun of me?” Cap shot back with a grin, his dimples revealing he wasn't in the least bit upset.
Leah realized the malodorous fish scent had been replaced with a spicy smell coming from a huge pot on the stove. Cap gently moved Leah to the side so he had access to the oven, from which he pulled a steaming hot loaf of French bread. “So what's for dinner?” Leah inquired, feeling her stomach begin to rumble. She had had a couple pieces of fudge during her shift, but nothing substantive.
“Homemade gumbo,” Cap announced, his pride filling the room alongside the delicious aroma.
“Wow, impressive,” Leah smirked, finding every movement he made to be interesting and revealing. So he cooks too; that's really sexy, she thought, admiring the way his thick, tan weathered hand looked as he slid it out of the oven mitt.
“You ain't seen nothing yet, baby!” he winked at her and lifted the lid to the pot so he could give the gumbo a stir with a dense wooden spoon.
Twenty minutes later, the pair was perched on his loveseat next to the Christmas tree in the small living room area. The tree was real and along with the spicy gumbo smell, Leah now had a steady stream of fresh pine filtering through her sinuses. Fortunately that meant the fish smell from the staircase had completely vanished from her memory. The tree was lit with multicolored lights along with those long, bubbly-looking retro lights that Leah remembered gracing her grandparents' tree back in the 80's when she was a tiny tot. The dogs had adjourned to Cap's bed and Leah could hear them both snoozing, their bellies full of the Christmas treats Cap had lavished upon them. The cat had brushed up against Leah's leg once or twice as if she was taking a cat-friendly reading and then she retired to the afghan-covered velvet armchair across the room.
There was a sense of coziness and warmth that Leah had never been able to invoke in her own apartment. Maybe it was the Christmas tree or the throw rugs that covered the worn wood floors, maybe it was the dim lighting or the peaceful whirring of sleeping animals. She wasn't sure, but the homey comfort of it was sinking into her, much like she was into the cushions of the loveseat. Cap was effervescent as he shared stories about adventures on the high seas, trying to get charter trips in despite impending storms. She shared some horror stories from college practicums and a little about what would be going down in the Miller household on Christmas Eve.
“My mother has this completely cheesy tradition that she started when we were little kids,” Leah explained. “She collected a dozen or so tiny brass bells tied with red and green ribbons. She keeps them on a very pretty, antique cut-glass tray and passes them out at the end of Christmas Eve dinner, which is always ham, scalloped potatoes, green beans and homemade rolls, by the way. We each have to take one and she makes us ring it while we sing 'Jingle Bells.'”
She was laughing as the memory filled her mind so vividly that she almost felt like a little girl again, remembering the gleaming brass bell with its satin ribbons between her fingertips and shaking it as her burnished copper ringlets danced in time to the beat. “Oh, we outgrew it years and years ago, and my brothers always roll their eyes when they see the bells come out on that tray, but we still do it to humor her. It'd kill her if we didn't play along! I know she's dying to share the tradition with grandchildren someday.”
“Your parents sound like real nice folks,” Cap observed. “Sounds like you had a fun, happy childhood.”
Leah no
ticed that he'd shifted so that one knee was angled against the couch cushion and now brushed against her thigh. His hand had moved closer to hers too, only millimeters from touching her. “They are,” Leah agreed. “I mean, in a narrow-minded, if you're not a Christian, you're going to hell kind of way.” She laughed it off. “You know, other than that, they're really nice!”
“Well, I'm a Christian,” Cap said, puffing out his chest. “Think they'd like me?”
Leah giggled and tried to picture taking Cap to her parents' house, introducing him as her boyfriend. It was a stretch, but she could pretty clearly predict their reaction to her bringing home a much older man, one who was divorced with daughters just a few years younger than she. They would not be pleased.
“You didn't get that, did you?” he asked, watching her nose wrinkle at the thoughts spinning through her mind.
“Oh, about being a Christian?” she caught herself from her daydream, reeling herself back to his living room.
“Yeah, it was a joke. Christian is my name, you know,” he suspended the words in front of her, like a Christmas present all done up in shiny packaging and frilly bows.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “I guess I assumed your name was Christopher...that's...uh...” She scrambled to grasp how she should feel about him being “a Christian.” “That's pretty ironic!”
“Leah is a biblical name, isn't it?” he asked.
She nodded. “From the book of Genesis...You've heard of Jacob and Esau? After Jacob tricked his twin Esau out of his inheritance, he went away to find a wife and fell in love with the beautiful Rachel. Her father made him work seven years to earn her hand in marriage. So on their wedding day when he lifted the veil expecting to see Rachel, it was her older and uglier sister Leah instead. Their father made Jacob work seven more years to earn Rachel's hand in marriage. Pretty sad, huh? Leah was the consolation prize.”
“Wow...I had never heard that one before, and I thought I'd heard it all in Sunday School growing up.” He took her hand into his and she felt his warmth wrapping around her. “It's hard to think of you as a consolation prize...”
She felt her cheeks flushing slightly at his compliment, but she accepted it graciously. “Although Leah was not beautiful, she was very loyal and she gave birth to four sons, four of the twelve tribes of Israel, including Judah, the line that Jesus came from. So Jesus was a direct descendent of my namesake. Pretty cool, huh?”
“I think I'd rather have that honor than beauty. Besides, physical beauty fades, right?” His eyes had missile lock on hers. “You're lucky to have the whole package: brains, beauty, personality...you're no consolation...just a prize.”
She held her breath for a moment as she wondered if those words had really come out of his mouth. But she knew she hadn't misheard when his finger stroked down her cheek, causing her to instinctively close her eyes, for she knew what came next. His lips smoldered against hers as she tasted some of the spices from their dinner burning into her tender flesh. She hadn't even opened her eyes yet when she felt him pull away, sensing a commotion on the floor. He was spreading a soft fleece blanket on the floor under the Christmas tree. In moments, he was lying on his side, beckoning her with his eyes and dimples to join him.
She laid facing him so that her head rested against his massive biceps. He pulled her so close that her nose became nestled in the tuft of his thick chest hair that peeked out from the top of his shirt. Her nostrils filled with the scent of his cologne, which was musky and wild. Cap's arm wrapped around her and he lifted her shirt a few inches so that his fingers could trail up and down the bare skin on the small of her back and the top of her ass. She wanted to speak, to ask him if he'd changed his mind about friendship, to say that she had...but the words wouldn't form on her lips.
He lifted her chin to him again and whispered, “Is this okay?”
She could barely squeak the word “yes” out of her mouth, but her nod and the way her body melted into his gave away her answer perfectly. He covered her lips with his and then words were unnecessary again. She felt her body responding to him as it was designed to do, with no conscious thought or direction. It's completely uncontrollable, she observed as she exhaled a soft sigh at the chills racing down her spine.
This is what I've wanted him to do to me since the first time I saw him and I'm not resisting. I'm complying, submitting...a moth drawn to the flame. It's Christmas Eve and I drank wine and let myself be seduced by the pretty bubbling lights reflecting in his eyes...and those damn dimples...and...it's okay, it's okay...
Her next question was going to be: Will I regret this in the morning? But she saw the way the Christmas lights cast their colorful glow onto his skin as he unbuttoned his shirt, causing her to flash back to the hypnotic lights on the stage at her church. She remembered how her hips began to sway and her lips began to murmur the lyrics to the song with merely a nerve impulse rushing through her, governed by some deep-seeded, primal area of her brain. And this was much the same. Her back arched as he lowered himself on top of her, and she shifted her hips so that he could slide her pants and panties down, leaving her unencumbered beneath him.
He was so gentle, all the kinetic energy in his strong, broad shoulders and hulking chest and arm muscles was locked away as he touched her with the lightest brush imaginable, his fingertips just barely grazing her nipples once he'd released her creamy ivory mounds from their lace underwire cage. That disciplined restraint transferred to his mouth as his tongue darted out to lightly flick the hardened buds resting on top of her ribcage, and then even further south as he tasted her other hardened bud. She felt him drink her in, leisurely lapping the nectar off her succulent petals. She had never been so thoroughly and thrillingly consumed, as if she was the most delicate, extravagant dessert ever concocted by the world's finest chef.
Leah knew he was expecting to lap at her clit until she surrendered to her climax, but she didn't want that. She vaguely remembered that feeling...that delicious feeling of a hard cock easing its way into her folds, sliding in so teasingly slow that she would tremble with wantonness until it reached her cervix. The desire for that feeling came over her so strongly, so overwhelmingly that she pulled Cap up across her body until she was tasting her juices on his lips. “I want you now,” she managed, her lungs compressed under his weight. “I want you inside me.”
“Are you sure?” he asked breathlessly, as if he couldn't move another muscle until she convinced him it was the one thing in all the world of which she was absolutely certain.
She felt him pressing against her thigh, throbbing, pulsating with the same desire she felt vibrating out from her core. But he was still the very picture of restraint, of self-control, balancing himself on top of her so that she could still easily breathe and positioning his rock hard cock far enough away that he wouldn't be tempted to plunge it into her before she was ready. She couldn't remember the last time she was poised like this, straddling the threshold of ecstasy. She had felt it before, years before, so many that she couldn't remember who had been hovering over her with lustful eyes. She'd gone through the motions the last several times she'd been in this position, but this yearning, this longing...yes...I have felt this before, a lifetime before.
“Yes, yes, please,” she qualified, lifting her hips and pressing against him, hoping to catch the tip of his cock between her slit. “I'm sure.”
He turned and fumbled for something in a basket near the tree and she realized he was slipping on a condom. She felt relieved but impatient to feel him inside her. He cradled her head in one hand, lifting her face to his so that their lips met again. His other hand guided his cock inside her. She had not seen his member in the dim lighting, only felt it pressed against her thigh. She was not expecting the girth or the length and she felt it stretching her inch by inch. Cap sighed as she finally gave way to him. “Oh, god...Leah...”
Hearing her name pass through his lips sent a jolt from her brain straight down her spine and into her sex. He began to very slowly thrust
in and out, pacing himself, once again exhibiting a surprising amount of patience and self-control. She knew that it wasn't going to take much on her end...her own self-control had already been thrown out the window. She wrapped her legs around his, attempting to take him even deeper inside, pushing her own pelvis up to meet his.
She had nearly forgotten what it felt like to orgasm so intensely, so serendipitously, controlled by external forces and not by her own hand. She felt the delicious build up and knew it was inevitable, but the crashing waves of pleasure still washed over her unexpectedly. She cried out as she trembled and shuddered beneath him, and he held her closer yet, expertly steering himself through the swelling tide of her climax.
She had never been guided through such teeming, fertile waters. Lovemaking with Cap was not a ten or fifteen minute adventure, as it had been with past partners. It was a marathon, not a sprint. An hour and a half later, after she had been pulled on top of him, thrown over the side of the loveseat, and then tugged down onto his lap as he sat on the loveseat, he finally announced in a deep, growling moan, “I'm going to come now, okay?”
She looked at him incredulously, her face caked with a mixture of sweat, makeup, and tears from the intensity of the seemingly hundreds of orgasms that had rocked through her body during the previous ninety minutes. Every ounce of moisture and energy had been drained from her. She had never ever in her life felt more satiated and full. She couldn't even respond to his question; she was completely speechless and could only manage a weary nod.
He began moving her up and down on his shaft. Completely zapped of energy, she had lost the ability to lift her hips more than an inch or so ten minutes prior. She watched the look of concentration gripping his face as he buried his cock up inside of her. His hands digging into her hips, he began to bounce her faster and faster on top of his still-swelling pole. She felt her breasts jiggling so fast with his relentless movement that they were nearly vibrating.
Just when she thought she couldn't take any more, she felt a jolt surge through him, his cock grew impossibly hard and then there was the sound: a primal howl that Leah immediately feared would wake the dogs. She felt his thighs begin to shake underneath her and his face twist and then go completely slack, as if he'd gone from agony to ecstasy in a heartbeat. “Fuck,” he whispered, “oh baby...” She felt his cock twitching inside of her as his orgasm dissipated. He pulled her head down so that it rested on his chest and wrapped his arms around her. “Baby, that was amazing,” he breathed into her ear.
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