So far, so good. Bracing her back against the headboard, she stretched her legs out in front of her and crossed them at the ankles. “You may proceed,” she said.
It was the most perfunctory striptease she’d ever seen, not that she’d seen all that many. But she certainly knew how to do one. He didn’t tease, he didn’t wink or bend over. She didn’t think he was even flexing his muscles.
He just slowly, his eyes on her, revealed himself. His long arms, masculine and dusted with blond hair. The wrists that were all bone and tendon. She liked his wrists. His handsome feet.
“Your second toe is longer than the first,” she said.
“I am evolutionarily superior.”
“A couple hundred years ago you’d be burned at the stake.”
“You are not helping the show,” he said, deadpan. Which made her laugh. Hard.
He took off his pants, the waistband of his light-blue boxers riding low on all the muscles of his stomach. Her laughter dried right up.
“You …” she whispered, her eyes following that light trail of hair to the obvious erection under the cotton. “Swim?”
“I do.”
He left the boxers on and crawled up from the end of the bed toward her. He grabbed her ankle and with one strong yank, he pulled her down flat on the bed. It was slightly caveman, and she totally dug it. Abandoned herself to it, put her arms up over her head, and watched him watch her.
“I like your Tweety Bird,” he said, looking at her shirt and no doubt the breasts under it.
“Is that a euphemism for something?”
One corner of his lips lifted, but his eyes stayed on her chest, his finger coming up to trace Tweety’s outline, across her breasts, along the sides, over her stomach, and then finally up to that cigarette Tweety held—contradicting all zoological reality—in his wing. Her nipples beneath the cotton were painfully hard. These light touches were killing her, were coming at her sideways, lighting her up from the inside. She arched against him, trying to inspire him to fuller contact.
But he resisted.
“I like your skirt, too,” he said, shifting slightly so those hands, those clever teasing hands, were at her knees.
“I could probably get you one,” she said, arching her throat to get a better breath.
“You know what I thought about all day after seeing you in this skirt?”
His hands, wide and warm, were slipping under the hem of her skirt, up to the top of her thigh, the muscles jumping as he passed as if vying for his attention, but he kept on, inch by inch up her leg. Under her skirt.
Having no sassy comeback, she could only shake her head.
“Tasting you.” His fingers reached the lace edge of her underwear and slipped right over it, to the damp spot in the silk. For a second she thought about being embarrassed. He hadn’t even kissed her. Barely touched her and there was a puddle between her legs. She was hot and wet and dying for him. “Will you let me taste you?” he asked, his thumb pressing up, shoving the silk of her underwear against her.
Her hands gripped the headboard. “Yes,” she sighed. “Yes.”
“Good.” He slipped the scrap of black satin and lace off her legs and feet and tossed it over his shoulder and then those hands slid back up her legs, pushing up her skirt this time until she was revealed to him. Half-clothed, half-naked.
Yesterday she’d been covered by the bubbles. Hidden from his gaze. But right now she liked the way his breath caught, the way his eyes dilated. Her body and the attention it got had long stopped being something of pleasure to her. And she was suddenly grateful to have that back. That pride in her body.
He shifted again. His muscles coiled as he slid down on the bed and then his breath was between her legs, hot and humid, and he moved her, slipped one of her legs over his shoulder, pushed the other out to an angle. It was his show, and he was utterly in control. And she gave in to it, her eyes drifting shut. She felt everything he did with painful clarity. His thumbs parting her, the first initial soft and sweet lick. Bottom to top, as if finding her boundaries. She arched when he hit the top, the nerves in her legs twitching.
She could feel him smile against her and he settled in, his touch growing surer. More confident. Harder.
“Yes,” she sighed. “Like that.”
“Soft, then hard,” he whispered against her, making her twitch and gasp. He sucked on her, licked her, bit her—very carefully—and she saw stars, felt her bones melt. Her brain was silent, blessedly silent, and she was fully inside her body, living in every lush inch of it, aware beautifully and specifically of that sweet, slow build between her legs, in her belly and womb.
He shifted again, as if finding a more comfortable spot, and she was suddenly aware of time. That he’d been doing this awhile and it felt good and she would definitely come, but was it too long? In the old life, in those rare times a man actually took the time to go down on her, she’d have put on the show by now.
She lifted her head. “Is it … are you—”
His eyes met hers over the black curls of her mound. Pleasure spiked again, despite her misgivings. That was just really hot. And when he lifted his face, she could see his lips were damp. Glossy. From her.
Oh, that was hot, too.
“We’re just getting started, Monica. It’s my show.” Those blue eyes were so alive, and they stayed locked to hers as one of his long fingers reached inside. Panting for air, she pushed against him.
Oh. So. Good.
“You like that?” he asked and added another. A long, slow slide that filled her. She nodded, breathless with this pleasure. His hand twisted, his fingers finding some secret hidden space inside of her and pressing.
“Oh!” She flopped back on the bed. “Holy shit.”
He chuckled against her and his mouth went back to work. Fingers, lips, teeth. His thumb. It became a blur, one long, loud party of pleasure between her legs. There was no room for thought, or doubt. If this was taking too long, good. It should take awhile. This was her body coming to life under his hands. Under his patience. It should take days. Nothing had ever felt so good.
The headboard was cold under her hot hands as she pushed onto him, into him.
“Oh, yes,” she whispered. The orgasm built, grew, rolled through her, pushing aside organs and muscles, blood and sinew. She braced her foot against his shoulder, arching and twitching, and he grabbed her hips, holding her, and then she broke. Splintered. Exploded.
She grabbed his head, holding him to her. Maybe breaking his nose in the process—she didn’t care. She just wanted this pleasure to last. And it did. She shook and moaned for what felt like hours. The big blast faded, but there were aftershocks, pops and zings of pleasure ricocheting through her body.
Weak, shattered, she stared up at the ceiling. “That …” Her voice croaked and she tried to clear it. “That was quite a show.”
He flopped down on the bed beside her, chuckling and breathing hard. They lay there for a moment. “Thank you,” she said, still staring at the ceiling because the intimacy was too much. She doubted he really understood what just happened, what he’d managed to hand back to her, and she didn’t have the courage to tell him. Not now, when she felt so raw. So new.
“Thank you,” he said, and she could tell he was looking at her, at her profile, as if waiting for her to turn and share with him this very real and beautiful moment.
Too much, she thought. Not going to happen.
“You hungry?” he asked when she didn’t move. “There’s chicken around here somewhere.”
He sat up, and only then did she have the courage to look at him. The muscles of his back were a thick, rippling fan under his smooth skin and finally, because he wasn’t looking at her, she could touch him. She shifted, moved, curled herself around him. Her legs along the outside of his, her arms around his chest. Her face to his spine. She kissed him there, a dozen small kisses, and he arched against her.
Blind, her hands explored the territory from his chest, to
the ridges and angles of his stomach, down to the waistband of his boxers. She slipped her hand inside and found him, unbelievably hard, the head of him damp.
He hissed, grabbed her hand, and pressed it hard against him.
“Sorry,” he muttered and lifted his palm, bracing his hands against her legs instead. “I … oh, fuck Monica. Please. Touch me.”
And she did. Hard, soft. With both hands. She squeezed his sac, teased the tip, listened to him groan and curse, and felt him shake against her. His head fell back, resting against hers, and she felt so connected to him just then. More connected to a man than she’d ever been and she couldn’t bear to leave it at this. Couldn’t bear to hold him off with one hand while jacking him off with the other. She moved, quick and sudden, sliding around to the front of him. There was no room on the corner of the bed his legs straddled and she fell to her knees on the carpet.
“What …?” he asked, his eyes gone, his face flushed. He was so close and he would never have asked for this and so it became a gift, cheerfully given.
“This,” she whispered and slipped him into her mouth.
He touched her cheek, her hair. Fell back against the bed and held her hand where it rested on his thigh. He twined her fingers with his and she didn’t like that. Didn’t want that. How totally fucked up of her that she could have his dick in her mouth but holding his hand was too much.
She slipped her hand away from his, building her speed and pressure, making him jerk and swear against her. It didn’t take long; she knew he was painfully turned on, and within seconds he exploded in her mouth, his feet lifting off the ground, his body jackknifing and curling around her, a cocoon of heat and skin and affection and mutual desire.
The safest place she’d ever been.
So, of course, she sat back, breaking the moment. The connection. It took her a second to catch her breath, to put at least some part of herself back together in a way that was familiar to her. Recognizable to her. But finally, she was able to look up and smile, resurrecting all of her sauciness, her flippancy, while inside there was a cleanup crew sweeping up after the mess of all her walls coming down.
“Well,” she said, bright and shiny, as if she’d just opened a bank account instead of having the most intimate moment of her life. “You said something about chicken?”
He laughed, a big deep belly laugh—the kind that blew back the walls and cracked the ceiling, while at the same time rebuilding that cocoon, locking the two of them into an experience, a shared moment. Panicked, she scrambled to her feet, pushed down her skirt, and found at the foot of the bed the underwear he’d pulled off of her.
“I didn’t bring any drinks.” He took his time getting dressed; stretching, smiling, totally comfortable. She looked away, averting her eyes from the golden skin stretched over sleek muscles.
Leave, she thought. Please. Just leave.
He opened the bag, unleashing a whole new wave of the fried-chicken smell, and then spread things out as if they were going to have a picnic.
“I got you a leg.”
When he handed it to her, she thought about not taking it. About making up some lie about work and then sitting down at her computer until he got the message, but she was starving. Could she ask him to go but leave the chicken with her?
In a backlash of terrible memory, she remembered visiting a guitar player’s room with pizza and a six-pack. They’d had sex, rough sex. Something she pretended to like while the whole time she had been thinking about the pizza getting cold on the dresser. When it was over and she had pulled on her clothes, he’d told her to take a slice and go.
At the time, the pizza had been cold and she’d been pissed, but now, looking back on it from this new place where she was standing, the whole scene was horrible. Vile.
And there was no way she could do that to Jackson.
Begrudgingly she took the chicken leg, thick and crusty, still warm. She could feel the care that Cora had taken, the love that she’d fried right into the meat. “If I stay in this town too long I’m going to get fat,” Monica said. She opened the minibar.
“There’s beer,” she said.
“Perfect.”
She handed the bottle to him by the neck.
“We can share.” He opened the beer, took a sip, and handed it to her.
“I’m good.” She sat in the office chair at her desk and bit a tiny piece of crust off the chicken. It was delicious, of course. Without a doubt the best small bite of fried chicken she’d ever had, and her instinct was to set it down. Push it away.
Like anything good that might roll up on the shores of her island.
“How’s your work going?” he asked, pointing at the stacks of paper beside the bed.
“You don’t want to talk about that,” she said, largely because she didn’t want to talk about it.
“I find myself interested in all parts of you, Monica.”
This was the reality of letting someone in, of the lesson Jenna’s death had truly taught her. As hard as it might be being alone, it was hard learning how to be with someone, too. She just had to decide which was harder.
Being alone, her heart answered.
“It’s going fine,” she lied.
“You know, you can just say, ‘I don’t really want to talk about it.’ ”
He was grinning at her from the bed. So happily oblivious to all the land mines between them. The land mines in her.
I have never in my life been happily oblivious.
She was always totally aware of the broken edges in people and situations. All the silent and hidden expectations that waited in the dark for her to fail. For her to be too much herself, or not enough.
But he sat there as though whoever she was at this very moment was just fine.
There was a long, slow unraveling of what remained of her distrust. Her suspicion. It wasn’t comfortable, sitting there, but she had the deep-abiding sense that it was necessary. For her. For her moving on with her life.
“Work is … it’s fine,” she said, taking tentative steps. “Well, hard, actually. Harder than I thought it would be.” She took a bite of chicken, a big bite, the flavor bliss. “How was showing Dean the factory?”
“It might be too small for the ovens.”
She winced. He shrugged, but she could see the tension scurrying back into his muscles.
“But I really don’t want to talk about that,” he said.
It was amazing how they could do what they just did on that bed—share that kind of intimacy—and still cordon off big parts of their life from each other. It seemed wrong, somehow. Like a lie, or worse than a lie. But she didn’t know how to change it.
“How was your teaching debut?” he asked, skipping from subject to subject looking for one they could talk about.
“Good. They … they want me to come back tomorrow.”
“Vanessa does? They didn’t get enough footage?”
She shook her head, pulling a long white sliver of chicken off the bone. “Not to tape. The kids …” It sounded ridiculous saying it out loud. “The kids want me to come back.”
“Really?” He laughed, but it wasn’t at her, so she relaxed. “Shelby must have been thrilled.”
“I don’t know if ‘thrilled’ is the right word.”
“You didn’t … what did you say … snatch her bald, did you?”
Monica shook her head, focusing for a moment on her chicken. On the memory of Shelby’s face going white when Monica had said she’d be back in the morning.
I’m watching you, she’d said. Those kids are at a really impressionable age and if you say or do one thing you shouldn’t as an adult and as an educator, you’ll be done.
Monica had burned hard at the words, biting her tongue to keep from giving a big, long “fuck you, like I asked to do this, you judgmental cow.” But in the end, she was proud that she’d managed to just nod and walk away. Her tongue bleeding.
“Her hair is intact,” she said.
“Look, Monica,
I know you’re both adults, but if she—”
She held up her hand. “It’s fine, Jackson. The whole thing is … fine.”
Monica thought about Gwen, about how frantic she’d seemed. So wild. There had been something painfully familiar about the girl in that moment when she’d accused Monica of being a bullshit liar. The anger, the eyeliner, the tears blinked away before anyone saw them.
It wasn’t so hard to see herself in Gwen.
Monica wondered about the girl’s family—the other bullshit lying adults in her life—if they were the cause behind some of that pain.
“So, who did Shelby get to take your class?” he asked.
“Ania,” Monica said. “And Jay and Gwen.”
His head snapped up and his hand holding the beer bottle slowly lowered. “Gwen was there?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s weird, she didn’t tell me anything about it.”
Monica laughed. “Does she usually?”
Jackson blinked. “Gwen is my sister.”
Oh. No.
Chapter 14
If day one of teaching the teenagers was uncomfortable and strange, day two was an unmitigated disaster. She’d had this half-thought of just coasting in and talking some more about point of view. Perhaps using some words like “voice” and “author authority.”
And if that didn’t work, she’d tell them about meeting Jay-Z and Beyoncé.
But Jay had come armed. With poetry.
Monica should have known it was going to be a disaster when both Ania and Gwen rolled their eyes, but instead she had thought that if Jay was brave enough to want to share with them, they could be brave enough to listen.
Two minutes in, Monica clued in to the fact that Jay’s poem was about Gwen. About ten seconds after Gwen clued in to it.
“Jay,” Monica said, after Gwen gasped so hard oxygen became scarce out at the picnic table. “Perhaps we should—”
“I’m almost done.” Jay rolled on; having worked up the courage to publicly declare his love via poetry, he was not going to be stopped.
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