by Noir, Roxie
“Because you’re making me crazy right now,” he says, hoisting himself onto his elbows and reaching over me for my bedside table. “Thirty-six, huh?”
I finally turn my head as he grabs my phone and spy the thirty-six pack of condoms I bought earlier this week.
“Well, now there’s thirty-three,” I say.
“That’s ambitious,” he says, grinning as he types the code into my phone’s lock screen and opens it.
For the record, I also know that his phone password is 0305, Rusty’s birthday. My phone’s locked so that if I lose it, whoever finds it won’t have access to all my bank accounts, not so I can hide something from Daniel.
“We don’t have to use all of them this weekend,” I tease. “They’re good for seven years or something.”
“They’re not gonna last that long,” he says, typing away.
“They’d better not,” I say, and he gives me a sideways glance, already grinning devilishly, still typing.
After a minute, he closes my phone and tosses it in front of me.
“There,” he says. “The hearing is in your calendar, and I set up both alert and email reminders for a week before, a day before, an hour before, and thirty minutes before.”
“Overkill,” I mutter.
“Is it?”
“I remember important stuff,” I protest, but not that hard. Daniel’s not really wrong to set up a thousand reminders for the hearing date, even though I’m sure he’ll also be calling and texting. I’m almost definitely going to remember something this important, but getting the reminders can’t hurt, and I feel better knowing that they’re there.
“Well, now you’ll definitely remember,” he says, his hand sliding down my back. “You hungry?”
“I could eat,” I admit.
* * *
We order a ridiculous amount of Chinese food and, in a fit of indulgence, have it delivered even though I’m categorically opposed to having food delivered, because I hate paying someone to do something that’s so easy to do myself.
“Are you putting on pants?” Daniel asks as I find an old pair of pajama shorts and tug them on.
“The delivery guy is coming,” I say, rummaging through a laundry pile that I’m 90% sure is clean.
It’s a small pile. A discreet pile, sort of hidden next to my dresser. I forgot to fold it before Daniel came over.
“You’ve got a robe,” he says, still lounging on my bed, fully naked, though at least he got the condom off.
“I answer the door in my robe when you’re visiting,” I tease. “If you really think that’s the way to greet the delivery guy—"
“New plan,” he says. “Do you have a snowsuit?”
I throw a pillow at him, but he swats it away. I pull on the tank top, still laughing.
“I can see your nipples,” he says, stuffing the pillow under his head. “Come on, Charlie, a parka at least.”
“Don’t you dare go caveman on me,” I tell him, rummaging through the almost-certainly-clean pile again.
“I just don’t want you to be embarrassed,” he claims. “It’s got nothing to do with the fact that the thought of another man thinking dirty thoughts about you makes me wildly jealous.”
I find two socks and stuff them into my tank top’s shelf bra, right over my nipples.
“How’s that?” I ask, putting my hands on my hips and sticking my chest out. “Good? Any nip showing?”
Daniel laughs, sitting up in my bed. He moves like a tiger, big and thick and muscled, with the grace of a powerful animal.
He reaches out and squeezes both my sock-boobs.
“I’d still hit it,” he says solemnly, then grabs me by my waist and pulls me between his legs. “How long did they say delivery would take?”
* * *
In the end, I do put a sweatshirt on over the tank top, because Daniel is right that I don’t really want the delivery guy getting the full highlights. We eat lo mein and kung pao chicken on my couch, right out of the containers, and watch half of Pirates of the Caribbean because it’s on TV.
It’s lovely. It’s peaceful. It’s the exact same thing we’ve done a hundred times before when Crystal has Rusty for the weekend, only this time my nipples are fully visible through my shirt, Daniel’s wearing nothing but boxers, and I’m snuggled against him with his arm around me as Johnny Depp prances and swashbuckles.
Daniel was right. Nothing that matters has changed between us, and it’s the biggest, most overwhelming relief.
We only make it halfway through the movie before I snuggle Daniel a little too hard, and before I know it, I’m gripping his hard cock through his boxers and he’s got my tank top pushed up over my tits and one hand up my shorts. I don’t even get the tank top off before we’re having slow, lazy sex on the couch, the movie still playing in the background.
* * *
In the morning, I wake up to Daniel getting back into bed. Everything is slow, hazy, so for a few minutes I just watch him, lying there naked with the sheet barely draped over his lower half, one arm behind his head, as he reads my battered, worn copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes.
It’s a good view, and I just watch it for a long time, letting myself wake up. Every so often he takes his hand from behind his head, flips a page, and settles back in.
Finally, I take a deep breath, exhale, and roll onto my stomach.
“He dies at the end,” I say. “Moriarty pushes him over a cliff. I think.”
Daniel puts the open book down on his chest, both hands under his head.
“Bummer,” he says. “Though I think they brought him back. He was hanging on by his fingertips, or something.”
“Sounds like a close call,” I muse. “I guess I never read them in order. I thought the author killed him off so no one else could write Sherlock Holmes stories.”
Daniel closes the book, tosses it onto my floor, and rolls toward me, his arm snaking over my lower back.
My body responds instantly, even though I’m half-awake at best. I push myself up on my elbows, back arched, and look at Daniel through my eyelashes.
Or, at least, I try. I probably look like a crazed muppet right now.
“Tell me more about Sherlock Holmes,” I purr, my voice still thick with sleep.
As come-ons go, it’s pretty bad, but it’s the best I can think of at the moment and besides, I’m certain it’s going to work.
Daniel grins. His hand slides beneath the sheet that’s covering me and palms one ass cheek, his fingers sliding into the crevice between my legs.
“Well, there’s my favorite Holmes story,” he says, his voice lowering. “The Mystery of the Soaking Wet Pussy.”
He pushes his fingers inside me and I gasp, arch, bite my lower lip as my fingers clutch my pillow. Daniel moves closer, his stiffening cock brushing my hip, as he lowers his lips to my shoulder.
“How the fuck are you already this wet?” he murmurs, his lips against my skin. “You just woke up.”
“I was watching you read,” I admit.
“Is that all it takes?” he asks, his weight shifting on top of me, his mouth on the back of my neck. He’s got his other hand in my hair, pushing my head forward, my shoulders still raised, my back still arched.
“I was thinking,” I say slowly, my brain still fuzzy.
Daniel’s fingers move deeper, pushing into my channel. My hips buck upward, already asking for more.
“About?” he prompts, my breathing faster, ragged.
God, what a beautiful way to wake up.
“Whether it would be rude to interrupt your reading by hopping on your dick,” I gasp out. “Or if I should ask first.”
Daniel moves a knee between my thighs, pushing my legs wide, and before I can even grunt, he adds a third finger. I put my face against the pillow and moan as he strokes me from the inside, then gasp when he finally puts his thumb on my clit.
“For the record,” he says, kneeling upright, his other hand moving down my spine, squeezing one ass cheek. “I will never cons
ider it rude to hop on my dick.”
He pauses. I look up at the sound of a condom wrapper, watch over my shoulder as he rolls it on one-handed, his hips driving forward as he strokes himself.
Then he pulls his fingers out and plunges his cock into me in one fluid motion and I groan into the pillow, clenching it in my fists as I push back against him, taking him as deep as I can.
It’s relaxed, unhurried. Daniel and I settle into a slow rhythm and I swear I float, just savoring the delicious feeling of his cock filling me, taking me again and again, each thrust sparking a chain reaction that sizzles along my nerves. When I finally come it’s not a thunderclap but a slow-building rainstorm that leaves me gasping and wrung out by the end.
When we finish, Daniel collapses onto the bed again, still breathing hard, and looks over at me.
“We could just stay in your bed all weekend,” he says.
“Isn’t that the plan?” I ask. “Who knows when we’ll get the chance again.”
“Very true,” he muses, then closes his eyes. “If something explodes at the brewery and I get called in, I will be pissed.”
“Nothing bad will happen,” I tell him, finally sitting up, facing the headboard, grinning at him. “Just sex until we can’t possibly bang anymore, and then maybe Chinese food or something.”
He leans in, his smile devilish, and kisses me.
“Agreed,” he says.
* * *
We do, in fact, get out of bed. I suck him off in the shower, water running down his body in rivulets, caressing his beautiful, sculpted muscles, until he comes growling oh that’s so fucking good Charlie. Then he bends me over my kitchen table and eats me out while the coffee’s brewing.
There’s sex on the floor. There’s more sex on the couch, in my armchair, and we try it against a wall but that becomes floor sex, too. Between rounds we have breakfast and read books and turn on the TV to see if it’s worthwhile and play stupid games on our phones, but mostly we talk.
We talk about absolutely nothing. He tells me the long, dramatic story of two brewery employees who were dating, then broke up, then she fucked his cousin, then they dated again, then he found out about the cousin and hung some ill-advised signs up around the brewery, took them down when they got back together, but by then Daniel and Seth had found a sign so they fired him.
“And it wasn’t Seth?” I tease.
“Seth has more sense than that,” Daniel says. We’re lying on my floor, my head on his arm. “Besides, she’s the one who fucked the cousin, not him.”
“Right,” I say, laughing. “Though, really, who else is there to fuck in Sprucevale? Everyone’s someone’s cousin, you’re bound to get into trouble sooner or later.”
In return, I go over all the reasons that Elizabeth claims her new house is haunted, even though it was built in the 1970s and the original owners are still alive, they just moved to Florida.
“I keep telling her that I can probably fix most of the creaks,” I say. “And, I mean, the doors coming open at night is just a mounting problem, but I think she kind of enjoys living somewhere allegedly haunted. Gives their life some spice.”
“I’d make a dirty comment about mounting problem, but I can’t follow it up right now,” Daniel says, and I laugh.
Around three that afternoon, he finds my vibrator in the drawer of my bedside table. By three-thirty I’ve come so much that I’m begging him to stop using the toy and just fuck me, and he obliges by sitting me on his cock and letting me ride him as fast or slow as I want.
I come again. I have no idea how, except it might have something to do with him sucking my nipples and telling me he loves watching me while I fuck him.
For someone who usually reprimands me for saying damn, Daniel is dirty as hell.
We both collapse sideways onto the bed, the sheets all kicked off and in a heap on the floor. My vibrator is still going, buzzing incessantly a few feet away from me, and by a heroic effort I reach over and turn it off.
“I should have bought Gatorade or something,” Daniel muses. “I didn’t realize I was coming here for an endurance athletic event.”
I take a deep breath, eyes closed, and ask something that’s been on my mind the last few hours.
“Is it too much?” I ask.
“Well, there are limits to what the human body can endure,” Daniel teases, then rolls toward me, eyes open. “But I think you’re a ways away from literally breaking my—"
He pauses as he looks at my face, then reaches out, puts one hand on my cheek.
“No,” he says.
“We’re not moving too fast, are we?” I ask. “We only got fake-engaged, like, two and a half weeks ago.”
It doesn’t feel too fast. It feels just right, us being together like this, but I’ve seen a calendar. I can count weeks. I know it was fast.
“When did we meet?” he asks. “Sixth grade?”
“I think so,” I say. “Was that the year we had math together with Mrs. Thompson?”
“Was she the one who wore the battery-powered light-up sweater at Christmas?” he asks, and I laugh.
“No, that was Miss Petchul and she taught English,” I say. “Mrs. Thompson always wore about fifty pounds of costume jewelry. Including a tiara that one time.”
“I’d forgotten the tiara,” he admits.
“Anyway, you sat behind me and copied all my answers, only half of them were wrong, and when you got busted she gave us both detention because she thought we were in cahoots,” I say. “It was sixth grade. I got in so much trouble.”
“Eighteen years ago, then,” he says. “We’ve known each other for eighteen years and been best friends for most of that time.”
I see his point.
“By most reasonable standards that’s glacially slow,” he points out. “It’s not like we barely know each other.”
“Especially now.”
“We’ve done plenty of talking,” he rumbles, his fingers working their way into my hair. “I think we’ve earned one weekend-long sex fest.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Daniel
“And then I went down the big waterslide,” Rusty says, so excited she’s breathless. “Fifty-five miles an hour!”
I lean my arms against the railing on the landing outside Charlie’s door, looking down at the cars in the bridal shop’s parking lot, phone pressed to my ear. It’s Saturday night. And yes, I’m clothed.
“That’s pretty fast,” I say, keeping my voice as light as I can. “Did they clock you?”
“No but that’s what the sign says,” Rusty goes on. “The Tropical Tornado waterslide make you go up to fifty-five miles per hour, and you have to cross your arms and legs and close your eyes but it still—” she breaks off for a moment, giggling, “—it still gave me a wedgie at the bottom.”
I swallow hard, opening and closing one fist. I don’t love the idea of my small, fragile seven-year-old hurtling down a water slide, but I also know I’m being a little overprotective. She’s tall enough, the waterpark is lousy with lifeguards, and hardly anyone ever dies at amusement parks.
Though staph infections and mysterious rashes are another matter altogether.
“What next?” I ask.
“Bruce and I went on one of the tube rides,” she says. “Mom couldn’t go because she’s having a baby, so it was just us. Bruce is nice.”
I want to tell her he is not fucking nice, he’s trying to take you away from me, but I don’t. She’s seven. It’s not her problem, it’s mine, and I’m damned if I’m going to let her worry about anything bigger than homework.
“Bruce sounds cool,” I say, hating every word of it. “What else did you guys do?”
“We went to Friendly’s and I got a burger and then I got an ice cream sundae with a banana in it,” she says. “I couldn’t finish it, so Bruce and Mom helped.”
“Sounds like you had a great day,” I tell her. “Are you having fun with your mom? And Bruce?”
“Yes,” she says,
and then stops abruptly.
I stand up straight, because even though the phone is silent, I can almost hear her using her index finger to softly poke her cheek, the thing she does when she’s thinking.
“What’s up, kiddo?” I ask, stomach in knots.
“Are you coming to Colorado with us?” she asks suddenly, and the simple question stabs me straight through the gut.
I’m going to murder Crystal. I am. I take a deep breath, frantically trying to think of what I should tell Rusty right now that won’t make her freak out completely. Apparently, I’m the only parent who gives a shit how she feels.
“We haven’t decided yet whether you’re going to move to Colorado,” I say simply. “You might be staying here with me, or you might be in Colorado sometimes and here sometimes.”
There’s another long pause.
“Oh,” she says. “Okay.”
“Your mom and I are still figuring some things out, okay?” I say. “There are a lot of big changes happening right now. You’ve got a new stepdad, you’re going to have a little sister.”
Charlie and I are together for real.
I don’t say that out loud. One change at a time.
“I don’t want a pony if I have to go to a new school,” she says. “Dad, I don’t even like horses that much. They smell weird.”
I’m going to kill Crystal, but I smile despite myself at Rusty.
“No one will make you take a pony you don’t want,” I tell her.
I spend the next few minutes talking to Rusty, trying to convince her as soothingly as possible that everything will be okay. I wish I didn’t have to. I wish Crystal would interact with me like a grownup instead of a petulant teenager, because I would fucking love to have a co-parent who was willing to work with me as a team instead of trying to win Rusty’s heart via waterpark.
When it’s time for her to get off, I ask her if I can talk to her mom for a minute.
“Mom!” she screams, not taking the phone away from her mouth, and I wince.