Rough Around the Edges

by Ranae Rose

  With his good hand, he caressed one of her breasts. The satisfaction that followed was intense, but regret filled him too – he could vividly recall the bliss that was having one of her breasts in each hand, soft flesh spilling over his fingers. How long would it be before he could touch her that way again?

  Still, touching her at all was heaven. When she leaned into his caress, pressing her nipple flush against his palm, his dick throbbed, hard beneath the fresh pair of jeans he’d just put on.

  “Do you want to go back to the bedroom?”

  Her question sent another bolt of sensation straight to his groin. “Hell yes.” Through the cover of her shirt and bra, he pinched her nipple lightly. It went even harder between his thumb and forefinger, and he could practically taste her sweet skin against his tongue. The cast on his arm wouldn’t prevent him from tasting her anywhere – everywhere.

  She reached below, running a hand over the front of his jeans, curling her fingers around his shaft.

  Though it went against his every instinct, he removed his hand from her body, releasing her.

  His heart rate escalated as they made their way to the bedroom. Beneath the haze of desire that shrouded his mind, his thoughts held an edge of disbelief. Two days ago – hell, just a few hours ago – he never would’ve imagined Ally would be back at his place, back in his bed. The fact that she’d returned and still wanted to be with him … there were no words, only an overwhelming sense of amazement that intensified when she stripped off her clothes.

  He’d memorized her every curve, and seeing her naked was everything he remembered, but it still took him by surprise. There was a paralyzing sensuality to standing so close to her bare body – one that his memory couldn’t capture. He stripped off his jeans and underwear, then reached out to touch her – there was no question of hesitating.

  He placed his hands on her hips and drew her close, careful not to scrape her with his cast. The feel of her warm skin and the pressure of her body against his stiff cock was the stuff of dreams. “How do you want to do this?” She’d never hesitated to let him know what position she wanted, but with his cast in the mix, things were a little more complicated.

  “Let me ride you. On top. I like that, and it’ll be easy for both of us.”

  A frisson of anticipation raced down his spine, making every muscle in his body tighten. He didn’t waste any time climbing onto the bed, maintaining contact with her perfect body as he did so and she joined him. As he reclined against the mattress, she slid on top of him, straddling his hips.

  Placing a hand in her hair and cupping her skull, he drew her close. For the first time since his last match, he kissed her full on, not caring that his lips were still healing. The twinge of pain was nothing compared to the promising heat and pressure of her mouth, or the way she yielded to him, her lips parting beneath his. Her taste brought his senses to life like nothing else had, and when the kiss ended, the taste and warmth of it lingered on his tongue. “Damn, I’ve missed doing that.”

  “Me too.”

  He’d missed doing a lot of things, though he and Ally had only been apart for a couple days. Thinking that their separation would be permanent had made those days drag by, and trying to suppress his desire for her had only increased it. Cradling one of her breasts in his good hand, he re-memorized the curves and lines of her body – everything from the way her loose hair hung over her shoulders to the perfectly bare skin above her pussy, as easy to look at as it was to touch.

  With that vision still clear in front of his mind’s eye, he lowered his head, pressing his mouth to her breast.

  She pressed the swell of it against his lips when she arched her back, leaning even further forward.

  He drew her nipple into his mouth and let his fingers dent her soft flesh. As always, her skin was faintly sweet, just enough so to make him crave more. Every second he spent teasing the bud against his tongue made his dick harder, but he could wait to be inside her, at least a little longer. Holding out was a sweet sort of torture, especially when her breath rushed against the top of his head, rippling through his hair.

  When she wriggled against him, he stopped and cupped her other breast, repeating what he’d just done. Eventually, he couldn’t take it anymore. She’d lowered her hips in order to stay steady while leaning forward, and the position put her pussy flush against his lower belly. Her folds were hot against his skin and unmistakably damp. He ran a thumb over the smooth flesh above, dipping below to tease her clit.

  “Let me just get a condom first,” she breathed, her thighs trembling a little as she slid off of him.

  “Almost forgot.” The lure of being inside her was so strong he hadn’t spared a thought for protection until she’d mentioned it. The realization was mind-numbingly tempting. Maybe – hopefully – someday.

  She retrieved a condom from the dresser and put it on for him. He didn’t stop her – even the light pressure of her fingers sliding down his shaft was bliss. “Maybe sometime, if you take a pill, or would be willing to start taking one – maybe we could stop using condoms.”

  She finished rolling the condom to the base of his cock, her fingertips brushing his shaft one last time as she met his eyes. “Maybe we could. And I do take a pill already.”

  He breathed a long sigh, unable to hold back. “Makes me want to come just thinking about it.”

  What would it be like to come inside her, to feel the heat and wetness of her pussy tight around his cock when the moment arrived? He didn’t know, but he could imagine it. If he dwelled on it for much longer, sheer desire would probably kill him. “I was tested for STIs by a military doctor. Didn’t have any then. Haven’t been with anyone since then, until now.”

  After the explosion, his recovery and the upheaval of being discharged from the Marine Corps, he hadn’t had any desire to spare for another person. All his wants had been focused on the past and what he’d lost. Ally had changed that, and she’d been more than worth the wait.

  “I have an appointment coming up to get my birth control prescription renewed,” she said. “I could ask for testing then, just to be safe. Not that I’ve been with anyone else for a while either, but it’s been a long time since I’ve requested comprehensive testing.”

  “All right.” His blood rushed and heated in his veins at just the thought, but for now, being with her this way was enough. He slid a hand up one of her thighs, cupping the round swell of one ass cheek.

  They started together – she gripped his cock by the base and he thrust upward, burying it halfway inside her. He let her lower herself the rest of the way, gasping as her tight walls yielded to his hardness.

  He rocked his hips until he was completely sheathed inside her, his groin pressing flush against her slick flesh.

  He didn’t even have to move to appreciate what they were doing. The simple pleasure of being inside her was real, gripping. When he thrust into her, it multiplied, setting his nerve-endings on fire. Eager to share the feeling, he pressed his fingers to her clit.

  Her pussy tightened around his dick, just like it always did when he first touched her there.

  Remembering the other times he’d gotten her off that way, he touched her like he had then, only a little harder, a little faster. Pleasure was already pooling at the base of his spine, like water behind a dam.

  She must’ve felt the same way, because it was only a matter of seconds before a tangible change passed through her, causing her thighs to tense against his hips and her channel to draw tight around his shaft, squeezing.

  She came hard – he could feel the force of her climax in the way her pussy contracted, threatening to push him over the edge too. And he could hear it in her voice as she moaned wordlessly, eyes tightly closed. Knowing the pleasure was something he’d given her was like a drug; it heightened his senses, pushing him to continue massaging her clit and thrusting hard into her until every last trace of her climax faded.

  “Something else I’ve missed,” he said when she was still and b
reathless. It was the understatement of the fucking century. Feeling, watching and hearing her totally lose herself because of him … it was the most incredible feeling, pride-fueling and humbling all at once. If she hadn’t returned, if she hadn’t wanted to be with him anymore, would he have been able to bear remembering it and never experiencing it again?

  Probably not. If he ever lost her, the best he’d be able to hope for would be that he’d forget it, that the holes in his memory would swallow up the most gratifying moments of his life.

  The thought almost made him laugh. Forget how it felt to have her on top of him, her pussy shrinking around his cock as she rode out an orgasm? No way. The way her lips parted as she squeezed her eyes shut, the way her breasts rose and fell with every hard breath – those things were burnt into his memory forever. Which meant that if they ever stopped seeing each other, he’d be like a lost soul trapped in purgatory, tortured by thoughts of a heaven he’d been locked out of.

  A tremor raced through her thighs as she opened her eyes and looked directly into his. “Me too.”

  It was simple, then – he couldn’t lose her. Not if he wanted to have any semblance of a life.

  “You can come again, can’t you?” he asked, slipping a hand between her spread thighs.

  She rocked her hips in reply, the quietest of moans escaping her as the head of his dick scraped a place deep inside her.

  He was so damn close to coming. Still, the urge to give her a few more moments of ecstasy was more intense than the urge to finish. He wasn’t ready for this to be over.

  Erratic tremors made her pussy wrench around his shaft. Were the contractions only a sort of aftershock caused by her first climax, or was she ready again?

  After a few moments of wondering, he groaned when she leaned forward, bracing herself with her palms against his chest and digging her nails into his skin. The shift in position sent his cock sliding deeper into her and brought her breasts closer. His mouth watered with the urge to taste their hardened tips, but a shuddering gasp from Ally told him that she was close.

  He focused on what he was already doing – fucking her hard from below while rubbing her clit, creating internal and external friction.

  Her pussy was already so tight, a sleeve of heat and wetness that surrounded every inch of his hardness. He sensed the moment she began to orgasm again – the increase in pressure was instantly discernible, heaven bearing down on his dick, making every muscle in his body tense up.

  She breathed and moaned like she had the first time, sinking her nails so hard into his chest he’d probably have marks there for a day or two, which was fine. No, better than fine – perfect. Just like the way she slumped on top of him when he wrapped an arm around her waist, her body soft in the wake of her second climax.

  The position put her breasts flat against his chest, swelling upward between them. Her nipples were pinpricks of heat against his skin, and his heartbeat hammered away against the weight of her body.

  His pulse hammered in his groin too, echoing through his cock, which was achingly hard. Her internal muscles had stopped spasming around him, but she was still tight, and he lost himself in the span of one rushed heartbeat, finally overcome.

  Holding her close against his chest, he rocked into her, finishing in a few hard strokes, driving himself deeper into her pussy with each one.

  The feeling of releasing inside the hot, wet confines of her body was all he could think about – the last few moments of fucking her were so intense that there was no room for anything else inside his mind. Nothing, not a single problem or thought, just mind-numbing pleasure that rushed through every fiber of his being, concentrated in the hard inches that were buried inside her.

  Fuck yeah. The words echoed through his mind and maybe left his lips – he couldn’t even tell whether he’d said them or not.

  When he stilled, she rested on top of him for a while. His heartbeat slowed and so did hers, an easing pulse beneath the soft weight of her breasts. Breathing a sigh, she slid off of him to recline at his side.

  He lay still and quiet until her stomach growled.

  “Hungry?” he asked. It was late – past dinner time. She was probably starving.

  “Yeah. I haven’t had dinner yet, have you?”

  “No.” Actually, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. He must have at some point, but he didn’t want to think back to when – the couple of days he’d spent thinking he’d never see Ally again were a dark corner in his mind that he didn’t want to revisit.

  And it didn’t matter, anyway. They could eat now, together. “Do you want to help me cook?”

  She turned to face him, her eyes wide. “Yeah, sure. What do you want to make?”

  A feeling of guilty unease pained him for a second as he registered her look of surprise. Was it because he’d asked her to help?

  “Some of the ingredients I stocked up on for breakfast a while ago will go bad soon if they’re not used. I was thinking we could dice everything up and throw together some omelets.” Maybe it would be good for both of them if he asked her to help with some things – things they could do together instead of things that left him feeling useless.

  “Okay.”

  He put on a pair of jeans as she dressed, pulling on her grey sweater last of all. He could still see her nipples through it, and the V-neck revealed a generous hint of cleavage. On a less curvy woman, it would’ve been a modest top, but not on her. Yeah, having her close by in the kitchen wouldn’t be bad at all.

  “I can take care of the dicing,” she said when they reached the kitchen. “Where is there a knife I can use?”

  He pulled open a drawer below the sink and handed her his kitchen knife handle-first.

  “Is this the only one you have?” she asked, looking down at it like she’d never seen anything like it before.

  “Old faithful. Believe it or not I’m not exactly a gourmet chef. I tend to keep my cooking pretty simple.” That was putting it mildly.

  “I wouldn’t say I’m a gourmet chef, but I’ve learned a lot about cooking from my mother. Maybe I could make dinner for you sometime.”

  He leaned into the open fridge and nodded, selecting certain items from its shelves and cradling them in the crook of his arm. His cast protected his forearm from the chill, but the cold vegetables pressed against his ribs and made his skin break out in gooseflesh. “That would be nice.”

  Eager to have the coldness away from his skin, he deposited his finds on the counter – a green pepper, some mushrooms, a bag of shredded cheddar cheese and a tomato, which he dropped. “Damn it.”

  It hit the countertop, probably bruising.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ally said. “We’re going to be dicing it up anyway.”

  He put a frying pan on a burner and rubbed the end of a refrigerated stick of butter against its inside surface, coating it.

  Ally used his one and only kitchen knife to make quick work of the damaged tomato. “The tomato is ready. Do you have another plate I can use to cut the pepper and mushrooms on?”

  “Yeah.” He pulled one from the cupboard beside the fridge and handed it to her.

  While she took care of the vegetables, he one-handedly cracked a few eggs over the side of the warming frying pan. Not a single piece of shell fell into the clear whites – apparently, all his practice cooking eggs was good for something.

  “You weren’t kidding when you said breakfast foods were your specialty,” Ally said, opening the bag of cheese.

  “Not so much my specialty as the only thing I can cook. You’d be good at cracking eggs too if you ate them every day.”

  “Okay. So no eggs on the menu for whenever you come over and let me cook for you.”

  He shrugged. “I never said I didn’t like them.”

  “Still. A little variety may do you good. Are you ready for these?”

  With a spatula he’d pulled from a drawer, he whipped the eggs until the whites and yolks merged together, creating a pale yello
w canvas for the other ingredients Ally had prepared. “Yeah.”

  One by one, he cleared the plates, sliding the vegetables into the pan and topping the whole thing off with a handful of shredded cheddar. Standing there stirring the ingredients in felt oddly right – there was a sense of peace that accompanied the simple task. The calmness was something he usually didn’t feel when he was in his apartment, or anywhere, really.

  There was no denying that it was good to have Ally around again. And she hadn’t made a big deal out of his broken wrist or tried to talk him out of cooking, even though his methods were awkward. She seemed to have actually taken what he’d said seriously. Now he wished he’d simply said it instead of blowing up at her.

  “Flowers?”

  A knot of tension sprang up between his shoulder blades as the single word she’d spoken registered.

  She was standing in front of the trashcan, dumping the unusable vegetable scraps.

  He kept stirring instead of facing her. “My parents sent them.”

  “Oh. Is that your cell phone?”

  “They called, too.” For the first time since he’d destroyed his phone, shame burned hot inside him. At the time, his phone had been the least of his worries – he’d known that no one who mattered would call. But now … what if Ally had tried to call him? Had she been forced to come to his apartment because she’d thought he was ignoring her?

  Yeah, she had – he remembered now. She’d said she’d texted him.

  He couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry. They never would’ve worked things out over the phone – he would’ve ruined it. He was glad she’d shown up, even if that made him a dick.

  “I didn’t even realize they knew how to get in touch with you.”

  “They have their ways of finding things out. They made some calls, bothered some people from my old unit until they wheedled the information out of them.” The irritation he’d felt when speaking to his mother returned, prickling hot and unwelcome across his skin. As the omelet fried, he looked back with longing on the moment of peace that had surprised him so recently.