Slip of the Tongue Series: The Complete Boxed Set

by Hawkins, Jessica

I don’t answer, and I don’t look at him. I feel him watching me, though. “New coat?” he asks.

  I finally glance over at him. He’s in his suit, and his face is flushed, either from the beer or the cold weather.

  He nods back into the entryway. “I haven’t seen that one before today.”

  I swallow. I didn’t mean to bring the Burberry coat home. I forgot to return it to Finn’s. I’m not sure how I can explain a thousand-dollar item of clothing without it showing up on our bank statement. I’m not sure I have to, either.

  “I’ll take it back,” I say, turning to the TV again.

  “Why? It’s nice.”

  I change the channel again. I’ve never been a fan of Raymond.

  “You ate?” Nathan asks, noticing my soup container on the coffee table.

  “Yours is in the kitchen.”

  Nathan gets his soup and the sandwich I bought to make up for his missed lunch. He sits in the loveseat by the couch. “Was that Going Clear you had on?”

  I switch back to the documentary. At least it’ll give me something to focus on. I try to listen to the words, but I can’t. I don’t have to look at Nathan to sense his every move, to know what he’s doing. He eats some soup. It’s been sitting out, and I should put it on the stove and heat it for him, but fuck it. He takes three more spoonfuls and then has some of his sandwich.

  “I had a cigarette on the way home,” he says.

  The abruptness of his confession is enough to get me to look at him. Nathan used to smoke. Not a lot, but now and then. One of his few flaws. I didn’t like it, but I knew it wouldn’t last. He was healthy in every other way.

  “That’s why I smell,” he continues. “It’s also why my suit smelled after visiting my dad in the hospital. And why I wasn’t out front of Brooklyn Bowl when I said I’d be. I went around the corner to take a few drags. It’s the stress. I’m sorry.”

  On the TV, David Miscavige pontificates in grainy footage. I actually open my mouth and attempt to speak. I’d like to tell Nathan it isn’t the smell that bothers me. It’s his health. It’s what it says about his state of mind that he’d smoke while his dad is dying of stage-five lung cancer.

  He’s that anxious.

  Nathan sets his soup on the coffee table and leans his elbows on his knees. “All right. The silent treatment. I get it, and I deserve it. You’re pissed.”

  I shrug, because I sense this plan is working and will lead to what I want—an actual, honest conversation.

  “No?” he asks. “Then how come you broke our tradition by turning on the heat?”

  “I get cold. At night. By myself.”

  He has the decency to frown. He scoots over on the loveseat. Our knees brush. “Not much for words tonight, are you?”

  I look up at him. He’s stifling a smile. When I realize he’s teasing me, my façade cracks. It feels like progress. Maybe it’s relief, or stress, or anger, but whatever I’m feeling makes my eyes water.

  He puts a hand on the curve of my neck and squeezes. “You crying, Pea?”

  The old endearment squeezes a tear from me. It wasn’t long ago I feared he’d never call me it again. “No.”

  “Good. You know I turn to mush when you cry.”

  Something in my chest gives, and I shed a few silent tears. My blubbering has always made him soft, and I’m glad that hasn’t changed. “I hate that nickname,” I say.

  “I know. I won’t call you that anymore.”

  I wipe my face. “Never stop calling me that.”

  “This has been tough for you, I know. I didn’t mean for things to get this far, but the longer I hold my feelings in, the harder they are to get out. And figure out.” He rubs my shoulder. “But this afternoon—something broke through. The fact that you’ve been so confused, you thought I could cheat . . .” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry I got so mad, but try to understand where I was coming from—”

  I shoot up. His hand catches under the collar of my nightshirt before he jerks it back. It’s possible he picked the worst thing to say to me tonight, when I’ve been attempting to figure out what’s going on in his head for months. “Try to understand where I’m coming from,” I say.

  “Okay.”

  I shut my mouth, startled. I hadn’t expected that response, but why shouldn’t I? Nathan and I don’t typically talk over each other, even in an argument. Standing above him, we’re toe to toe, bare feet versus dress shoes. He looks up at me, unbuttoned, his collar open, his tie loose and sagging. “I’m lonely,” I tell him. “You’ve made me feel small. Unimportant. In my own home.”

  He glances at the ground and back up. “I know. I mean, I don’t really know, Sadie. I’ve tried not to think too hard about it.”

  “Why? Why are you pretending not to care?”

  He shakes his head. “Because when I care, it hurts. It hurts me to know I’ve hurt you. I . . .”

  He stops talking. I’ve lost him. His eyes are fixed on my chest, so I look down. When I stood, my button opened, exposing my breast. Nathan stares as if he hasn’t seen more of my own body than I have.

  “Nate?”

  With one hand, he undoes another button. The hair on my arms prickles as his fingertip grazes the space between my breasts. He stops and looks at me. The heat in his eyes is sudden but raw. He’s asking permission. Nothing is resolved. Through it all—my anger, my confusion, my heartbreak—one thing has remained the same. My body craves his touch. Limiting his affection has only made my desire stronger.

  I want this. He knows it.

  He lifts the hem of my shirt to expose my stomach, but doesn’t take it off. My favorite plaid pajama bottoms, which were once technically Nathan’s, are several sizes too big and droop to my hipbones. My cotton gray underwear covers more than should be legal. My eyes feel puffy, and I haven’t shaved my legs since yesterday, but Nathan sticks one finger in the elastic and slides the flannel over my hips like it’s fine lace. My breath snags as his knuckle trails down my upper thigh. He pulls on my pants until they drop to my feet.

  He takes my waist, pulls me to him, and presses his face to my stomach. He breathes so hotly on the fabric, I feel it on my skin. “I’m hungry, Sadie.”

  “I’ve never denied you.”

  Pushing my top up under my armpits, he commands, “Take it.”

  I’m not sure why I can’t just remove it, but I don’t ask. I hold the shirt up. My body trembles like a teenager’s.

  “What’s this shaking?” He looks up at me, sounding as tense as I feel. “Are you nervous?”

  “No.” Seven years I’ve had this. Seven years we’ve been making love. Yet, I have butterflies, as if I’ve been waiting to do this my whole life.

  He wiggles a finger under the crotch of my panties. “Too bad.” He knows I’m lying. “I like the idea that you might be nervous.”

  He bends his finger to tug the fabric away, knuckling my folds. I grip the flannel in my hands tightly, melting under his controlled touch.

  He stands from his seat and takes a step back. I’m bared to him, my pants and underwear around my ankles, my top pulled up. The TV glare flashes behind him.

  I wait, afraid to make the wrong move. He might leave me panting like last time, even though his cock is already straining the fabric of his suit pants. It’s that mouthwatering outline that makes me bold. “Why’d you call me a slut?” I ask.

  He looks from my tits to my face. If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. “It was the only way I could be with you that night.”

  It’s the answer I expected, but hearing he wanted anyone but me still hurts.

  “I thought I could turn you into someone else,” he continues, “but I can’t. You’ll never be that in my bed.” He doesn’t take his eyes off mine. “It’s one of the reasons I haven’t been able to be with you since.”

  I breathe from my stomach. I want to find the meaning in his words, but the tender ache between my legs hurts so much, it’s not even pleasant. “Nathan,” I plead.

  �
��Sadie.” The rough playfulness of his voice makes my skin pebble. His eyes glimmer. He begins unbuttoning his shirt. “Are you sure you want this? After everything we’ve put each other through?”

  Even if I could form a coherent thought against sex, I know what my answer would ultimately be. “Yes.”

  “Go get on the bed. Hands and knees.”

  I shouldn’t hesitate. It’s not like he hasn’t had me in every position possible. I trust him, but it’s been weeks, and if I’m this turned on, he must be going crazy.

  He pulls his belt through his pant loops and drops it. “Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

  “No.” I go to pull the top over my head.

  He stops me. “I’ll do that. Just get into position.”

  Nathan gets demanding in bed when he’s hot. This feels different, though. There’s a calm edge to his commands that isn’t new, but it’s sharper than I’m used to.

  I turn and go to the bedroom, feeling his eyes on me. I climb onto the bed, facing the headboard, and do what he says. I display my most intimate places for him. At the same time, my flannel hangs from my torso, covering my upper half like a blanket.

  Seconds later, his footsteps cross the living room, and he enters the room. The mattress trembles when he gets on it behind me. I barely register the sound of his zipper before he’s teasing me. He slaps the head of his cock against my crack, then drags it up the back of one thigh. His soft skin on mine is maddening, and I drop my head toward the mattress, breathing hard. A trail of pre-cum dries on my skin.

  “I’m going to fuck it all out,” he says. “I could take my time with you, but I don’t want to.”

  “I’m ready,” I say.

  “Unless you beg me to,” he says, ignoring me. “I can eat your pussy now instead of later. I can tease you to the brink first if you want.”

  “No,” I say, the word hard and imploring. I realize I’m squirming, and I stop moving except for the heave of my chest. “I don’t need it. I just need to feel you inside me.”

  He lines himself up with my throbbing slit, wraps my hair in his hand, and pulls my head back. Kissing me sideways, sloppy but determined, he begins pushing into me. “Like this?” he asks into my mouth. I hear the torment in his voice. I feel it in his touch.

  I simultaneously nod and moan. My pussy salivates for him. It’s my core, and he’s the only one who’s truly been there.

  He slows down. Takes his time filling me. I’m given each inch with agonizing deliberation, like being fed dessert in tiny bites. I try to push back, but he stops me—scolds me—with a firm hand on my ass. We’re still kissing. He’s never, in seven years, stopped kissing me. Sometimes we fuck quick and hard, other times long and slow. But he doesn’t skip the kissing, not ever.

  When he’s all the way in, he stays there. “I’ve been dying without this, babe. Fucking you is an addiction I can’t kick.”

  “Really?” I goad him. I just want to be torn apart. “Because you’re going easy on me.”

  “No, I’m not, and you know it.”

  “This is how you’d fuck a slut?”

  He growls in my ear, rears back, slams into me. That’s more like it. “Go on,” he says. “Ask for what you want.”

  This much edge is new for us, but it’s just what I want. “Use me. You need this,” I say. “You aren’t going to break me.”

  He straightens up and stretches my pussy lips with his fingers until they burn. He thrusts in and out, faster than before, but still with restraint. He holds me in place like that, as if I’m a doll or some kind of toy.

  “Quite a view,” he says. “Sorry you can’t see it.”

  He’s smug. He doesn’t realize, though, that the closet door is open. With my head bent and angled, I can see flashes of us in the mirror. Nathan’s shirt is off, but his pants are around his knees. His muscled ass cheeks clench and release with each thrust like a well-oiled machine. If he bent over me, his big body would consume mine in one bite. We’re in our bed where we belong. It’s right. Wonderfully familiar. I’ll end my affair tomorrow and put my secrets on the table. All of them. I promise I will. I’ll hurt him, but then I’ll heal him. When he tries to leave, I’ll throw myself in his path. Anything so I don’t lose this.

  He closes over me again, trailing his lips along my neck, and then bites my shoulder blade. I cry out, and he kisses it. No longer holding back, he shoves my face into the mattress so my lower half is propped up to take more of him. My shirt falls forward around me, but he doesn’t fix it. I said I wouldn’t break, and I won’t. My cheek chafes against the comforter. He leans his weight on my shoulders, angles deep, owns me top to bottom.

  I grasp for the bedspread and hang on. He slips one finger and then two over my clit. My control spirals free with his little circles. With a touch honed and perfected from years of practice, he tips me over the edge and into a rippling orgasm. My hips give, and I flatten out onto my stomach. The force of his fucking moves me up the mattress. I slither over the side, catching myself on the floor with my palms. He keeps my bottom half on the bed. My shirttail sticks under my stomach, but I’m still in the dark, facing the belly of the mattress. The way he takes from me is like the first night we dropped the pretense of lovemaking and fucked like animals on a futon in his studio.

  “Want me to come in you?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I beg.

  “Wrong answer.”

  Blood is rushing to my head. “What?”

  “You’re supposed to tell me I can have whatever I want.”

  “Whatever you want, Nathan,” I repeat. “You know you can have anything.”

  He holds my hips down, and my attention is reduced to one simple thing—the unrelenting pounding inside me and then the heat of his release.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I’m still half off the bed, waiting for Nathan’s cue. We finally fucked again, and two weeks apart made us wild. But the following silence scares me. My locked arms wobble from my weight. Nathan shudders over me, his breathing loud and raspy. After some more languid thrusts of his hips, he stills completely. Seconds tick by. When I think my elbows are going to snap, I move.

  “Shh.” He runs his hand down my back. “Don’t.”

  I stay where I am, waiting. Darkness creeps on me like an ocean tide. My upside-down face pulses as blood rushes to my head. It’s turning painful, but I think he knows. After what feels like forever, he swivels his hips. My stomach drops, my walls clenching around him.

  “You’re hard again?” I ask.

  “Almost.”

  He pulls out and slides me back up the bed by my hips. My arms tingle. I bend my elbows, but I don’t move other than that. This is Nathan’s event. He gathers up my shirt and pushes it over my head. Picking up one of my limp hands, he begins to massage it, working his strong fingers into the meat of my palm, around my wrist, and up my arm then down the other. To my shoulders, he applies more pressure. My eyes shut. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more tranquil.

  He straddles my outer thighs, elbows the spot where he bit me, and gets a guttural groan. “Keep making noise,” he says as his cock twitches against my leg. “I’m almost there.”

  He moves down my back, and I don’t hold anything in. My breathing picks up when he massages my ass cheeks, opens them, and closes in on my anus. I can come again, but Nathan knows it might take more than it did the first time, so he lightly presses against it. As soon as I anticipate it, though, he abandons my anus and slides two fingers into my pussy.

  “I came hard,” he says. “You’re sopping with it.”

  My arousal springs, a jungle cat waiting in bushes. He knows just how to touch me, just what to say. He pumps into me two, three more times and then slides his hand up my crack. He eases one slick finger in my asshole. I clutch the sheets but relax the cluster of muscles he’s currently working. All at once, it’s good.

  “This will never not get me rock hard,” he mutters.

  The comforter flutters with my desperate, gap
ing breaths. “Not even when we’re old and gray?”

  He grunts and removes his finger. “Turn over. We can make love now.”

  His cold, robotic tone can’t scare me off. He stands and looks at the bed as if he can’t decide how to proceed. I get up too and take over, pushing him into a sitting position on the mattress.

  We wrap our legs around each other. This time, we’re face to face. When I lower myself onto him, he’s nice and hard inside me. “Press your tits against me,” he nearly groans. “God, you’re so fucking hot inside.”

  He circles me with his arms, urging me into his warm, open chest. He teases my asshole again with the tip of his finger. When he slides it in, my face gets burning hot. He moves it, and I move on him, swiveling my hips to stroke all the right spots. We kiss, and with his tongue searching my mouth, his finger working inside me, and his cock filling me up, I’m possessed by him.

  “Watch my face when I come,” I rush out, feeding my words into his hungry mouth. “I want you to tell me how I look.”

  “I already know every detail of how you look.” He sounds much calmer than me, although his hairline is damp. Sweat beads on his upper lip.

  “What do I look like?” I ask.

  “Not yourself . . .”

  Instead of distracting me, talking this way is ballooning my arousal. “Is that a polite way of saying ugly?”

  “Not ugly, but not pretty. Sexy as fuck, though, like . . .” His breath comes in hot bursts against my nose. He’s getting close. “An animal,” he grates, “whose prey is just out of reach.”

  I wrap my arms around his neck and pull myself onto him more furiously. He meets my pace, plunging his finger deeper and faster. His honesty makes me hot. Like my face at the peak of my pleasure, it’s not pretty, but it’s real. That’s more erotic than anything.

  He whispers, “You’re killing me. Hurry. I’m going to explode. I won’t finish before you.”

  “You can.”

  “I won’t.”

  He keeps his promise. The balloon pops. When I come, my ribs rattle, my hairs stand on end. He continues to plumb my depths because fingering my asshole turns him on as much as it does me. Inaudible words pass between us. He takes the skin of my neck between his teeth. For a moment, it’s as if he’s going to rip my head off when he comes.