The Fixer

by Jessica Gadziala

  His weight shifted to balance on an arm as I heard the dresser drawer slide open, and heard the telltale crinkle as he opened the wrapper to protect us.

  His lips released mine so he could look down at me as his hips shifted, and his cock slammed deeply inside me, claiming me completely with one stroke.

  "Fuck," he growled when my moan was loud enough to alert the neighbors.

  His body shifted suddenly, moving back onto his knees, grabbing my legs, and dragging them up to rest on his shoulder, ankles crossed, his arm folding over them around the thigh, holding them tight to him as he started fucking me.

  Hard.

  Fast.

  If he weren't holding onto me, I would have been slamming back against the headboard with the force behind each thrust, his cock hitting as deeply as my body would allow with each stroke, driving me up faster than I knew was possible.

  His free hand moved out, fingers pressing into my belly, making the pressure even more intolerable as his thumb slipped down to work my clit.

  The build-up was too much.

  It had been too long.

  It seemed like almost as soon as it started, my walls started clenching tight around him, threatening a blissful end.

  Seeming to feel it, Quin's hand left my clit, grabbing my ankles, and dragging my legs down to press into the bed at an angle, thighs clenched tight as he fucked me harder, faster, his body getting tight with his own need for release.

  "Come, Aven," he demanded, one hand planting beside my shoulder as he half folded over me, keeping eye-contact as his cock slammed deep, making the tension release with a wave of pulsating pleasure.

  "Quin." It wasn't a scream, or even a moan. It was a desperate, pleading sound as the orgasm ripped almost violently through me.

  "Fuck," he growled, thrusting through it, dragging it out, before planting deep, his body jerking hard once as he came with my name on his lips.

  His other arm came down on my other side, his body curling over mine, his face buried in my neck as he came down from his orgasm, as he worked to level out his breathing and the frantic pounding of his heart I felt against my breast.

  My arms moved up, curling around him, pulling him to me as I tried to find some semblance of control over my oddly sated, almost numb body.

  A long moment later, his lips pressed into my neck, his breath warm over the skin as he spoke, "Hope you have no plans for the next week because I plan to keep you in bed for all of it," he told me as he pressed up, a small smile pulling at his usually serious lips, his face completely at ease, something that was truly a sight to see in a man as reserved as he was. "I'll be right back," he told me as my body lost his, and he moved off the bed to walk toward the bathroom.

  I forced my weighted limbs up, slipping under his soft sheets, and pulling them up to cover my body, now cold with the lack of contact.

  I heard the sink running, and barely a few seconds later, Quin walked back out, beautifully naked. My head turned on the pillow, watching him as he moved toward me, not even trying to hide the way I was ogling him. When you clearly worked out to have a body like that, you expected it to be eye-fucked whenever it was on display.

  He didn't move right to me, though.

  At the very last second, he veered off toward the dresser, rifling inside. I would have complained, but, well, with him turned away from me, it meant I got a chance to look at his back and his muscular ass. I had never considered myself an ass person until right that minute. But Quin's ass? Oh, hell yes.

  He turned back a second later, coming over toward my side of the bed with clothes in his hand. At my questioning look, he shrugged. "Shirt for you. Pants for me. We gotta go watch the ball drop and completely ruin my fucking apartment with confetti wands," he informed me, handing me the shirt, and leaning forward to slip into the plain black and white plaid cotton bottoms.

  Deciding that the idea of being able to ring in a new year properly with him did actually somehow trump cuddling in bed, I reached for the shirt and dragged it on, taking his hand when he offered it to me, and walking out into the main space of the house again.

  "Turn on the station," he demanded as he veered off into the kitchen to get the champagne and wands. "I had been avoiding that shit like the plague," he told me when I sat down on the couch to see a rerun of Casino Royale on the screen.

  "Bond, huh?"

  "I like Craig's version," he told me, handing me my champagne flute, then moving to sit next to me, reaching to grab my thighs and pull them over his.

  "Me too. Somewhat less of a misogynist," I agreed, flicking over to see Times Square. We had ten minutes to spare. "So..." I said after a few minutes of silence, just watching the announcers on TV try not to seem mildly drunk and freezing cold.

  "So?" he prompted when I didn't go on.

  "How soon after this nonsense do you think we can venture out to Sbarro's?" At his raised brow, I shrugged. "I didn't have dinner," I explained. "I was pretty sure I was about to be crying over a slice as I waited for the train back to Navesink Bank. But now that I'm not, I kinda still want it anyway."

  His face fell a little at that comment as his hand moved out to brush my hair behind my ear. "I can be a dick at times, babe, but I don't want you crying over pizza because of me."

  A little uncomfortable with the intensity I saw in his eyes, I shrugged. "I am not much of a cryer," I deflected. "I guess I just kinda like you," I added, giving him a small smile.

  "Yeah?" he asked, his own lips tipping up. "Well, that is convenient because I guess I kinda like you too."

  There was no denying the strange heart-squeeze sensation I had at his words, making me scoot forward, resting my head on his chest as his hand went to my thigh, and we watched on TV as everyone outside, just a few floors below us, hyped up for the start of a new year.

  We weren't cheesy.

  We didn't count.

  At least not out loud.

  But the second the ball dropped and the sign above lit up with the new year date, Quin's hand left my thigh to find my chin, tipping it up. "Happy New Year, babe," he said, finger stroking up my jaw.

  "Happy New Year," I told him back.

  And I was still smiling when his lips closed over mine.

  It was by far the best New Year I had ever spent.

  And my gut was telling me that was because of the person I had spent it with, the person I hoped I would spend many more New Years Eves with.

  EPILOGUE

  Quin - 1 day

  I couldn't remember the last time I woke up with a woman beside me in bed. And I was pretty damn sure that even when I had in the past, I had never felt this strange, almost overwhelming feeling of rightness in my gut at seeing her there, her dark hair spread over the pillowcases, her eyelashes resting softly on her porcelain skin.

  Supplies aside, I honestly didn't think she was going to show up. I had accepted that I would be spending the night watching Bond movies, drinking too much, and trying to drown the idea that I wanted her there with me.

  When there was a knock at the door, I figured it was for the people next door who seemed to be having a dinner party, and two other sets of guests had mistakingly knocked on my door already.

  But then there she was.

  And she was angry at me for assuming shit.

  Which, to be honest, was the right reaction.

  She was right. I had jumped to conclusions and sulked away like some heartsick teenager too chickenshit to confront her about it.

  Hell, I should have known it was just Fenway being Fenway.

  I had just been building up our reunion for too long, had all these fucking sappy ideas about how it was going to go, and seeing her with him had felt like a gut-punch.

  But by being a pussy, I had not only sent myself into a mood for days that had everyone in the office walking on eggshells around me - even the usually fearless Jules. And I had hurt Aven.

  Even watching her in my bed, the blankets pooled around her breasts, her breathing slow and
even, her hand still on my hip from when she had rolled off my chest sometime in the early morning, but reached out to keep contact, I was almost having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that I had delayed my access to this by being a stubborn ass for days.

  But that didn't matter now.

  What mattered was that she was here.

  And that last night was the first New Year's I had ever spent with a woman.

  And it felt right.

  I had felt my gut instinct enough in my life to know it when it showed up. Like it did every time I looked at Aven.

  This was new, sure, but it was going somewhere.

  Aven - 3 days

  Kennedy had closed down the salon for the two days following New Year's Eve, knowing that practically every female in the area was fighting off a massive hangover and making trips to the gym to make good on their resolutions and that a trip to the salon was low on their list.

  I had enlisted Gunner to watch Mackey for me, something he did with a text that declared Don't cry to me when it goes south, doll. A compassionate soul he was not, but I understood him well enough to know it was his way of trying to protect me. Even if it made him kind of sound like an ass.

  We spent those days in Quin's apartment in the city.

  We talked and had sex and shared meals - I got my Sbarro the next late morning, crossing paths with women in last night's makeup, and men with sunglasses on even inside.

  "Holy hangover, Batman," I had mumbled, feeling Quin's hand squeeze my hip where it had been situated since we walked out of his apartment.

  I noticed that as the days went on; he was always touching me. Like he was afraid that if he didn't hold on, I might slip away.

  But I sure wasn't complaining.

  We had exchanged presents, making me realize he had been thinking of me around Christmas just like I had been thinking of him. He had gotten me a genuine Russian musical jewelry box.

  He had opened my gift - a bit of a gag one because I hadn't known him well enough at the time to get him anything truly personal - he had thrown his head back and laughed, childlike, almost painfully attractive.

  I had gotten him a plaque with an inscription on it that had made the guy at the personalization place look genuinely shocked.

  To the world's best opium smuggler.

  He had hung it up in his hallway like it was the best gift he had ever gotten.

  On the third day, we climbed into his car at the crack of dawn, both of us having work to get to, a life to resume.

  "Girl, that is a glow," Benny declared as soon as I walked into work that morning, pointing a comb at me. "Don't you even try to deny it. Kenny," he called, enlisting our boss in his musings, "come look at Aven. She's got that I got fucked right good by some delicious man meat until I couldn't walk right for a day glow to her, doesn't she? Please tell me it was that yummy thing with the suit and the nice car. Tell me he's your man."

  There was no stopping the obnoxious smile that I could see reflected in the mirror behind him. Blissfully happy. I had never seen the look on my face before.

  "He's my man."

  Quin - 5 days

  "Oh my God. You can't be serious," Aven scoffed as I led her inside my place for the first time, having spent the night before at her place because Gunner said he was done dog sitting so we could 'fuck like jackrabbits all week.' I wondered then if maybe there was more to it than simply Gunner being Gunner, if maybe he had thought something had been building between the two of them, if he was pissed that I had gotten the girl.

  I would have felt bad for the fuck, but I was too happy enjoying Aven to give it much thought.

  "Seriously," she said, shaking her head at me. "This is insane. No one person should be allowed to have two nice places like this."

  I hadn't been born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had needed to fight and claw my way to the top, barely getting any sleep all through my twenties and half of my thirties, trying to build something, trying to get out from under the nearly unbreakable ceiling that seemed to be the lower middle-class upbringing.

  So when I had first sat down to sign the paperwork on the apartment in the city and then walked into it for the first time with the keys in my hand, I felt it.

  Awe.

  But, to be perfectly honest, since then, I had yet to feel that same sensation. When I bought the building and had it renovated, when I stayed in luxury hotels, when I bought my house. It just became my new norm.

  It was nice and humbling to be able to view my life through the lens of someone who was still in the place in life that I had once been.

  Aven worked hard and kept her head above water, but had long since accepted that she would never know what it was like to drive a luxury car or live in a house that cost closer to a million than half.

  I had bought the place on a whim when I got tired of living out of a suitcase in the hotel in town as my office was being renovated. I had taken the ride with the agent to the first house on her list, walked around, and made an offer before I even left the property.

  It was a place I hung my hat.

  But I hadn't even had much of a hand in decorating it aside from telling Jules to tell the designer to not put any frilly chick shit in it.

  "Shut up," she said when we walked in through the entryway into the kitchen that was easily bigger than her entire lower floor with quartz countertops, white cabinets, and flat slate fronted appliances. "I could actually have space to spread out ingredients here," she declared, moving over to the island, spreading her arms on it until her chest was resting on it, making her ass stick out.

  And, well, I wasn't about to pass on that opportunity, was I?

  I moved over toward her, feet silent across the tile floor, so when my hands grabbed at the waistbands of her yoga pants and panties, and dragged them down to expose her ass to me, her air whooshed out of her in a surprised Oh.

  My hand slid between her thighs, finding her clit as I undid my button and zip with my other hand, freeing my cock, and stroking it as I felt her pussy get wet with need.

  She was always wet for me, always greedy for me inside her. It didn't matter if I just got done fucking her ten minutes before, making her come three times, if I brushed my fingers over her again, she was writhing with need once more.

  We'd had the talk the night before after she fumbled in her nightstand for condoms she didn't have. The tests and Pill talk, unsexy as it might be to have it in the heat of the moment, still necessary, still something we needed to get out of the way.

  And after that, I got the gift of having her raw, nothing between us, getting to feel her slick heat wrapped tight around me.

  I grabbed my cock when her pussy was wet enough to coat my palm, stroking her velvety desire over me before taking it by the base, and leading it between her thighs, slamming hard and deep before she could even anticipate it, making her body jolt forward hard, her hands slapping down on the counter as she let out a whimper.

  My hand tracked up her spine to slip into the hair at the base of her neck, sinking in and twisting, yanking until she arched back toward me to ease the pull on her scalp.

  And then I fucked her, the sound of my hips slamming into her ass and thighs filling the open, silent space, met with the moans that made my balls feel like they were in a goddamn vice grip.

  "Touch your pussy for me," I demanded, watching as she didn't even hesitate, just moved her hand between her thighs to work her clit. "Good girl," I growled, feeling her walls tighten around me as she got close.

  It was hardly even a couple seconds later when she tightened almost enough that I couldn't keep thrusting, then started pulsating around me as she cried out my name, her hand slipping on the counter. If I hadn't had her by the hair, she would have fallen forward with the intensity of her orgasm.

  I found my own a couple seconds later, filling her with my cum, something that had never appealed to me before, but seemed somehow important now, significant, right.

  But then again, every
damn thing with her so far felt right.

  Aven - 3 months

  "I said no, Quin," I snapped, waving a hand full of romaine hearts out in his kitchen.

  See, we didn't fight often. In fact, rarely. But it was unavoidable sometimes, both of us being too damn stubborn for our own good.

  "Why not?" he asked, leaning back against the fridge, face impassive.

  "Oh, gee, I don't know. Because it costs seventy-five-thousand dollars. How about that?" I asked, putting the lettuce down on the cutting board, and steadily chopping it with one of his fancy ass knives. Too good for Bed, Bath, and Beyond knives, apparently.

  Okay.

  I was maybe being a bit of a shrew about it.

  But it was going against so much of what I had built my life around - bootstrapping and elbow grease. Everything I had in my life I had because I worked my ass off for it. Nothing had ever come easily. And certainly nothing had ever been given to me.

  Hell, I even felt weird when Quin paid for dinner. Even after three months. Even though for as many times as he took me out, I made him homecooked meals.

  It just felt weird.

  I wasn't sure I would ever get fully comfortable with the idea of being taken care of. Especially seeing as I had quite successfully taken care of myself since the day I turned eighteen.

  And here he was, seemingly oblivious - or simply not understanding - my issue with him paying for the little things, and suddenly offering me some fancy ass luxury car.

  He was just being himself - generous, being a good guy. Fixing a problem. The problem being that my lemon car had finally, finally kicked the bucket. The final kind. The kind where the mechanic had simply come back out like a doctor after a touchy surgery to tell me that there was nothing he could do, it had given up the fight and gone to the big metallic graveyard in the sky.