Aubrey felt a little sad. He’d be putting her in a car and sending her off to a room. She’d offered to walk but he’d told her she was crazy. No way.
“There’s the doctor,” Mike said, half yawning. “I’m going to check in.”
Off he went, still clutching one of her bags. She grinned. He looked cute with her messenger bag slung over his shoulder. She leaned against the wall and stifled her own yawn.
Aubrey shut her eyes for a second. In her mind’s eye she saw him in the sand. She saw the ocean, very close to the color of his eyes. She saw the stormy skies and smelled the ocean breeze. She wanted to be back there with Mike. Just a while longer. Together, alone. A cocoon of time and romance.
She laughed softly, eyes still shut. She was so damn tired.
“He looks so happy with you.”
The voice was so soft that Aubrey thought at first that maybe she’d fallen asleep and was dreaming. She cracked one eye when she realized who it must be, her heart thundering.
“I…oh…um—”
Angela held up a hand. “You surprised me down there.”
She looked exhausted up close and Aubrey felt herself fighting a wave of empathy for the woman. “I surprised me,” she admitted.
Angela did smile then. “I could tell. But it’s good. When you fall for someone you should go…is it crass to say balls to the wall to my ex’s new girlfriend?”
Aubrey snorted. “Nope. It’s fine. It seems to be a very weird, stressful day. I know…well, I know you and I aren’t going to be all there-were-birds-and-flowers-and-flutes-were-playing any time soon, but I hope everything is okay with Chuck. I really do.”
The other woman nodded. “I know. He’s a good kid. And he—” She nodded briskly toward Mike. “He is a good man. The stress of all this is what separated us first. Then we realized we’d been limping along with patches and glue on our relationship anyway. But bottom line is, he’s a good guy but this is a hard situation.”
“I know, “Aubrey said. “But I’m in for the long haul.”
Angela nodded again. “Good for you. Now, let me go see what they’re saying.”
“Can I get you a coffee or something?” Aubrey asked, wanting to extend an olive branch of some kind.
Angela shook her head and stifled another yawn. “Thanks, but when I do get myself wedged into one of these hospital chairs, I want to sleep if I can.” She waved at Aubrey, a little inside joke, and then off she went.
Mike returned, looking worried. “Did she—”
“She was fine. I was fine. We were fine,” Aubrey said. “And clearly I’ve turned into Dr. Seuss so maybe I need to go to that hotel room after all. Let the family deal with—”
“They’re kicking me out,” he said, taking her hand.
“What do you mean?”
“The nurses are real ball-busters, especially when it comes to kids.” He pulled her along. When Mike realized her reluctance he held her close and whispered, “He’s asleep. It’s fine for me to leave, Aubrey.”
Aubrey relaxed. The idea of her being the reason he wasn’t with his son was unthinkable.
“They said one parent overnight. That’s obviously going to be his mom, since Joshua is asleep. And even ball-buster nurses aren’t going to wake up a kid and make him move.”
Now that she knew they were leaving, the fatigue she’d been doing so well ignoring hit her like a train. “Won’t he miss school?”
“Homeschooled. That’s why they’re here visiting family as it is. Once things started to progress, school was a nightmare. Just trying to juggle it all and then deal with absences and so forth. Angela decided to homeschool him. And when that happened, Joshua decided he wanted to be with his brother.”
They’d made their way down to the main lobby and the large automatic doors whooshed open. They moved through the vestibule and the outer doors peeled back to let in a blast of night air. It smelled like fall. It smelled peaceful. It was the best-smelling air that Aubrey had ever smelled.
She stumbled a little over the metal lip of the door and then Mike’s arm was around her waist and he was kissing her temple. “Long-ass day, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s get to the hotel and maybe have a snack.”
“I wonder if they sell alcoholic beverages,” she laughed. “I think I could go for a vodka and soda or a glass of wine or a keg of beer…”
“How about wine from the liquor store up on the corner.”
“How do you know there’s a liquor store on the corner?”
“I asked the nurses. I said ‘when I get out of here I wanted to buy a bottle of something for a gorgeous woman and toast her induction into my insane life.’” He paused under one of the blazing sodium streetlamps and wrapped his arms around her. Aubrey thought if they stayed that way long enough she might fall asleep standing up in his arms. “You’ve weathered your first difficulty being my girl.”
Being my girl…
The phrase made her heart beat faster. “I gladly weathered it. I want to be by your side. I want—”
He kissed her. His lips were soft and warm and seeking. “I want you.”
“Aren’t you tired?” she asked, worried. But even as she asked it, her body was gearing up to accept his. Everything was warmer and softer and wetter than before. She could feel the change come on as suddenly as heat lightning and she felt herself blushing.
“What?” Mike asked.
She shook her head, sighed. “Nothing. I’m just so damn easy for you.”
He grinned and then they were walking again. “Thank God for that. I think I’m too tired to woo tonight. I just want a glass of wine and to slip into a hot shower.”
She sighed heartily at the thought.
“And then slip into a hot woman.” He said it right up against her neck so the vibration of his words triggered a shiver in her. There was that heat in her cheeks again. Among other places.
* * * * *
She touched his soapy back. Mike was facing away from her and she could see the suds and soap bubbles sluicing down the lines of his muscular back. He was still brown from the sun and it made her just a bit nostalgic for summer. Even though she mostly hated the heat.
Aubrey had been the one to vote shower, then wine, then other things. But being close to him in the heated steam, smelling the shampoo and soap and warm rich smell that was the natural scent of Mike, she felt a bit weak-kneed and giddy. Maybe it was the heat of the small room.
“Why are you staring at me?” he asked, not turning to look at her.
“How do you know I’m staring at you?”
“You’re touching me, aren’t you?”
So she was. Even as she stood there relishing being this close to him, she realized her hand was gliding up and down his back. Her fingers tickling along the muscles that stood out and the freckles and the small scar above his left shoulder blade. She fingered it again.
“My brother stabbed me with a wooden sword from Hershey Park when we were kids. We were playing pirates and I stole his booty.”
She snorted softly, amused to picture him as a kid. Being a total boy. Running and playing pirate and getting stabbed. It was an easy thing to imagine.
He turned fast and pushed her against the cool tile. Aubrey gasped. “Why are you staring, Aubrey?” he asked again.
He gave her a Big Bad Wolf grin and her arousal shot through her so fast she felt shaky.
“I guess…” He kissed her nose, her forehead, her mouth.
“I’m waiting.”
“I guess I’m overwhelmed by you.”
“By me?” His hand knifed its way up her inner thighs so that the edge of it bumped against her clit. Her heart jumped. Her stomach dropped.
“Yes by you. I’ve never…been with anyone like you. Anyone as secure being himself as you. As loving as you. As handsome as you. As…” Her words trailed off and he dropped low, kissing and licking the water off her breasts. He paused to suckle her nipple, sliding his fingers betwee
n her legs. He found her wet and ready and drove a finger inside. When she moaned, arched forward and took him easily, he added another two fingers.
She was full of him. His fingers thrusting and dragging against her G-spot. His mouth on her nipples, his tongue sliding along the slope of her breast. He pressed the pad of his thumb to her clit and pressed it.
Aubrey came. Shaking against the wall, her fingers gripping him so she wouldn’t fall.
“We should—”
“Not done,” he mumbled.
His mouth was on her then. Warmer than the shower water. His tongue insinuated itself between her folds. He tasted her and when he grew more aggressive, lapping at her, giving her small bites along her nether lips, she found herself breathless and flushed and coming. Coming hard, saying his name, asking him to take her to bed. “Please, please, Mike, please…”
He took her hand and led her to the bedroom.
Chapter Twenty-Five
In the bedroom, she climbed onto yet another luxurious hotel room bed and rolled to her belly. Got up on her knees.
“What’s this?” he asked. His palm smoothed down over the slope of her hip, the swell of her ass.
“It’s what I want.”
“Is it now?”
His voice held that slow, smoky quality Aubrey now recognized as arousal.
She moved her ass from side to side slowly. Wooing him. “It is.”
“You don’t want to look at my pretty face?” he teased. “I like looking at yours.” He was already running his cock slowly along her wet pussy. She shut her eyes, hung her head.
“I love looking at it, in fact,” he murmured.
He penetrated her, just the tip pushing inside her. Her body closing quickly around it, thrumming with anticipation and need. She tried to push back but he stalled her with his hands on her hips.
“I love looking at your face too,” she mumbled, trying to move back. He stayed firm, not letting her.
“But?” He pressed forward, entering her a little more. Stretching her slowly. Her body ached dully to be filled. Her head felt muzzy, her ears rang.
“But I want you to…” She hesitated. When he began to withdraw slowly, she gasped and blurted, “No! I want you to take me. I need that. I want that. After the day we’ve had and the confusion and your ex and…” Aubrey shook her head, feeling inept with her words. Her sexual desire was overwhelming her ability to speak.
“Tell me.” His fingers walked down her spine. Mike’s touch was soft. It left her feeling as if she might have imagined his touch.
“Realizing how I feel about you. It’s all so big. So huge. I need this from you. I need you to—”
Her words were cut off because he gave a sound that was more like a growl than anything and drove into her. Aubrey heard her breath leave her lungs as if it were happening to someone else.
She moaned softly as he gripped her hips with rough fingers and thrust hard so that he filled her. All the extra chatter in her head dropped away. She was nothing but pleasure-soaked nerve endings. She was mingled with Mike Sykes. She left off where he began and she began where he left off.
Her heart jumped almost painfully with every thrust and she pushed her forehead to the sweet-smelling hotel sheets. He reached beneath her to put his fingers to her clit but she said, “No, I don’t need that. I’ll come anyway.”
“I thought I was taking you, Aubrey. I want to do this. I want to touch you. Hush.”
He touched her and within three gentle strokes coupled with his thrusting cock, she came, sobbing against the small pillow. She began to laugh a little but then it turned to a cry again as he hiked her closer and angled her hips for his pleasure.
She gasped, clutching the sheets, moving back to take him as deep as she could. To feel him as much as she could.
“Remember what you said in the shower?” His voice was dark and deep. On the verge of letting go. He sounded very much like a man about to lose his control and surrender to what his body wanted.
“What? Which part?” she babbled. Her hands were trembling. Her hair curtained her face and she felt his finger press against her back hole.
She found herself wishing he’d push it in. All the way. Before he came.
She opened her mouth to say it but he cut her off, answering her question. “That you were overwhelmed by me.”
“Yes, that. Yes, I do. I am…” She tried to press back invitingly. Asking him with her body to push that finger into her there. To fuck her with his cock and fuck her with his finger and just fuck her. Take her. Make her his completely.
“I feel the same way. Overwhelmed by you.” He moved his finger and she gave a little desperate cry. His other hand skated through her juices and then he was lubricating her ass with it. “Humbled by you…”
His finger played over her tightest hole again.
“Amazed by you…”
He pressed steadily and then his finger was sliding into her. Moving against the fragile barrier of flesh that separated cunt from ass. She felt him moving inside her in both places and it made her head spin.
“Completely in love with you,” he said softly, and pressed deeper still.
She came with a loud sob, her eyes prickling with tears, her body shaking with surrender.
“I love you too. I love you too…” She said it a few more times and when he came, she listened to the sound of his breathing, felt the tension and relaxation that swept through his body. She was right there in that moment with him and not another damn thing mattered.
They poured wine when they were done. But hardly drank any. They were too tired and too ready to simply wind around each other and fall into the dark, deep rabbit hole of sleep.
* * * * *
The phone was ringing. This was becoming a pattern, Aubrey thought. When they slept in the same bed they woke to some intrusion. Someone knocking on the door. The phone ringing.
Then her head cleared and she realized it could be the hospital. She fumbled for her phone and it dawned on her it would be his phone. It was. Mike was moving slow, so deep in sleep he couldn’t seem to wake up. She grabbed the phone as he reached blindly.
Aubrey laughed lightly. As if he could answer the phone when he couldn’t even open his eyes. “Hello?” she said softly.
“Aubrey? It’s Angela.”
Aubrey sat up straight. “Is it Chuck? Is he okay—”
“He’s fine, he’s fine.” She swore she heard the other woman smile.
Mike was sitting up reaching for the phone when Angela said, “Actually, I called to speak with you.”
“Me?” She put her hand on Mike’s and squeezed for a moment.
“I wanted to thank you for not holding my glares against me.”
“I—”
The other woman barreled on. “It’s hard to let go of something that was, something that created children you adored, even if you know it’s over. And it is over.”
Aubrey felt more relief than she cared to admit at that declaration. Mike was awake now. Sitting up behind her, kissing her shoulder softly.
“I understand,” was all Aubrey could think to say.
“I wanted to say thank you for understanding. And for being nice to the boys when you met them. I’ve heard Joshua wax poetic about how you seem like the right woman for his father.”
Aubrey didn’t know what to say. Which was fine, because Mike’s ex went on without taking a breath.
“Which is a bigger deal than you might think, because the last girl Mike dated, Josh glued her hair to the back of the sofa.”
A wild giggle escaped Aubrey and Mike cocked an eyebrow.
“So I wish you luck. I want to start our acquaintance with good karma. I will do my best not to be bitchy and judgmental. But sometimes I might slip.”
“And I will do my best not to be jealous and unsure of myself,” Aubrey said. “But sometimes I might slip.”
She could tell Angela was smiling. “I really do wish you luck. It’s easier to say on the phone th
an in person later. Which reminds me, please tell Mike that they’re letting Chuck go today. The congestion is easing. They feel he can recuperate at home.”
“I will,” Aubrey said. “We’ll see you soon. And Angela?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. For the olive branch.”
“One of my better moments.” She laughed and disconnected.
“Who was that?” Mike said. Though she knew he knew.
“My new friend Angela.”
“Friend?” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. They were still half-buried in the sheets.
“Well, we’re going to give it a shot. For the boys. One of whom is being sent home today because they think he’s good to go.”
He just looked at her and then grinned. “Great. For the boys.”
“And for you. We all deserve moving forward with good karma, right?”
Mike just nodded. “Exactly. We do. Now have I mentioned that you are super sexy in the morning?”
“No.”
“And that you make me want to throw you back in the bed and never get out?”
“Nope. Not that either.”
He took her face in his hands, growing serious. “And that I love you?”
“Now that one you might have mentioned,” she said, accepting his kiss and returning it. “But I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing it.”
About Sommer Marsden
Sommer Marsden writes from her cozy Baltimore home, which she shares with a very patient family and a chunky wiener dog. She’s widely published in the erotica genre. Her work has appeared in dozens of anthologies, multiple magazines and on numerous websites. When she’s not writing, you can find her haunting thrift stores, walking, drinking red wine and eating frozen blueberries. Often simultaneously. Visit Sommer at her blog, Smut Girl (www.smutgirl.blogspot.com), to keep up with her dirty ramblings and daily updates about her life of controlled chaos.
Sommer welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email addresses on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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