“Oh, cupcake.” Nick gathered me in his arms and held me tight to his chest. “It’s OK. Come on. Let’s go for a drive.”
Keeping an arm around my shoulder, he guided me around the house toward his car.
“Where you going?” called a female voice from the porch. Katie, maybe.
“Just out for a drive. We’ll be back.” He opened the door for me, and went around to the driver’s side. Without bothering with the convertible top, he pulled away from the house and drove down the same dirt road that we’d run on. I rolled down the window, still desperate for fresh air. We kept going until we reached the road that cut through the orchard. Halfway to the end, Nick pulled over and shut off the engine.
I looked over to the right…somewhere out there was the place where I lost my virginity to the man next to me. On a fall night, when the air had a crisp chill to it. I remembered how the moonlight barely filtered through the branches to the ground, where we lay in the shadows.
I hadn’t been scared. I remembered that vividly. I’d put up a little resistance—after all, I didn’t want Nick to think I was easy—but the truth was, I couldn’t wait to share my body with him that way, and have him share his with me. He would be inside me—what would that feel like? I wanted him there, wanted him to be the one to show me. I wanted to discover the thrill of it together.
Because of course, I’d thought he was a virgin too.
I remembered how he’d brought me to orgasm with his tongue first that night, leaving me drenched and swollen and ready for him. Then I’d pulled him up my body, reaching between us to free his cock from his jeans, my heart pounding. The details were so clear in my mind—the floral dress and red cardigan sweater I wore, the way the skirt bunched up around my waist, the crunch of the leaves under the blanket, the taste of apples and cinnamon in his kiss, his mouth wet. The look in his eyes as he pushed inside me for the first time, inch by inch, and the feel of his shirt in my tightly clenched hands. Willing my body to ease up, to take him in, I breathed deeply, my fists relaxing. God, you’re so tight, he’d whispered. So tight and wet and it feels so good.
“I can still feel it, you know.” I spoke without taking my eyes from the orchard. “That first time. You went slow for me.” Between my legs an ache was building, and I squeezed my thighs together. The memory would have to be enough.
“Yes.”
“You kept asking if I was OK.”
“I was so nervous.”
“More nervous than I was, I think.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you. And I didn’t want it to be over too quickly, which was always a problem in those days.”
I looked at him. “You knew what you were doing.” A subtle reminder that he’d lied about his virginity.
“Didn’t feel like it. In fact, that felt more like a first time than my actual first time, which was pretty fucking terrible, to tell you the truth. Terrible and very, very fast. Not that I really cared.” He reached over and took my hand. “With you I cared. I wanted it so badly, but I wanted it to be perfect. I was so in love with you.”
My throat felt like someone’s hands had closed around it. “It was perfect.”
“I never wanted it to end.”
I managed a smile. “Not even you can last that long.”
“I didn’t mean sex. I meant us.” He brought the back of my hand to his lips. “I never wanted us to end. I still don’t.”
I tried to pull my hand away, but he held it tight. “Nick, stop.”
“Come here, please.” He scooted over toward the passenger seat, reached beneath my arms, and hauled me onto his lap, my knees on either side of his hips. “Let’s talk about this. What are you thinking?”
“I can’t talk—I can barely think.” I braced myself on his shoulders, keeping him at arm’s length. “And being on your lap does not make that easier.”
He tightened his grip on my hips, lifted his slightly. “I know, it makes it harder. So. Much. Harder.”
I sighed, exasperated. “No jokes, Nick. We need to have a serious discussion. I messed up really badly! I’ve been stupid all weekend.”
“No, you haven’t. You’ve been enjoying yourself. So much that your regular routine slipped your mind. You’re human.”
“But that slip might have resulted in a pregnancy. Do you understand that? A baby. I’m totally unfit to be a parent!”
“You won’t be alone, Coco. I’m here.”
“You’re totally unfit, too!”
“Hey, come on. I want kids, remember?”
“Not like this, you don’t. With your ex- girlfriend who—“
“Ex-wife, actually. Hey, let’s get remarried!” he said, as if it were the best idea he’d had in years.
“—ex-wife who hasn’t forgiven you for what you did and probably never will. And could you please stop proposing to me out of the blue?”
“Sorry. I just got carried away when you said baby.”
“I don’t want a baby with you, Nick. And I don’t want to marry you again.”
He was silent a few seconds. “Ouch. I’m not sure which part of that hurts most.”
I closed my eyes and tried to rethink what I’d said. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, and if I am pregnant, that may change things, but right now, Nick…I am not OK with this. I wish I were. I wish I could accept your apology and understand your excuses and forgive and forget and all that, but I can’t. I just can’t. Because I don’t know how to trust you.”
“Why not?” His hands locked behind my hips. “Tell me what to say and I’ll say it. Tell me what to do to make you change your mind. I love you, and I don’t want to give up on us.”
“But you did! You already did!” It struck me then that maybe that’s the part I couldn’t get over. Even if I forgave him for leaving me in Vegas, I couldn’t get beyond feeling that he didn’t try hard enough to get me back, if that’s what he really wanted. “If you were truly sorry for calling our marriage a mistake, you would have tried harder to find me, to keep me. Even after I got back from Paris.”
“But I did try! You divorced me in sixty days!”
“I wanted to hurt you. Like you hurt me.”
He exhaled, dropping his head back on the seat. “I left you in peace after the divorce because I thought that was what you wanted. If you love something, set it free and all that. I’d fucked everything up, and I thought for once I’d try to be a gentleman.”
“I never wanted a gentleman. I wanted you.”
He picked his head up. “Thanks.”
I almost laughed at the offended look on his face, but every time I felt a moment of levity, reality sucked me down again. Groaning, I dropped my forehead to his shoulder. “What the hell, Nick? What are we going to do? Why can’t we ever get things right?”
He rubbed my back. “It’s your body, Coco. And I will support you no matter what you decide. It’s going to be OK no matter what. ”
Giving in to the feeling of being comforted, of being told it would all be OK, of feeling like I wasn’t alone, I turned my face into his throat. Inhaled the scent of his skin, which would forever say sex-and- sugar to me. Except when it said sex-and-bacon.
I chuckled in the crook of his neck. I couldn’t help it.
“What?” He sounded shocked that I was giggling.
“Nothing. I was thinking something dirty.”
“What a coincidence.”
I laughed again, lifting my head. “This would be so much easier if I didn’t like you.”
His mouth formed that crooked grin I couldn’t resist. “I knew you still liked me.”
“A little. Maybe.” What are you doing? screamed a voice in my head as I leaned forward impulsively to kiss those lips. What the actual fuck are you doing? It was the anti-dessert tray voice, the one that remembers to count the steps it takes me to walk away.
Oh, now you show up, I thought, feeling Nick’s hands move up my back. Where were you in the kitchen when I told him to fuck me without a con
dom? Where were you in the cemetery this morning? Why didn’t you sound the alarm then and remind me that I hadn’t taken a pill?
No answer.
I took that as a sign.
Our kiss grew frantic, and our hands began to wander. I freed my dress from between us and Nick’s fingers crept beneath it. His palms slid up my thighs, settling on my ass and squeezing it tight. I took his face in my hands, meeting his tongue with mine, shivering with anticipation at the growing bulge in his jeans beneath me.
Reaching behind me, I unzipped my dress and let the straps fall off my shoulders, then slipped my arms from them. Nick’s hands moved up my back, which arched instinctively, pressing my breasts closer to his mouth. He dragged his tongue around one nipple, teasing it into a stiff, tingling peak before sucking it hard into his mouth. “Oh God, that feels so good,” I breathed, taking his head in my hands and holding it to my chest. My breath caught as he took the hardened tip between his teeth, biting down before sucking it again. His other hand slid down over my ass, this time inside my panties.
I grabbed onto the back of the seat and rocked my hips over his, widening my knees. He groaned, moving both hands to grip my ass, thrusting up beneath me as he pulled me against him, his mouth never leaving my breasts. Remember this? I almost asked. Remember how we used to park your truck somewhere hidden and fuck each other through our clothes? I wanted the real thing. I want the real thing now. But I was too scared to say anything—if I stopped to talk, stopped to remember, stopped to think at all, I might reconsider where this was headed, and right now I really wanted this to head somewhere that ended with my pussy hot and tight around his big hard cock.
“Coco.” Nick’s breath was cool on my wet skin. “Are you sure?”
“Shhhh.” I kissed his cheek, his jaw, his neck, running my tongue over his favorite little spot.
Between my legs, I was aching and wet, my panties soaked. Fuck yes, I’m sure.
But wait.
I picked my head up, breathing hard. “Do you have a condom?”
“Yes.” Lifting his hips, which made my core muscles clench, he reached into his pocket and pulled one out.
“Give it to me.” I ripped it from his hands and tore it open with my teeth while he reached beneath my dress and undid his jeans. My stomach jumping, I unrolled the condom over his dick and pressed up on my knees, freeing one leg from my panties. Nick closed his lips over my nipple again as I positioned him at my entrance and sank down slowly, reveling in the exquisite way he stretched and filled me, inch by rock solid inch. Pressing my hands to the car’s soft roof, I stopped for a second to slide up and down a few times, exhilarated by the way it made him moan and suck harder. Finally I went all the way down, sighing as he reached the deepest place inside me.
“Coco,” he said gruffly as I began to move. “I have to have you.”
Arms overhead, I swiveled my hips in lovely little arcs and circles, each shape twisting me tighter, carrying me higher. “You have me.” Trading swivels for thrusts, I set a hard, steady rhythm against him, my entire body humming. God, he was so deep inside me, hitting that spot that made everything rush to the no- stopping-this point. “I’m here. I’m right here.” And then I couldn’t speak or think or even move, every muscle in my body seizing up. Nick’s fingers dug into my ass and he pulled me roughly against him, the base of his cock rubbing my clit. Tears came to my eyes, my mouth falling open as I teetered on the brink. Take me over. Now. Fuck me, yes, yes, like that… I exploded, his name on my lips.
He never stopped moving. “Fuck, I love watching you come. I love hearing you say my name. I love every fucking thing about you.”
“I love you too.” Taking his head in my hands, I rained kisses on his forehead, his cheeks, his lips. “I don’t want to but I do.” God, the world was tilting and spinning out of control. What the fuck was I saying?
Was I delirious? The words wouldn’t stop pouring out, as if a dam had burst. “And I hate you too. I hate you,” I said, sliding up and down his hard, wet cock, my mouth pressed close to his. “I fucking hate you for what you did to me. I hate that I couldn’t get over you. I hate that I can’t say no to you. I hate that I still want you this way.”
“Get on your back.” Without waiting for me to move, Nick flipped me onto my back across the front seat. One leg ended up wrapped around him, the other dangling toward the floor. He pulled his shirt off before taking a wrist in each hand and pinning them against the door above my head. “Is this the way you want me?” He drove his cock inside me again and again, slamming into me with a force that knocked my head against the door. “You hate the way you want this?” His jaw was set hard, his tone hot with anger and desire.
“Yes, I hate it,” I panted, lifting my hips to meet his, gasping at the violent way our bodies crashed together. “But I can’t get enough.”
“Jesus.” Somehow he fucked me harder and deeper, causing stabs of pain to pierce the pleasure ballooning inside me. But I liked it that way—and he knew it. I turned my face to the side, trying not to cry out. “You’re going to come again,” he ordered. “I want that tight little pussy to come on my cock just like it was the first time. Remember?”
Hell yes, I remembered. I hadn’t been expecting a second orgasm that night, but the way he moved and the things he said and the sound of his voice and the thought of him inside me…I’d climaxed again beneath
him, my hand over my wide-open mouth, smothering a scream as my body pulsed around his for the first time. “Yes,” I breathed, the past and the present converging within me.
“Good girl. I want you to scream this time, like you wouldn’t then.”
I thought about trying to stay quiet just to defy him, but then I made the mistake of glancing down at his bare torso, at my name on his chest, at the way his abs flexed as he rocked his body into mine. Unable to stop myself, I cried out, again and again.
My head banged against the side of the car but I didn’t feel it—I felt nothing but his hot skin and hard cock, heard nothing but our gasps and cries in the falling darkness, imagined nothing but his body joined to mine until we came together and the world turned to liquid gold behind closed eyes.
Later we pulled the Amish quilt from the trunk and lay on our backs in a clearing near the orchard.
Nick’s hands were folded behind his head, and I rested my temple on his left bicep.
“What’s that one?” I pointed high above us, where stars glittered in the cloudless country night sky. “The one that looks like a W.” I tilted my head the other way. “Or maybe it’s an M.”
“That’s Cassiopeia.”
“Story, please?”
“She was beautiful, and a queen, so she had a pretty good thing going, but then she bragged that she and her daughter Andromeda were more beautiful than these other goddesses.”
“Never a good idea. Which goddesses?”
“Some sea goddesses, I think. So they went to
Poseidon, and he was pretty pissed, and said she had to sacrifice Andromeda to a sea monster to appease him.”
I gasped. “Did she?”
“She would have, but Perseus came along and saved Andromeda.”
“Perseus,” I mused. “Remind me about him.”
“He was this handsome chef with a big cock that—ow!”
I thumped him on the chest. “Come on, tell me.”
Nick rubbed his ribcage and went on. “OK, fine, although I like my version better. Perseus comes along and sees the lovely Andromeda tied to a chair at the edge of the sea, and being the awesome hero that he is, he kills the sea monster and rescues her. Cassiopeia can’t go unpunished, of course, so she gets placed in a throne in the sky, destined to spend all eternity circling the north celestial pole, half the time clinging to it so she doesn’t fall off.”
“Aha. Hard to look beautiful when you’re upside down. So what happened to Perseus and Andromeda?”
“They got married.”
I sighed. “Of course.”
“And they had nine children.”
“Yikes.”
“But she gets her own constellation too, right next to her mother’s. Right there, see?” With his right hand he drew a line across the sky.
“No.” I frowned, holding up my right hand too. “Show me.”
Taking my hand in his, he traced the outline of the stars with my finger. “See it now?”
“Yes.” Truthfully, I wasn’t sure I did, but it didn’t really matter. I just liked being here with him again, hearing the stories, and forgetting about our own lives for the moment. “And what about that one over there?” I pointed to another cluster of stars and relaxed as Nick began to talk about them, recounting for me stories his father and grandfather had told to him. After a while, I moved my head to his chest and closed my eyes, but he kept talking in a low, soothing voice, smoothing my hair back from my face and pretending not to notice the tears soaking his shirt.
#
By the time we drove back to the house, most of the cars were gone from the driveway and the parlor windows were dark. “We stayed out there too long,” I fretted. “You should have been at the party with your family.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. Noni understands.”
“What does she know?”
Nick turned the engine off. “About us?”
I nodded.
“Nothing. I mean, just that we broke up. She knows I screwed it up, though. She never let me forget it.”
That made me smile. “I love Noni.”
“She loves you too.”
“Did she want us to get back together?”
He shook his head. “No. She pretty much said it was a good thing you’d moved on because you were too good for me anyway.”
I laughed, in spite of everything. “Stop it. She adores you. Everyone does.”
“I am kind of adorable.”
I glanced at him and shrugged. “Kind of.”
With a grunt of frustration, he grabbed the back of my head and pulled my lips to his, kissing me hard. “You drive me crazy. Tell me you’ll do it forever.”
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