by E. K. Blair
“I am so happy for you,” I tell her honestly.
“Thank you.”
We continue to stroll through the rows of trees, filling our buckets with several varieties of apples. And when we are overflowing, Landon and Chris head over to the Cider Taproom to grab a couple beers while Brooke and I take the kids to bag up the fruit. The day begins to fade into evening, and when exhaustion kicks in, we load up our apples and the pumpkins and head back.
The kids fall asleep instantly, and with the guys sitting up front, I debate pulling out my phone and texting Alec, but I refrain. Anticipation grows as I think about when I’ll be able to talk to him again, and then I mentally scold myself, asking why I’m so needy to talk to him. I tell my conscience that he’s like a new toy, and today was the first day it’s been taken away, so naturally I just want to have it back—to play.
By the time we get home, it’s past eight, and when I ask Landon what we are going to do for dinner, he looks at me, utterly drained and says, “There is no way I’m cooking.”
“I don’t blame you,” I laugh. I know the last thing he wants to do after preparing for the Times food critic is cook. A surge of deceit awakens in me when I see an opportunity to indulge in my new obsession and offer, “Why don’t I call in an order at that little Italian restaurant down the street. If you’ll get the girls showered and in bed, I’ll go grab dinner for us.”
“What about the kids?”
“Just give them a Lunchable or something quick,” I tell him as I grab the keys to my car and head out.
As I pull out of the driveway, I’m already placing my dinner order, but it’s the second call that causes my heart to pump small doses of adrenaline through my veins. When I hit the first red stoplight is when Alec answers and all the anxiety within me begins to sedate.
“Hey you.”
“Hi,” I respond, smiling without delay.
“Can you hold on for just a moment?”
“Sure.” The light turns green, and I start driving while I listen to muffled voices followed by a door shutting and then silence.
“Okay, I’m back.”
“If this is a bad time, I can let you go.”
“No,” he says. “I’m over at my brother’s house and my nieces were singing along to some Disney movie, so I stepped outside where it’s quiet.”
I pull into the lot of the restaurant, park away from all the other cars, and kill the engine.
“What are you doing, Victoria?”
Releasing a heavy breath of tension, I close my eyes and lean my head back as thoughts tumble around. Confliction and contentment battle for the upper hand, but neither is victor. This has always been innocent fun—just harmless entertainment—but this isn’t benign if I’m hiding out in the shadows of a parking lot just to talk to Alec.
“What are you thinking about?” Alec’s voice is silk, slipping through the phone and caressing my ear softly.
“You.” I shouldn’t be so honest. I should lie. I should hang up. I should go home.
“I’ve been thinking about you too.”
Don’t say that, Alec. Don’t encourage me.
“You have?”
“I told my sister-in-law about you tonight.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing much,” he tells me. “Only that I met a girl who’s piqued my interest.”
“Alec . . .” I murmur breathlessly around the flutter he invokes.
“Talk to me.”
“This isn’t me,” I admit. “I don’t act this way with anyone.”
“How do you mean?”
“I’m not a needy person. But with you . . . if I’m not talking to you, I’m thinking about you. You’re probably the most intense person I’ve ever met. You’re all-consuming—addicting—and I don’t know what to do with that because it brings out this neediness inside me that’s never been there before.” My words fall freely from my lips as I make my confessions. “I feel a little crazy here because we’ve only been talking for a week and I’m so unsure of everything I used to be so certain of.”
“Does that scare you?”
“Yeah . . . it does. And I’m not one who scares easily, which is why I feel so thrown off by you.”
He doesn’t respond immediately, but when he does, his words surprise me when he says, “You scare me too.”
My laugh is one of nervousness and not of amusement. “How on earth do I scare you?”
“Because I’m not needy either, but I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re nothing like the women I go for. You’re the opposite of what attracts me, and yet, the attraction I have for you is profound and difficult for me to understand.”
“This is crazy.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I say as I lean forward and rest my head on the steering wheel. “Because this is really fast. Too fast.”
“Look, I like you. But if this is too much for you, then we can end it now.”
The thought of walking away doesn’t sit right with me. I’m still curious about him. There’s still so much left for me to explore and learn from him. I’m just not ready to close the door on him just yet.
“No. I don’t want to end this. Today just shook me up a little bit. I didn’t expect to feel this pull. I mean, I should be able to go a day without talking to you. I hate feeling this way because it makes me feel like a little weak girl.”
“I like that you feel weak for me.”
I shake my head, laugh under my breath, and tease, “You only like it because it feeds that big ass ego of yours.”
“I made you smile though, didn’t I?”
And he did, but I still feel so torn when I shouldn’t. There’s nothing I should be conflicted about. I mean, I’ve never even met this guy, so why do I even feel like this? Why am I even here?
I need to get home.
“Can we talk later?”
“We can talk whenever you want. I’ll be here at my brother’s for another hour or so, and then I’ll be home.”
“I’m sorry for calling you like this and being so emotional.”
“Don’t ever be sorry for calling me. If you need to talk, I want you talking to me,” he states. “And it’s okay that you’re feeling emotional—you’re human.”
“Thanks for listening to me.”
After we hang up, I run inside and pick up dinner before heading back home. The weight I felt earlier is no longer there. I got my Alec fix, and when I return home, Landon and I sit down at the dining table and eat our dinner. We speak briefly about our day and then resume our meal in silence. I begin to think that if it were Alec sitting across from me, our food would probably go cold because we wouldn’t be able to stop talking. Landon and I used to be that way. We could talk for hours on end, but somewhere along the way, we’ve stopped talking.
“Remember when we used to stay up all night talking on the phone?” I ask between bites.
“Mmm hmm.” He nods as he chews his food.
“I miss talking to you.” My words catch his attention, and after he takes a swallow, he says, “What do you mean? We talk all the time.”
“I mean talk about something other than kids and work.”
“Tor, that’s our life right now. If we aren’t consumed with the kids, then we’re consumed with our jobs. There’s very little time left in between.”
I set my fork down and look over to all the buckets of apples that are sitting on the large kitchen island. I know Landon is going to wash them and create a whole menu on how he plans on using them, but I take this as an opportunity.
“Can I help you with whatever you’re planning on doing with the apples?”
“Really?” His eyes light in surprise because this is the first year I’ve offered to help him. “But you hate to cook.”
“Well, it’s about time I try something new then. And maybe it will give us something to talk about,” I tell him with a wink, but it feels like a farce.
As we sit here and eat the rest of o
ur dinner in silence, my mind drifts back to the early years and how it used to be. I blindly thought we’d never change, that we’d never lose the spark, that we’d never run out of things to say, and that we’d never be able to keep our hands off each other. I miss the newness and the excitement that comes along with it, and I wish I knew how to get it back.
I smile nervously as I look into his dark blue eyes, but his lips don’t resemble mine because his nerves don’t taunt him like mine do. He’s spent the past ten minutes or so trying to convince me to move the computer back so he can see all of me, which is now completely naked, but I’m much too modest to expose my body to him—a body that wears the marks of bearing two children.
“Let me see you, Victoria,” he says as he looks intently at me through the screen of my laptop.
Biting my lip, I shake my head with a coy, “No.”
“Why are you afraid to show me your body?”
I cover my face with my hands and laugh nervously.
“Look at me.”
Dropping my hands, I tilt my head over to my laptop, which sits on the bed next to my face. Alec picks up his computer and sets it on a desk or nightstand, angling it to focus on the bed. I can’t look away as my skin prickles in excitement when I see his fully naked body walk over and sit down on his bed with his back reclining against the leather headboard.
Every inch of his body is mine to look at now that we are video chatting. His lightly tanned skin is smooth over his long athletic cuts of muscle. He doesn’t look into the camera when he takes his one hand and grips it firmly around the base of his erection. He stares at himself as he pulls his hand up around the tip and slides it down. Heavy breaths roll through my body as I slide my hands over my breasts while I take in the images of him pleasuring himself.
His head turns toward me and looks at me straight on. “You like watching me touch myself?”
“Mmm hmm,” I moan, pinching my nipples between my fingers.
“Lick your fingers and rub your clit.”
I slip my fingers into my mouth, spread my legs, and drop my hand down to my core. The first touch sparks a shock of heat through me and my body jerks upward. “Oh, God.” I plant my feet flat on the mattress and continue to tease myself.
“Look into the camera,” he says, and when I drop my head back to the side to look at him, he widens his legs and is now pumping his cock with more force. The muscles in his arms constrict as heat crawls up his neck. “Tell me how wet you are.”
I avoid talking because it’s not something I ever do during sex, and it feels awkward. So instead, I slip a finger inside of me, moaning out in desire as I close my eyes and imagine it’s his cock filling me.
“Look into the camera,” he repeats, directing my attention back to him. “Tell me how wet you are. Talk to me,” he continues to press through his staggering breaths as he jerks off.
Swallowing against my dry throat, I muster up a tiny shred of boldness and speak. “I’m insanely wet for you, Alec.”
My words elicit a low growl from him, enticing me as I lift my hips against my hand, grinding my clit and shoving a second finger inside myself.
“I’d like to taste that pussy of yours.”
“Yes,” I breathe as my body begins to climb. I writhe, tangling the sheets beneath me as I roll around in reckless passion.
“Have my cock nestled deep inside you, to feel how tightly you fit around me.”
His words spur me, growing me even more wet as we both watch each other through the computer.
“You want to feel my cock in that wet cunt of yours?”
“Fuck,” I mewl in response to his filthy mouth, losing all control. “Yes. I want to feel you so bad.”
“Say it.”
“I want you, Alec.”
Our eyes remain locked as we spit our explicit desires, overtaken by rapturous heat. Everything around me fades into delirium as I focus solely on Alec. His face contorts at the same time I feel the bites of ecstasy on my overly sensitive skin.
“Don’t let yourself go yet,” he demands. “I want you to watch me cum.”
I slow myself, withholding the orgasm that’s building in my bloodstream. I watch as Alec’s hand moves in rigid, erratic strokes along his thick cock while he stares at me intently. He bears down, gritting his teeth, and then grunts as he goes. His abs constrict tightly as streams of cum shoot onto his stomach. Every sound coming out of him dissolves all my restraint, and I don’t even wait for him to tell me to continue when I shove my fingers back into my pussy.
I never stop watching him as I eagerly work my body up to the knife’s edge, taking my other hand and rolling my fingers over my clit. My thighs quiver as my climax builds painfully slow and then erupts out of nowhere. The pleasure is beyond containment, and I pinch my eyes shut as I grind my hips into my hand, arousal coating my fingers as my body sweats through quakes of head-to-toe euphoria.
The moment the feeling begins to subside, I grow needy for more, fiending for the next fix like some insatiable junkie. Maybe I am. And there’s no doubt that Alec is my enabler as he encourages, “Don’t stop, Victoria. I want to watch you again.”
He drapes a sheet over his legs, grabs his computer, and sets it on his lap. His face is all that fills the screen as he watches me. I glance to the corner of the video chat box to see that no longer am I hidden from view as I’ve shifted farther away from the camera, revealing everything down to my hips. But I don’t care anymore, because I’m no longer me as I rub my clit and squeeze my breast.
“Talk to me, Alec,” I blindly request, craving his dirty words, words no man has ever used with me before. “Give me your voice.”
“Fuck, you look so hot right now.” His voice is low and guttural, coated thickly in voracity. “My cock is still rock hard. Watching you, listening to your sex-filled pants, if I were there I’d flip you on your stomach, yank your ass up in the air, and pound my dick inside your pussy.”
“Yes.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Mmmm.”
“You’re not so vanilla, are you, Victoria? You like imagining me fucking you like an animal, don’t you?” he taunts, and in this moment, if he were in this bed with me, I’d let him do just about anything to my body because I’m suspended so far above reality that I’m someone else entirely.
“Yes.”
“You like the thought of me fucking you like a dog?”
“Shit,” I blurt when my body peaks again.
My eyes fall shut as I ride out another intense climax while Alec continues his affliction of words. “I’d then shove my thumb into your ass, filling both your holes. I’d love to see how you’d squirm under my touch.”
I’m completely under his spell as his foul words fill the air around me, filtering in through my erotic moans. Alec never stops talking as I float through orgasm after orgasm, feeding my outrageous appetite. I never knew I was so starved until now—I could go all day.
Alec is a whole new experience, nothing like what I’ve ever had before. He’s unfiltered and raw, debasing me with his words that should offend me but don’t. Instead, they intoxicate me and leave me wanting more.
My body collapses in a heap of sweaty, tingly mush. I roll onto my side, facing the computer screen, and attempt to catch my breath. My damp temple lies on my arm while I, once again, look into Alec’s midnight blue eyes.
As I fall back down to reality, I fight the nervous giggle that threatens to escape. “That was slightly embarrassing,” I mutter as I cover my naked body with a sheet.
“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. You’re so fucking sexy.”
“No.”
“If I tell you something, no matter what it is, don’t reject it as if it’s meaningless.”
Propping my head onto my hand, I stare at him, mesmerized in a way I can’t explain.
“What are you doing to me?” I ask, not really expecting him to respond, but he does.
“I should ask you th
e same thing,” he says. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“I need to work. I haven’t written in over a week because you have me so distracted.”
“Let me distract you for one more day. Meet me tomorrow morning for a cup of coffee.”
The mere idea excites me, but I know I can’t. The moment I meet him is the moment this all becomes real, and I can’t let that happen. I’ve already pushed my limit of fun with this guy, and if I meet him, I’m doing nothing but leading him on.
“Stop thinking and say yes.”
“Alec . . .”
“Pavement Coffeehouse on Commonwealth. Ten o’clock.”
The moment the words are out of his mouth, his lips flick in a subtle smile, and then he disconnects our video chat.
As I close the lid to the computer, my heart jumps out of my chest when I hear the door leading out to the garage open.
Holy fuck!
I bolt out of bed, sling the comforter over the messy sheets, grab my clothes, and run into the bathroom.
“Tor,” Landon calls out as I throw my clothes on in a hurried panic.
“Going to the bathroom. Be out in a sec,” I holler.
Shit!
After I zip my pants, I flush the unused toilet and open the door before quickly washing the sex off my hands with some fragranced soap.
“Nice hair,” Landon jokes when he walks into the bathroom, and I respond, “Lazy morning.”
I pump a little lotion into my hands, further hiding the scent of deceit as my pulse races wildly under my skin.
“What have you been doing?”
“Nothing much,” I delude. “Just lying around, but I’m about to get to work. What are you doing home in the middle of the day?”
He then holds out the newspaper I didn’t even notice he was holding. “The review is out.”
His smile gives everything away.
“Gimme,” I say and then snatch the paper out of his hands. I thumb through until I find the review. “Oh, my God!” I squeal and then read aloud, “Four stars. New York Times Critics’ Pick. Chin-Chin is a radical reimagining of the grand style of French dining.” Looking at Landon, his face is filled with elation, and I couldn’t be more proud of him. “Congratulations, babe. This is just . . .” I look back down at the article and then to him again, “This is just so amazing.”