times with Erick she’d probably have to be restrained for her own safety until she came down off the sex high. But she was determined to enjoy it while it lasted. After all, who knew what would happen after Thanksgiving? She didn’t even know what to tell PNW Garden Supply about their offer yet. Her life would seriously change if she said yes to it. She’d have a lot of money, yes. But she’d have to pay a lot of taxes on that money, too. She’d be able to quit working for a couple years, but the nursery closed down, anyway, from the end of November to the end of February. And those were the longest, dullest months of her year every year. If she couldn’t work all year, she’d go out of her mind with boredom. Unless...unless she had something to distract her from her boredom. Like a real boyfriend. Not a fake one just for Thanksgiving. But a real relationship that would let her make up for a lot of lost time... That was tempting...very tempting...
Clover rolled her eyes at herself. One night with Erick and she was already planning their entire life together. Not good. She needed to roll back her expectations. Erick had agreed to play boyfriend through Thanksgiving. On Friday after her family left they’d have a nice long talk about whether they wanted to keep doing this on a more permanent basis. And if he said no, she would be okay. She’d miss him probably. She’d already kind of gotten used to having him around. Still, he had a daughter and he had a business and he might not be looking for anything serious. These things happened. Not the end of the world.
But maybe he’d say yes to a real relationship. And maybe they’d start working their way down that long list of all the different kinds of sex she needed to have...
Clover had just put the scrambled eggs onto the plates when her phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. She glanced at the number—Dad. Oh, goody.
With a sigh she hit the button and put the phone to her ear.
“Hi, Daddy, what’s up?” she asked, putting a smile into her voice.
“Just checking in on my girl. Your mother wanted to know what you want us to bring for dinner Thursday.”
“Oh, the salad, the cranberry sauce, the mashed potatoes and gravy...desserts.”
“So everything?”
“No, not everything. I can do the turkey.”
“You?” Her father sounded skeptical. She didn’t really blame him. “You’re going to cook the turkey?”
Ruthie had said her father could work magic with a Big Green Egg. Might as well let him cook the turkey. It would impress the heck out of her parents.
“Yes, we’ll handle the turkey.”
“We?” her father repeated just as Erick slid the glass deck door open and stepped inside the house. She looked at him and mouthed, “Help,” at him.
“Who is it?” Erick whispered.
Clover muted the phone quickly.
“Dad. I accidentally said ‘we’ would cook the turkey.”
“We can cook the turkey,” he said.
“What do I tell Dad?”
“Let me talk to him,” Erick said.
“What?”
“Just let me talk to him.”
“Okay, if you insist.” Clover unmuted the call. “Dad?”
“Where’d you go?” her father asked.
“Sorry. The phone cut out for a second. You know I live in the middle of nowhere. Here. Erick wants to talk to you.”
“Who is Erick?”
Erick took the phone from her hand and put it to his ear.
“Mr. Greene?” he said, and Clover tensed into a tight vibrating bundle of nerves. “Yeah, this is Erick, Clover’s boyfriend. I hear I get to meet you all on Thursday.”
Erick paused and winked at her.
“Nice to talk to you, too, sir,” Erick said. “No, Clover was kidding. We can handle all the food unless you or your wife have something special you want to bring... The turkey? Yeah, we’re cooking the turkey, too. What do you think? Fifteen-pounder enough for everyone?”
Erick tucked the phone against his shoulder and with his free hands he reached for her bathrobe cord. She swatted his hands away but that didn’t deter him from putting his hands on her waist and pulling her to him. Clover leaned against him, her arms around his back, and listened to her father chattering at Erick.
“Well, we got seven kids coming but only three of them are old enough to put much of a dent in the turkey. Fifteen should be plenty unless you all want to eat leftovers for a week,” her father said.
“I better make some extra,” Erick said. “My daughter will kill me if I don’t. She’s a vegetarian all year except between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.”
“You have a girl, too?’
“Yes, sir. Seventeen. Almost eighteen. God, I’m getting old.”
“We get to meet her, too, this week?”
“She’s with her mom and her stepdad in LA all week.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Swing by Clover’s nursery next week and you’ll meet her. She works for your daughter.”
“That how you two met?”
“That’s how we met. My daughter fixed us up.”
“Good for her. Clover’s a good one. Can you put her back on the phone?” Erick passed back the phone. He looked adorably smug. Already working his charm on her parents.
“Hey, Daddy,” she said. “You and Erick work out the turkey?”
“We did. I like this Erick fellow,” he said. “Even if he is at your house awful early...”
“I’m thirty years old,” she reminded him.
“You might as well be twelve. Until you’re married with kids of your own, you’ll be my little girl.”
“Well, I’m not married and I don’t have kids of my own, and I’m still thirty. I have the birth certificate to prove it.”
“You’ll understand how it feels when you have your own babies. The sooner, the better.”
“Right, the sooner, the better.”
“Tell Erick you’re not getting any younger.”
“Dad, we just started dating. And two seconds ago I was your little girl. Now I’m getting old?”
“You know what I mean, sweetheart.”
Clover sighed as quietly as she could. “Yes, Dad. I know what you mean. I’ll see you all on Thursday.”
“We’re really looking forward to it,” he said.
“You and me both. But can you do me a favor?” she asked. “Don’t tell Mom and Kelly or anybody about Erick. I’ve got a lot to do this week and I don’t want to be on the phone with them for hours on end.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” he said.
“Thanks, Daddy. Love you. Bye.”
They hung up and Clover sighed again.
“What?” Erick asked as she rested her head on his chest.
“I’m supposed to tell you I’m not getting any younger so you need to hurry up and get me pregnant since I won’t be treated like an adult until I have children. But I’m not supposed to be sleeping with you, either.”
“So I’m supposed to knock you up, but I’m also supposed to do this without having sex with you?”
“Yes.”
“This is going to be difficult. Or not. Got a turkey baster?”
“Welcome to the world of being a woman. We’re not supposed to have sex, but we’re also supposed to have kids. And we wonder why so many women are on Xanax.”
“I’d be swallowing that stuff with a bourbon chaser if I were a woman. Damn.”
“It’s about to get worse,” she said. “Dad can’t keep a secret to save his life.”
“How much worse?”
Clover’s phone started to buzz again. All at once she was receiving a phone call and text messages from both Kelly and her mother with another text message coming in five seconds later from her sister-in-law.
“It’s kind of insulting, isn’t it?” she asked, holding up her phone. The first text message read, Boyfriend??? Oh, my God, it’s about damn time. Finally! I’m so happy! Tell me everything. I can’t believe we get to meet a boyfriend.
Clover shook
her head. “It’s the ‘a’ there that really hurts. We get to meet ‘a’ boyfriend, not ‘your’ boyfriend. As if it’s such a huge shock I’d have a boyfriend at all. Thanks, sis. Just the self-esteem boost I needed.”
Erick grimaced as he read the text.
“Pass the Xanax.”
“And the bourbon,” she said as Erick pulled her into his arms. “And to think, I was so happy this morning. Now I have to spend the rest of the day trying to calm down my entire family before they start planning our wedding for us.”
“Or.”
“Or?”
Erick took the phone out of her hand.
“I will teach you one of Ruthie’s secrets for keeping her parents out of her life. It’s a very simple secret and you will benefit from it greatly.”
“What are you doing with my phone?”
“I am...” Erick pushed the button on the top. “Turning it off. Now no one can call you or text you. Or they can but you can’t see the messages until you turn the phone back on again in say...twenty-four hours?”
“That’s brilliant. Why did I never think of that?”
“Because you are a kind and thoughtful daughter who would never ignore your parents’ phone calls. Unlike Ruthie, who once threw her phone into the Zigzag River after her mother called her one too many times that week.”
“You know, the Zigzag isn’t that far from here. You’ll pass right over it on the way to Welches, won’t you?” Clover entertained a brief and lovely vision of Erick throwing her phone out of his truck window and into the white-capped river as he drove over the bridge.
“Lost Lake is closer. But I don’t think you need to do something that drastic. You just need to put this phone up here...” He put the phone on top of her kitchen cabinet where she wouldn’t be able to reach it without a stepladder. “Out of sight, out of mind. No Xanax necessary.”
“I feel better already. Want some breakfast?”
“I do want to eat. Definitely.”
“You sit. I’ll get the waffles out of the toaster.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean I wanted to eat breakfast,” he said.
“Then what—”
Erick wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her off her feet.
“Erick...” she said. “What the hell are you—”
“Kitchen-table sex,” he said. “You need it.”
“I need it?”
“Well...don’t you?” he asked. “I would if I were you. Correct me if I’m wrong, but after that phone call and that text message, I’m pretty sure you need your pussy eaten.”
He set her on the edge of the kitchen table and stood between her knees. His hands stroked her thighs and her hips and his mouth massaged her neck.
“Am I wrong?” he asked. “I’ve been wrong before.”
Clover liked this table. It was solid oak and came with two leaves that turned it into a table that could seat eight to ten people. The kids would have their own table, but on Thanksgiving Day all the adults in the family would assemble around this table. This very table Erick had set her on. And he wanted to do that to her on this table? The Thanksgiving table?
Clover grinned.
“No,” she said. “You aren’t wrong.”
“Didn’t think so.”
Erick kissed her on the mouth as he untied her bathrobe cord and pushed the robe off her shoulders. She inhaled sharply as the cool air touched her bare skin. Once more she was aware of her body. As Erick gently caressed her back with his rough fingertips, goose bumps popped up all over her and she shivered the most delicious shivers in his arms. He hadn’t touched her breasts yet and her nipples were already hard. She felt so wicked and wanton leaning back on her hands as Erick kissed her naked neck, her naked shoulders, her naked breasts and stomach and thighs.
“Anyone ever do this to you before?” he asked as he gently put her flat on her back.
“Oral sex? Yes,” she said. “But I was young and too nervous to come. Or maybe I could have and he just quit too soon.”
“I’m not going to quit on you until you tell me to stop. Please...do not tell me to stop.” Erick pressed a long deep kiss into the center of her stomach.
“I won’t,” she said. “I want it.”
“My three favorite words to hear from a woman,” he said while pushing her thighs open. He sat in a chair and pulled her hips closer to the edge of the table. “Tell me what feels good and what doesn’t. Can you do that for me?”
“I can do that,” she said. “For you.”
“Good.” Using his fingers Erick opened her labia wide. “So fucking good...”
She flinched a little as he flicked his tongue over her clitoris. It was such a sudden shock of sensation. He seemed to sense it was too much all at once. He licked her instead the next time, a long slow motion that made her fingers bunch up into fists. His mouth was hot on her and she could feel his warm breath on her most intimate parts, relaxing her, making her hot, making her writhe all at once. She sensed his tongue moving in a sort of spiraling motion, making circles around her clitoris and then dipping inside her. He had her thighs in his large strong hands and she opened her legs wider for him because it felt so good to do it. She realized as she did it that she wanted him to see her, all of her. She couldn’t recall a time she wanted to be looked at by a man. Self-consciousness had kept her closed off and bundled up for her entire adult life. How freeing it felt to simply be naked and unafraid, naked and unashamed.
“You make me feel so good,” she said, and she heard and felt Erick’s soft laugh.
“That’s what I like to hear when my head’s between your thighs.”
She smiled up at the ceiling as he kissed her clitoris again. She knew he thought she just meant he made her body feel good. But that wasn’t all. He made her feel wanted, sexy, adored.
A wave of tenderness washed over her and Clover reached between her legs and put her hand on the back of Erick’s head. His hair was soft and streaked with a few strands of gray. A grown man with life experience. A mature adult man. Scars didn’t bother him. Her lack of experience didn’t bother him. All he cared about was her and her pleasure. Now she knew what she’d been doing wrong in her dating life before Erick. It wasn’t that she’d been dating the wrong men. She hadn’t dated any men at all, only boys. She liked having a real man in her life.
He seemed to sense her need to touch him, to connect. He took her hand and twined their fingers together and rested their joined hands on her bare stomach. Clover relaxed again against the kitchen table and let the pleasure of his mouth on her flow over her and into her and through her. The intensely pleasurable tension built quickly. Clover moved her hips in small pulses against and into Erick’s mouth. He made a sound of approval as if her movements aroused him as much as they aroused her. He released her hand and grabbed her by both thighs, pushing them wider, pushing his tongue deeper into her. Clover found the edge of the table with her fingers and gripped it hard. Inside her stomach and hips, muscles twitched and flinched and tightened. She inhaled and couldn’t exhale. Her head spun and her lungs burned. At last it hit her, her climax, deep inside her. She exhaled, arching on the table, stars dancing in front of her eyes. Somewhere far away she heard Erick chuckling and she knew he was laughing at the intensity of her orgasm. Let him laugh. She’d laugh, too, when she had the energy for it.
Slowly Clover lifted her head off the table and saw Erick wipe his mouth on the back of his hand. He smiled at her and it was the sexiest smile she’d ever seen on any man’s face, and the best part was, she’d caused it.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome. Mind if I...?”
“I want you to,” she said. She laid back flat on the table as Erick opened his pants and slid the tip of his cock up and down the wet, throbbing seam of her body.
“Fuck, that feels good...” Erick said, his eyes closed as he
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