by April Fire
“So, what happens now?” I asked, my heart beating hard in my chest as my gaze flicked down briefly to his lips.
“I think we…date,” he grinned, raising his eyebrows cockily in that way he had. I smiled back, and we both laughed.
“Have you ever dated anyone before?” I asked, cocking my head at him, and he shrugged.
“Well, depends what you call dating,” he shot back. “I’ve had some, uh, very short relationships in my time…”
“Shut up,” I teased, and Will wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me taught against his chest. Every thought in my head stopped as he moved his mouth to cover mine, my skin prickling with excitement as he stroked his hand up my back and down again.
“Here?” I asked softly, cocking an eyebrow at him. I wasn’t complaining, but I didn’t know if this was really the time or the place.
“Here,” he confirmed. “I’ve wanted to have you on this table since the moment you walked in this room.”
And with that, he scooped me up and placed me down on the polished wood of the table where I’d spent the last hour discussing my future. I glanced to the door; there was a small window inset into the wood, just big enough that people could see in. For some reason, that just turned me on more, and I found myself half-hoping that we might catch a scandalized look from someone passing by. But my thoughts were soon pulled from that concept as Will leaned down to press a kiss to my neck. My eyes rolled into the back of my head and I tightened my grip on him; he knew exactly how to touch me, as though he’d gone over something like this happening a hundred times in his head and was only just getting the chance to act it out with me now.
“You smell so good,” he murmured against my skin, and I closed my eyes and lost myself to the feeling of his body so close to mine. I knew we shouldn’t be doing this, knew that now we had all the time in the word to fuck in places where we weren’t going to get caught – but I had waited long enough and I didn’t want to hold back any longer. I needed him. It was more than just desire – it was the knowledge that if this didn’t happen, we were still unsealed, still not quite legitimate yet.
I was wearing a skirt, perhaps in some kind of subconscious preparation for what was happening right now, and Will slipped his hand over my bare thigh and caressed the crook of my leg, just where panties met my skin. I let out a ragged moan, one that seemed to come and go and come again. He grinned against my neck, enjoying my helpless response to him, and I decided to take some initiative, grabbing him by the chin and pulling him up so I could kiss him once more.
Kissing him now felt so different than it had previously, none of the guilt or shame or panic lingering at the back of my head. Yes, this was a risk, and yes, I had no idea how it was going to turn out, but as long as we were in it together then none of that fucking mattered. We could make it work. I had every faith in the world.
Our tongues met, and Will leaned into me so that I could feel every inch of his dazzlingly perfect body up against mine. I pressed my hands to his chest briefly, feeling his taut muscle beneath the fabric, before my fingers fumblingly undid his shirt and I kissed down from his throat to his stomach. He groaned and held my head, raking his fingers through my hair and sending tingles all across my scalp. I wanted to fuck him, but I also wanted to savor every second of this, wanted to taste him and touch him and feel him before we went anywhere past kissing.
It wasn’t like the fuck we had in that dressing room, which had been so desperate and hungry and hot – this was slower, more considered, our chance to actually get to know each other’s bodies beyond the carnal heat that we had shared from the first moment we’d laid eyes on each other.
Will pushed me back on the table, pulling my legs down so that they hung over the edge of the desk. He spread them, leaned in, and kissed my pussy through my panties, the heat from his mouth drawing another ragged moan out from between my lips.
“I’ve wanted to taste you ever since that night in my trailer,” he groaned against me, and the thought of him, lying awake in bed and craving me, sent a shock of desire through my system. I knew I couldn’t wait any longer.
“I need you to fuck me,” I panted, grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him on top of me, paying no mind to the fact that the table was creaking with the weight of us both on it. “Please, Will. Now.”
He kissed me hard as he pulled a condom out from his pocket – I pulled down my panties and kicked them off over my shoes. He parted my legs and placed himself just at my entrance, the pressure of his cock making me squirm with delight. He looked into my eyes – really deep into them, like he was trying to stare through me and see my soul – and pushed himself into me.
The simultaneous groan of pleasure we both let out as he entered me seemed to echo off the walls of the room around us, and I forgot entirely about being worried about someone overhearing us as I had been earlier. Nothing mattered now but the feeling of him in me, the way his cock felt as he eased himself all the way inside of me. He kissed me slowly, almost chastely, as he began to fuck me, sliding his hands up and down my legs as I lifted them to wrap around his back.
“Fuck, you feel so good,” I murmured into his ear as he moved down to kiss my neck, brushing his lips across the sensitive skin of my throat and flicking his tongue against my collarbone. With anyone else, it would have felt odd, but I knew exactly where he was coming from – he wanted to taste every inch of me. He wanted to know me in a way no-one had before, and I loved it.
“You too,” he breathed as he slipped his hand beneath the low-cut shirt I had on and brought one of my breasts to his mouth, flicking his tongue against the nipple and let his teeth drag across my engorged flesh. He slowed his thrusts tantalizingly, making me wait, making my body keen for him hungrily – and then suddenly picking up the pace and moving fast again, fucking me deep and hard and with a passion I’d never felt before in my life. He brushed my hair back roughly from my face and our lips met again, our tongues moving in time with his movements inside me. I lifted my hips, taking him as deep as I could, my entire body filled with sensation-
I wasn’t ready for the orgasm, but the intensity of the moment whipped through me, sending me reeling almost painfully as the pleasure rippled out through my body.
“Fuck!” I cried out, just as he had when he’d come inside me in that dressing room a few weeks earlier. Except this time there was no doubt, no fear, no worry – no there was just us, and I couldn’t have been happier.
He came a few moments later, my pussy still clenching around his cock as he buried it in me one last time then slowly withdrew, pulling out almost reluctantly. He kissed me again, as though he couldn’t get enough of me, and then brushed his nose against mine and looked into my eyes.
“You’re not going to go now, are you?” he asked, and I couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not. I shook my head and smiled, pressing my forehead to his in what I hoped was a reassuring gesture.
“No,” I promised him. “Never. I’m with you, Will. I promise.”
He swept me off the table and into his arms, and outside the lights of the city were dimming down to dark, as though the entire outside world was getting ready for something exciting.
Epilogue
Will
“I can’t believe it’s actually happening tonight,” she half-grumbled, half-muttered to herself as she tried to put in the pair of earrings I’d purchased her for the night. She jabbed herself in the lobe a couple of time before she managed to get them through the hole, and I couldn’t help but grin at how grumpy she was. She always got like this before a big event – it seemed like it was her way of venting nerves or excitement, even if it seemed kind of counterintuitive.
“Me neither,” I stepped towards her and put my arms around her waist, pulling her close; she half-turned her head to acknowledge me and I planted a kiss on her cheek.
“It’s going to be okay, you know,” I reminded her gently. “Really. I know you’re nervous-”
“Hey, may
be I’m just excited that my amazing work is finally going to get an airing to the general public,” she shot back playfully, stepping away from me to grab her lipstick. We were getting ready at my apartment, and there was something really charming about seeing all the stuff she’d dumped here over the six months that we’d been together – her make-up, hair stuff, clothes, everything she needed to stop by at the last minute and spend the evening eating takeout with me. Amongst other things, of course. Those were my favorite nights, the ones we spent all curled up together, nothing but each other for company.
Well, it wasn’t like we’d had a lot of choice before tonight. Dina had been dead set on taking the relationship super slow, and part of that meant not outing ourselves to the press before she was ready. I had never been with a woman who was so against our relationship getting out before – at first, I felt a little affronted by it, but soon enough I realized that it had nothing to do with her feelings towards me and everything to do with holding on to her privacy as things ramped up. She didn’t want to be nothing more than the girlfriend of some movie star. She wanted to be her own person, exist in her own right, and I would never try to take that away from her.
Still, I had to admit, there was something fateful about our first time coming out as a couple coinciding with the premiere of the movie’s release. It had been months since we wrapped on Nation, and part of me felt as though it was so long ago that I was already halfway into the next project – but I was so proud of this that I couldn’t wait to see it come to fruition. It was going to be amazing. I’d watched the final cut and I knew we had managed to make something pretty special, something that I was so proud off I thought it might bust out the front of my chest.
And I was looking forward to finally being able to talk about my girlfriend as opposed to ducking questions about the sudden cessation of my bachelor lifestyle. I hadn’t realized quite how big that part of my bran that had become until it stopped, with a few people assuming that I must have been hit by a car or something to have vanished from the dating scene so suddenly.
I would have been pissed had it not been for Dina’s influence. She made me so utterly, endlessly happy that I couldn’t find it in myself to get pissed at the little minutiae of celebrity-hood anymore. I knew it had been a gamble when we had gotten together, and I was more than prepared for it to go wrong the way the rest of my relationships had, but so far it was just so…easy. I had even met her parents, and though they had been stunned when I walked through the door, it seemed like I made a good impression and soon enough I was pretty sure I was part of the fold.
“You look amazing,” I remarked as she quickly ran a brush through her hair and glanced over at me and pulled a face.
“You think?”
“Always,” I agreed. “But especially tonight.”
It was true – she was wearing a deep green dress that flared out over her knees and hugged her torso to show off that perfect curve where her waist met her breasts. She glanced over her shoulder at me coyly and grinned.
“How much time do we have?” she asked, and I glanced at my watch.
“Not long enough for me to fuck you over this table,” I replied regretfully, and she pulled a faux-grief-stricken face.
“When we get back?”
“Obviously,” I agreed, and I heard the buzzer on my apartment go.
“That’ll be my driver,” I sighed. “We should get going.”
“Oh shit, I don’t know if I’m ready for this,” she ran her hands through her hair and stared at herself in the mirror, her eyes suddenly full of nerves. “Do we have to?”
“We don’t have to do anything,” I assured her. “We can go separately if you want.”
Her eyes travelled over to meet mine, and I saw her chest deflate as she let out a long breath.
“I want to do this,” she assured me, taking a step forward and placing a hand on my chest. “I’m just…nervous, that’s all. I’ve never been a movie star’s girlfriend before.”
“You have, just not in public,” I pointed out. “You’ve been doing it pretty damn successfully for the last six months, if I’m not very much mistaken.”
Her eyes met mine, and I knew what I was going to say at once. It was something we’d held back on till then, but something that was obviously true for the two of us. Without hesitation, I spoke.
“I love you.”
The words hovered between us for a moment, and her eyes widened – but a few seconds later, a grin broke out over her face and she leaned up to kiss me again.
“I love you too,” she replied, almost a little breathless. It was the perfect moment to say it, and it had never been truer than in that moment, because every second that passed I felt as though I loved her more deeply than before. I pressed my forehead to hers and both of us shut our eyes for a second, lost in the moment, until the door buzzed again and ripped us from our little reverie.
“Come on,” she took my head and stepped into her heels, using me as balance. “Let’s get out of here.”
We headed for the elevator, smiling at each other dizzily as we waited for it to arrive. I let her step in first, and she caught my eye in the mirror and knew damn well that I was taking the opportunity to get a look at her perfect ass. I joined her, standing at her side as the door slid shut, and we looked to each other and swapped a nervous, excited grin – I had no idea how this was going to go, but I couldn’t wait to try. Every second with Dina felt like a perfect movie moment.
The End
Cutting Ice
April Fire
Chapter One
I would have cried all the way there if I wasn’t driving myself.
I had never been so torn about making such a huge life decision; every other time, the obvious answer had presented itself to me and I’d gone with that. When it came to break up with my high school boyfriend to go to college across the country, I knew exactly what I was meant to do, so I dumped Darren and hopped on a plane to New York. Hunting my first job, I wondered briefly whether leaving my entire life behind so I could pick up an editorial position in a small but prestigious paper all the way back across the states was the right decision- but I knew that it was in my heart. But this time, when the call had come through, I was left completely unsure as to what I was really meant to do.
The call, which my editor Paul directed straight to my office, was from one of our higher-ups, the head of the publishing corporation that owned the paper. They were pitching a story- a story that Paul knew would be right up my alley. I’d written about sports for as long as I’d written, and was currently doing a weekly column for the paper that had been pretty well-received so far. So, when head office got in touch and said they wanted someone to go immerse themselves in an up-and-coming hockey team across the country and write an investigative piece on their rise to notoriety, there was only one person they were ever going to send out to cover it. I remember nodding my way through the phone call as though they could see me, before I hung up and stared at the opposite wall for five full minutes.
I really thought I would be here for at least the next few years or so. Yeah, the article wouldn’t take forever to write- I would be gone six months at the most- but it was another upheaval. I had hoped that when I chose to come to the Herald, I would finally find some of the stability I’d been craving since I left home. And I had found it- I had found it with Joel.
We’d met through work- I was covering the opening of his new restaurant back when I first arrived, and we hit it off at once The age difference didn’t seem to matter too much (he was thirty-one when we met, a full decade older than me), and we soon fell for each other and moved in. I’d been so busy with work before that I had never much bothered with relationships, and he was the first- I loved him with every inch of my being, more than I thought it was possible to love someone.
Loved. That was the operative word, I thought, as I finally saw the lights of the town I would be living in for the next few months on the horizon. When I told him about
the opportunity I’d been given, I assumed that it would be a bit of a change for us, but that we would stick it out- it wasn’t forever, and after all, absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?
“I’m not waiting for you that long,” Joel snapped, wiping his hands on the towel next to the stovetop. I leaned up against the counter, gripping on for dear life.
“Why not?” I demanded. “We’ve been together two years. I won’t even be gone that long!”
“It’s not you going,” he sighed. “It’s that you don’t…you obviously don’t want to settle down yet.”
It took me by surprise, but he was right. He had ten years on me, and he would be looking at starting a family and getting married and here I was, running off across the country to pursue a story and leaving him behind.
So, we broke up, and I packed a bag full of clothes and pictures and threw everything into the back of my car. At least I didn’t have to worry about finding a place to stay- the paper was paying for my accommodation, so I wouldn’t have to slink back to my family and ask to crash on their couch for a while. Still, it felt as though my heart physically ached- I had thought we were forever, in the foolish, certain way you think your first love will last. I had known it was wrong from the start, if I was honest with myself, known that we were at different places in our lives, but I had ignored it in the hopes that we could figure something out one day down the line. Turns out I had just been putting off the inevitable.
It was a seven-hour drive, and I did it in a day, desperate to put as much distance between myself and him as I could. I had been given the name of the town and the location of the training ground that I’d be hanging out at for the next few months, and that was it- the team management had agreed for me to come cover the team in the hopes of attracting a few sponsors, but Paul reminded me that that didn’t mean I had to produce a flattering story. I hadn’t written an investigative piece on this level before, and I was nervous about pissing someone off- the team, the players, my editors. I just had to trust that they wouldn’t have sent me here if they didn’t think I could do it.