Keeping Pace

by Dee Carney

  By Wednesday evening, I was determined to get some sleep. My late hours and the subsequent tossing and turning were beginning to take their toll at work. I was snappy toward everyone, and dark circles seemed to have taken up permanent residence beneath my eyes. While the thought appealed to me on one hand, I resisted the temptation to take a pill. It seemed wrong to have to rely on pharmaceuticals for something that should have come naturally.

  I suffered for my stubbornness. Roaming the house brought me no relief. Lights were turned off and on as I looked for something to occupy my mind enough to make me drowsy. Mostly, I wandered; no good books to read, nor good TV to watch. It took me hours to fall asleep, and when I finally drifted there, I dreamed.

  There’s a place between waking and sleeping where dreams blend with reality. Where the noises of the house, such as the insistent ticking of a clock, became the sound of footsteps in the mind. Where the radio announcer on the radio whose alarm you’ve slept through became a sportscaster at the parade you’ve led.

  I hovered there, at times opening my eyes to capture a shadow on the wall, sometimes mistaking a shape for something it couldn’t be. An impossibility. Boiling hot, I cast aside the sheets only to bundle beneath them hours, maybe only minutes, later because I was freezing cold. I didn’t rest during this time, but I clung to what little sleep I could manage.

  In my dreams I found Josh again, because somehow in the waking world, I’d lost him. My broken heart mended during those times, and I rejoiced in the smell of him, the feel of him against me. I cried for him, and I laughed with him; at times I did both simultaneously. There was no sense in my whispered words when I awoke, but in my dreams, I said his name again and again, crying out for him because, in my heart, I knew how much I needed his love.

  I allowed myself the freedom to care for him openly here, to give my heart to him without fear of losing him to an illness that came unheeded. My feelings blossomed, growing on the certainty that he loved me back with all of himself. Here, no one judged us for our differences, because here, only he and I existed.

  My eyes opened to more shadows, to indistinct shapes. I whimpered in protest at the darkness. I needed sleep. I needed Josh. I had neither.

  I drifted back into the haziness where I felt his kisses, hot against my mouth. He cupped my face in his palm, outlined the shape of my breasts with his fingers. Josh studied the curve of my hips, explored the vee between my thighs.

  “Josh…” It was a simple sound of yearning. A part moan, half asleep, half awake. Begging for more. For him. Needing.

  A shadow moved in my bedroom. “I’m here.”

  “Josh?” I blinked rapidly but did not wake up.

  “The lights…” He sounded hesitant. Unsure.

  I remembered now he had a key. But that didn’t matter. Or did it? I was punch-drunk on fatigue, on my body’s desperate need for rest. It was hard to tell if I dreamed now or if I was awake.

  The shadow moved toward me. “Regina.”

  Suddenly I wasn’t sleepy. My vision wasn’t as hazy. Somehow Josh found me in my desperate hour. He came to me when I needed him most. The fog around my vision cleared, and I studied his outline in the silhouette of light bathing him. Lights in the hall I’d neglected to turn off. The same ones he used as a beacon to guide his way back to me.

  I lifted my arms, weighed down by the fog still enveloping me, and Josh fell into them. The last shadows of sleep vanished the moment our skin touched. There was no place for tiredness or dreams in this moment. The only thing that mattered now was the way my once-broken heart melded back together.

  “I missed you,” I murmured between the kisses pressed to his lips, his chin. My mouth trailed over his neck, found the pounding pulse there.

  “I shouldn’t have stayed away,” Josh replied. His voice was thick with emotion, and I knew he’d suffered from our separation too. “Tell me we’re not through.”

  My hands pushed up the soft cotton of his shirt, exposing his perfect, flat abdomen. I sat up, kissing that wondrous stretch of skin and muscle. “If we are, I don’t want to know.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  He made a noise, a whimpering sound, and when my tongue followed my lips, the sound morphed into something more erotic.

  “No.” He lifted his head away from mine, the strain of doing such a simple act evident in the way he breathed. Panted. “I didn’t…” he said softly.

  “Shh…I know.”

  I didn’t come here to have sex with you, he tried to say. I didn’t have to hear the words to understand what wasn’t said. Somehow, though, he knew how I’d needed him, and as if we were in tune with each other’s thoughts, he’d heard me.

  I studied him in that dim lighting. My gaze went over his outline, the hallway light creating an aura-like effect around him. He stood over me as my angel. My savior. Josh brought me from the brink of loneliness and made me face his passion. He’d become a partner to me in a few short weeks, one I didn’t know I’d been looking for.

  “We’re messing this up, Regina.”

  My lips traveled to his neck, pressed a bruising kiss there. “What?”

  “This. Us.” His mouth brushed the side of my face. “We’re so good together, but we’re not taking it seriously. There’s more to us than just—”

  I cut off his words with a searing kiss on his mouth. I distracted him because I didn’t want to listen to rationale thinking. Whatever lecture or chastisement he’d been about to voice could wait. I wanted him inside me. Needed it.

  He groaned when my tongue pushed past his lips, teasing inside until we kissed with the fiery abandon I’d come to know when I opened myself to him. As always, Josh responded to my fevered touching. His body heated beneath my fingertips, and without brushing his cock, I knew he was ready for more. Ready for me.

  Josh somehow found the will to pull away. He searched my eyes. “How many chances do we give ourselves to get it right?”

  I struggled to hide my confusion. He was here, and we were mended. What wasn’t I understanding? “We are getting it right. Every time we touch. Every time we kiss. We’re doing it.”

  “I want more than sex with you, Regina.”

  “And we have more than just sex.” The words felt wrong as they left my mouth, as if they knew there was an undercurrent of doubt hidden within. “We talk and we laugh. We’re so good together.”

  There was conviction in those last few words, a surety I’d inserted. Something inside me blossomed. It knew the truth it heard. Whatever doubts I had about being with Josh were assaulted by the understanding that we did talk and laugh together. We belonged with each other.

  Still another part of my mind balked, though.

  To my own self, I hid, then. Hid by reaching for Josh, pulling him to me until our mouths crashed together and his tongue lashed mine.

  He tasted of the night, like summer. His breath was clean. Pure. His taste was both rugged and masculine. All I knew at that moment was that I was addicted and wanted more. The rest of him to feast upon.

  I pulled at his shirt, feeling the material stretch in my grip, defying my want. I cried out my frustration for there was too much material in my way. Josh took my hands in his, putting an end to my frenzied groping. My appetite for him had grown to immense proportions, ready to consume us both in its intensity. So Josh stoked my urge, not by matching it but by forcing me to endure him at his pace.

  He kissed over my lips, taking his time with the exploration. No part of my mouth went untouched. Josh tugged on my bottom lip with his teeth, kissed both corners of my mouth. When his tongue teased over my top lip before stealing inside, my heart roared. No matter how I sighed beneath his strong grip, his kiss was unhurried. He pressed his mouth to mine as if time did not exist, or if it did, he couldn’t care less if it left him behind.

  We didn’t speak after he pulled away. Instead, Josh kneeled over me, straddling my body, and removed his shirt. Unable to help it, I sucked in a breath at his naked beauty. Somehow the li
ght had found him just right—highlighting the perfect places, hiding the imperfect ones. His skin was flawless, missing the stretch of too many indulgent dinners or too many beers. Muscles in his abdomen flexed with his movement, as they similarly did in his arms. He was young. So incredibly young, but once again, I tried to ignore it.

  Behaving myself was a chore, but I didn’t move when he slipped off simple black shorts. They hadn’t been able to disguise his growing arousal. My eyes drifted to the swollen head of his cock, already glistening at its slit. My mouth watered with the anticipation of tasting him. He was so aroused. So hard and ready.

  He elevated himself over my hips, almost giving me no place to look but at the decadence of his body, or if not there, gaze into the hunger in his eyes, at the tension in his strained muscles or at kiss-swollen lips. My hands went to the material of my nightgown, for I wanted to feel all that masculinity against my bare skin with no more clothing between us.

  Josh stopped me. “No.” His voice was almost guttural. Strained. “Let me.”

  There was heat in his eyes when he gazed on my uncovered nudity. The same type of gaze men get when they hold themselves back with every bit of restraint they have in themselves. The same parted mouth and eclipsed gaze that made a woman melt inside.

  This was no dream when his fingers whispered over my skin, memorizing my every curve. The feel of my flesh. My nipples tightened when he circled them, and when he slid his hands between my thighs, I was wetter than I could ever remember being.

  He studied my every reaction, stroking places over and again when they made me cry out in unashamed abandon. Kissing away the tickle if I smiled. He tested the feel of my heartbeat beneath my breast. Tasted the skin of my neck. His touch was light when he parted the lips of my pussy, his arms nudging my legs wider apart. And that heat in his eyes went molten as he stared at what he’d bared. My swollen lips, my hardened clit. The moisture I knew had gathered.

  He skated one finger across the delicate folds, a feather-light caress enough to make me buck when he touched me. Then that finger pushed into me, sliding into my body. He watched where he entered me, his gaze almost palpable to my tingling flesh. When he withdrew it and brought his glistening finger to his mouth, the lust in his eyes made me break out in goose flesh.

  The sound he made when he licked my cream almost made me come.

  It wasn’t enough for him and Josh lowered himself between my legs, his face hovering just above me. The first caress of his tongue was light. Delicate. But Josh’s grip on my thighs tightened, and his tongue slipped farther inside. His mouth danced over my exposed cunt, and my hips rocked, an encouraging partner in that dance.

  “Josh!” I cried out. He made me hurt inside, the kind that made my heart swell, and brought me to the edge of a cliff over which I wanted to happily tumble. He pulled again and again on my clit, a gentle teasing suction, and I had to grasp the sheets to keep me from falling.

  “Damn, you taste so sweet.”

  I couldn’t get my brain to come up with some semi-intelligent, semi-sexy reply. The moment his tongue dipped inside again, any thoughts that tried to form shattered.

  Josh kissed my body, loving it with his tongue and his lips. Consuming what I offered him freely. Tasting the passion he incited.

  I called out to him as an orgasm wrapped me in its hold, making my muscles go rigid under an immense weight from which I couldn’t extract myself. Unbelievable pleasure, too much sensation, swelled inside me, rushing through me until it touched every place within. I cried out to my lover again, and encouraged, he doubled his efforts. By the time I was seeing black at the edge of my vision, I was panting and too boneless to do anything but submit to the way he played my body.

  Then he was kissing me again, teasing my tongue with his. Allowing me to savor the flavor of my arousal. And it was so good to feel the weight of him on me. To taste myself but still find the trace of Josh in that kiss.

  He stretched past me, reaching for the nightstand. I knew what he wanted. We’d stopped putting the condoms away after the first two days together when we’d grown too frantic in our desire to be hindered by a simple drawer. Now, he sought one of the packets still lying there in haphazard stacks. Even during our time apart, it had never occurred to me we wouldn’t use them again.

  Now I wasn’t so sure.

  “Josh… Wait…” I tugged on his arm, needing to get his attention. Needing for him to look at me.

  “Gina, I need you.” Breathless. Hoarse. Sexy.

  Although he’d elevated himself on his forearms above me, I was cradling a lot of his weight between my thighs. His cock was so very close to the entrance of my body. “I need you too, baby. But…no barriers between us, okay?”

  My heart tried to kick its way out as I said those words, and I swore I felt his respond in the same way.

  Simple math told me I wasn’t ovulating, and the odds of conceiving were slim to none, but of course, there was always that chance. But this wasn’t about creating a life, no matter how much I thought about it recently. We’d done the long talk about our health and safety already, so there was little risk in that regard.

  This was about being closer to Josh.

  “Are you sure?” he said gently before brushing my cheek with his lips.

  I nodded because my throat tightened, making it too difficult to speak. For some reason I couldn’t name, my eyes watered, and a single tear tracked its way down my cheek.

  Josh visually followed the trail but used his thumb to wipe it away. He lowered his mouth to mine, and I angled my pelvis, making way for him. When he entered my body, for the first time with nothing between us, he gave me the sweetest kiss I’d ever known.

  I’d truly forgotten what it felt like to be with a man who wasn’t wearing protection. It had been that long. But my body remembered, and it accepted Josh willingly.

  His pace started slowly, a rocking of our bodies, bringing us together, closer than we’d ever been. We kissed and touched. Our fingers entwined, and I held on to him. My leg wrapped over his, encouraging his body’s motions.

  Together we watched him impale me, and it was beautiful to see. I felt oversensitive, as if discerning every line, every ridge on his cock. I listened to the gentle rhythm of our breathing. Our whispered words. Our gentle moans.

  Josh drove himself into me, again and again, each push taking me higher. Each thrust coaxing a cry from me. My cunt grasped onto him, unwilling to give him up even for those few precious seconds, the ones he needed to gain momentum to do it yet again. I rolled my hips, meeting him halfway. Together we found our rhythm, and keeping pace with him, I gave myself over to pleasure as Josh made love to me.

  I shuddered in his arms, orgasms sweeping over me in waves that were unrelenting. They grew in intensity, coming faster together until they were no longer separate but one long gasp for breath, a single tensing that would have devoured me. But then I felt Josh swell inside me, heard his strangled moan. The rhythm of his breathing accelerated, and his thrusts became frenzied. When Josh threw his head back and growled, pushing as deep as my body would accept him, I felt the first expulsion from his cock. I cried out as he spilled inside me, the feeling so alien and so wonderful I didn’t know if I would recover from it.

  Josh kissed my lips, his tongue touching mine in barely a caress. I was full with him and wanted this moment to never end. How I longed for it. This time was so perfect. So right.

  “Regina,” he whispered, his mouth still roaming over my face. Little butterfly kisses that made me tingle. “I love you.”

  And I didn’t know how to respond.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I only needed a second to think—just one—to gather my thoughts and answer him. But it must have been one second too long.

  Josh’s face tightened. “Did you hear me?”

  “I-I did.” Something in me said to respond now. To find my feelings and give him the response he wanted. The one he strained to hear now as he searched my face, his eyes
pleading with me.

  But I couldn’t stop the doubt from assailing me, taking away every ounce of emotion he’d generated and shoving it behind lock and key.

  Josh scrambled away from me. The moment he pulled out, I felt the weight of being without him return. The suffocation of loneliness.

  “Christ. I knew I should have stayed away, but like an idiot, I gave in.” He used a corner of the bed sheet to wipe the remnants of our coupling from his semi-erect cock. Holding out the soiled cloth to me, he asked, “Why, then?”

  I sat up, folding my legs beneath me. “Because…” The words escaped me. “I just…” How to explain to him that in that moment it seemed so right, that I wanted to be close to him, and that was the best way I knew how? There was no way to tell him I wanted to give him those words back, but some part of me looked on his youth and couldn’t see a future together for us. Hours in bed exploring carnal pleasures, yes. A future? No. To me, hearing those three significant words from him meant he yearned for something more. Something I wasn’t sure I could give.

  He shook his head. “Never mind.” Without saying anything further at first, he slipped his clothes on. When dressed, he sat beside me on the bed again. Josh took my hand in his, looking into my eyes. “When I think about you, I think about marriage and babies and all the good stuff. And when I came here tonight, when you let me… I don’t know what you want. What do you see when you look at me?”

  There was so much expression in those pretty green eyes of his. Looking into them, I believed he really did love me. But when my gaze traveled to the rest of his face, the only thing I could see was his youth. “Twenty-six,” I said softly.

  He let out a sigh that broke my heart. Josh cupped my face between his hands, leaned forward and kissed me. A slow, soft press of his lips to mine. “Good-bye, Regina.”

  A voice in my mind screamed at me. It cried out it did love him. That we both loved him. That when I looked at him, there was more there than youth alone. There was promise and hope for so much more between us. But the voice wasn’t powerful enough to move my mouth, and so I sat in silence when he walked out of my bedroom. The ethereal light from the hallway had somehow become a shadow, embracing him as I would not.