Heart Doctors Collection

by Carly Keene

  He pulls me out of the passenger seat, and I just manage to grab my tote bag before we’re running across the parking lot to his door. He’s fumbling with keys when I reach up to kiss him again, and we practically fall through the door of his first-floor apartment. I barely notice the door locking behind me because I’m unbuttoning his shirt, kicking off my shoes, kissing him, pulling his shirt off, kissing him, reaching for his belt buckle, loving the solid length of him under my hand, kissing him, moaning at his warm hands fitting my breasts so wonderfully in the cool air, kissing him. For a few ecstatic seconds our bare bodies are pressed together, and then he’s picking me up. “Bed,” he says firmly.

  I want to shriek at him to put me down, it can’t be good for his knee, but in just a few strides my back hits the mattress and I lose what little control I have remaining to me.

  Troy’s long fingers are stroking over my breasts, down my waist, to my private parts, and I go mindless with the pleasure of them on me. I’m so wet. I’m so shameless. I spread my thighs for him, running my hands over every part of his body I can reach, and then those clever fingers are finding all the good spots, making me buck my hips and cry out.

  Then I can barely reach him anymore, just his hair, and he’s licking me with a rhythm that catches up my whole self and drives me toward the cliff. It doesn’t take long before orgasm has me blind and shaking with pleasure.

  When I can see again and the room has stopped spinning, he’s leaning over me. “Be right back. Condom. I think I have some somewhere.”

  “No!” I can’t bear the thought of a barrier between us. Not now, when I have abandoned barriers and walls and everything else. I grab his arm and yank him back to me. “I need you, Troy. I need you now.” My voice breaks, and tears start to flow.

  “Oh, Deena,” he says in the tenderest voice, and kisses me again.

  “Now,” I insist, and I reach for his beautiful penis, hard for me. I guide him to my entrance, rubbing the tip of him over all my most sensitive places. “Now, please.”

  And finally, finally, he’s inside me, us fitting together the way we always did and still do, hand in glove. I think he’s crying too, but I’m too swept away by the exquisite torture of the friction of his hard shaft insist my soft aching sheath. I love the way his hair spills down over his shoulders and across my breasts. I love it long like this.

  “Baby,” he says in my ear, and kisses my earlobe. “Deena. My love. I missed you so much, baby, I’m so sorry, I would have given anything to have you back again, I’m so sorry,” and finally his words trail off into noises without meaning as we crash into each other, urging each other on to completion.

  I lose control completely. “Fuck me, Troy, my lover, fuck me with your gorgeous hard cock, fill up my cunt, please, please don’t stop!” The dirtiest things come out of my mouth while we’re locked together, and I do not care. I just don’t want it to end before it ends.

  It finally ends, my body clenched down on his in spasms of climax while he shoots his hot juice inside me. And it’s not going to be enough; it’s only enough for now. We have things to say to each other, further bridges to cross. But this one was, I think, the deepest chasm to bridge.

  He slides off me, gasping for air. I’m breathing hard too, but somehow so happy. He kisses my cheek, then my mouth, then my shoulder, and I think he even goes to sleep for just a few seconds, completely spent.

  I must have known, somewhere deep inside myself, that it would be easy to forgive him, and that may have been why I resisted it for so long. Why I avoided him. I lie still, wiping tears from my face, and look at him. He’s so beautiful. We’ve missed so much time together.

  When his green eyes open, we smile at each other like idiots. “You’re not sorry we did that, are you?” are his first words.

  “No.” I cup his cheek in my hand. “Except I’m sorry that I didn’t let you tell me you were sorry.”

  “Yeah, that was pretty dumb of you,” he says lightly. “I can only hope it makes you appreciate me more.”

  “I think it does.”

  “Good. We should appreciate each other a lot now.”

  I stretch, feeling that all-over body glow. Then my stomach growls, and Troy laughs. “I have eggs and cheese. How about an omelet?” He hops off the bed naked and holds his arms out for me.

  I go into them, smelling the familiar spice-and-musk scent of his skin. I lick one of his nipples, and he exhales sharply, cupping my buttocks and pulling me closer to him. “You’ll go hungry if you don’t stop that.”

  “I’ll stop for now,” I admit.

  He puts on sleep pants to cook in, and tosses me an old UVa t-shirt that hangs partway down my thighs. I feel almost naked, but in a good way. My stomach growls again, and Troy’s eyes have gone a vibrant, happy green. I feel good from scalp to soles.

  SIX

  Troy

  I can barely keep from humming as I make us a four-egg cheese omelet to split. I put Deena to work on the single-cup coffeemaker, sneaking glances at those long beautiful legs below my old t-shirt. It’s sexy as hell, especially because I know she’s otherwise naked. And once I’ve satisfied our appetite for food, we’ll go satisfy our appetite for each other again.

  And again, and again, if I have any say about it.

  As I cut the omelet in half and plate it, I can’t stop myself from asking. “Are we together now?” I hand her a plate.

  She takes it and sets it on the small table in the dining room just steps from the kitchen. I get out utensils and the half-and-half. She never used to take sugar in coffee, just in iced tea, so I point to the sugar bowl on the table.

  To my surprise, she dumps in a spoonful and stirs it, sipping with every evidence of pleasure.

  “I love you,” I say without even thinking about it.

  Her eyes meet mine. She opens her mouth, and then her eyes fill with tears.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to say it.” I take a big bite of omelet.

  “What do you mean, I don’t have to say it?” She sounds a little annoyed.

  “I mean, you make decisions with your whole self. If we’ve just made love like that, you’ve decided to forgive me. Whether you can say it yet or not, it’s okay.”

  “All’s right with the world?” she says. She’s not eating.

  I eat more omelet, thinking how to explain. “It’s easy. I mean, I think it’s easy. You’re probably still going to put me through hell until I apologize sufficiently.” She makes a skeptical noise, but I keep going. “And that’s right. You should expect me to grovel, because it was my fault.” She rolls her eyes. “No, seriously, listen. I fucked up. I fucked up really badly.”

  “You sure did.”

  “And I know it. And you know it. And we both know how sorry I am. But I think it’s going to take a while for you to really trust me again, and I’m saying that’s okay with me.”

  “Why?”

  “This is the easy part: because I’m going to be trustworthy. Because I know I am. All I have to do is keep living the way I want to live, and you’ll see. You’ll see I have become the man I always thought I was before the rug got pulled out from under me.” I look at her eyebrows knotted together and the sadness on her face, and I lean across the little table to kiss her forehead. “You’ll see. I promise.”

  “Easy for you to say,” she mutters.

  I kiss her forehead again. “Yeah. And I promise to stick it out. Even when you’re mad at me for the past, I will be here. I’ll be here for you. Deena, I love you. I’m sorry for being a shithead.”

  She toys with a bite of omelet. “You’re sorry for sleeping with that girl?”

  Wait, what?

  “Sleeping with what girl?”

  She gives me a murderous glare. “That girl. The one I saw you kissing at Kembe’s party.”

  “Her? I never slept with her. I just kissed her.”

  “And groped her,” Deena says grimly. “I saw your hands in her back jeans pockets.”

  “
Okay, yes. I groped her.” I sigh. It’s truth time. “Because you were looking.”

  “Because I was looking,” she repeats, blankly.

  Oh damn. Whole truth time. I sigh again, bigger. “Okay. Look, eat something, okay? I know you, you get emotionally volatile when your blood sugar drops.”

  “Most people do,” she says, making a face at me. “All right, fine, I’ll eat.” She starts forking up omelet.

  “Multigrain toast?” I offer. She shakes her head, her hair falling out of her messy bun. “Marmalade? Cherry jam?”

  She swallows a bite. “Cherry jam?”

  It’s her favorite. I smile to myself as I put two slices of bread into the toaster.

  “So tell me why you were kissing someone else while I was looking,” Deena says. I’d be scared of her eviscerating me, if she hadn’t just fucked me forty ways to Sunday. She might be mad, but she’s here. She hasn’t armored up.

  I lean against the kitchen cabinets. “You know how it was for me,” I say softly, “when I blew out my knee. Career gone, just like that. And I guess I was just so angry. I couldn’t stand it when people kept reminding what I had left, when I’d lost so much. It just burned me up inside.”

  She’s looking at me with that level gaze, really listening.

  “I got tired of people telling me to cheer up. It was like everybody wanted to ignore my loss like it was no big deal, I should just shake it off and keep going. Trouble was, I couldn’t see where to go or how to get there. I’d totally lost my gameplan. I couldn’t understand how I could keep going, or even why I’d want to.”

  She shakes her head a little. “But you still had so much. You weren’t just a jock, Troy. You never were.”

  The toast pops. I put the slices on a plate and butter them, then take the jam out of the fridge and bring everything to the table. When I sit down and hand her a piece of warm crunchy toast, I try to explain. “You’re right. I wasn’t just a jock. But that was a big part of my identity, and I’d just lost who I was. Nobody seemed to get that.” I look right into her eyes. “Even though you were still there for me—when I was cranky and in pain and being the biggest kind of whiny asshole? You didn’t really get it either. And the words just wouldn’t come out of me.”

  “When did they start?” she asks, and takes a bite of her jam-smeared toast.

  “Rehab.” I smile at her blissed-out cherry jam expression. “Duh, right?”

  “I kept telling you to talk to the counselor,” she says, defensive.

  “I know. But I think I had to hit bottom first, really know how bad off I was. Drinking to make the pain go away. And losing you . . . well, pushing you away, that made me hit my low faster.”

  Now she’s looking down, nodding. She bites her lip. When she speaks, her voice is soft and tentative. “So it wasn’t somebody you were sleeping with?”

  “I kissed her at Kembe’s party and never saw her again.” I swear. I cross my heart—and hope to live. “I loved you. I hated letting you down. I hated feeling like I didn’t deserve you anymore, and that you just felt sorry for me.”

  “I did feel sorry for you,” she says, and eats more toast. “I just thought that we were in it together, and you would find something else to do as a career and be just fine even if you did miss football.”

  “You were right. About all those things. It just took me a couple of years to be able to see it.” I reach across the table to take her hand. “And I’m so sorry I hurt you. I’m so sorry. Will you forgive me? Can we start over?”

  SEVEN

  Deena

  “Can we start over?” Troy asks, and my heart, already full, overflows.

  “No,” I say, and stand up. His face contracts in pain, and he swallows hard. But I’m not done explaining. “I don’t think we can start over, like there’s nothing between us. I loved you for too long to forget how good we were together.” I take a deep breath. “I think I understand now. Because—you know, like you said it hurt so badly when people told you to get past your injury and move on with your life? I can’t just put it behind me that you deliberately let me think you were cheating on me. I have to acknowledge how much it hurt, and then say that was the past. I have to do that first before I can move on.” I reach for his hand and pull him out of his chair. I slide my arms around his waist, loving the feel of him close to me. “I’m so sorry I made it harder for you. I wish you could have told me how you were feeling.”

  “I do too,” he whispers, his voice scratchy. His arms gather me in, and we stand together, giving each other strength. “I wish we never lost those years.”

  “We’re just going to have to speed things up so we don’t miss anything else,” I say. It’s so clear to me now. I reach up to kiss his chin. “Let’s start that now. Everything that happened before is over. Now we’re going in a new direction. We’re going to trust each other.”

  “Yes.” He leans down to kiss me, and then his hands find my bare bottom under his shirt. “This doesn’t feel like a new direction, Dee. I don’t know if I want to go in a new direction.”

  “Not in bed,” I say primly, nestling my hips closer to his.

  “What about out of bed?”

  “Why wouldn’t we be in bed?” I tease. “Bed is comfortable.”

  “Yes, but the bed is so far away.” His voice has gone all deep and sexy, and he picks me up with his hands under my butt. “The countertop is right here.”

  I catch my breath. “So it is.”

  Troy sets me on the kitchen counter. I give half a thought to the cleaning that will have to take place later, and then I put it out of my head and reach to push his sleep pants down. His erect member springs out, already eager to be touched. I touch it. I take it on both hands and stroke the length of it over and over as Troy kisses my neck, kicking the pants off his ankles.

  “Spread your legs, baby,” he says into my ear, nipping my earlobe. “And let’s take this off.” He strips the shirt up over my head, making my breasts bounce.

  I make room between my thighs, and he steps between them, lifting my breasts to his mouth. He teases my nipples with fingers and tongue, while I stroke his shaft. I’m so wet that I can feel moisture dripping from me, and the stimulation to my nipples only makes me want him more every single second. I let my head fall back, and I let go of my control again.

  I guide his hard cock right to my center, stroking him against my wet folds, over my clit. It makes us both moan. “I need you now,” Troy growls against my nipple.

  “Not yet,” I pant, rocking my hips to keep him from entering me. “Not yet. Soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “Not yet,” I repeat, letting my excitement grow with every stroke of his cockhead over my clit. “Not . . . yet . . . Oh god, now.”

  “Now,” he echoes, pulling my butt closer to the edge of the counter and thrusting himself deep inside me in one motion. The sensation is incredible, his firmness rubbing insistently over my G-spot, and I cry out.

  “Don’t stop, don’t stop, please don’t stop yet,” I beg, rocking my groin against his in desperation. “You feel so good, so good, don’t stop!”

  “Come for me, Dee, baby,” he mutters against my neck. “Come on. That’s a good girl, get that O. Come for me.”

  I do. I tighten my vagina around him as we thrust together, and then the pressure explodes into pleasure and I’m screaming with the release.

  “Fuck, Deena, I can’t hold it any longer,” Troy moans, and I feel his own climax inside me.

  I hold on to him. “Don’t let me go,” I say. “Never again.”

  “Never again. We’re set in stone. Never let you go.”

  EIGHT

  Troy

  “Stay,” I say to her as I help her to her feet. She wobbles, legs rubbery after the incredible fucking we’ve just done in the kitchen, and laughs out of joy as she leans against me.

  “I have to work tonight,” she says. “And I need fresh clothes before I go in.”

  “Me too. But stay as long
as you can?”

  She nods. Reaches up to kiss me. “Why do I feel so happy? You know I like everything all laid out orderly. Nothing about this is proper.”

  I kiss her back. “Maybe that’s why: it’s crazy, but you’re in control.”

  “I’m not in control!” she protests, and I laugh.

  “You are too! I’m never going to let you go, so you can do what you want and it’ll be okay. And I trust you to keep loving me.”

  She blinks, holding on to me. “You do?”

  “I do.”

  It’s like watching the sun come up, seeing the certainty grow in her eyes.

  “I trust you too,” she says.

  “Good. Let’s go back to bed.” I walk her toward the bedroom again.

  “I thought we were being spontaneous and having sex other places.”

  “Oh, we’re definitely gonna do it in every room in this apartment.” I grin at her. “But we’ve both worked a twelve-hour shift, and we’ve already done it twice, and I figure we’re due for some rest and relaxation. So yes, this time in the bed again.”

  She reaches up and runs her hands through my hair. “I think your hair is really sexy, you know.”

  “Not too out of control for you?”

  “Stop teasing me.” But she smiles. “Yeah, it’s out of control. I just can’t help how I feel.”

  “How you feel . . .” I say, running my hands over her full breasts, her narrow waist, her voluptuous hips, “is damn sexy to me. You feel like a woman I want to kiss every inch of.” And I toss her onto the bed.

  She laughs, and I’m full of joy at the sound of it. She opens her arms to me.

  In for a penny, in for a pound. “Want to move in?” I ask.

  “Move in together with you, yes.” She tilts her head and gives me a dubious look. “This apartment, maybe not. You haven’t seen my house yet.”

  “You have a house? Where is it?”