Natural Love

by S. Celi

  Not just something. Someone. Her. I needed her.

  I got out of bed, found my robe on the floor and pulled it on. She was probably asleep, but I didn’t care. I’d wake her, no matter what. After that kiss, we needed to talk. We needed to sort this out. It would all get better if I could just talk to her.

  I didn’t make it to Avery’s room, though. When I opened the door to leave, I found her standing there, right next to the hallway table.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Avery whispered as she pulled her robe tighter around her body. “I wondered if you couldn’t either.”

  “No. I couldn’t.” I sucked in a deep breath. “How long have you been here?

  “Why did you leave the party so early?”

  “Because I had to.” I leaned against the doorway. “I couldn’t take it,” I said. “I couldn’t stand it at that party anymore. So fake. All of it. How long have you been standing here?”

  “A while. A few minutes. Maybe fifteen.”

  “I wish you hadn’t left,” she murmured. “Wasn’t the same after you were gone.”

  She took a step toward me, and out of instinct, I stiffened. Somewhere inside, I already knew what would happen next, but I wanted to give her one more chance to pull us back off this collision path. If she stopped it right then, I would stop it, too.

  “Avery.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Avery placed her hand on the bare skin of my chest, and every cell in my body amplified. She was all I felt, all I knew, as if my whole world shrank to that sliver of the hallway. The house didn’t exist. Dad and Leslie didn’t exist. We had no Henry, no party, no new Lexus, nothing. Just us. Just this. Alone together in a way we had never been before.

  “Absolutely sure?” I said.

  “We’re not related. Not by blood.” She pulled closer to me until her mouth was just a hair away from mine. Her quiet breath warmed my face, and we breathed together. When she exhaled, I inhaled. When she inhaled, I let out my own. “You’re my stepbrother. That’s all. So stop asking me if I’m sure.”

  “This won’t end well,” I whispered.

  “It may not. But I don’t care. Not tonight. I don’t care about the future. Just about this moment.” She moved closer to me. “Please, Spencer.”

  “Please what?”

  “Please let me stay with you tonight.”

  In a fluid movement, I pulled her into my room, shut the door, and pushed her up against it. My lips crashed against hers in a kiss I didn’t want to control, a moment I didn’t want to stop. She moaned against my mouth and my tongue entwined around hers, pushing us both to some unholy place I never wanted to leave, a moment I had only dreamed of in the deepest parts of my mind. Our bodies crashed together, my arms wrapped around her and she pulled herself against me. My fingers slid across her shoulder and underneath her robe, not stopping until they found her right breast. The soft flesh teased my fingers. She moaned, and I broke away from our kissing to catch my breath.

  “This used to make me scared, Spencer. But it doesn’t anymore. You don’t make me scared. You make me feel alive.”

  I kissed her again, just once that time. “Do you know how incredibly beautiful you are?”

  “No,” she said, and then smiled against my mouth. “Tell me.”

  “You’re the most beautiful person I know.” My lips found her forehead, then the delicate skin in between her brows. “Not just on the outside. On the inside, too.”

  She nuzzled her nose with mine and we returned to the frenzy of just a few minutes before. Soon, I tore myself away from her lips again.

  “I don’t want you to worry,” she said. “And I don’t want you to stop.”

  We kissed again, and after a few moments I lifted her and carried her lithe body over to my bed. My lips stayed on hers, and we only broke away from each other when I placed her on top of the comforter. As I pulled off my robe, I heard some rustling and knew she had taken hers off, too.

  I leaned down and my mouth traveled her neck, then her collarbone and the top of her chest. She murmured something I couldn’t understand and stretched out further against the bed. I crawled on top of her, hard and ready, but desperate to make this moment last as long as I could.

  When my lips found her left nipple and my hand massaged her right breast, she made a sound of satisfaction that overwhelmed and controlled everything. I wanted to hear that sound every night for the rest of my life.

  Every night. Without question.

  “I want you inside of me, Spencer,” she said. “I want all of you.”

  I wrenched my mouth away from her body and leaned over her on the bed. My hand searched in the darkness until it found the night side table drawer handle. I pulled it open and fumbled for the condoms I kept there. After I found one, I didn’t bother to close the drawer again.

  I’d slept with plenty of women in my life, but I’d never made love. Not like this. Not with someone I cared so much about. Every other woman didn’t mean what she did to me.

  Avery Jackson would ruin me. I knew it.

  And I didn’t care.

  “This is it,” she whispered. “This is really it.”

  “It is,” I said. “But not yet.”

  “You won’t break me.”

  “I know. But I want to savor you.”

  She’d had others before me. I didn’t know how many for sure, but I had an estimate in my head. Avery’s history with sex hadn’t been . . . fantastic. I knew that much, and because of it, I needed to make this night unforgettable. I wanted to show her that sex could be more, and could be better, than what she’d ever had before. She deserved that much, at least.

  And that’s why my mouth took over instead of my dick. My lips found her navel, then the soft skin around Avery’s hips. I traced the side of her hip to her upper right thigh, then over to the apex of her pussy. When my mouth found it, I grinned at her in the darkness.

  “This. I’ve wanted this for so long,” I said. “More than I ever wanted to admit to anyone. Not even to myself.”

  She moved a little bit more, and I took that as an invitation. My tongue found the soft folds of her flesh, and I tasted the tender sweetness between her legs. The rawness and the intimacy of it shook away any remaining hesitation, and as my tongue explored every part of her most intimate place, my left hand returned to her right breast.

  We stayed that way for a while, moving in unison as Avery’s groans grew louder and she pushed toward a climax. I loved the way my tongue pleased her, the way she moved underneath me, and the way she tasted. It was all so simple. It was all so real.

  And it was all so natural.

  “God, this feels so amazing.” Then a moan. “I can’t take it anymore.”

  I pulled a little further away from her body. “I think you can.”

  “No.” Avery’s voice sounded clouded and heavy. “I can’t.”

  “Delayed pleasure is the best kind,” I said, still holding my body above her.

  “No. Now.” She pulled me on top of her. “Right now. Please. Let me feel you inside of me. I’ve never wanted anything more.”

  I found the condom packet in the folds of the comforter, opened it, and slid it onto my dick. With another deep breath, I entered her at last. Right away, our kinetic energy collided. We moved together like magnets. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. Faster and faster. As we did, though, the minutes slowed. Each inhale became an eternity and each exhale could have created a universe. She bucked her hips against me and suddenly her breath turned into short, tender gasps that cut through the air as we both moved closer to release. We had so much between us, so much more than just the physical. When our bodies moved together, they created a haze of ecstasy.

  Avery’s soul was mine. Mine was hers. And maybe it had always been that way.

  “Spencer,” she said, and I knew she hung on the edge of climax. “Spencer.
”

  “Avery.” I almost couldn’t speak, but I managed it somehow. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m close,” she said. “I know it.”

  “Me too.”

  My mouth covered hers and I teetered on the edge of oblivion. So close now; so pure. We moved together a few more times as the energy we created built to a pinnacle. I had never wanted anything as badly as I wanted this.

  When I came, it was better than any other time in my life. It was perfect. It was like coming home. I knew she felt that way, too, because I heard it in the small noise of emotion she tried to hold inside of her so that no one else would hear us.

  I collapsed on top of her and we both went still; our exhausted breaths the only sound in the room. After a few moments, I pulled away from her and rolled over onto the bed where I stared at the ceiling again. She molded her body to mine and we lay in the silence, not asleep, but only half awake.

  As the haze started to fade, I struggled with what to say. How would this change things? What would we do in the morning? Where would this go? What good could come of it? Would she regret this? Should I regret it? Why didn’t I?

  “Do you want me to stay?” Avery said after a long time passed.

  I glanced at the clock and it read 3:12AM. I hadn’t slept yet. Neither had she.

  “I wish you could.” I kissed her hairline and then her forehead. “I want to wake up with you.”

  “But we can’t,” she said, finishing my sentence. “I know we can’t.”

  My fingers raked through her blonde hair like a comb. “If someone sees you . . . Henry . . . Linda . . . Dad . . .”

  “Too risky. I know; they can’t suspect anything.”

  “No.” I picked up a few strands of her hair and twisted them around my fingers. They still held the curls from the night before. “They can’t.”

  “You mean that I should leave now.” She moved against me again and we kissed. Then she sat up. “But I don’t want to go.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  “But I have to.”

  She wanted me to tell her to stay. I knew that. I just couldn’t do it.

  “It’s just a short walk to your room,” I said instead. “I’m right here. Not far away at all.”

  Avery got up from the bed and I heard her fumbling around for the robe and her underwear. She came back to the bed with them on, and I flinched at the realization that I had to touch her again with clothes on, that she wouldn’t be naked forever and that this night would end.

  “Thank you,” she said from somewhere above me. Then she leaned down and kissed me on my cheek.

  “For what?”

  “For seeing the real me. For being you. For tonight.”

  “Goodnight, Avery.”

  “Goodnight, Spencer.”

  She slid out of the room as quietly as she had come. I turned on my side and stared at the clock. The minutes and hours taunted me, and when I shut my eyes, Avery still danced in my head. After about fifteen minutes passed, I stood, took the Omega paddle off the wall and threw it underneath my bed.

  That night did nothing to cure my obsession. It just made it worse.

  CHADWICK GARDENS CREAKED and shuddered the next morning as the rest of the house stirred. From my bed on the second floor, I heard all the sounds: Henry directing the landscaper and some gardeners outside, someone in the kitchen making breakfast or cleaning up, Mr. and Mrs. Crawford leaving the guest room where they’d spent the night sobering up after too many vodka cocktails.

  The house may have been waking, but I didn’t want to. If I stayed in the bed, it meant I could hang on to the last few seconds of my night with Avery and the sugary sweet smell of her that lingered on my pillow. And I wanted more than anything to hang on. To repeat it. To stop time inside my room forever.

  Of course, I couldn’t.

  When my stomach growled around 9:30, I got up. By then, the aroma of breakfast had wafted to my room. It smelled like pancakes, sausage, and something else I couldn’t place. After a quick shower and shave, I pulled on my jeans and an old Vineyard Vines T-shirt before I stumbled down the stairs.

  “Ahh, Spencer,” Dad said when I walked into the kitchen. He held a spatula in one hand, and he stood next to the pancake griddle. Sometimes he cooked for the hell of it, or when he wanted to impress people with his wide array of skills. I guessed this was the latter. “We wondered when you’d come down for breakfast.”

  “Still early, Dad.”

  The Crawfords and Linda sat at the antique kitchen table in the breakfast nook. Mrs. Crawford’s hair still held onto the last bits of what I knew had been an expensive hairdo, and Mr. Crawford’s eyes were bloodshot. They sat before large plates of eggs and pancakes. Linda, on the other hand, had a large green smoothie to her lips. She must have been juicing again. Detoxing. Purging. Whatever she liked to call it.

  “Was just hearing more about how Lauren’s doing in Palm Beach.” Dad flipped two of the pancakes and they sizzled on the grill. “Such a go-getter.”

  “She’s moved down there permanently.” Mrs. Crawford’s voice hung on to the last vestiges of the previous night. “And she’s marrying Trent next year.”

  “Big wedding.” Mr. Crawford chuckled. “You know how those things are. And she wants her reception at The Breakers.”

  “That’s wonderful news,” Linda said.

  “Lauren’s always had a good head on her shoulders,” Dad said. He gulped a third of a large glass of orange juice. “She should be an example to you, Spencer.”

  “I know.” I sighed and sat in a chair at the breakfast bar, pulled a banana out of the fruit bowl, peeled it, and took a bite. “Any leftover pancakes?”

  “You can have this one.” Dad flipped the pancake one more time, waited a beat, and then placed it on a plate. “Now,” he said, handing the plate to me, “you don’t suppose your stepsister is . . .”

  “Is what?” Avery said from the entrance to the kitchen.

  All of the energy in the kitchen shifted to her. I could feel it. From the smiles on the Crawfords’ faces to the pleased expression on Dad’s, everything shifted in Avery’s favor, as if the day hadn’t really started until she walked in the room.

  Good thing I already sat at the breakfast bar because I was hard within ten seconds of her arrival. Hard, ashamed, proud, obsessed, and ruined. And the bite of banana that lingered in my mouth had turned sour.

  “Good morning, everyone,” she said.

  “Ahh, my darling.” Dad put down the spatula and walked over to her, then kissed her on the cheek. “Good morning, birthday girl.”

  “Thanks.” She followed him back to the breakfast bar, a large grin on her face. “Did you guys have a good sleep last night?”

  She addressed all of us, but her eyes fell on me when she said it. I looked away as fast as I could. Better not talk to her. Better not look at her. Better not think about her.

  We shouldn’t have done what we did last night.

  “Of course we slept well, honey,” Linda said over the rim of her smoothie. “And I can’t believe my baby is twenty-two.”

  “I know. So weird.”

  “Are you ready to start grad school? I didn’t have a chance to ask you last night,” Mr. Crawford said.

  He held his fork in midair, and a bite of pancake hung off it. He sounded as if he really wanted to know, not just like he was being polite. Avery did that to people. They always wanted more of her.

  My stepsister pulled out the barstool at the other end of the bar, and her eyes met mine again. Once more, I ripped my gaze away. “Grad school should be great. Can’t wait.”

  “She’s getting her masters in Public Relations,” Linda said.

  “Corporate Communications,” Avery muttered.

  “Good, solid major,” Dad said as he placed a plate in front of me with a solitary pancake in the center and a sticky gob of maple syrup on top. “Everyone needs PR these days, and no one can communicate. Just ask my son, here.”

&nb
sp; Everyone at the table laughed at my father’s weak excuse for a joke.

  “That’s what Spencer always says,” Avery said. “Don’t you, Spencer?”

  I didn’t look at her again. I just nodded and kept my focus on the cooling pancake. I really needed to leave the kitchen. Being around Avery that morning felt like being suffocated with cotton candy, and the previous night had left me so conflicted. I wanted her so much, and now I had her, but once again, we had another secret to keep. And this time, I wasn’t sure we could.

  Maybe we could go back to the way things were before.

  “What’s wrong, son?” David said. “You haven’t touched the rest of your breakfast.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. Once again, the lies tumbled out of my mouth. “Just tired. Long night.”

  “I’ll vouch for that,” Mrs. Crawford said. “And what a wonderful party. I’ll never forget those fireworks, or that pâté. Delicious.”

  “I thought you wouldn’t be able to forget the vodka,” Mr. Crawford said, and everyone laughed again.

  “Listen, I’m not really that hungry,” I said. “I’m going to go lie down.”

  Dad put down the spatula. “But you just got up, Spencer. We’ve got a full day ahead. Plenty of things to talk about.”

  “Like what?”

  “For starters, you didn’t do a very good job of helping out with our guests last night.”

  “I know.” I stood from the breakfast bar. “But can we talk about this later? I’ve got a headache.”

  “Okay.” Dad eyed me.

  “Go take some of the supplements in my bathroom upstairs, Spencer,” Linda suggested. “All natural, of course. Nothing prescription.” She nodded at Mrs. Crawford. “He should probably bring some of that for you, too.”

  “No thanks,” I said, and held up my hand. “I just need to go lie down.”

  Without giving them any time to argue, I walked out of the kitchen as fast as I could. I just needed to get away from all of it, away from Avery most of all.