Afterwards

by Nia Forrester

  Right now, with her naked in his bed, it was impossible to think about afterwards. He didn’t care about afterwards. He cared only about right now.

  Feeling her heat and wetness, Chris knew his resolve wouldn’t hold out, not when she was doing what she was doing, holding his wrist firmly as she rolled her hips against his fingers, trying to get them inside her. Panting now, she finally turned her head so he could kiss her mouth again, and when he did, it was open, and her tongue was hungry for his.

  The hell with thinking.

  Robyn seemed to have read his mind and reached down, temporarily shoving his hand away so she might work on getting his pants off. Her fingers were busy and quick, and within moments he was as naked as she was. Chris was more than ready, but she had other ideas, and shoved him away so he had to sit back on his haunches.

  She looked at him, then took him in her hands. He lurched and she smiled a small, private smile. Then sitting up, she opened her legs, so that he was between them. Chris could see how wet she was, smell the scent of her wanting him. Reaching for her, he stroked her with two fingers, just as she continued to stroke him. Torn between looking into her eyes, and down at her increasingly swollen entrance, beckoning to him, Chris felt his own breath quicken.

  Robyn slid closer, until they were almost touching, pulling her knees up to her chest. They were inches apart now, but still resisted the ultimate act, each touching the other with hands only, their eyes locked. Finally, Chris leaned in, taking a nipple in his mouth and Robyn jerked unexpectedly, her hips convulsing against his fingers. Abruptly, she released him and instead gripped his shoulders, lifted her weight off the bed and lowered herself onto him.

  The sudden rush of heat and wetness as she enveloped him took Chris off guard and he almost came himself, but Robyn dug her nails into his shoulders, distracting him for a moment. A rush of breath escaped between his lips. Both of them sitting upright, they clasped each other, fingers pressing into flesh painfully, pleasurably.

  “Oh god,” she said against his neck. “Oh god . . .”

  Yeah. Oh god.

  She felt like silk, and her hair and neck smelled like pomegranate. Chris grabbed her head with both hands, pulling her face down to his and like that, she rode him as they kissed, her hips making slow, rolling waves. Every so often, Robyn pried her lips from his and looked down at where they were connected, her eyes opening wider as though in wonder at the marvel of how perfectly their bodies seemed to have been made for each other. There was no way Chris wanted to come now, he just wanted to ride this feeling for as long as she’d let him. Then suddenly, Robyn wrenched her lips from his yet again.

  “I can’t . . . I can’t feel all of you like this,” she explained.

  “You think you’re ready for all of me?”

  Even Robyn’s soft laughter increased his excitement. “I’m pretty sure I’m up to the challenge.”

  “Yeah?” he said. Chris gripped her hips and pulled her down so even more of him was buried inside her.

  Robyn gasped, then quickly recovered. “Yeah,” she said, her chest heaving against his.

  And none too gently, Chris lifted her off him, flinging her onto her back. Robyn shrieked in surprise, her eyes wide, then she opened her arms to him as Chris lowered himself between her legs.

  ___________________

  Mrs. Lawson didn’t remark on the fact that she had to call up several times before they appeared on the terrace for breakfast, nor on the fact that Chris was barefoot and without a shirt and Robyn much more disheveled than when she’d arrived. And when Chris told her he was hungrier than he thought and wanted eggs and bacon, she wordlessly returned to the kitchen to fulfill his request, ignoring the secret looks passing between them as she walked away.

  “She knows what we were doing,” Robyn whispered.

  Chris shrugged. “Probably.”

  “That’s a little embarrassing.”

  “Get used to it. She’s almost always here. And besides, you make a lot of noise.”

  “I do not.”

  Chris was staring at her, and there was a new dimension to his stare than there had been before. Holy shit. She’d had sex with Chris Scaife. Her boss. Her friend. Now, her lover.

  “Tell me about your tattoos,” he said.

  Robyn smiled and sipped her coffee. “What about them?”

  “What’s the story behind the butterfly?”

  “I was a little bit of a wild child for a minute. Around the time I was eighteen and in college,” she said, shrugging. “So what does any wild child do? She gets a tattoo.”

  “Did the butterfly mean something, or . . .”

  “It just looked pretty. Why are you so fascinated by my tatts?”

  “Because you don’t seem like the kind of woman who would have them. You’re, I don’t know, conservative.”

  Robyn snorted. “Hardly.”

  “In public at least,” Chris said, giving her that look again.

  Was this how it was going to be from now on? Robyn wondered. He looked at her and she got wet for him? That would be all well and good when they were alone, but if this was the way they were headed, she was going to have to run from the sound of his approaching voice at work.

  “Tell me about the tattoo on your back.”

  She didn’t want to talk about that one. “That was more recent,” she said.

  “I can tell. What made you . . ?”

  “I’m a woman, so I thought I’d better label myself as such.”

  “I don’t think there’s any chance of you being considered anything else.”

  She blushed when he looked at her now. He’d always had that unnerving way of looking at her, but now she knew what lay behind those eyes—the things he could do, the words he might say. And the things he made her want to do and say.

  “Now let’s talk about your tattoos,” she deflected. “Who’s Christine?”

  “My mother,” he answered without hesitation. “She’s dead.”

  “Oh, I’m sor . . .”

  “It’s been awhile.”

  Maybe better to move off the topic of tattoos, Robyn thought. They had much to learn about each other.

  When Mrs. Lawson brought their breakfast, they ate with barely any conversation at all, like a couple late for a crucial, not-to-be-missed appointment. Robyn knew why she was in a hurry and wondered as she watched him, furtively, whether it was the same for Chris. She’d shown up here because she wanted him, and she wanted him still, as though the previous two hours hadn’t happened and she was still anticipating without knowing, what it would feel like for him to touch her.

  Just as he finished up, Robyn was finishing too, as though they’d planned it that way, timed it so neither of them would have to wait. Shoving the last strip of bacon into his mouth and emptying his glass of juice as he stood, Chris extended a hand to her.

  “C’mon, he said.

  “Where?” she asked, though she already knew.

  15

  Tugging at his bowtie, Chris opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement. He meant to go home. But instead, here he was looking up at Robyn’s mother’s townhouse. The windows were all dark. She was probably asleep. It was a Wednesday night and they both had work the next day, so of course she was asleep.

  But he dialed her number anyway. It rang three times and then there was Robyn’s voice, groggy and almost incoherent.

  “Chris?” she said. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

  Was he okay? The question confused him at first, but it was probably a fair assumption that something had to be wrong. Regular folks didn’t make calls this late on a weeknight unless something was wrong.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I was just passing through. I had a . . . thing tonight . . .”

  Passing through? Yeah, right.

  “Passing through?” Robyn echoed his thoughts.

  “Yeah, but obviously I woke you, so . . .”

  “Wait a second.” There was the sound of movement and rustling. “Is
that you outside right now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, hang up. I’m opening the garage. You’d better pull in.”

  Before he could say anything further, the line went dead and moments later the garage door ascended. Inside, there was only one car, Robyn’s Honda. Chris recalled that there had been two the last time he came, but no matter, there was room for him to fit. He got back behind the wheel and pulled up the driveway and inside. As soon as his headlights hit the back wall of the garage, the door leading into the townhouse opened, and Robyn was standing there in shorts and a tank top, a headscarf securing her hair, her face puffy with sleep.

  When he opened the car door, Robyn shut the garage. She yawned hugely and stepped aside to let him in. A dim light emanated from the top of the range in the kitchen, so what little of it there was cast a yellowish-orange glow. Shutting the door behind her, Robyn leaned against it and looked at him. She didn’t ask the obvious question, the only question—why was he there?

  “You’re squinting,” she observed after a moment. “And your eyes are bloodshot.”

  Chris shrugged.

  “Are you having a migraine right now?”

  “No,” he said. He definitely wasn’t having a migraine. He was having a headache. A headache was to a migraine what a ripple in a bathtub was to a tsunami.

  Robyn took in his formal attire but asked no questions.

  He went to events just about every week. Some formal, some not, and most of them unenjoyable. Tonight it had been a party for The New Yorker which he went to with Carmen Ali, an up-and-coming model, and New York’s latest It-girl. Her PR team had started a rumor that she was one of Muhammad Ali’s unacknowledged kids and somehow it stuck, so she got lots of undeserved press on the strength of that lie alone. Chris had known her from the party scene for a couple years before she hit it big, as the girl who would just as soon suck your dick as say hello; and so when he invited her, he figured that nothing was more likely to make a dry party for The New Yorker more interesting than being blown in his car either before, after or even during the so-called festivities. But the invitation had been issued before, when he and Robyn hadn’t yet started this thing of theirs. And now that they had started, Chris saw no reason to cancel his date with Carmen, because he and Robyn weren’t that kind of thing. They were just casual.

  But all through the cocktails, he’d been bored out of his skull by Carmen’s incessant chatter about her bookings, and his eyes glazed over while she name-dropped. After a couple hours of trying to tough the evening out, Chris introduced her to a New York Knicks player and told Carmen to call his car service when she was ready to leave. By then she was all into the baller anyway and didn’t give a crap whether he left her there or not.

  And now here he was, standing in front of Robyn, him in a tux, her in nightclothes, each of them sizing the other up, wondering but not asking what the hell they were doing.

  After a moment Robyn turned toward the stairs and extended a hand. Chris took it and let her lead him up. At the top, she turned and put a finger to her lips as they passed what must have been her mother’s room, and pushed open the door to hers.

  Yellow. That was the first thing Chris noticed. Everything in pale yellow, with white flowers, and a simple innocence to it, like the room of a thirteen-year old girl. Robyn shut the door behind them and let out a breath, looking at him as though she didn’t know what to do next. Her legs, long and golden-brown, he knew from experience now, would be soft to the touch. He wanted to touch her now; he always wanted to touch her.

  “I’m going to get you a couple Ibuprofen tablets,” she said. “Hopefully, they’ll do enough so you can get some sleep at least.”

  “Sleep?” he asked, as though the word was foreign to him.

  “Yes. Chris you’re obviously beyond exhausted. I don’t even know how you made it here from the city without running off the road or something. You have a driver. Why don’t you use him?”

  When Robyn disappeared into her bathroom, he looked around, taking in the smallness of the space. It seemed so unlike her, to be in a small space. She wanted to live a big life—he already knew that about her. Jon told him she was taking to her motorcycle riding lessons like a fish to water, but that she liked to go fast a little too much. And Chris recalled the look of unbridled excitement on her face when he described the one and only time he’d been dumb enough to go snowboarding on some godforsaken mountainside in Colorado just to say he did.

  “These are 800 milligrams each,” Robyn said. She had returned with a glass of water and two enormous white pills. “So let’s hope people can’t O.D. on this stuff.”

  Chris took them from her with the water and swallowed both in a quick gulp. He wondered why she didn’t seem more insulted by his appearance at her house at his hour with the flimsiest of excuses.

  “Sit,” she said now, indicating her bed.

  Robyn crouched at his feet, sliding his shoes off, pulling off his socks, the posture was one of humility and subservience. Few women would do as much for a man without being self-conscious, or reluctant about appearing so. Then she stood once again, loosening his tie, unbuttoning his shirt, sliding it over his shoulders. Her chest was directly in his line of sight. Chris leaned forward, pressing his face into her cleavage, and Robyn rested her hand for a moment, gently atop his head.

  “Did you grow up in this house?” he asked.

  “Nope,” she said right away, as though it was a perfectly reasonable topic of conversation from a man who had shown up at her doorstep at an ungodly hour for a school night. “I grew up in a nice house in Teaneck with my mother, father and brother. And then my Dad left and we moved to a not-so-nice house. My mother moved here when my brother went to college.”

  Chris didn’t want to lift his head. It was restful being pressed against her like this, smelling her warm, fresh, soap-like scent, feeling the slow rise and fall of her chest. She moved as though to pull away from him but Chris held her fast by the waist, keeping her close. Robyn’s fingernails raked his scalp, back and forth, back and forth. He inhaled her.

  “You’re tired, Chris,” she said. “So let’s go to sleep.”

  She reached around to her back and released herself by prying his arms loose and then pushing him back against the mattress, she went to work on his pants, removing and draping them across an armchair. Turning off the bedside lamp, she crawled into bed next to him

  “C’mon,” she said. “It’s a small bed. You’re going to have to spoon me, if we’re going to be comfortable.”

  Not too many things sounded as good as that right about now, so Chris did as she instructed. With her back against his chest, her butt wedged at his groin, he should have been thinking about sex, but instead he was thinking how crazy it was that he could be so comfortable in a bed was maybe a third of the size of the one he had at home in his bedroom, crowded against another body when he generally preferred to sleep alone.

  “What were you up to all evening?” he asked.

  All of a sudden there were too many gaps. He saw her at work sometimes, and for sure on Saturdays, and here and there during the week. But after three weeks of them sharing the most intimate of contact man and woman could have, there were still too many gaps.

  “I played Scrabble with my mother,” she said, her voice beginning to sound a little thick and tired. “And then we ate popcorn and watched a talent show on television.”

  Chris smiled. “Sounds like a much more exciting evening than the one I had.”

  And that was the last thing he remembered before he gave in to sleep.

  ___________________

  Was it crazy that she looked at him like this and wanted to . . . take care of him?

  As she slid out of bed, taking care not to upset the covers too much, Robyn glanced back at Chris’ sleeping form. If he’d left before she’d awoken, she would have wondered if the previous night’s visit had been a dream. His showing up out of the blue was unexpected to say the least, and wh
en he had, she’d fully expected that when it got down to it, it would be about sex. But it didn’t appear to be, or if it was, he’d been too tired to go through with it. But whatever it was about, she felt strangely protective of him. Especially seeing him as he was now, completely and thoroughly at rest. Funny that the very first time they spent the entire night together, there had been nothing but some PG-13 cuddling. Except it wasn’t the first time they’d spent the night together. The first time was the evening of Brendan and Tracy’s wedding. And that time it had been about taking care of him as well. So maybe the feeling she had now was just déjà vu.

  Smiling, she made her way to the bathroom, and started the shower. She might have just spent the night with the boss, but it was still a workday. All through her lathering and scrubbing, rinsing and repeating, Robyn thought about Chris, sleeping in her bed. In her bed. For whatever reason, in the middle of what looked to have been a formal event, he thought about her and wanted to come to see her; that was all the more flattering since she was well-acquainted with the kinds of women he generally took to events. She’d seen him with them in the gossip papers—cool beauties who turned their necks just so toward the camera, who couldn’t take a bad photo if they tried. But he was here. With her. Oh, she knew she was attractive enough, and she got her fair due of attention from men. But still . . . money gave you options, and Chris had plenty of both.

  Her shower done, Robyn wrapped herself in a towel—when she might normally have exited the bathroom naked—and did a quick check in the mirror before going back out into the bedroom. As she’d feared, Chris was up, having probably been awakened by the squeaking sound of her turning on the water, or the sound of the shower itself. Sitting on the edge of her bed, in the room that now appeared tiny, he was pulling on his loafers, having already put on his pants and shirt. His tuxedo jacket still lay draped over her armchair.

  When she entered he looked up at her, and seemed to be taking in details, from her clean, freshly washed face to her still wet legs and bare feet. Robyn wondered whether last night was a blur for him as well.