Only she isn’t. Still nowhere to be seen, I wait. I look out the window. I don’t see her at all. I sit down on the bed.
Fuck. What if something’s happened to her? Where the hell could she have gone?
I get up and look out the window again. There, way in the distance, I see her. I’m not going to lie, my fucking heart turns over in my chest. Tall and slender, and just so pretty, with her hair shining in the low winter sun.
She makes her way distractedly to and fro down the parking lot, paying zero attention to the outside world but very close attention to whatever’s on that page. As she gets closer, I see she’s got about ten different books with her.
“What the hell are you up to?” I ask the window.
Whatever she’s doing, it’s interesting, and she’s completely engrossed. She puts her hand to her mouth and smiles. Her walking slows a bit, and she sort of veers off toward some parked cars. I watch her turn a page and then sweep her hair off to one side.
Her hand moves to her mouth like she’s thinking.
Thinking about what, for God’s sake?
“Just get back here,” I say to the glass. “Let me get my fucking hands on you.”
And then, as if she can hear me, she glances up. I give her hands to say, What the hell, beautiful?
She lets her purse slide down her arm and closes the book. And smiles up at me. She taps the book with her finger, and heads for the side entrance.
I listen for her closely. Her footsteps coming down the hall, her door opening and latching shut. Then I hear the sound of the plastic bag on her bed. I grab the bowl of strawberries and I open the two doors.
There are books spread all over her bed. At first, I can’t make any sense of it at all. It’s like this crazy mashup of sports imagery and Kama Sutra. I look at the titles and see words like Champion and Sexual Fulfillment.
She wriggles out of her coat, looking mischievous, devilish in the eyes. “Do you trust me?” she asks, reaching up and running her hand along the back of my neck and into my hair.
“Yeah, fuck yeah.”
“Like really trust me?”
I glance at the books and see Peyton Manning’s face over the top of the Buddha’s. “I think so?”
“Good,” she whispers, pressing me down onto the bed. “I know you want to dominate me, to make me submit…knock me up…”
Oh fuck, the way that sounds…I pull her closer and hook my thumbs over her pants to start pulling them down. But she stops me, gripping my wrists. “But tonight, I want to do something different. Tonight,” she whispers, and puts one pretty finger to my temple. “Tonight I want to get in here.”
“I need to fuck you. Hard. Right fucking now,” I tell her, low and mean in her ear. “I don’t want to fuck around with New Age bullshit. I want my cum inside you just like before.”
But she straddles me and pulls off her turtleneck and shakes her head, kneading her fingers into my chest. She lowers her weight down onto my body, but we’re both still half-dressed, so all it does is make me more insane.
There’s a new fire in her eyes. And she whispers, “You’re not the boss of me, Jimmy Falconi. Not tonight.”
She pulls herself off me and goes to close the drapes. The room is thrown into darkness, sending the shadow of her body up mine. Like she’s in my head, she goes to the door and checks that it’s locked, then does the very same in my room.
When she returns, she’s holding up a finger, telling me to wait. She comes to my ear and whispers, “I’m going to strip for you. You can’t touch me.”
“The fuck I can’t.” I drag my hand up her ass.
“No. Not tonight. You obey me tonight.”
My words get caught in my throat and I swallow hard. I yank her to me. “I’m not that guy. I can’t go slow. Not with you.”
“Yes you can, Jimmy. You can do anything that you want.”
Then she backs away and grabs the desk chair, putting her foot up on it and slowly—so fucking slowly—working the zipper of one boot down. She does the same to the other calf, and then slowly slips out of her socks.
The light from the setting sun shines through the gap in the drapes, sending a long, clear beam of sunshine up her body. Over her curves, over the valleys, highlighting that perfect line of her cleavage. Standing in front of me, she begins to undo my belt.
There is a determination in her eyes that is fucking killing me. Like she’s got some kind of secret, and I’m going to have to work to learn what it is.
So, gently, slowly, like she asked, I touch her. With the tips of my fingers, up the curve of her spine. Goose bumps follow along, tightening her skin. And her nipples.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
And what does she do?
Winks.
With her hand hooked over waistband, she signals for me to get up and off the bed. I do, and I’m towering over her at last.
She undoes my fly and pulls my chinos down to the floor. But doesn’t touch my cock, not once.
Instead, she gets up on her tiptoes. “In bed. Right now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good boy.”
“Fuck you.”
“Get in bed. You know you like it. So just do it already.”
Yeah. Okay. Fine. It’s fucking hot. I didn’t think I’d like it, but that throb in my balls, that pulse in my cock, it’s undeniable.
I love it. So I do exactly what she says.
40
Mary
I didn’t have time to read nearly as much as I’d like to have read, but I got the idea. And I’ve got a plan. We are both naked now, him laid out on the bed, and me on top of him. On my knees, I kneel forward and kiss his neck. His cheek. Tug at his lip with my teeth. His hands, so massive and strong, move up to my back, but they don’t hold me there. He’s listening. Which is exactly what I need him to do.
He’s incredibly hard in my hand, the skin of his cock soft in my palm. I position him at my opening. “The point of this isn’t to come.”
I say it so softly I can tell he didn’t hear me. So I lean forward and say it again in his ear. “The orgasm is not the point. If you come, you ruin it.”
“Fuck that.”
“Just try it. Please.”
He bites his lip. He digs his fingers into my hips. “Okay.”
And then I begin lowering myself onto him.
Millimeter.
By.
Millimeter.
We watch it happen together. I hear his breath get caught in his throat. I look up to see his eyes rolling back slightly, behind almost-closed lids. Another millimeter and he groans again.
All the while, I stay as relaxed as I possibly can. “You know I want to squeeze you, but I’m not.”
“Okay,” he gasps, trying to pull me down onto him. And God knows I want to let him, but I also want to do this, this new thing, with him. Another quiet afternoon, the two of us, being naughty, while all the world swirls around us. In other words, my new favorite thing.
After a minute, only his head is inside, and my thighs are burning, but the very best burn. I have never seen him look so helpless, but also in such utter pleasure. He moves his hands to my hips, and instead of pulling, he supports me. Holding me up and letting me come down onto him even slower than before.
After another thirty seconds, he’s beginning to part my walls, and his hands start to grip me, to pull me faster.
“Slow,” I say. I feel him in a way I’ve never felt another man. Every inch of him, every curve. There is no friction, just connection.
“Jesus, Mary.”
“I know,” I whisper back. Oh God, I know.
It is the opposite of the ruthless way I’m used to him getting inside me. And it hits me that rather than him taking me, I’m the one slowly, powerfully, carefully taking him.
Which is really, really sexy.
I try to remember some of what I read. About magnetisms and polarity. I reach out and put my hand to his heart. His eyes flicker to my hand, a
nd as if he’d read the very same book, he does the same thing to me.
His breathing slows, and when I’m about midway down, he arches his head back into the pillows. The muscles of his pecs pull tight, the fibers of his shoulder stretch and curve.
I bring my lips to his chest and suck gently on his nipple. His hand comes to the side of my head and holds me there. Just that. Just holds me. Carefully, and warmly, without any force at all.
Once he’s all the way inside me, I let my body weight drop completely onto him. Instinctively, he starts driving into me slowly from below, but I press onto his thighs with my hands to tell him to stop. “Just be inside me. Just like that.”
I don’t squeeze him. I don’t tease him. And oh God, does it feel good. I let myself relax onto him, to pull him in as deeply as I can. But with no urgency. The truth is, we really do have all night. If we need it.
Once I’ve been there for a few seconds and we’ve both calmed down, I look him in the eye. “I need to know what you’re most afraid of in the world.”
He furrows his brow. “Is this the time for that?”
I nod.
He gets serious, focused, and is trusting me just like he said he would. Finally, he says, “I’m not afraid of anything.”
I lean in and kiss him. Hard. All the while keeping my body relaxed on top of his. So that we are one thing, him inside me and me around him. He wraps his arms around my back and breathes in, long and slow.
“Please tell me,” I say softly. “I want to know.”
That big stern face gets a little shy, almost. A bit vulnerable, and he looks at the edge of the bed. I tip his face back up to me, that strong jaw resting on my fingertip.
“I’ll go first,” I say, forcing myself to relax a little more around him.
He nods, squinting for a moment, like he’s trying to see if I’m kidding around. “Yeah. You go first.”
What are you most afraid of, Mary?
Tell him.
Don’t lie to him, because he’ll know.
Tell him the truth, like you want to.
“It’s okay.” He shifts my braid over my shoulder. “Whatever it is, it’s okay.” He undoes the tie at the end and helps my hair come down loose over my shoulder.
I let myself get lost in those eyes. In the way he feels inside me. The way being with him makes me feel. It takes a lot of courage to say it. It’s not a thing I like to talk about, or that I’m proud of. Or even that I really want to say at all. But I need to tell him. And I want to tell him. If anybody should know about this, it’s him.
And so with a deep breath, I tell him. I don’t sugar-coat it. I don’t laugh about it. I just say it. Right now, safe with him, violence isn’t the thing that frightens me most. There is something deeper.
“You’ll be pissed,” I say, like I wasn’t the one who had this idea in the first place. I’m now almost regretting it, almost kicking myself, for heading down this path at all. But here we are. And this is it. If I lie to him now, I’ve blown it.
And I refuse to let that happen.
So I say it. I just blurt it out, fast and steady as I can. “I’m terrified of having children.”
I brace myself for the inevitable, the line that everybody loves, the one they think is such a compliment. But you’d make a wonderful mother.
He doesn’t say it. Instead, he studies my face and brings his thumb to my cheek. “Why?”
There are a million reasons, but only one that really rings true. “Because I don’t want to give up my life.”
He blinks. His eyes flicker.
And again, I brace myself. You can get a nanny! Or There’s always daycare.
Right now, I feel so vulnerable, so utterly petrified. He has to feel it too, how wide open I am. How I have just voluntarily ripped myself open.
His face shifts from confusion to something peaceful and calm, and then he says, “I can see that.”
What a beautiful, honest thing to say. He holds my hand in his, still hard and strong inside me. “I understand that.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I really do.”
I breathe out slowly. “Is that a problem?” I don’t even know what’s happening to me, but my lips are trembling already. I think about what he said to me last night and how utterly into it I was, and am, but how this is different.
“For me? For us?” He shakes his head, not a hint of hesitation. “Hell, no.”
I let myself ease down into him a little deeper. I think he’s still just as hard as before, but he has become such a part of me, so much one with me, that I can’t really tell. We just are, here together.
“As hard as I try, I can’t get my head around the idea. They seem like the end of the world to me.”
He nods again, but doesn’t speak.
And so I fill the silence. “What a horrible thing to say…What kind of woman thinks that?”
He smiles. “You do. That’s all.” He sits up slightly, still inside me. I wrap my legs around him, marveling at how natural it feels, how simple this really is. Sex for sex’s sake. Not to come. Not to roar or scream or groan into the pillows. Just to be here together. Just us. In the middle of the day.
“If you don’t want them, you don’t want them. I totally get that.”
Without any warning, tears start sliding down my cheeks. I feel so free, having said it. Finally having it out there.
“They fucking terrify me too,” he says, holding me tightly in his arms. He presses his jaw to my chest, between my breasts, and I hold his head there.
One of my tears falls from my cheek and lands on the back of my thumb, then rolls off into his hair. “Do they?”
He nods. “Yeah. Scare the living shit out of me.”
I smile down at him and run my fingers through his hair.
“They’re like unsocialized adults. Scary. Annie’s not, but that’s only because I know her.”
Annie. God. I forgot about Annie. Here I am talking about how kids make me want to run. But it’s about honesty. It’s about the truth. And that’s the truth, what I told him. The simple truth.
“Women take the brunt of it,” he says matter-of-factly. “You give up the most. Doesn’t matter what anybody says.”
Again, the tears start. But it’s not a sad crying. It’s pure, easy, delightful relief. He wipes my tears from my cheeks, and whispers, “Okay, then. My turn.”
“Yeah.”
He wraps his hands around my waist, and I can almost feel his fingertips touch at my spine. “I like this, you know. A whole fucking lot.”
“Me too,” I whisper back. “I don’t think it would’ve been like this with anybody but you.”
He takes a steadying breath. “I’m fucking petrified I will lose tomorrow. That my whole career will go down the drain. All my life, I’ve been worried about tomorrow. The game that could change everything. If we win tomorrow, we go to the championships. And if we win the championships, we go to the Super Bowl. I have lost tomorrow’s game so many times, Mary. In my head, and in the past. I’m not going to get another chance.”
“Do you think you’ll lose?” I lean forward a little. As I do, I involuntarily tighten around him and he groans. So I relax, relax, relax again. Until we are back to being one.
“I think I’m going to lose, yeah,” he says with misty eyes. “Don’t you dare tell that to anybody. But I do think I’ll lose.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he says, pressing his forehead to my ribcage. “Because I can’t fucking remember how to win.”
“You won last week,” I reassure him.
He looks up at me. “Yeah.”
“So…”
“That was different. Somehow. This is bigger. This is worse.”
It’s the same thought pattern I’ve heard from him before. Not to celebrate the victory, but to worry about the potential for screwing it all up the next go-round. It’s not an uncommon way to think about things really, but if I could erase that from him, I would.
So he could see how remarkable he is. How sweet. How talented.
“What happens if you win?” I ask. “What happens when you win?”
He shakes his head. “It won’t happen. Don’t tell them I think that.”
“Nothing you say to me leaves this room. Ever.”
His nostrils flare. And now it’s his turn for tears. It breaks my heart, this massive hunk of a man reduced to tears in my arms. But also it’s an honor. This isn’t sex.
This is love.
Love the likes of which I’ve never even imagined.
Irrational, sudden, head-over-heels love. The kind of love that gets people married.
The kind of love that changes everything.
Forever.
“I think you can. I think you will,” I tell him.
He blinks a few times quickly to clear away the tears. “You do?”
“Yes, I do.” I’m not lying to him. I don’t think I could, even if I tried. Not like this. Not now. “I believe in my heart you can win. And I don’t know why you don’t believe it too.”
He presses his lips together again, and dissolves one more time in my arms. “I’m so afraid of fucking up, Mary. I’m so afraid they’re going to trade me. And I only just found you.”
“I know you are.” I press my forehead to his. He stirs inside me, swelling almost, pressing on parts of me I didn’t even know I had. Like the more we talk, the more we share, the closer we get to something absolutely perfect. “You’re not going anywhere. Not if I have anything to do with it. You just have to believe it too.”
“Yeah,” he says. But I can tell he doesn’t buy it.
“Believe it, Jimmy Falconi. Believe it.”
We stay just like that for a long, long time, until finally, all wrapped up in one another, he starts thrusting into me slowly, so slowly, from below, in a rhythmic hypnosis that feels different from any other experience I’ve ever had.
Hail Mary Page 23