by Box Set
I tried not to gasp too loudly, but I had actually never felt full-body shivers like that before. How? I had clearly been kissing all the wrong frogs.
You’re perfect, I thought to myself.
But either he could mind read or I must have actually said it out loud, because he whispered, “You’re not so bad yourself,” before tugging me back to him so he could reclaim my lips.
Our makeout session grew hotter and more frantic, and soon, he pulled me up with him so we were both on our knees. “Hands up,” he commanded then lifted my nightshirt over my head, leaving me in nothing but my lace trimmed panties—Batman this time. Hey, they came in a set. For justice!
Marc’s eyes drifted down my body, lingering on my breasts until my nipples were laser beams under his gaze. He chuckled when he noticed the panties, but they didn’t kill his mood like they did last time. If anything, his dick got harder. Vindication!
It wasn’t difficult to notice with my hand wrapped around him as tightly as it was.
I tugged him once, experimentally, and he groaned. “Fuck. Yes.”
Eagerly, he slipped his fingers past the lace to rub against my clit. At the same time he sucked a nipple into his mouth.
“Jiminy Christmas,” I gasped, clawing against his back with my free hand. I was on fire. I was fire—consuming every bit of oxygen I could draw into my lungs—and Marc was the fuel, igniting me with his mouth, with his fingers. With the thick cock I pumped in my fist. Hands down, the sexiest moment of my entire life.
“I want you,” he moaned as I rubbed my palm over his crown. “I want you so bad.”
“Have me,” I said, breathily, and all I could think was finally. Finally!
“Hold on. Condom.” Annoying, but honestly I find responsibility kind of sexy too.
I kept my hand on him, stroking him up and down as he leaned back to grab a foil packet from his nightstand drawer. After tearing it open with his teeth, he handed the rubber to me.
Which was no big deal.
Even though I’d never put a condom on a man before in my life. What? It was a skill I never learned in health class, and then it would have been awkward and weird to try and figure it out later, so I always just let my boyfriends do it.
It couldn’t be too hard, I told myself.
After all, I can take apart and put back together all kinds of machinery around the office. Ripping open the wrapper successfully was a good first start. I held up the condom to the light like it was a contact lens and figured out which direction things were happening in.
Fabulous. I was practically an expert already.
With all my focus on my task—okay, not all my focus, because Marc had resumed the finger exploration happening in my panties—I set the condom on his tip and had just started to roll it down his shaft when the doorbell rang.
“Ignore it,” Marc hissed.
“Oh, I am.” Was the condom supposed to unroll this way? It seemed inside out. I took it off his cock and examined it. The tip was there, so that—
“Are you—? For fuck’s sake. Give it over,” Marc said, impatiently. “We’re adding this to the lessons.” It took approximately two seconds for him to place and unroll. The doorbell rang again. this time followed by heavy pounding.
And not the kind of heavy pounding I’d been looking forward to.
“Don’t stop,” I whispered, so damn keyed up at the prospect of actually feeling Marc inside me. His fingers went down to make sure I was ready for him, touching just the spot that was craving him most. I whimpered, and his tip started to slide in.
“Yoohoo! I brought you guys some breakfast!” yelled Ava from outside. “Open up. Are you guys asleep? I know you’re home—I see your cars.”
Marc froze, panic in his eyes. “She has a spare key. We have to stop!”
“Don’t you dare stop,” I panted. I was so close, and his fingers kept working their magic, and oh my god it’s Ava we were talking about. “Do you think she’d actually use it?” I truly didn’t know. Ava didn’t make a point of just swinging through very often, and I always opened the door.
The banging paused—both on the door and in the bedroom—and Marc and I strained our ears to see if she’d come in. Unable to stand the suspense on either front any longer, I reached down too, and pressed Marc’s fingers down, reminding him what he was doing. I crested into orgasm just as he started to push further inside, so he stopped to let me ride it out.
It was silent for several seconds. Then there was the distinct sound of a key. In a lock.
The only thing I could hear was our rapid ragged breaths and the beat of my heart echoing in my ears. The faint sound of regret as the sex-train left the station without me in it. Again.
“Fuck.” Marc said, pulling out completely and scurrying off the bed.
“Fuck,” I echoed, grabbing my nightshirt as I jumped to the floor and fled to my room. Really we should have been saying Fuck-Not, because that was totally more accurate at this point.
In my bedroom, I quiet-slammed the door and stood against it breathing heavily. My body was still quivering with the aftermath, but I could hear Ava buzzing around—in the kitchen, maybe?
“Madison?” she called out. “Hey! I brought you cinnamon rolls. I know you always get anxious while you’re drawing for your ComicCon booth. Get up and eat one with me!”
Not what I wanted to be eating at the moment.
But Ava’s cinnamon rolls were actually pretty amazing. Also, I do stress over ComicCon. It was pretty hard to stay irritated at such an excellent friend. “Give me a sec and I’ll be right out!”
I counted to ten, deciding that was long enough to make it seem like I was just waking up. Then, faking a yawn, I shuffled to the kitchen.
Marc was already there, wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else. As if I needed a reminder of what I was missing out on. Unf. Did I say Greek god? More like Norse. All he needed was a hammer to be Thor. Then again, he was basically packing that sort of heat in his jeans, so.
I was so busy ogling, it took me a second to notice his horrified expression.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered as Ava brewed more coffee. “She doesn’t know anything.” She totally knew everything, but he didn’t know so I figured it was a good deed to keep up the pretense.
“I can’t find the condom,” he whispered back.
“What was that?” Ava asked turning back from the coffee pot.
Marc’s face went ashen.
Having already learned he wasn’t great at improvisation, I covered for him. “He said your cinnamon rolls are awesome. Which they are.” Awesome sounded sort of like condom. Didn’t it?
“Oh my god,” she said, laughing. “For some reason I thought you said condom.”
“Ha,” Marc choked through gritted teeth. “That would be…weird.” No poker face on that guy.
“Condom,” I said too cheerily. “How funny is that? You should get your hearing checked.”
I turned to grab creamer from the fridge for Ava, shooting Marc a panicked look when she couldn’t see me.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” he mouthed. Oh, that mouth. I was utterly ruined for normal conversation with him, now that I knew what his mouth could be doing instead of talking.
Despite Marc’s assurance, he remained visibly tense while we stood in the kitchen listening to Ava’s recount her latest bad date. In detail.
Twenty minutes later, her coffee was finished, even if her story wasn’t. Still talking, she crossed to put her dirty mug in the sink, then, as she turned back toward us, she stopped abruptly mid-sentence.
“He told you he’d let you get dessert if you…what?” I prompted, not really as interested as I sounded. After all, she’d just ruined my dessert.
“If I. If.” She blinked then shook her head, as if trying to dismiss a thought. “If I paid for it myself,” she said in a rush. “I’m sorry. I just remembered somewhere I’m supposed to be. I’ll call you, Mad-Dog.”
She gave Marc a half-hug and pecked me on the c
heek and then bustled out as quickly as she’d arrived.
“That was odd,” he said, staring after her.
That was when I spotted it. Plain as day, lying on the kitchen floor, undoubtedly seen by Ava. Entirely possible it was the reason for her sudden departure. And extremely plausible it would completely unhinge my roommate, who it seemed was not to become my screwmate today, either.
At least I had more material for the sitcomic. I couldn’t hold it in anymore.
“Hey, um… Marc?” I said, pointing to the ground. “I found the condom.”
Chapter 8
“There was a condom. On the kitchen floor,” Ava sang when I answered the phone in lieu of a greeting.
I dropped my pen on the drafting table and sat back on my stool. “I’m surprised it took you this long to call about that.” It had been almost a week since the kitchen condom episode, and I hadn’t heard a word from Ava. “I was beginning to think you didn’t see it.”
“Oh, I saw it. It’s taken me this long to recover.”
“I thought you wanted me to bang your cousin! I can’t keep up.”
“I do want you to bang him. I don’t want to see your used condoms. It said Extra Large. Right there on your kitchen floor.”
“It hadn’t been used.” Much. Unfortunately. “And I can’t help it that your cousin has a—is a big man on campus.” A campus I hadn’t seen since that day, sadly.
“Not making it better, Madison! It was unwrapped! And in your kitchen. I’m guessing that means the two of you have a kinky thing going, but remind me to come and thoroughly bleach all exposed surfaces before eating anything at your house. Ever again.”
“What? No, no. You have this all wrong,” I said, more than a little annoyed. “My kitchen is clean. There was no banging in the kitchen. There was no banging at all. But you are welcome to come and bleach any time your heart desires.”
“If there was no banging, then why was there a condom?”
“Because we were about to bang when someone showed up with cinnamon rolls. We hurried to get dressed and, best that I can guess, the condom got stuck to my nightshirt. And then fell on the kitchen floor to await your disapproving glance.”
“Oh.” She was quiet for a beat, and I could practically hear the look on her face changing from relief to puzzlement rapidly. “But you’ve banged since?”
With a sigh, I threw my head back and stared at the ceiling. “No. We haven’t.”
“But— Why the fuck not?”
“It’s complicated.” I realized as soon as the answer was out of my mouth that it wasn’t going to be enough for Ava. No gossip left behind was her motto, and when it was about someone besides myself, I appreciated it. Sadly, it was my sad sexless life that would be served up as fresh tea to the other girls as soon as we hung up.
“Between the extra work I had at the print shop after the pipe damage and working up merchandise for my ComicCon booth, I barely saw Marc last week. Then he had to go home early for some big farmer’s market thing. I was at the shop when he got back last night; he was asleep when I got home. Blah, blah, blah. We’re back to the old Invisible Roommate days.” I sighed heavily. Marc was, of course, far too polite to show up in my room in the middle of the night. And I was too nervous to do it to him. It was good while it lasted, though.
“You know what your problem is, Madison? You don’t put your own happiness as a priority. You should do that now and then.”
“I’ll try to remember that.” For example, my happiness currently demanded some mac and cheese. And that was a thing I was unlikely to be let down by.
“What about today? You still have six hours until you have to be at work.” She had me there, though. Could I? Could I demand some satisfaction? Maybe not, but I knew I needed to give it a shot.
“Well, Marc was gone when I woke up, but I think I just heard him come in.” That was true. Surely he was feeling just as frustrated as me.
“Party time! Go get some, girl. Then tell me all about it. But not the parts that I don’t want to hear. Just the other parts.”
“Will do.” I didn’t bother to ask how I was supposed to guess which parts she wanted to hear and which she didn’t because, frankly, it wasn’t any of her business. I was tempted to tell her that, actually, but it went against the unwritten understanding that best friends have rights to full disclosure, even if that friend was the town crier, and anyways I wasn’t in the mood to debate my privacy boundaries.
Besides, I really would tell her everything. Except about his cucumber. There just wasn’t anything to tell, and that fact had admittedly made me a bit cranky.
“Now let me go so I can get something done.”
“You mean get someone done.” She giggled at her own joke.
“Shut up, or I’ll send pics. Goodbye, Ava.”
“Bye!”
I clicked my cell off and used two fingers on each hand to massage my temples. Despite what Ava had suggested, I wasn’t planning to literally jump Marc right now. I wanted to—I really, really wanted to—but with our stupid seduction plan, I’d just get shot down. But she was right about one thing, which was that I had not been very vocal about getting laid since the last aborted attempt.
Today that ended. There was an errand I’d been putting off, and I planned to tackle that next.
I grabbed my purse, slipped on my flippy-floppies, and was on my way. As I walked out, I bumped into Marc carrying an armload of books to the dining room.
“What on earth?” I exclaimed when I saw the table. It was filled with more books. Stacks and stacks of them. “Did you rob a library?”
I desperately wanted him to say yes, because that would be a pretty badass move.
He put down the pile in his arms and greeted me with a grin. “No, I just picked up a few resources on wine. It’ll help us get better at tastings.” He proudly displayed what looked like a hundred scholarly tomes on grape varietals.
“Uh.” I scanned a few of the titles. The Grape Grower. A Beginner’s Guide to Vitaculture. The Organic Backyard Vineyard. The Weekend Vintner. The Vintner’s Compendium of Grapes. Not quite as badass. But very, very Marc.
It must have taken him several trips to get them in the house. I couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten them to his car from the library.
And, as far as I was concerned, all of them could go.
Which was maybe not fair.
So, in an attempt to give him the benefit of the doubt, I picked one up and flipped through it. “Soil notes?” The doubt was gone. “No. Just no.”
“Soil is important! Nitrate levels affect the flavor of the end product,” Marc protested.
“Says the farmer.” I took a deep breath and squinted, trying to figure out the best way to explain alternative forms of learning to someone who was married to the traditional methods. “Look. Marc. Nothing you read is going to help you get better at taste. How did you not understand that getting better at wine meant we just drink a shit-ton of it?”
“Reading—”
I cut him off. “—is not experience. The words on those pages has nothing to do with the buds on your tongue.” His amazingly talented tongue. On my bud. Aw, yes.
Now I was distracted.
I shook my head and forced myself to focus. “The only way to learn a taste is to taste it. It’s like—I’m on my way out to buy seduction-worthy lingerie. I imagine you think that could be done online, too, huh?”
Marc’s eyebrows perked. “You’re going lingerie shopping?”
“Yes. And, since the point of lingerie is to highlight the body, it’s a task best done in the flesh and not ordered over the Internet.” It wasn’t a perfect analogy, but I figured it would do the trick.
It did do the trick. Marc had forgotten all about the books, and was now focused solely on lingerie. “You’re planning to go try on lingerie?”
“Yeah. To make sure I have the perfect fit and all.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Why do you need to com
e? I am more than capable of choosing my own underpants.”
“The fact that you call them underpants says that you have no business choosing seduction-garments for yourself.”
“Whatever.”
“Have you even looked at yourself in the mirror lately?”
“No. What? Why?” I ran to look in the hall mirror and found my nose and forehead were covered with ink. A glance down at my fingers showed ink all over them too. I slipped into the bathroom and washed up before returning to the dining room.
“You really think you’re capable of managing your own appearance?” he asked a bit smugly for my taste.
“I’m an artist. Ink stains come with the territory.” I suddenly worried my last, um, drawing session had left ink in other incriminating places on my body.
“You need me.”
“I don’t—”
He leaned in so he was only a couple inches from my face, and said sternly, “I’m coming, and that’s the end of the story.”
The sudden transition to professor mode was hot. I couldn’t argue with Hot Professor Marc.
“Fine,” I said with a huff. “But if you’re coming, you’re paying for half of anything I buy.” Seemed only fair since the lingerie was as much for him as it was for me.
He didn’t argue.
Half an hour later, Marc and I stood wide-eyed inside the door of Get it On, the closest “adult store” to our house, according to Siri.
It was a veritable sex wonderland. The very air itself was scented with edible strawberry lube. Bins of dildos competed for attention with racks of sexy nurse and French maid costumes. There was an entire aisle devoted to anal. An entire aisle. This was absolutely going into the Screwmates sitcomic.
Also, it was very clear to me that the entire rest of the world was having more and better sex than I’d ever even dreamed of experiencing. It made me want to go right back to hiding in my room, to be honest. I was so much further out of my depth than I’d even known. But no, no. This was me moving out into the big world, no nervousness. I was learning from the sex thing.
“When you said we were getting lingerie, I was thinking something more like Victoria’s Secret,” Marc said under his breath.