After dessert, Danny whispers in my ear that he’s got one more important thing to do, one more trick up his sleeve to make tonight perfect, and then we can slip out. I nod, unable to ever remember feeling quite so much all at once ever in my life before now.
To my complete surprise, I watch Dad and Danny take to a platform, and announce—in front of everyone, including all the magazine reporters and bloggers in attendance—that early next year, they’ll be purchasing a building for a second location in the city. I clap and beam until my hands and cheeks ache, bursting with so much pride for the two most important men in my life and their success.
Danny and I are on each other the second we get in the door, kissing like two people desperate for each other like we were drowning without each other – like maybe we want to drown in each other. He slides his hands to my back and undoes the zipper on my dress. I step out of it, shivering, and pull on his hand, guiding him toward my bedroom.
Unlike last time, I want to do this slowly—I want to savor it. I don’t regret the first time we had sex, especially since we’ve ended up here, but I want this time to be more. I kiss Danny again, laying back in my bed when we get there. Danny takes his jacket off and crawls over me, running his hands over my skin.
“Slow this time?” Danny asks, reading my mind, running his hands over my stomach and ribs in delicious lines.
“Mmm. Yes, please,” I say, arching up under his touch. He slides his hands up, under my bra, and I lift myself so he can take it from me entirely.
“Good,” Danny says, with a smirk, “because there is something I’ve really been wanting to do.”
He starts licking lines on my neck, then down to my chest, over my breasts, licking my nipples while he spreads my legs with his hands. I moan with delight as he licks his way down my ribcage, over my stomach and my hipbones. He’s taking his time, and I can feel him everywhere, like every touch of his hands and flick of his tongue is taking me higher, out of myself, floating away.
He hooks his fingers in my underwear and pulls them down, then starts licking again, over my thighs, before spreading my legs even wider and then running a single finger over my already-soaked clit. He follows the finger with his tongue, and I buck against him, crying out at the feeling. He licks me gently at first, so slow it’s like he’s teasing, before building up the speed and pressure.
The heat in me builds up with him, waves coming over me under his tongue. I fist my hands into the sheets, twisting and turning, crying out over and over at the feeling of him. He keeps up his speed, running his tongue all over me, on the sides, around, and then back directly on my clit. It feels so good that the edges of my vision go a little white at the feeling.
He anchors his hand on my hips, holding me down as he continues, until I cry out again, feeling my orgasm approaching. He licks me through it as I come, shuddering and gasping, and just holds my hips still for a minute, then crawls back up to me, smiling.
“You’re still dressed,” I say, still gasping. He grins at me.
“We’ve got a lot of time still to fix that,” he says, winking.
“We do,” I agree, pulling him down to kiss him over and over. I still want to take my time. I want to touch him, have his cock in my mouth and inside me. I want to feel him everywhere. I want to make this time last.
Chapter Twenty-Four - Danny
Charlotte is breathing heavy as she tugs on my shirt, pulling quickly for as slow as we both said we want to go this time. I pull it over my head, feeling just as eager. She had been so hot under my tongue, crying out for me as I licked her, and it just made me want her more. It made me want all of her. She pulls on my pants as soon as my shirt is off, hands on the fly.
“Should I be careful with these? Since they’re formal,” she asks like she’s suddenly thought of it and she’s concerned. I grin and kiss her again, thinking of her own dress on the floor of her living room.
“They’ll dry clean,” I say against her lips. She smiles back and then tugs the pants off with my underwear so we’re both naked and breathing heavily. Charlotte kisses my chest, and then my stomach, eyes locked on mine. She grins at me as she wraps a hand around my already throbbing hard cock. I groan, not bothering to hold it back as she starts to stroke me.
I thread a hand into her hair as she slides down me, bringing her mouth to meet her hand, licking little lines on the head of my cock first before she takes me in her mouth, lips around me and eyes locked on mine.
“Shit,” I bite out, “that’s so good.”
She runs her hands over my stomach as she brings me in and out of her mouth. She feels incredible, and I tighten the hand I have in hair, gasping as she sucks me. I can’t stop watching her, can’t stop staring at how she looks like this for me. I rock my hips up, fucking her mouth just a little, and she picks up speed in response. I’m so close to the edge of everything from licking her, from her mouth, from the tension of everything lately breaking. I want her to not stop, not ever. I want something else, right now.
“Wait,” I say, pulling on her hair, gently. I groan a little when she stops, even though it was my idea. She pulls up and looks at me, curious.
“Wait?” She repeats. I run my hand over face, running my thumb over her lips, all pink and swollen.
“I want to come inside you,” I say. Charlotte closes her eye for a minute, shuddering and nodding her head.
“Yes,” she says. She slides back up, still underneath me, and grabs one of my hands, guiding it to clit, where she’s still soaked. “Please, yes.”
“Yes,” I repeat, dragging my hand over her clit a few times before sliding my cock inside her, making us both cry out. She kisses me again, pulling me down to her, hard, as I fuck her. She brings her hips up to meet mine, rolling them meet my strokes.
We move in unison for a while, spending several minutes lost in each other, both moaning, biting back curses. It’s that same electric feeling, the hot, boiling one, except more intense now, somehow. The tension builds and breaks quickly like I knew it would, and I come inside her, losing my rhythm but feeling her come around me only a few seconds later.
For a moment we don’t move, and then I pull out of her and lay beside her. Charlotte burrows herself into my arms. I can feel how fast her heart is still beating. She looks more beautiful than ever this way: her eyes are wide and her skin is pink, and she’s looking at me like all she wants is to stay here with me forever.
That’s all I want, too, I think, more sure of the statement than of anything I can remember being sure of.
“Tonight has been so perfect,” Charlotte whispers, putting her head on my chest. “Thank you.”
“Thank you, beautiful,” I say, kissing her forehead. “You saved the Dock’s End.”
“You would have figured it out eventually,” Charlotte says, but she’s smiling.
“Maybe not,” I say truthfully. “I was so convinced it was connected to Anthony that I wasn’t even looking into anything else.”
“You had good reason to suspect him, though. He sounds awful,” Charlotte says, wrinkling her nose and making me need to kiss her again, so I do, kissing her softly, intimately. I’m not used to this. I’ve never been in the kind of relationship with talking and cuddling after sex . . . with a woman I wanted to talk to after, to keep beside me like this all night.
“He is,” I say, “but I guess not awful enough to try and take down the Dock’s End.”
“I’m glad,” Charlotte says, “and I’m glad it all worked out.”
“All thanks to you, and to that guardian angel of a patient of yours,” I say. “Really, how can I ever thank you?”
“I can think of a few ways,” Charlotte says, grinning and leaning up to kiss me again, and then again. I thread my hand through her hair, bringing her in even closer to me. I can feel her sigh against me, feel the way her skin is still warm, feel all of her deep inside me. I think I want hundreds, thousands of more times, just like this.
I’ve never been in love bef
ore. For a long time, I wasn’t sure I even believed in it, that love was even a real thing you could feel and not a lie to get you to give up your free time for someone else’s benefit. I’d certainly never seen it growing up, and I’d been happy enough to go through life without it, to spend years chasing sex, but not intimacy – not anything real. I’ve had so many women come in and out of my life in a flash, and I thought I wanted it that way, thought it was for the best.
But Charlotte makes me feel like I’d been lonely and unhappy. She makes me feel like love is real.
She makes me feel certain I’m falling in love with her.
Chapter Twenty-Five - Charlotte
Christmas morning dawns bright and sunny, the water of the bay sparkling against the icy film that has covered the tree branches and railings all over town. It’s brisk and cold and the world feels like it’s shimmering, like everything has been painted a fresh coat of silver just in time for Christmas. Danny and I head out, walking slowly and carefully to Dad’s. I cling to Danny’s arm tight, sliding a little a few times on the slippery patches of ice on the sidewalks.
Danny’s been coming over to my place almost every night since the Naval Ball, and we thought it would be best just to head over to Dad’s together. I had dropped several presents off under Dad’s tree early in the week, and Danny is carrying the rest as well as his own in the arm I’m not balanced on. Dad greets us with a wide open smile and the smell of cinnamon rolls baking in the oven. The house looks great—the decorations are more simple than I remember growing up and they make me smile.
“Merry Christmas!” I exclaimed, hugging Dad tight while Danny puts down our stack of presents.
“Merry Christmas, kitten,” Dad mumbles into my hair, kissing me on the top of my head, and the mention of the childhood nickname makes me beam. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
“Me too,” I say, and I think it couldn’t be truer. I think I’ve maybe never been so glad to be anywhere as I am to be here this morning, celebrating this Christmas with Dad and Danny.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Dad asks, clapping his hands. “Let’s eat.” He leads me and Danny to his small kitchen table where he’s laid out a breakfast for us all. I catch Danny’s eye and smile at him as we sit. Over breakfast, we update Dad on Michael and Amanda. He’s starting work for Danny’s friend after the New Year, and Amanda, and the baby has just had a health checkup. They’re having a little girl who should be born sometime in mid-January. I’ve been visiting them every few days, and I think I’ll probably keep doing so until after the baby is born.
After breakfast, we sit on the floor around the tree and pass out gifts. I think of Christmas when I was a kid and about how much better this one is. I can’t ever remember a happier, better Christmas than this simple one, holding Danny’s hand and watching Dad smile as he opens one of my gifts to him: a nice new case for the laptop he drags back and forth between the Dock’s End and his house every day.
“Oh, sweetheart, this is perfect,” Dad says, leaning over to hug me again, a little stiffer, tenser this time. “Thank you both for spending today with me. I’m sure you could have filled it up by yourselves.”
“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world,” I tell him. This morning, wrapped in Danny’s arms in my bed, we’d woken up together, kissing and wishing each other a Merry Christmas on a whisper. We could have stayed there all day, could have exchanged gifts in private, and I would have been thrilled, but this is so much better. This feels like family.
“Me either,” Danny says. “Thanks for having me here.”
“I hope this is the first of many Christmases just like this,” Dad says. “I know you two just started dating, but I have a good feeling about it.”
“Me too,” Danny says seriously, squeezing my hand like a promise.
“The best feeling,” I say, smiling at both of them. I still can’t quite believe that in Dad is so okay with me and Danny, that he’s so happy about it—but it some ways, I think it makes a lot of sense. Danny and I are probably the two people Dad is closest to in the world: the two people he cares about the most. Maybe he has to worry less about if we’re together. Maybe he likes it better that neither of us had fallen for a stranger. I’m sure Dad would have grown to care about anyone I did, would have loved anyone I did, eventually, but he doesn’t even have to try with Danny.
I think it would disappoint him if Danny and I didn’t work out. I know it’s foolish, that this is all brand new, but I have a strong feeling it will. I feel like Danny and I really will be sitting here for many Christmases to come.
I pass Danny a small box, watching excitedly as he opens the compass I had engraved with his initials the night after he took me out on his boat. It’s large and brass and its door is painted with a beautiful picture of the bay, with boats on the water. Danny’s own eyes get wide as he opens it, and he pulls me in for a quick kiss.
“Thank you,” he says, “it’s incredible.”
“I thought of you as soon as I saw it,” I say, smiling into the kiss. Danny hands me a bright blue envelope with my name on it. I’ve already opened a beautiful sweater from him and a tiny sparkling keychain in the shape of a stethoscope, both so thought I wasn’t expecting anything else.
I open the envelope and gasp at the certificate inside—it’s for sailing lessons, starting in the spring.
“You said you’d never been on a private boat, and I thought, since you live here again, you might want to learn to sail?” Danny says. His smile almost looks shy, unsure, like he’s not certain I’ll like it, or like he thinks he’s overstepped somehow. It’s such an unusual expression for Danny, so different from his normal calm and confident air that I feel my heart swell, and I slide my hand on his knee.
“This is perfect,” I say. “I’ve always wanted to do this.”
“She used to ask when she was a kid,” Dad chimes in and nods. “All the time. I would have said yes, had it been up to me.”
“I remember,” I say. “It’s perfect.”
I lean into to kiss Danny again, lightly and quickly and I feel my eyes start to water a little. It’s amazing that Danny already knows me so well to have guessed at something I haven’t even told him, to know something I’ve wanted for so long.
“You’re welcome,” Danny says, smoothing his hand over my face, an affectionate and intimate gesture that makes me feel even more emotional.
The rest of the day passes all too quickly. After gifts, we settle on the couch to watch old Christmas movies, and I snuggle under Danny’s arm on the couch as we watch and talk. At dinner, we stuff ourselves with ham and potatoes and pie. Danny says maybe he should have Dad cook for him more often, to change things up, and Dad sheepishly admits they’re Danny’s recipes. I laugh, thinking about Catherine’s family and wondering if they’re eating those famous mashed potatoes of hers, I hope they’re happy today, even without her. I wonder if they can feel her spirit still with them, the way I’m certain I can sometimes still feel her.
After dinner, we break out the wine and the Monopoly board, Danny and I protesting that Dad has an unfair advantage since he actually has property-buying experience. He has most of our money within a few hours, but I don’t mind. We talk as we play, chatting about the plans for the second location of the Dock’s End and planning scouting trips to look at potential properties and locations in the New Year. I promise I’ll come too and help them scout the neighborhoods to see if they’d be a good fit. I feel like I’m part of the team. Maybe Dad was right—maybe I do have a restaurant in my blood after all.
We talk and drink wine until it’s so late Dad says both Danny and I can just sleep in the den. We fall into the pullout couch, both happy from the wine and from Christmas.
“I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed Christmas this much,” Danny says, kissing me softly.
“Me either,” I agree. If we still had our glasses, I’d toast too much more to come, but since we don’t, I kiss Danny for it instead, hoping the mes
sage is the same.
Epilogue - Danny
The second Naval Academy Christmas Ball at the Dock’s End is even bigger than the inaugural event had been. I’ve expanded the menu, with Charlotte’s help, and there is a six-piece swing band behind the bar providing live entertainment. I think back to how I felt last year at this very moment, with Charlotte on my arm and so much trouble finally behind us. It’s incredible, it’s unbelievable, that this year feels even better. Not only is the ball bigger, but the Dock’s End is doing better than ever. We’ve had no problems since last year, and the customers and good reviews keep right on pouring in.
We opened our second location in the fall. It’s tucked away in a trendy Washington, D.C. neighborhood that I had never heard of, but that Charlotte convinced me and Hank was perfect. As usual, she was right. It’s been a booming success, garnering its own rave reviews and a steady flow of patrons. I glance over at Charlotte, at the hand, she has on my arm, the one that’s been wearing my ring since we got engaged over the summer. I can still hardly believe that this beautiful woman is with me. She’s agreed to be mine and I’ll be hers for the rest of our lives.
She looks amazing tonight, in a sparkling red dress that makes her skin look bright and soft. Her hair is pulled back, showing off the lines of her neck and her collarbones. I still don’t know if I believe in things like fate, but I can’t shake it on nights like tonight, the feeling that everything has lined up just right, somehow.
Charlotte and I are dancing when Hank comes up and says there are people here to see us. We head up to the front of the Dock’s End. Waiting by the doors are Michael, Amanda, and their daughter, Maria.
“We just wanted to stop by and thank you, again,” Michael says, grabbing Amanda’s hand. They both look happy and healthy. Maria, bundled in a warm-looking coat in her stroller, is rosy-cheeked, smiling and giggling.
“We were talking about last year and how scared we were, and about how you changed everything,” Amanda says. We haven’t seen them in a few months, but I’ve heard nothing but good things from my friend about Michael’s work performance at the lumber yard.
Daddy's Best Friend: An Older Man Younger Woman Box Set Page 33