by Liora Blake
“Aside from the fact you disappeared on me in the middle of the night, I’ve got another bone to pick with you.”
I let my purse fall to swing at my side. “What?”
“You know what.” Tugging me forward, he walks us to the front door, unlocks it, and pulls us into the dark house, flicking on a light switch to illuminate the hallway leading to his bedroom. Only when he has us right outside his bedroom does he say anything else. “You forgot something in here.”
His chin tips up, prompting me to go in the room. “I got that picture for you. It was a gift, and you said you loved it. Go grab it.” He drops my hand.
Shuffling, I step into the room and the only light inside comes from hallway. The framed photo remains where I left it, perched atop his dresser, and when I look at it again, the same sensations it first inspired return in a rush. Knowing I should reach out and pick it up, I try to command my arms to lift, but I find myself fixed in place and somewhere behind all the logical thoughts about what I should be doing, there is only the hope that I want Simon to make me stay. Ask me, inspire me, want me to stay here with him for another night.
When I look up, he’s right there. Peering around the doorway and into the room, gaze soft and steady.
“You don’t have to go, you know. If you want to, you could stay.”
From the simple words and their tone, he isn’t asking, merely making a statement and leaving it there to hang between us until I decide what to do. And I can tell he needs me to decide, to choose to stay this time. So I close my eyes and nod my head.
I’m a morning person. Waking up and staring at the ceiling at the crack of dawn isn’t unheard-of, whether I’m in my bed or Simon’s. When I do, if I can’t fall asleep again, I usually haul my ass out of bed and do something worthwhile. Fold the laundry, bake some bread, maybe drive to the beach and wait for the sun to come up. I like how the streets are quiet at dawn, the dew that covers the grass at sunrise, the way everything about the day still has such sweet promise.
When I wake up this time, I try to lie there under the pleasant weight of Simon’s arm across my waist, but can only manage it for an hour or so. Finally, I decide perhaps I can get up and do something productive, like make coffee. No clue what Simon and I are going to do with each other when the glaringly unforgiving light of daytime has us standing on his porch doing some weird-ass good-bye scene, but coffee should help. Even after last night, the way he was patient enough to let me choose this, I still can’t wrap my head around the concept that we’re dating instead of just enjoying all the benefits of really amazing casual sex.
In the kitchen, the sunlight streaming in puts the extent of his atrocious cabinet disarray on full display. It takes a great deal of my self-control not to start taking everything out and organizing all of it. The hilarious part is that half of the shelves are empty, and the ones that aren’t are crammed full. If he just put the glasses here and then the plates over there, it would make so much more sense. If he just . . . no, no, no.
This is the kind of job for that beautiful, quiet, smart girl he’s going to marry someday, not me, the crazy chick standing in his kitchen wearing just a T-shirt of his, a bunch of tattoos, and nothing else. This elusive pretty girl will be wearing an ivory silk robe, with little square glasses that make her look like a sexy librarian, and she’ll probably have a delicate French manicure instead of nails clipped to the quick like mine. Because on top of everything else that will be perfect about her, she’ll probably have her own trust fund and won’t need short nails to work as a massage therapist. She’ll spend her days doing charity work and finishing her PhD in rocket science or some shit.
Eventually, I find the coffee in a cabinet with the cleaning supplies, because that is exactly where it should go, right? Once it starts brewing, I try to figure out breakfast. Unfortunately, he wasn’t kidding about his affection for cereal. There are fifteen boxes of cereal in a single cabinet. The good stuff, too. By “good,” I mean the kind that ten-year-old boys think of as good. Corn Pops, Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, Trix. Shoved in toward the back is one sad-looking of box of Grape-Nuts, never opened, with a thin layer of dust on the top. He must have been on a health kick when he bought it, then the moment passed when all the sugary delights stared back at him.
I pull a few boxes out and set them on the counter, reading the nutrition labels, for no particular reason other than to torture myself, I guess. From down the hall, suddenly, I hear him grumbling.
“Jesus fucking Christ. You have got to be shitting me.”
The cursing is followed by stomping, the thump of a dresser drawer closing, and the slamming of the bathroom door. Standing in the kitchen, holding a box of Cookie Crisp, I start to panic a little. He sounds pissed. Maybe he’s the opposite of a morning person. Water runs in the bathroom for a bit, then he’s moving down the hall—I know, because he’s in the middle of a rambling speech to himself.
“. . . if she thinks for one second I’m going to let this go, she’s delusional. Come over here, destroy me, and then leave again? Not allowed. I don’t fucking think so—”
Oh, hell, no. The kid is babbling about me. He thinks I left, and now he’s pulling some caveman crap about being in charge. Which he is only getting away with because he thinks he’s alone. When he rounds the corner, he should enjoy the sight of me while he can, because once I put him in his place, I’m out of here. I don’t care if he did take me on a date and manage to coax more wild orgasms out of me last night, none of that means accepting the words “not allowed” in reference to me.
“. . . I’ll Lloyd Dobler her ass, and she’ll be sorry for treating this like some dumbass hookup. No sleep for her with me outside her window, that’s for damn sure—”
I’m leaning up against the counter with my right hip, holding the stupid box of cereal in front of me with both hands, trying consciously to stop from crushing it in my fierce grip. When he turns into the room, he has both hands raking through his hair. He sees me and his hands freeze in place. The fact he is standing there in only a pair of pajama bottoms, with his arms raised up high, causes a momentary distraction from my pissed-off state. They’re hanging obscenely low, so I can see all the ink on his torso and the taut rise of every muscle surrounding it, including the deep ridges that edge his hipbones.
Do not focus on the bare skin, Devon. Do not think about the rest of him. Whatever you do, don’t get sucked in by the delectable sight of him right now.
His jaw drops and then snaps shut. I raise my eyebrows at him and don’t say a word.
“Oh, shit. I thought you bailed on me.”
I nod my head and purse my lips together. “Clearly.”
“Don’t look at me like that. We’ve been here before. When I woke up to an empty bed, it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption that you left.”
“Did you not notice my clothes on the floor? Figured I left like this?” Tossing the cereal box on the counter, I gesture to my current state of dress. A thin white shirt of his, just long enough to cover my bare ass. Classy, that’s for sure.
A growl leaves his throat as his eyes run over my body and he curls his hands into fists at his sides. “I didn’t do any detective work, Devon.”
“Well, maybe you should have. Instead of going off on a tear about me being delusional and some guy named Lloyd. Whoever the hell he is.”
“He’s a movie character.”
“Even better.”
“Say Anything. Old movie. This guy, Lloyd, when his girl breaks up with him, he stands outside her window with a boom box, playing this song that was on when they had sex. So if I needed to put on my Clash T-shirt and drive over to your house and make you nuts by playing ‘In Your Eyes’ on a loop, I was going to.”
Simon stands there and stares at me, with this annoyed and exasperated look on his face, as if I should obviously understand why this fictitious Lloyd dumbass should mean something to me. If I want to avoid talking about Lloyd some more, I probably have to set him straight about
what is going on this morning.
“I woke up an hour ago and figured I could make some coffee or breakfast. But since you apparently truly don’t eat anything other than cereal, I only got as far as the coffee.” His eyes dart to the coffeemaker, as if he’s checking to see if I’m lying about that part.
I roll my eyes and point to his bare chest. “It’s a fucking mystery to me how that body”—I gesture to the handful of cereal boxes on the counter—“is the result of this kind of diet. This shit is terrible for you.”
“Yeah? You like what you see, Dev?”
Before I can come up with anything smart-ass enough to say, to claim the power back in this conversation, he tilts his head and crooks one eyebrow up. “Don’t move.”
He disappears down the hall. When he returns, he stalks over to me, tosses a condom down on the countertop, and shoves his hands up in my hair. “Let’s try this again.”
When his mouth slams into mine, every motion of his lips and tongue is fierce, demanding, and it melts all my anger into heated craving. The way his hands pull my neck forward, it drives our mouths together so intensely that I can’t breathe properly, relying on his breath to feed my own. Pulling back, he grips his hands to either side of my neck and forces me to look at him.
“Good morning, sunshine.”
“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” My eyes dart to the condom.
A lopsided grin covers his face and his eyes, with the morning sun streaming in from the front windows, flicker with sparks of platinum gray.
“What did you think was going to happen? Standing here in my kitchen wearing my shirt and nothing else. Did you think I wasn’t going to spread your legs and fuck you on the counter? Come on, baby, you’re smarter than that.”
In the context of those words and his smile, fighting seems pointless now. I’ll put him in his place in a little bit. Later, after he puts me up on the counter and does a series of dirty things to me. Later, later, later.
Pushing his hands up the shirt, he covers my breasts and proceeds to fondle the flesh with full, grasping caresses, his palms flat over my nipples and pressing down heavily. Any resistance on my part dies when his mouth finds my neck, biting down so hard the sting aches immediately. My hands respond by dropping into the back of his loose pajama pants and pulling his body closer, before nudging them down until his cock springs out and prods against my belly. I try to wrestle my body up onto the counter, but he halts me with a jerk of his hips and bends his knees a little so he can shove his length down between my legs.
Despite the way I open myself a bit more to encourage him, I know it’s a dangerous game to let him glide between my legs like this, slipping across where the tip of his cock teases in just so. Because if one of us doesn’t stop, he’s going to be inside me, unprotected, and it feels so good I can’t stand it.
Circling one arm around my waist, he lifts me up onto the counter and then yanks on my hips until I’m teetering on the edge, my legs dangling down. He runs one hand up my thigh and, with his other, holds his erection and taps the head against my clit. I nearly shatter right there.
“I want this, Dev.” He taps again and then slowly rubs the tip along my wet opening. “You and me. Just like this.”
A deep moan comes from my mouth and my head drops back. “Simon, we can’t—”
“Shhh, I know. Not yet, but someday.”
The sound of the condom wrapper tearing open is almost disappointing; I think I wanted him to convince me to let him do it now. With even the smallest conversation about both of us being clean, I probably would have let him. I would have loved every second of it, too.
Seconds pass, the sound of him grunting and rolling the condom down is excruciating because I want him so much I can’t find my balance on the countertop. If he doesn’t get his arms around me soon, I’m going to topple off and onto the floor. Moving my outstretched arms around, I try to find a less unstable position, but then he’s there, pressing inside and holding me securely. I still feel a little precarious, unable to move much or meet his thrusts, which is maddening because I need to take him, instead of feeling like it’s just him taking me.
Digging my fingers into the back of his neck, I tug on the edge of his hairline until he looks up at me. “I need . . . oh God, I need—”
“What, Devon? Say it and it’s yours.”
I didn’t even know exactly what I needed until he looks at me with his jaw parted, trying to control his breathing. “Floor. I need to be on top.”
He hauls me off the counter, and my hands whack into a few of the cereal boxes and they fall, spilling onto the floor as I wrap my legs around him. Once we hit the ground, I curl my legs back to perch on the balls of my feet. Perfect. Simon throws one hand up to grab the edge of the counter and I can see the flex of his triceps as he grips tightly, the Mexican sugar skull inked there dancing as he does. His eyes are clenched shut so tight it looks painful, his jaw so rigid I have to wonder if something I’m doing is too much. Is that even possible? Can a woman really be too rough on a man? If anyone could, I guess it would be me. I’m like a bull in a china shop about nearly everything—look at my minigolf swing—so that style probably extends to sex, too.
“Simon, look at me.”
His eyes flip open, and when they do, his jaw goes slack. “Fuck. I can’t . . . ”
Before I can stop him, his eyes fall closed again. It hurts that he won’t look at me and some weird feeling in my chest is tugging at the acknowledgment of it. I slow my grinding and start to move up and down his length slowly. “Too hard? Sorry, I just needed to ride you. Sorry.”
His arm drops from the counter edge and he places both hands to my hips. Even as he starts to speak, his eyes stay closed. “Never say you’re sorry when we’re together. And, no, I can handle anything you give me, don’t worry about that.”
When his hands grip my hips so firmly I can’t move anymore, he finally opens his eyes, then pulls his hands up and knots his fingers into my hair. “If I look at you, I’ll come too fast. I want you to get there first, but you feel too damn good and if I look at you moving on top of me like that, I’m done for.”
I shake my head and let out a frustrated whimper. “I don’t care. Just look at me, please.”
Simon wraps his fingers tighter into my scalp and gives my head a little shake, ensuring that I’m listening.
“Don’t hold back, then. Just take what you need, because when you start to move that body I’ll be about a minute away from losing it. If you start moaning or screaming, it won’t even take that long.”
His body relaxes but his hands remain in my hair as I start to move, locking my eyes with his to be sure he doesn’t cheat and close them again. As my hips find their bucking rhythm again, I can see him fight the pull. But I want him powerless to it all, to my body and to the way I feel around him, so I let out a long moan that twists into something wild and deep when I come. At the sound, he finally gives in, and looks so starved for mercy that seeing what I did to him makes it all even hotter.
When I lean back from his chest, the shifting of my knees on the hard kitchen floor sounds a crunching noise, and I realize that we’re sitting in a sea of cereal on the floor. Crushed under my knees, his ass, his hands, and our legs. It’s everywhere. When Simon opens his eyes, he sees me gawking around at the mess. Stretching both of his arms out, he grabs a cereal box in each hand and holds them up.
“Corn Pops or Count Chocula? You earned first choice, sunshine.”
10
I refuse to eat any of his diabetes-inducing and cancer-causing cereal. Instead, I put my skirt and sweater on, thinking that will prevent any further hijinks, and sit on the counter while he pours three different types of cereal into a mixing bowl and covers them with almond milk. Then he stands next to me, leaning against the countertop, and proceeds to babble about ratios, appropriate mix-ins, and the proper pairing of different milks with certain cereals. The lecture includes a long-winded section about the merits of almond
milk versus soy milk and a theory about the mysterious and cruel discontinuation of free toys in cereal boxes.
In between his rattling, he stops occasionally, tucking some hair behind my ear or leaning in to kiss the side of my head. Finally, I have to leave. I have to get out of here before he starts convincing me to take my skirt off again. In his eyes, there is this ever-present shimmer that makes any woman with estrogen in her system spend far too much time considering how to get horizontal with him. While I used to be able to note the shimmer and remain relatively unmoved to getting naked because of it, now it seems nearly impossible.
Once he’s finished his cereal, he grabs the shirt that I was wearing when he took me on the countertop and slips it on to walk me out. He carries my picture out for me, stowing it in the backseat of my car, wrapped in a blanket he brought from his hall closet. Then, before I can get in the driver’s seat, he wraps his arms around me and props his chin against the top of my head.
“You have clients today?”
With my face buried into his chest, I nod my head in affirmation. “All day.”
“I’ll apologize in advance for keeping you up too late. Only because it seems like the right thing to say. Not really sorry, though.”
Before I can give him some shit for assuming he could wear me out, a car pulls up behind us and stops in the middle of the street. Even with my back to the car, I can hear the window roll down and the sound of small gravel crunching as the tires roll to a stop.
“Simon! Morning! Thanks so much for watching our place last week.”
Simon’s hands are placed very inappropriately, and our lewd embrace is now on full display to whomever it is that has stopped. One hand is firmly on my ass, the other run up the back of my cropped sweater, resting against the bare skin of my lower back with his fingernails scratching lightly in tiny circles. I’m sure the nosy neighbor is really getting an eyeful, although it can’t be the first time Simon has been outside in broad daylight, feeling up a chick whose body looks all worn-out and boneless from his antics. Probably why the neighbor doesn’t think twice about stopping to have a conversation.