Practice Makes Perfect

by Sarah Title

  Lou was going to be disappointed.

  Especially when she saw who it was.

  She knew the dean of the libraries, and she had met the president of Pembroke College once at a new-faculty mixer. She recognized some folks from Willow Springs: the public library director, the owner of the Daily Drip. And here they all were, in the archives.

  “Hi,” she said brightly. Because there were people in here! She really hoped they didn’t have very complicated reference questions that would test her understanding of Lou’s organizational system. Undergrad questions, no problem. The college president was probably another story.

  “Helen!” Dean Pritchart said, looking surprised. “No Lou?”

  “She’s . . .” Helen hesitated. It certainly wasn’t the end of the world for the woman to have a doctor’s appointment. And yet Helen felt guilty for telling them Lou wasn’t here. Like she was ratting out a colleague. And Lou would probably never leave the archive again.

  “She’s right here!” Lou came bounding in after the crowd of dignitaries, her purse flopping behind her. “I just got your message. Thank you so much for coming by.”

  Lou shook hands, then scurried behind the desk, hip-checking Helen out of the way. Then she launched into a speech about the age of the archives facility (“It’s almost an archive of an archive!”) and the needs of the college community and the potential partnership with the public library and the historical society. It sounded very polished, if a bit rushed. And while she talked, she waved Helen away. Helen barely had time to grab her calendar before Lou was walking her out the door. “Thank you, Helen,” Lou said, even though she had already turned around to the crowd of dignitaries.

  Lou was notoriously protective of her archives, but this was a lot, even for her. Helen hovered in the doorway and listened to Lou talk about the terrible space and lack of climate control, and the sorts of fixtures a new, state-of-the-art archive needed. New? State-of-the-art? Helen didn’t think she would ever hear those words coming out of Lou’s mouth, not seriously anyway. And yet here she was.

  Were they getting a new archives building? That would be amazing. No more finding errant historical documents behind old shelves.

  Which reminded her that she had R. Butcher’s Never You Mind tucked inside the cover of her calendar. She started back into the archive, but Lou gave her such a look that she turned around and walked back out.

  She would return R. Butcher later.

  Chapter 9

  The door was unlocked.

  As soon as he turned the knob, he heard the click-clack of doggie toenails on the hardwood floor. He poked his head through the door and shouted, “Hello?” and was greeted with George and Tammy’s strange bark-howl combination that meant “Hello, Henry, please give us treats.”

  “Henry?” came a voice from down the hall.

  “No, it’s an ax murderer!”

  “OK, can you let the dogs out real quick?”

  “OK, but then I’m coming back to ax murder you!”

  Helen didn’t respond.

  He walked through the kitchen and let the dogs out into the fenced backyard. At first they wouldn’t leave his feet, but after a minute, the enticement of the grass was too much. Business done, George, Tammy, and Henry headed back inside in search of Helen.

  She was in her office, furiously typing on her laptop.

  “Hey—” he started, but she held a finger up, then went back to typing. Henry stood in the doorway for a moment. Then he leaned on the doorjamb. Then he crossed his arms.

  “Can you go away for a second?” Helen asked without looking up from her screen.

  He should feel annoyed about the quick dismissal, but this was Helen. If she was mad at him, she would tell him. She’d promised.

  Nonplussed, he headed back to the kitchen and grabbed a beer out of the fridge.

  “Get me one too!” he heard from the office as the bottles clinked.

  “Which one is it, go away or get you a beer?”

  Helen didn’t respond.

  Deciding that delivering the beer cold was more important than leaving her alone, he walked back to the office, dogs in tow. She was staring blankly at the ceiling, and she didn’t turn when he put the beer next to her. He started to say something, but before he could even take a proper breath, she made a weird “enh” sound and went back to furiously typing.

  She seemed to be over her writer’s block.

  Their plan was working.

  He took a seat in the soft chair across the room and grunted as Tammy tried her basset-hound best to jump onto his lap. She eventually settled for Henry idly petting her ears, and Henry settled in to watch Helen work.

  He’d always liked watching her concentrate. Helen was a total extrovert with the worst poker face he’d ever seen. She was always smiling and engaging with other people. When she engaged with herself, though, she was like a whole different person. She stuck her tongue out. She squinted her eyes. She twisted her hair into strange and wonderful positions and held it there with pencils. Her focus was a laser.

  Suddenly, she stopped typing and raised her hands in the air. “Yes!” she shouted, then turned to look at him. “It’s working!”

  “Our research?” he asked, just making sure.

  “Mm-hmm.” She took a swig of her beer and came over to the chair where he sat. Without thinking, he moved his hands out of the way and she sat on his lap. “I just wrote a 1500-word make-out scene.”

  “That’s a lot of making out.”

  “Yeah. It might be too much. But better too much than too little, right?”

  “Can I read it?”

  “Not yet. Too first-draft-y. But soon.”

  He put his beer on the side table next to him and wrapped his arms around Helen’s waist. “So . . .”

  She put her beer next to his. She wrapped her arms around his neck. “So.”

  And then she leaned down and kissed him. She tasted like beer, but then, he imagined he did too.

  “So are you ready to take a writing break?” He kissed the pulse at her neck. She shivered.

  “We could still be productive,” he suggested, running his hand up the back of her shirt. Since it was in the way, he flicked her bra open.

  “Henry!”

  He stilled, hand on her back, lips on her neck.

  “How did you do that?”

  “What, the bra? You don’t know how to unhook a bra?”

  “Not one-handed! Show me!” She wiggled around to hook herself back into her bra. “I’m gonna put it in a love scene.”

  He wasn’t going to show her anything if she kept moving around on his lap like that. Well, he’d show her something. But the more she wiggled, the less interested he became in the physics of one-handed bra unhooking.

  He trapped her hips with his hands. “Later,” he growled.

  She looked down at him, surprised. Then she smiled. It reminded him of a wolf. “Later,” she agreed.

  * * *

  It had been a day full of revelations. First, that something was going on with the archive, beyond just dust collection. Helen had no idea what, but clearly Lou was trying to persuade the committee that improvements to the archives needed to be made, and she had some ideas how to do it.

  Helen should be concerned about that. She should probably talk to Henry about it; he’d definitely be interested. But at the moment, Helen was more interested in the things Henry was doing with his tongue. It involved blazing a trail down her body, pulling her clothes out of the way as he went.

  She liked this technique. There was something both seductive and demanding about it, like he couldn’t wait to get at her, but he wanted to savor every step of the way.

  She was definitely using that in a love scene.

  Which was the other revelation. Henry’s plan, crazy as it seemed a few days ago, was actually working. She was writing. She was writing a lot, and it was good. It was hot. She no longer felt like she had to close her eyes when she was typing about mouths and fing
ers and skin. It was as if working with Henry took everything she knew and loved about sex and made it legible.

  Then Henry bit her inner thigh and Helen realized she was standing in her office, in only her panties, with a fully-clothed Henry kneeling in front of her.

  “Um,” she said shakily. This was good. This was very good. But she thought it might be better if they were horizontal.

  Henry looked up at her, his eyes dark with passion. Her knees almost buckled. Then Henry looked over at the dogs, who were watching them, their faces cocked at that curious-dog angle.

  “Should we move to your bedroom?” he asked, his voice husky. She willed her knees to quit shaking, and nodded.

  Of course, she was still nearly naked and Henry was still fully clothed. She moved her hands up to cover her breasts, but Henry stood and shook his head at her. “Don’t,” he said, trapping her hands behind her back. “You’re beautiful.”

  It was a good thing he leaned in to kiss her, because Helen was pretty sure the only thing keeping her upright was Henry’s grip on her hands and her waist.

  And then it was Henry’s grip on her butt as he hoisted her up and wrapped her legs around his waist. She wanted to protest that she was too heavy, that they’d never make it to the bedroom like this, but Henry wouldn’t stop kissing her so she just held on to his shoulders—strong shoulders—and went along for the ride.

  When they were in her room, he kicked the door closed—she loved when he did that, despite the threat to her infrastructure—and she unwrapped her legs and slid down his body.

  Oh god, he was strong. And he was ready.

  But he was still fully clothed.

  “Helen,” he said urgently into her mouth. He backed her up against the wall and trapped her there, pulling her arms up over her head. It was the only wall in the house not covered in bookcases or artwork. It was her new favorite wall. “Are we really doing this?”

  It was a question, she was sure, but it didn’t really sound like a question. It sounded like a desperate man pleading, and she melted into a puddle of burning desire. “Hell yes,” she said, and then he growled—Henry growled!—and attacked her mouth and ground his pelvis into hers and Helen couldn’t catch her breath but she suddenly felt like breathing was severely overrated.

  While he ground and groaned and Helen panted—she was breathing, after all—his hands let hers go and explored all over her body, touching, squeezing, until she realized she had been wrong before. She hadn’t been a puddle. She had been a damn iceberg compared to how hot she felt now. She should stop and think and capture the five senses for writing purposes, but instead she clawed at his clothes, pulling his shirt untucked from his pants, pawing at his bow tie until he shoved her hands away and pulled it off himself. She was about to complain that he should let her do that, and that it wasn’t fair that he was wearing so many clothes, but before she could remember about words and forming sentences as the best way to communicate with another human being, Henry was naked.

  Oh lord, Henry was naked.

  Now she was definitely a puddle. She was halfway to a sinkhole.

  Henry was gorgeous.

  She knew all about the chest and the shoulders and the abs. But having seen them before and seeing them now, combined with the legs and the hips and all the rest was just . . . He definitely wasn’t built like Hawk, who she imagined would be bulky, the kind of bulky that wouldn’t really fit into regular clothes. But seeing Henry in all of his glory—and it was glorious—in front of her, she was reconsidering Hawk’s physique.

  Helen wanted to just stand there, leaning against the wall to support her puddle-body, and memorize Henry. The way the hair on his chest tapered down to a trail. The way his abs flexed with every deep breath he took. The way the muscles in his legs tensed as he walked toward her.

  And then she couldn’t admire him because she was grabbed and spun around, her bare breasts pressed against the wall, Henry pressed against her back.

  “Did you like what you saw?” he whispered in her ear, his hand working its way between the wall and her panties.

  “Nnn-hnn,” she said. Or at least she made a vague groan of assent.

  “What do you want, Helen?”

  His other hand pulled her away from the wall far enough that it could cup her breast. She arched into his hand, her butt arching into his hips. He hissed and bit her earlobe.

  “What, Helen? Tell me.”

  She should tell him. She should use words. That was the whole point of this exercise, right? Words?

  “This?” he asked, pushing his hips forward.

  Yup, she thought, and hoped that she had also said it out loud. She was pretty sure she hadn’t, though, because he didn’t give it to her. Instead, his hand found its way into her panties.

  “This?” he asked, and she was pretty sure his fingers were the only thing holding her up off the floor.

  “Christ, Helen,” he said, and he squeezed her everywhere. She squeezed her eyes shut and was just gearing up to turn around and tell him to quit fucking around and fuck her already, but then the pressure of Henry on her back was gone. She turned her head to find him going through his pants. Condom, she thought, and made a vague, whimpering motion at her bedside table, but Henry was too fast for her and he pulled the wrapper apart with his teeth and she whimpered again and then Henry was back at her back, then back at her front as he turned her around and lifted her thighs and before she could tell him to hurry, what the hell was he waiting for, he was inside her and she screamed and arched into him and felt him bury his head in her breasts as he worked himself in and out and she held on and wrapped her legs tighter and higher and scratched at his back and his arms and finally she found her voice and it was “Yes, yes, yes” and then she saw stars—actual stars!—and felt Henry groan and shake and then there was nothing to do but catch her breath and convince herself that she was still alive, that Henry—secret, powerful, sex machine Henry—hadn’t just killed them both.

  * * *

  Helen still hadn’t opened her eyes.

  They were lying in a heap on her bed. It was all he could do to stagger there, pulling her with him. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to stand much longer, even after she put her feet on the ground. Hell, he wasn’t entirely sure he would ever stand again.

  He was surprisingly OK with that.

  He was pretty sure Helen wasn’t asleep. She kept sighing and touching the ends of her hair, and every so often she would raise her hand a little, then drop it down again.

  “Hey,” he said, hoping he wasn’t waking her up. But also wanting to talk to her. “Helen.”

  “Mmm?” she said.

  “Are you awake?” He leaned on his elbow to look at her. Her skin was flushed and her lips were swollen and he felt a surge of pride that he had put that sleep-smile on her face.

  “Mm-hmm,” she said. She didn’t open her eyes.

  “Are you OK?”

  “Mm-mmm,” she said.

  Was that a yes or a no? “Was I too rough?”

  Her eyes shot open. “What? No! God, Henry. No.” She put a hand on his shoulder and closed her eyes again. “Hell no.”

  He flopped back on the pillow, relieved. Her hand flopped with him, and he held it to his chest. “Good.”

  “Did I scratch you?” she asked, and now it was her turn to lean up on an elbow.

  He twisted his shoulder so she could look.

  “Sorry,” she said, wincing.

  “I’m not.” It had felt good. It had felt amazing. God, when she squeezed her legs around him and dug her nails in . . . yeah, it was definitely good.

  “I didn’t think you had it in you,” she said, flopping down on the pillow so her head was next to his.

  Me neither, he thought. Then: “Wait, what?”

  “You just surprised me.”

  “How?”

  “I didn’t think you would be so . . . in charge.”

  He was pretty sure that was a compliment. A compliment t
o his lovemaking, if not a compliment to his personality. Whatever, there was a compliment in there somewhere.

  He was pretty sure.

  “Seriously, Henry. That was amazing.”

  Yup, definitely a compliment.

  He smiled and closed his eyes. “Do you think you got enough?”

  “Enough what?”

  “Research.”

  He felt her sit up again. “Why? Can you do it again?”

  He laughed. “In a minute.” He felt her fingers dance across his chest. Maybe less than a minute.

  “OK,” she said, and snuggled in next to him. “Next time, I’m in charge.”

  Chapter 10

  “Come in,” Helen called without looking up from her laptop. She shouldn’t be writing at work. She especially shouldn’t be writing love scenes at work. But it was either that or work on the desk schedule again, and since she’d slept through this morning’s writing time (well, she didn’t sleep through it. Thank you, Henry), her font of inspiration was full to bustin’. First against the wall, then with her on top, then from behind, then her on top again because she liked it and Henry did too. Tonight they would have to find other positions. And oral.

  Good god, she was a monster.

  A sex monster.

  A sex-with-Henry monster.

  Well, there were worse things in the world. And wasn’t she lucky to have such a good friend?

  “I was going to wait for you to explain, but hell would have frozen and thawed, and I don’t have time for that.”

  Helen turned around to see Grace hovering in her doorway.

  Grace, wanting an explanation.

  “Explain what?” Helen said, in her best impression of a person who has no idea what her friend is talking about.

  “Uh-huh,” said Grace, clearly not convinced. “The other night Jake and I ran into Henry walking your dogs, which is not crazy. Usually you’re with him, but fine. Then I noticed that his top button was undone, which is unusual. Then I realized that his top button was undone, and he wasn’t wearing his bow tie.”