Just Like That

by Nicola Rendell

  But lost or not, I’m not coming until she’s back with me. I won’t let go until I’m sure she’s had all she can take.

  Eventually, her eyes open up again, a little glazed. “Oh, my God.” She pulls me into her, looping her legs together around my ass and holding onto me in a full body embrace.

  I give myself a break, still deep inside her, holding off on the thrusts for a minute. I fluff the pillow behind her head, and push aside her hair from her ear. I make sure she’s safe and comfortable. “I told you I’d untangle you.”

  Her legs tighten, and I feel her smile.

  “Are you back with me?” The flutters from her walls start to slow. She strokes her fingers through my hair.

  “I think so. I don’t know. I’ve never been a part of anything like that. It was like I was in a kaleidoscope.”

  I get up on my elbows so I can watch her. “It’s not always like that?”

  She shakes her head, and the small shifts of her body echo back as a pulse in my balls. “I've always been the one to…” She glances down at me inside her.

  “You’re fucking kidding.”

  “No, I’m not.” Now her glazed eyes get almost tearful. She blinks a handful of times and sniffs hard.

  I nudge her cheek with my nose. I don’t want to make a big fucking thing of it, but holy shit that’s awesome. “Never?”

  “Not once.”

  “So that kaleidoscope belongs to me. Don’t you forget it.”

  She sniffles again, and smiles. She brushes a tear away from her cheek on the pillow case, and then she turns to face me again. “All yours. Totally yours.”

  Fuck, yes. I double down, driving into her now a little more forcefully, but not fucking her so hard that the bed sounds like it’s going to break like it did before. Her wetness is thicker now that she’s come so hard, as thick as honey spilling out onto my balls. I stay right there with her, in the moment—the two of us linked up into one.

  I grip her ass with both hands, angling her hips until they’re exactly fucking right. It’s like I can’t get close enough to her, like I want to cover her with my whole body, not leave a single inch of her exposed. I let my face fall into the cool space between her tangled hair and the headboard, pressing my forehead into the pillow.

  “Holy shit,” she says, and her body echoes that with another squeeze.

  “You going to come again?” I ask her.

  “I don’t even know. I don’t know what you’re doing to me.”

  I know what I’m doing to her, though. I’m fucking her like I haven’t fucked a woman in years, with every ounce of passion I’ve got. Every drive gets me closer. Fuck the W2, and fuck the new job. This isn’t the last time I’m going to come tonight, and I know it. So I drive into her harder, and she rolls on into a new wave of Russ-into-yes.

  I have every intention of pulling out, but as I’m heading down into it, she digs her hands into my ass. “Please. Now. Inside me.”

  Holy fuck. “Penny…”

  “Russ. Don’t argue with me,” she growls. “I know what we’re supposed to do, and I don’t want to do it.”

  We stare each other down again and suddenly, I don’t give a fuck if it’s safe. Or if it’s sensible. It has to happen. I need to claim her, and it needs to happen now.

  I feel a wave of precum spill out into her. “You better be really goddamned sure,” I tell her. “I’m not kidding around.”

  “I’m sure,” she says, without any fucking hesitation. “I really, really am.”

  “And if you let me do this once…”

  “Do it. Right now. Put your cum inside me. Don’t you dare try to change my mind.”

  And just like that, it turns into the most primal fuck of all.

  12

  Russ

  I wake up in that weird state of travel disorientation. Where the hell am I? What’s going on here? And what in the ever-loving fuck is that smell?

  In an instant, I realize that I’m with her, in her bedroom, with her curled up next to me. She’s naked, the curve of her hips and back an elegant sideways S on the sheets. I get up on my elbow and study her. The light from the clock radio shines on her as she sleeps, peaceful and sweet. Almost too pretty to believe. I pull the sheets up around her as the air conditioning unit kicks on higher. When I touch her, she moans and curls up into a more compact ball. I shift her bangs aside. She really is so fucking…

  Lovely.

  It’s the only word.

  But Christ, that smell. I inhale hard and feel the sting behind my eyes. I’m no stranger to tear gas, and this isn’t too far off.

  Except everything outside is silent. No lights, no sirens. No riot police. No guy with a bullhorn. There’s only the tick-tock of one of her alarm clocks and the whir of the AC in the window.

  And then a low grumble followed by the quiet squeak of a closed-mouthed bark.

  Guppy.

  I roll over and look down. He’s on his side next to the bed, sprawled out like a sleeping pony on the floor. His massive barrel chest expands with a deep breath, and then he makes a marf-marf, muted and high-pitched. His ears flicker, and his paws make very slight walking movements. But the more I watch him, the more panicked I realize he seems. Something in his nightmare startles him, and his whole body jolts. His ears perk up, and the marfs sound more worried. I reach down and give him a pat on his flank. As I do, a sudden and very human snore gets stuck in his nose. His mouth drops open, and I see the row of teeth on his bottom jaw, glistening from the light of a paw-shaped nightlight. His tongue slides from his mouth, dangling toward the floor, and his snores become soft and peaceful.

  The faint pfffffft of a dog fart fills the air. It’s semi-silent but totally deadly. The guys at the Department of Defense should really look into bottling it, as soon as fucking possible. He unleashes another one, and then his paws wiggle like he’s digging for something. Judging from the smell, it’s buried, fermented cabbage. I rub my face and sit up in bed. Breathing only through my mouth, I untangle myself from the sheets and step over him—it’s like stepping over a body on a crime show, no shit. I head to the bathroom, where I take a tentative sniff. Amazingly, the smell hasn’t wafted in here yet, and so I shut the door behind me and flip up the toilet seat.

  A rippling light streams in from the street lamps outside, through the window in her shower and through the shower curtain printed with seashells. It’s enough light to show me that on the counter are all sorts of perfumes, makeup, and lotions. Fluffy white towels are folded up neatly on the racks. I peek behind the shower curtain, and I groan. In the tub is a drying rack, covered with her bras and panties, each one pinned with a clothespin. Some are lacy, some are sporty. A few are nude, one is bright red. In the middle, there’s a strapless black one that’s lit up by a shaft of light, each cup a perfect half-circle, made of some kind of shiny, soft fabric.

  Goddamn it.

  I close the curtain again, careful not to let the hooks clatter on the rod, and take my half-hard cock in hand, making sure my aim for the bowl is solid. My mind drifts back to the way she whimpered, the way she roared. I know I shouldn’t like her this much already, but sometimes it’s that fucking simple. Sometimes two people just click. Nothing to be done about it, no way to stop it happening.

  Penny. Russ. Click.

  I shake myself off and flush, setting down the seat like I found it, because leaving up toilet seats is for guys who have sex with their socks on. I rinse my hands and cup my palm to take a drink from the sink. I notice her toothbrush, plugged into the wall. A bottle of lotion catches my eye, and I pick it up, squinting in the moonlight.

  Tahitian Vanilla body butter. I unscrew the lid and take a whiff. Fuck, yes.

  I take it all in, her little touches everywhere. My bathroom in Boston looks like a dude bathroom. I’ve got minimal shit that all fits in the drawers, but hers is that same brand of Penny chaos that I see everywhere in her house, and that I saw in her car too. She lives life right to the brim, with some overflo
w—like champagne spilling over the top of a glass.

  Quietly, I open the bathroom door to head back to where I need to be. From a distance, she’s almost more captivating, between the moonlight and the clock light. The curve of her hip is accentuated by the rumpled sheets. Her bare back is traced by the faint outline of her bikini straps. Her hair is all messy and sexy on the pillow behind her. But then there, next to her, where I was…

  Guppy.

  He’s lying exactly like a human being, right on the warm spot I left behind, with his head to the pillows and flat on his back.

  I walk over to my side of the bed. The smell has dissipated on the thousands of BTUs from the AC, thank God. “Hey, buddy,” I whisper, giving him a shake.

  A very human snore.

  Another shake.

  “Marf.”

  “Guppy,” I say in a stern whisper.

  When he hears his name, he shudders awake, like drunk guys do when you slap them out of a stupor. His big eyes go straight to mine, and there’s a low rumble.

  Yet somehow, I know he’s not going to bite me, warning growl or no, so I try to shift him. It’s fucking impossible. He’s got to weigh a hundred and fifty pounds, and right now he’s practicing the time-honored art of Being Dead Weight.

  I tug on his sheriff’s collar.

  In response, he lets loose a small airy fart with about as much total destructive force as a cluster bomb.

  “Christ,” I mutter in my hand.

  He blinks again, watching me. Bed. Time.

  He doesn’t get it. Sleeping next to her, that’s the only thing that matters right now. Me, in that bed, next to that perfect fucking body, holding her close. But then he nuzzles his huge face up beside her shoulder and gives his short tail a few thumps on the mattress.

  Yeah, he totally gets it. It’s the best spot in the house.

  And it’s official. My human ass just got demoted to the couch.

  13

  Penny

  I wake up to the thoroughly unpleasant sound of our mayor, singing both Sonny and Cher’s parts of I Got You Babe from my bedside radio. I jam my face into the pillow and groan, as the voice on the radio says, “Rise and shine, Port Flamingo! This is Mayor Jeffers coming at you from KPFF. It’s gonna be a hot one!”

  Cue canned sizzling bacon sound effect.

  Mayor Jeffers. He looks like Sonny Bono, talks like Sonny Bono, pops his collars like Phil Collins while claiming it’s like Sonny Bono, and knows every single song the guy ever sang by heart. And he’s no stranger to Simon and Garfunkel either. He’s on the radio every weekday from 6-8 a.m. His show feels like a combination of some very low-budget version NPR, a karaoke bar, and Good Morning, Vietnam.

  Guppy puts his drooly face on my bare arm, and I give him a pat. My second alarm clock goes off, the old bell clanging. I slap both clocks into silence like I’m playing Whac-a-Mole and then pull the cool sheet up over both Guppy and me.

  My whole body has that sort of sore, pleasantly exhausted feeling of a night of really, really good sex. More than that, though. I run back through it in my mind. Hands down, no contest: That was the best sex ever.

  Except then I realize this whole picture is missing something very important. Russ. I flail my way out of the sheets and spring up to sitting. Where on earth is Russ?

  Turning, I notice that Guppy has left a space of roughly five inches between him and the side of the mattress. “Guppppyyyy.” I give him a two-handed shove. “You have no sense of romance at all.”

  He adjusts his mouth and nestles in deeper to Russ’ pillow. Hoping against hope that Guppy only recently evicted him, I listen for any noises in the bathroom. Nothing. I spring out of bed and grab my robe from the hook on the door. I tie it around my waist as I hustle down the hallway. I check the couch. Not there. I check the reclining chair in the corner. Not there either. It occurs to me that because my dog doesn’t understand the concept of sharing, the sexiest man I’ve ever met in my life—and the only man to give me an orgasm on his own—might have been forced to leave my house in the middle of the night.

  I’m really winning this. Totally. My tummy turns over with the early stages of regret, but then I see his suitcase is right where he left it, by the front door.

  That’s when I see him, on my patio, sound asleep on one of my old chaise lounges. He’s so big that the little plastic straps bow under his body, particularly under the muscles of his sexy tush. His shoulders are so broad that he spills over the sides of the chaise, but in spite of all of it, he looks amazingly comfortable. He’s tilted the seat back to the bottom rung, and his hands are clasped over his rippling abs. And he’s in the boxer briefs.

  Bless him.

  There’s a thump and clatter from the bedroom, and before long Guppy is nudging my hip with his stuffed armadillo, our signal for Brekkie, please. I leave my boxer-briefs dream land and return to reality. I grab a can of dog food from the cupboard, and the can opener from the drawer. As I turn the crank on the can opener, I look out at the beach from my kitchen window. And out there on the shoreline, a familiar face catches my eye.

  It’s Mrs. Mankowitz, shuffling along the sand. She walks the shoreline every single morning, like an ancient, beach-combing Zamboni. She carries a little grabber arm so she can pick up things like shells, and water bottles, and the odd body part from the old mannequin factory. I watch her bend down, bird-like, inspecting something in front of her. She picks up a plastic foot, but as she turns to drop it into her shopping basket, lined with a garbage bag, she freezes.

  The mechanical arm pops open and so does Mrs. Mankowitz’s mouth.

  I can’t blame her. What she’s seeing is as rare as a frost in Port Flamingo: a gorgeous hunk of man on Penny Darling’s porch.

  Guppy noses my bare leg and thumps his tail on the corner of the island. “Sorry,” I say, scooping out half the can and measuring out enough kibble for ten Chihuahuas to eat for a month. “Sit. Stay.”

  He pretends to have no idea what I’m talking about and snaps at a non-existent passing fly. “Guppy. Sit.” I give his kibble a shake. He drops his huge rear end onto the ground finally, splaying out his huge back legs behind him like a stuffed teddy bear. “Stay.”

  I put his food on the floor. I count to five Mississippis, and then give him the all-clear. “Free!”

  And he’s off to the races.

  From my purse, my phone buzzes. I don’t even need to see what it says to know it’s from Maisie. She’s the queen of the rapid-fire text, and my phone hiccups and jerks with alerts stacking up on top of each other. I pull it out and have a look.

  Are you awake?

  Are we walking the dog?

  Do you want protein in your smoothie?

  Also

  Mrs. Mankowitz and I have noticed that…

  THERE IS A MAN ON YOUR LANAI

  * * *

  After feeding Guppy breakfast—which takes about six seconds and is more like inhaling than eating—I put on a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt and creep out to the patio. Russ is still sound asleep, his broad, sexy chest rising and falling with each breath. Out here in the light, I get a better look at the tattoo on his shoulder. I don’t know what it means, but it’s some kind of official crest.

  Military. Definitely. And I can imagine it, him in some sort of daring situation. Saving civilians from danger. Maybe even wearing fatigues. Fatigues!

  Part of me wants to climb on top of him right here and now, Mrs. Mankowitz be damned. Part of me wants to tell him he can move to the bed, to apologize for having a dog as big as the Yeti. I want to whisper in his ear, Let’s go for a fourth round. What do you say, soldier? But my fear is that if I do wake him up, I run the risk of his doing what most men do the morning after: grab his stuff, say something about a real nice time, and hustle for the door. But if I play my cards right, if I time it right, there’s also a chance I can stand around and watch him eat marmalade and drink coffee in his boxer briefs. So I scribble a note on my to-do list for him.

>   * * *

  Russ –

  Just walking Guppy. There’s fresh coffee, and banana bread and marmalade in the fridge. Help yourself and don’t go anywhere!

  * * *

  Penny

  I pick up his arm, ever-so-gently, and tuck the note between his pec and his bicep so it doesn’t fly away in the breeze. Then I grab Guppy’s skinned tennis ball from his bed and we head out the wooden side gate.

  As I undo the latch, I hear a long “Owwwww,” and I open it to find Maisie rubbing her nose with her palm.

  “Were you spying on me?”

  “No, just trying to place his face,” she says. “I’m almost sure I’ve seen him somewhere.”

  “If you say ‘on the FBI’s Most Wanted List,’ I’m never speaking to you again,” I half-whisper as I latch the gate closed and toss the tennis ball out onto the beach. Guppy takes off after it, galloping through a sandcastle left over from yesterday, colliding spectacularly with a tide-battered turret that explodes as he hits it. Maisie disappears onto her patio for a second and then reappears, holding two big plastic cups. She hands one to me. The smoothie inside is bright green and smells like horse feed.

  “Why can’t we have strawberry? Or mango?” I give it a sniff. “Or peach? There are so many fruits, Maisie. So many.”

  “Because kale is the superfood of superfoods. Blueberries? Please. Now, enough small talk.” She slurps up a big gulp of smoothie through the wide bubble-tea straw. “Did you get injured when you fell off the Man Wagon? Because I could hear you from my house. Through my earplugs...”

  I get up on my tiptoes and study him over my patio wall. The bulge in his boxer briefs, his abs. His face.

  “…Annnnd the pillow over my head...”

  It started with an accidental theft, moved to an accidental poisoning, and ended with him sleeping on my porch. And yet, it was absolutely perfect from strange start to even stranger finish. I had a Cosmo-debunking orgasm, and I haven’t laughed so hard on a date…ever.