by Julia Kent
This time she flinched, but in a completely different way. “You know that?” she asked.
“You know that?” he countered.
They both laughed.
“How about me? Guess my drink,” he said, waving at his chest, as they slowly made their way into the threshold of the coffee shop.
“I know you like coffee with milk from our…interaction,” she said slowly, “the other night.”
“Interaction?” He smiled. “Is that the word you use for it? I have plenty of better words.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
The barista looked at them expectantly. Josie could feel eyes on her, sense them and then see them out of the corner of her eye. It was as if everyone else in the room were from a different planet. As all his attention was on her, completely focused, waiting for something that she knew she was capable of giving, but hadn’t known that until this moment.
“Macchiato,” she snapped.
He pulled his head back, a bit perplexed. “What?”
“Macchiato. You’re a macchiato guy. Not that Starbucks crap, either.”
The barista flashed a giant grin at her. This was an independent coffee house, built into what had probably once been a barber’s shop. The long, narrow space was shabby chic, with painted chalkboard walls and a handwritten menu colorfully chalked up daily. The biggest investment in this space was in the espresso machine, which looked like something out of the Steampunk Exhibition at the Charles River Museum of Industry.
“You’re right,” he said quietly. “How’d you know?”
“You’re that kind of guy,” she said, leaning back against the counter, needing the support to say what she was about to say. “You can sense, and taste, and feel the subtleties of life. You don’t need to cover up anything with a bunch of milk and a ton of sweetener to make something bitter go down. You savor what you seek, and you know something special when you find it.” The end of her sentence came out husky and dark, like a gasp. The pit of her stomach tightened as she acknowledged the reality of her words; speaking the truth about herself wasn’t something she did well. Actually, it wasn’t something she did at all. This felt like sitting in a confessional, with Alex the priest on the other side of the screen. Except, thank you, Jesus, Alex was no priest. The deeper truth of who she was burbled to the surface, as if he conjured it or pulled it out of her with a magnetic force that only he possessed.
“Macchiato, huh?” he said with a lopsided grin. “You’re right.” He shook his head slowly, looked at the barista. “A latte and a macchiato, please.” The barista just jutted his chin up in acknowledgment and got to work on the giant, shiny espresso machine. “I do like to taste life exactly as it is,” he said, gesturing to Josie to take a table. There weren’t many, most of the spots taken by people using the coffee shop as a pseudo-office, but there were two, and he grabbed the most private.
She sat down, grateful to give her shaking legs a rest. Talking about herself, talking about anyone, in such true terms wasn’t something she was used to. But she’d done it, she’d actually told him something deep about her soul and about how she saw him, and he was still here. But holy shit, now she had to continue talking and so did he.
This wasn’t like in the movies, or in a book, where the scene ends on this dramatic, intense moment and then switches over to three days later, with the main female character engaging in chatty banter with her best friend, confessing what had happened. Josie couldn’t skip to a charming reflection that perfectly encapsulated all of the heroine’s foibles and her journey toward accepting that love conquers all.
Oh, no.
Instead, she found herself fumbling to know what to do with her hands, her hips, her knees and feet, and the millions of brain cells flying fast and furious inside her skull, trying to compose a sense of self by making it up as she went along, second by second in Alex’s presence. She still had to sit here, and talk to him, and get to know him, and do what next? Pretend she hadn’t said such revealing, visceral observations about him?
He leaned forward on the tabletop and invaded her space as much as she could handle. Deep breaths helped center her as she willed herself not to pull back. It would have been too easy to lean casually into the chair’s back and pretend that it was her sarcastic facade that made her so casual, so blasé. She had that, she possessed it—or rather, it possessed her. It was the comfortable and the known, but…at some point in the past two days, the comfortable and the known had become claustrophobic and stifling.
Alex was a breath of fresh air, and the Josie that she was just starting to get a peek of when she was around him needed more oxygen—not more containment.
If he could have hit a pause button, as if life were a DVR, he would have, just to freeze in time what Josie was saying to him, so that he could process it instead of react to it. He tried, with marginal success, to keep a straight face as she talked about him, but he felt as if he had cracked his own chest open and revealed the flesh of his beating heart to her in stark relief.
It was a small thing. It was no big revelation, that macchiatos were, in fact, his favorite coffee drink. And she was right, the Starbucks version was crap. The fact that she understood why was what made his pulse race, made his back straighten—and other body parts, too. He was hard at the thought that she could know him so well with so little time together.
Years ago his mother had told him that he would know, just know when he found the right person. He had thought that she was being sappy, overly romantic, and idealistic, which was her tendency at times when it came to love. As Josie sat across from him and they waited for the call that their drinks were ready, he filled in the space between them with as much knowing as he could muster. As much as he would have enjoyed a pause button, just being real would have to be enough. He reached over and clasped her hand in his, the shock of the connection of their skin making his heart simultaneously race just a little more, and calm down on a deeper level.
She didn’t pull away. In fact, she intertwined her fingers in his, a confirmation of what he had suspected was there, making each step toward connection with Josie seem more preordained. When he reached out she responded, so why was he so unsure? He wished again that he could halt time and buy himself some reflective processing. “Dr. Calm, Cool, and Collected,” as one med school colleague had called him, didn’t get flustered like this. The fact that she could trigger this kind of response in him meant something.
She relaxed at his touch, and just as he was about to open his mouth and ask her how she knew what she knew about him, the barista called out, “Alex!” He jumped, their hands separated, and he motioned to her to wait, he would get the coffee. He came back to the table, careful to set everything down with unshaking hands. It wasn’t that he was worried that he would spill, but rather that time seemed to move in nanoseconds, while his brain raced at the speed of love.
They each took a sip of their coffee, then he asked, openly, with that unshaken sense that whatever he said had to be enough, “This is unnerving you, isn’t it?”
“Me?” She waved her hand dismissively and took another big sip of her coffee, her face bisected by the rim of the white coffee cup, like some sort of demented librarian looking over the edge of a book.
“Why did you come with me?” he asked, hoping that the question sounded like the warm inquiry that it was, and not an accusation or some sort of creepy, low self-esteem narcissism.
“Because I always go out for coffee with guys who’ve been traumatized by looking at Dylan’s asshole.”
Ah, he thought, smiling, and laughing at the joke, doing the conventional thing that was expected of him. She was that threatened. Good. That meant she felt it, too.
Her face got serious and she set the coffee cup down. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, giving him a look at her cleavage as her shirt fell a bit. His fingers itched to reach out and peel the shirt all the way off, gain access to the flesh that had been so tantalizingly close in the on-call room. Pursui
ng a presumption of those activities too soon would make him look like what he did not want her to think he was. “Skirt-chasing”—Ed’s term—wasn’t his goal here. Not with Josie. And yet…oh, how he wanted to get naked with her again, let her explore all the ways they could read each other’s skin, the way that she was reading him now with observations and words.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said. “How often do we get weather like this in May in New England?”
She stood, the question not really a question. She seemed to want to walk and he was up for it.
“Hey, you never know, it could snow tomorrow.”
“It could,” she said, and two people sitting at tables nearby nodded in agreement, ruefully smiling and rolling their eyes.
It wouldn’t snow today, though; she was right, it was a good day for a stroll. He had finished his coffee already, the shot with a little milk foam on top about the size of a kid’s Dixie cup, so he pitched it as they walked outside, and then took her hand in his. The gesture, so fluid, felt right. She looked up at him, and for the first time since he’d seen her today, gave him a dazzling, open look of joy. This was a face he could fall into every morning, waking up next to it. This was a smile he could spend the last six decades of his life trying to make spread across her face. This was a hand he could hold, warm and soft in his, and this was a woman he could know from every perspective, and still find more to know.
As they walked, the heady scent of trees in full bloom filled the air. Alex smelled crabapple trees, and various dogwoods, and other things he couldn’t name. Pink and white petals dotted the scenery in all directions.
“How did you know how I felt,” she asked, “when I was holding the baby today?”
“I told you”—he shrugged—“I’ve seen it before. It’s completely different when you’re holding one that’s related to you.”
“Yeah, but Jillian’s not related to me.”
“Of course she is. Family isn’t just about blood, so you’re related to her.”
She swallowed hard and then smiled again, a grin that reached her eyes and wrinkled the skin above her apple-cheeks, the only part of her face that had spare flesh. They made her look like a teen, carefree and a little untamed.
He stopped, unable to resist—unwilling to resist, in fact. He slipped his arms around her waist, going in for a kiss that made him feel as if all of the time between their last kiss and this were just wasted hours. This seemed impossible, yet he wasn’t about to let the impossible get in the way of the luscious feeling of their embrace. Alex had spent most of his life making the impossible happen, starting with going to med school despite being the child of an eighteen-year-old single mom. Finding the impossible, though, in the form of woman that had eluded him until now.
As she pressed against him, Alex found his body responding to hers with a predictable urgency that made him wish they had two weeks alone in a bedroom. His eye caught a small walking path that led down to a creek, and he pulled away, stopping the kiss. Josie looked up, confused, the sun shining on her pale skin showing freckles he hadn’t noticed before around the edges of her eyes. She had the blush of arousal on her cheeks, and it filled him with a great strength, a bit of macho pride that he’d put that color there. He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the small path, wanting privacy, wanting to talk more alone, knowing soon she’d need to go back to the hospital.
Josie hadn’t come here to see him—after all, she’d come to see the baby and Laura, right?
Josie wondered if Laura would want to kill her if she didn’t get back to the hospital soon, or if her absence would go unnoticed. Given the overwhelming demands that an infant exerts on its parents, she suspected Laura would be quite fine with her spending time like this with Alex. All the same, she couldn’t leave her friend hanging. Or was that just an excuse to avoid the fact that every second she spent with Alex made her want ten thousand more?
His hands were currently playing that dance of early touches between her and a man, where he wasn’t quite certain where the boundaries were, yet wanted to cross them anyhow. Alex’s tongue parted her lips and the softness, the eager, all-consuming pleasure of being in his arms poured forth from her, making her wet and ready to finish what they’d started in the on-call room.
The yearning was something she could feel in him, too—and not just his hard erection grinding into her navel. She was on tiptoes and he was curled over her, their bodies touching, legs and arms and palms and mouths searching for every part to connect.
She made the first boundary-crossing move, caressing his ass as their kisses deepened. A groan of lust came out of him, vibrating in her mouth as he nipped her lip.
“You do more of that and I’ll…” he said with a rasp, glancing around.
Stepping back, she took his hand, pulling him toward the base of a bridge. The concrete was pebbled with small stones and covered in a creeping ivy that had reached out over the years to a nearby tree, making a weird sort of canopy no taller than she was. Perfect. Once ensconced under it, she pulled him to her roughly, yanking his shirt out of his waistband, needing to feel the heat of his skin against her palms.
“You’ll what?” she challenged, hand grazing his rock-hard cock, loving the vibrant feel of it through his jeans. A shot of adrenaline ran through her, fired by sheer arousal and a desire to be taken right here in broad daylight, the risk (thrill?) of public discovery making the blood pound in her ears. Her fingers teased the outline of his erection just to see how far he would go.
“I’ll do this,” he growled, making her moan with delight as he pulled her up into his arms and pushed her against the wall, his cock grinding into her and making her so glad she’d chosen to wear a skirt, even if she normally hated them.
Alex seemed to have the same idea. One arm and the weight of his muscled torso held her up as they gasped and bit and laved their way through a kiss that, by all rights, was enough to make her come right now. Then his fingers reached under her skirt and found her panties, pushing under the soft, cotton fabric to find her wet and soft. His touch made her hips buck against it, her mind in a frenzy at the combination of his arms around her, the scent of him, and what they were doing. Danger turned her on, and he was about to fuck her in public.
Could he get any better?
Reaching between them, she struggled to unbutton and unzip him, yet persevered, her hand encasing him. Impressive. A bit daunting, even—he was big, and not just hard and throbbing. The man was enormous.
A shock of excitement added to her already oversexed mind and body as Alex peeled her panties right off, shoving them in his back pocket as she watched kayakers paddle past, the leaves that stretched over them barely enough cover. If someone knew to look here, they could see everything.
His mouth bruised hers as his fingertips stroked her clit with a surgeon’s precision—oh, those hands—and within a tiny number of strokes she was biting his shoulder, clutching his shoulders, pulling at his polo shirt and practically screaming as he kept the languid circles going, making her climax over and over, her sight filled with the green leaves, ears catching the traffic on the road above, the lap of paddles gliding through water, the dusky sound of Alex’s breath against her ear.
“God, I want you,” he murmured. She felt for his back pocket, half mad with the need to have him fill her, and found his wallet. Opening it, she felt by touch for what she needed, blinded by the wall of chest before her and the man’s ceaseless fingers prying her pleasure from her, one stroke at a time.
Aha! Wallet condom. She knew it. He was too responsible not to have one, and as she tucked his wallet back in place and flashed the foil wrapper at him, he chuckled.
“I thought this was an inventive way to mug someone,” he joked.
“Wait until you see what I do when I kidnap you,” she replied, not joking. Pulling away, she heard a low groan of shock, then of appreciation, as she ripped the wrapper open, hands as precise as could be, and rolled the condom over his cock. He shif
ted her, arms holding her easily as her wet pussy slid along his upper thigh, their bodies able to do things because of his strength and her dexterity.
And then she centered her hips over his rod and—without pretense—welcomed him in, his breath hitched and coming out in little grunts, her own matching his as she reveled in the heat of being filled completely by Alex. Dr. Perfect really was—that he enjoyed this, would even consider it, had initiated it ballooned her heart as her body tingled and thrummed, his mouth on her neck and his hips sliding up against her pelvis, knees bent and holding her weight, making love to her slowly.
“Is this okay?” he whispered.
“Are you kidding me? This is amazing,” she said, shuddering as her wet walls clamped down on him, a tightness in her belly emanating throughout her entire torso, pulsing into her ears.
“No, I mean, am I too much? I don’t want to hurt you.” He stopped moving, the stillness both exquisite and aching.
“I’m a big girl.”
He nuzzled her neck, still not moving. Wrapping her legs fully around his hips, she made little thrusts of her own, her position too awkward to get the long, deep strokes he could give her. That meant he was in charge, her orgasm at his command. The sound of bikers riding not thirty feet away, on a path near the water, zinged her with the idea they might be caught.
“No, you’re tiny, and I am—”
Shutting him up, she slammed her mouth against his, lips pulling his apart, tongue ravaging his mouth, until he involuntarily began to rock against her, the heat between them building into the early signs of climax for her.
As quickly as she’d first kissed him, she tore her mouth from his, lips raw and burning. Catching his eyes, which were unfocused and smoldering, she reached up to cup his face in hers, the hint of dark stubble scratching her palms. I wonder what that would be like on my thighs? she wondered, her pussy tightening at the thought, making him groan.
Eyes locked, she simply said, “Alex? Shut up and fuck me.”