I spun around, pleased to see a shocked expression on his face, and wrapped my arms around his neck. “I don’t want slow, Cal.”
Before he could utter a word, I sealed my mouth over his in a bruising kiss. I nipped at his mouth in teasing little bites that I soothed with my tongue. Callum stood still for a moment before wrapping an arm around my back and pulling me to his solid body.
Finally.
We were evenly matched in height, so every piece of me aligned every piece of him. If I was a sentimental type of woman, I might have said we fit together, like two halves of a whole. But I didn’t care about things like that anymore. I was more interested in how strong his lean arms felt around my back, how solid the wall of his chest was, and how thick his cock felt trapped against my stomach.
Callum pulled back from the kiss and rubbed his nose along mine. The gesture was startlingly sweet compared to my kiss. “I didn’t come here expecting this,” he said in a voice gone rough from his arousal. “But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought of it.”
I twined my leg around his thigh and pulled him closer, rubbing against his body like a cat in heat. “If I admit I thought about it too, will you shut up and fuck me?”
Callum tipped back his head and let out a shout of startled laughter. “You’re a surprise, Olivia,” he said.
The sound of his laughter made something in my gut clench, but before I could examine that feeling, Callum slammed his mouth on mine and flooded my senses. All semblance of softness was gone. His blunt fingers dug into my hips and pulled me up, so I had no choice but to wrap my legs around his waist. His mouth was just as hard and insistent as mine had been before. Lust pooled in my belly, and I forgot the little clench at his laughter.
“Are you wet for me, Olivia?” Callum whispered as he trailed a hand from my hip across my belly and toward my pussy.
“Touch and see.” I arched my hips up toward his hand, panting with the need to have his touch on my pussy.
The first glide of his finger over my flesh felt almost like sparks of electricity; it was a pleasure so pure it bordered on pain. “Hmm, drenched,” Callum said as he circled my clit, narrowly missing the most sensitive tip before he plunged a finger inside.
“Fuck,” I yelped and clenched around his finger. I could feel the walls of my pussy flutter, and knew I was close to tipping over the edge.
Callum must have felt the tremble as well because he pulled his finger out, then traced the outer lips of my vulva and back across my clit in a touch so light I wasn’t sure if I felt or just sensed it.
I dug my fingers into his shoulder and leaned forward to trace the leaves of a clematis that climbed from his pectoral toward his bicep. Callum continued to keep me at the edge of orgasm as he alternated between teasing touches to my clit and deep thrusts of his fingers into my channel.
“Condom,” I panted. “In the bedroom.”
“Do you want to stay here or come with me?” Callum asked as he pressed firmly on my favorite spot of my clit.
“With you.”
He gently pulled me from his body and held me steady as I stood for the first time in a while. My body felt loose and liquid, but I was determined to make it to the bedroom and the box of condoms I’d stashed in the little cupboard by the bed.
I snapped the water off and tugged Callum behind me into the bedroom with the king-sized bed. I didn’t bother with a towel for either of us; I was too eager to feel him inside me. I stumbled into the bedroom on legs that felt like jello and crawled across the bed to reach for the tiny cubby in the corner.
Callum crawled onto the bed behind me and ran his hands up my legs as I reached for the box of condoms. I shuddered and paused when he ran his hands up the backs of my thighs and over my ass. “Have I told you how much I love this?”
I looked over my shoulder and grinned. “Thanks, I work hard on it.”
“It shows,” Callum replied, and gave me a light slap on the meaty part of one cheek.
The sharp sting had me sucking in a breath. I loved the burn his palm left. But I had enough of playing around, so I tossed the box toward him and got up on my hands and knees. I arched my back and said, “Stop playing around, Callum. I’m ready for you to fuck me.”
“And how do you want to be fucked, Liv? Hard and fast, or soft and slow?”
“Either. Both. I don’t care.”
He slid his hand over my pussy once more, using two fingers to give a firm rub on my clit. Somehow, he’d discovered the exact spot I loved to have firm pressure, and I moaned low in my throat and demanded he do it again. Maybe because I asked so nicely, he did. Repeatedly until my legs shook and I barely could hold myself up.
He must have sensed that I couldn’t hold out much longer, so he took his hands away from my clit and gripped my hips firmly while he gently thrust forward. The first touch of his cock on my pussy had me dropping forward onto my elbows and reaching between my legs to help guide him in.
Once he was deep within me, we both paused. The only sound in the room was our ragged breathing. Then Callum leaned forward, kissing up my spine, leaving a trail of gooseflesh in his wake. When he reached my shoulder, he pulled back my hair so he could kiss and nip his way up my neck.
“Okay?” His question was only a breath against my ear.
I nodded and licked my lips. “Be even better if you moved.”
“Knew you’d be bossy. I like it.”
Before I could respond, Callum pulled back and slammed home. Once, twice, three times before setting a hard and steady rhythm that nearly rattled my bones, but felt exactly right. I urged him on with little moans and pleas for more, and squeezed down hard on his cock as it tunneled into me.
I knew the rough pace and the stretch of his cock in my pussy would make me sore tomorrow, but I didn’t care. It’d been six months since my last fling, and after the frustration of the day, I really wanted to burn off my anger in bed. Callum seemed more than obliging because it wasn’t long before a sheen of sweat covered our bodies, and the sounds of skin on skin became louder in the confined space.
Just as I felt myself nearing orgasm, Callum wrapped his arms around me and pulled me up to sit in his lap. While holding me still with an arm around my chest, he used his free hand to pinch and rub my clit. I continued to ride him and rubbed the soft curve of my ass against his stomach.
“Cal,” I whispered. “Close.”
Callum licked the side of my neck and pressed firmer on my clit. “Me too. Let go, Liv. Come for me.”
I reached back, looping my arm around his neck, and began riding him harder than before. Just as I felt the first tremors of my release flutter around his cock, Callum forced me to turn my face toward his and kissed me hard. My body clamped around his as I tumbled over the edge, and from the sounds he made, I knew Callum couldn’t stop his own release from following mine.
The orgasm shot like lightning through my body. Every nerve ending felt alive with sensation, and I could hear the roaring of blood in my ears. I ground down hard on his lap and moaned low in my throat as I tried to extend the sensations for as long as I could.
Callum collapsed to his side, bringing me with him to the bed in an exhausted heap of limbs. Gently, he pulled away from me to deal with the condom in the bathroom before coming back to the bed and laid next to me.
For a few long moments, we laid silently in bed together, breathing heavily and recouping from the quick but satisfying round of sex. Suddenly, I felt Cal’s entire body tense up, and his breathing changed. Without looking at him, I knew the sex bubble had burst, and his logic brain was kicking in.
“Stop freaking out,” I mumbled while remaining curled on my side. “I can practically hear your mind spinning over there.”
“I’m not freaking out,” he lied.
I rolled over, still feeling content. “Just don’t, okay? That was amazing. Just enjoy
it before you move on to what ifs.”
“All right, I promise.” Callum kissed me gently, lingering over my mouth. “I’ll go clean up. Got anything in here I can pull together for dinner?”
“Since when do you know how to cook?” I asked, with a startled laugh.
Callum smiled. “There are a lot of things I know how to do that I didn’t before.”
“I can’t wait to find out.”
Chapter 13
Callum
There was a smart speaker on the counter in the kitchen, so I put on a classic rock mix based to fill the silence. Then I started rummaging in the cabinets and fridge. I pulled together enough ingredients to make basic sauteed chicken and pasta. Not my fanciest meal, but it would do.
As the water boiled, I stood at the sliver of the countertop that one might consider an island, and started slicing vegetables and prepping the chicken. The mindless tasks helped me calm my nerves after what had occurred in the bedroom. I’d imagined being with Olivia so many times over the years. It still felt like something I’d imagined, but the soreness in my muscles reminded me it was very much real.
After a few minutes to myself, Olivia came out of the bedroom dressed in a pair of leggings and an oversized ECHS football sweatshirt that must have belonged to her brother at one time. She looked sexy, rumpled, and satisfied. It was petty, but I let myself enjoy that finally it was me that made her look that way.
“Mm good, you found the chicken,” she said as she walked past me to open the fridge and pull out a bottle of beer. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Sure, I’ll take one of those,” I agreed.
“Did you learn how to cook in college?” she asked as she handed me the beer.
“Yes. Fabián taught me,” I said. “If you haven’t noticed, he’s a bit of a meddler. When he found out I was nineteen and couldn’t even scramble an egg, he declared me useless, then forced me to cook Sunday dinner with him every week until I didn’t burn everything.”
Olivia laughed and ran a hand through her tangle of hair. She produced a hair tie as if from nowhere and rolled the mass into a bun. “I love Fabián. He’s obviously the best kind of friend.”
The hair on her head now looked even more sexy and messy. It fascinated me. The magic women possessed to arrange hair into piles that stayed put and still looked amazing. I could watch her do it a thousand more times and still not understand how she did it.
My timer for the pasta water went off, and I moved to the stove to pour in the dried spaghetti and start the sauce. “Don’t tell him that,” I said, picking up the conversation once I could again. “He’s already got a massive ego.”
“That’s probably why he and Lucy are getting along so well.”
I laughed. “Yeah, he thinks she’s a spitfire.”
“I thought as we got older, she’d get over some of that, but no luck yet.”
I turned to look over my shoulder. “She seems like a good friend, though. I didn’t really hang around her in high school she had a bit of a reputation, but I don’t remember her being a catty or mean.”
“She isn’t,” Olivia said, then took a sip of beer. “No, that’s not right. She doesn’t intend to be. But sometimes her mouth gets the best of her, and she says the wrong thing.”
I knew she did not direct the statement at me, but I felt it hit home all the same. “Sometimes, we all do that.”
“We’re both guilty of saying things that night that hurt the other.” Olivia smiled softly.
“I know you don’t want to talk about this, but after what just happened, I can’t ignore it,” I said.
The room was quiet for a few moments. The only sound was the music from the speaker and the food on the stove. I’d thought to ignore the night of graduation for the entire duration of my stay in Eagle Creek, but the change in our relationship made me feel guilty for denying her closure.
“I was mad at you for a long time,” Olivia said softly. “You left so suddenly I never had time to work out my feelings about our fight. I blamed it all on you, but then Priscilla talked some sense into me, and I realized I wasn’t innocent. I hurt you just as much as you hurt me.”
“I’m not angry about that anymore. Haven’t been for years,” I said. “We had a fight. We hurt each other because we could. But in the end, we were too young to be having that conversation. I think what hurt more were the years of silence between us. I missed my friend.”
“The silence was self preservation. At eighteen, I thought I wanted the life my dad told me I should have. He wanted me to marry Peter and settle down and have babies. He was okay with me going to college as long as it didn’t interfere with creating the perfect family,” Olivia said. “I was mad you had the audacity to ask me to abandon my home with you to do the exact opposite. It wasn’t until years later my therapist helped me realize I was also mad because I wanted to follow you to RISD.”
“I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to stay here,” I replied as I tossed the chicken into the pan to sauté. “I thought you were better than this place.”
“Do you still think that?”
I turned to her, wiping my hand on a kitchen towel as I considered her question. “That’s kind of hard to answer. I’m just getting to explore the town again for the first time in years. It seems like there are a lot of things that remained the same. Things that I hated. But there’s been some change too. New people have moved into town like Ruby’s fiancé and his friend, Hunter. They seem like good people. And I love the restaurant they put in at the marina.”
Olivia smiled. “Wait till you meet the chef, Marcus. He’s this genius chef that went to all the fancy schools. But he grew up in Charleston, so his first love is southern home cooking.”
“Who knew the north woods of Wisconsin is where I’d find some of the best fried catfish I’d ever had.” I turned back to the stove to pull the pasta off and drain it. “I think Rose’s endowment will also do a lot of good for moving this place into the 21st century. Provided we can get the right projects going.”
“I meant to talk to you about that earlier.” Olivia took the plate I handed her and took a long sniff. “Oh god, this smells awesome. What did you put in here?”
I sat down across from her at the cramped little table and pointed to the plate. “Chicken, baby spinach, garlic, peas, and I made a cream sauce from some sour cream, milk, and parmesan. We’ll call it Alfredo Adjacent.”
Olivia laughed. And the sound did things to me I didn’t want to examine right now. We both tucked into the food, and the RV was silent for several minutes as we both enjoyed dinner. In the back of my head, I still had questions and concerns about what’d just happened between us, but it also felt nice to enjoy a quiet dinner together.
“You’re thinking again,” Olivia muttered before taking a drink of her beer.
“Sorry, I’ve never learned how to turn off my brain.”
“Me either.” She flashed a grin. “Let’s talk about it.”
“We’re working together for the summer. Sex could make things messy.”
“Agreed, but we can also choose not to make it messy.”
I couldn’t stop the laugh from bubbling up and out of my mouth. “Oh? You can turn off feelings?”
Olivia rolled her eyes. “No, there’s always a risk of someone catching feelings. But if we lay out expectations right away, we can at least know what to do when feelings get involved.”
I took a moment to chew my food and think about her proposal. “So, you’re proposing a summer fling?”
“Yes. I don’t do serious commitments. Besides, you don’t live here, so nothing beyond the summer would be workable.”
I told myself not to ask, but my curiosity was always one of my worst traits. “Why don’t you do serious commitments?”
Olivia was quiet for so long I worried I’d offended her, but her
face remained impassive, so I wasn’t able to read her reaction. After she took several sips of beer and ate some more pasta, she said, “I don’t know what you’ve been told of my divorce, but it was pretty messy.”
“I know nothing more than you divorced after three years together,” I replied. “I never asked for the full story from my mom. I figured it wasn’t my place to know.”
She seemed surprised. “It was pretty public. I’m shocked she didn’t let it slip.”
“Mom’s a good secret keeper when she has a reason.”
“Peter was having an affair,” Olivia said, and shrugged. “A common enough story, but it was more difficult because she was only eighteen when the affair started.”
“Shit.” I put my fork down and leaned back to listen to the story. “You were what, twenty-six when this happened?”
“Yeah, old enough to make it feel just this side of creepy.”
“How did you find out?” I couldn’t stop my fascination. A tiny and petty part of me was enjoying how right I’d been about Peter, but I would not hurt Olivia by gloating.
“She called me.” Olivia chuckled and took a long drink of beer. “Apparently, he’d been funneling money to her for years. Not just our money, but money he’d embezzled from his parents’ car dealerships.”
“Woah,” I breathed. “That’s seriously fucked up. But at least she told you, so you could get out.”
“Oh, Cal, she didn’t call to warn me. She called to extort me.”
“What?”
Olivia nodded and got up to clear the plates from the table. “Yeah. He’d called the relationship off after finding a newer model.”
“Newer than eighteen? That’s illegal.”
“No, she was twenty by this time. She was angry. He’d dumped her for another eighteen-year-old and thrown her to the curb. She’d been living the high life in college, using his money to buy clothes, drugs, and booze. When he took that away, she decided that blackmailing the wife would be the next best idea.”
To Be With You Page 10