Driving in Neutral

by Sandra Antonelli

  She knew, from all the ridiculous associations her mind had been making, it would just be best to avoid him completely. After the wedding was over it would be a lot easier to keep a safe distance and not get pulled along in his slipstream.

  With a sigh, she draped an arm across her eyes, trying to let it all go, hoping to nod off again and make up for the fitful way she’d slept last night. She concentrated on breathing evenly, inhaling slowly and rhythmically, relaxing each part of her body beginning with her feet. A soft, shuffling noise broke her concentration. Were Mimi and Tex outside going at it again? She lifted her arm and found Maxwell beside the bed.

  He wore a pair of green cotton pants that looked like hospital scrubs. “Sorry.” He made an apologetic face. “I heard water running in the bathroom and thought you were awake.”

  She sat up. “I’m awake now.”

  “I’m really sorry. I know you’re usually up at sparrow’s fart and I just wanted to ask if you thought it’d be okay if I went down to the kitchen to make something to eat. I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes this early.”

  “Eggs are in the fridge.”

  He watched her yawn and rub her eyes like a sleepy child. He couldn’t stop looking at her. He swallowed hard. “Did you sleep in your clothes?”

  She glanced down at her wrinkled dress. “I guess so.”

  “You must have been exhausted. I’m sorry I kept you up so late.”

  She shrugged. “How’d you sleep?”

  “I didn’t sleep at all,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I couldn’t stop thinking about the perfume of your neck, or how soft your mouth is, or what it would be like to have you in my arms, in my bed. You can go ahead and scold me for having such thoughts and saying those things, but, well, there you go.”

  Olivia found she was short of breath. Her mouth had gone dry too. The words were simple, yet so straightforwardly erotic. Last night, she had been disappointed that he’d gotten up and left. While they were talking she’d begun to entertain crazy notions of lounging in bed with him all day, of Sunday mornings spent reading the newspaper, nibbling toast with blackberry jam interspersed with coffee-flavored kisses. That in turn led to other more evocative ideas. He stared at her and his expression suggested his mouth would quench the thirst she had developed. She mumbled, “I’ve tried. I’ve tried being absolutely direct with you, but obviously I’m not very good at it.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  “It doesn’t seem like I’m doing fine.”

  Even with her hair messy from sleep, her rumpled dress, and her face creased by bed linen, Emerson thought Olivia was the most exquisite woman he had ever seen. He couldn’t believe Martin didn’t see how beautiful she was. “Trust me. You’re doing a great job.”

  “Yes, but the results are all wrong, and did you have to use that word?”

  “What word?”

  “Job.”

  “What’s the big deal?”

  “Oh, come on. Hand? Blow?”

  Emerson laughed, recent sleep making him sound a little raspy. “I don’t think I alluded to anything of the sort.”

  “You’re one big walking allusion,” she groaned and rubbed her hands over her face, “and I’m a huge bag of mixed messages and unclear boundaries.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Palms up, she spread out her hands and waved them over the bed like a model presenting a new car at an auto show. “After carrying on about all the reasons why I shouldn’t, I’m already halfway in bed with you.”

  “So?”

  “So?” she groaned again. “So?”

  “Olivia, I think I may have fallen in love with you.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Does the truth scare you that much? That’s strange. It doesn’t scare me at all.”

  “Of course you’d say that. That’s supposed to be what women want to hear. I know people sleep together and have affairs for all kinds of reasons: validation they’re still attractive, loneliness, drunkenness, just because they can. When I found out about Karl, I was—”

  “Devastated?”

  “No. Furious.”

  “I bet you wanted to kill him.”

  She shook her head. “No. I wasn’t mad at Karl. I was angry with myself. I was blind, blindly trusting of him and myself. I had the wool pulled over my own eyes. Everyone knew Karl was screwing around. It was obvious, but I didn’t want to see it. He was nearly a decade younger than me and I made excuses for him. He’s young; he’ll mature. I lied to myself, hid the truth the same way he did because I didn’t want to believe I had fallen for another man who thought so little of me. I didn’t look for those little clues. But I see everything now. So as honest as I am with myself these days, I’d like a man to be honest with me just once. So tell me you want to use me for sex and I’ll respect you a hell of a lot more. Is that asking for too much?”

  “I’m being completely honest,” he said. “You know, I’ve been completely honest since I met you…” His brow creased, but suddenly he smiled. “And I haven’t lied once. Why is it you think you only get two chances anyway? So what if things didn’t work out for you before. That was then. This is now. Haven’t you ever heard of third time lucky? Third time’s a charm? Good things come in threes? The Holy Trinity?”

  “You love cheesy clichés, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes they’re true.”

  “You’re a rebound man, you know, a post-divorce transition man.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “What else could you be?”

  “Much more than a temporary substitute for something you never had.”

  He was so sure of himself; his gaze was so level, his conviction unwavering. Olivia couldn’t think of a single argument or example to counter with and she stared at him when he sat on the edge of the bed, not knowing what to believe, or feel, or want, but he took care of that. He scooped her up and rolled onto his back, carrying her along with a softly enveloping kiss.

  For a brief second, she whimpered. Then every shred of deliberation ceased. Her hands went beneath his head and she burrowed into him, kissing him back while he traced the bared line of her spine with one finger.

  Emerson kissed the hollow at her throat, the curved depression of her collarbones and felt her skin prickle with goose bumps beneath his lips. His skin did the same as she concentrated on his ear, nibbling the lobe, leaving soft butterfly kisses around the outside edge and when she darted her tongue inside he voiced his pleasure with a low rumble.

  She pulled back, sliding off his abdomen to rest on her hip to look at him, trailing tickling fingernails across his chest, through the hair there she found so fascinating, moving from one nipple to the other, making them rise to the same kind of hard peaks as hers.

  “I like you touching me,” he said and immediately wished he’d kept his mouth shut because she pulled her hands away and sat up, tucking her hair behind her ears.

  Olivia sighed. “Look, I don’t know how to do this.”

  “Who says you have to work it out in advance?”

  “Self-preservation. Common sense. The fact this crap never works.”

  “Are you back to that office romance thing again?” Emerson sat up with his knees bent and his fingers kneading gently into her neck.

  Olivia’s ears suddenly felt hot as a tinge of embarrassment flooded into her. “I have to be honest. Call me old-fashioned, but at this age, I’m a little set in my ways, and just so you know, so things are clear, I really don’t know how to do this and not expect it to mean something or want more.”

  “Okay, Olivia, listen. Expect more. I’m not kidding. I want more and I’m willing to wait until you do too. There’s no reason to rush.”

  She looked at him a long moment, her lips parted slightly and her heart caught in her ribcage when he traced her eyebrow with his thumb and pushed the hair from her face.

  She wanted to have faith, to believe him regardless of how those tabloid pho
tos of Karl had robbed her of the ability to trust anyone, even herself. For months she’d second-guessed herself, protected herself to the point where nothing affected her steady world because she didn’t let anything matter, nothing was important except standing, and staying, on level ground. With Maxwell things twisted and turned and sped and raced. When he was around, life was full of chicanes to steer through instead of a constant straight line that continued on, steadily, but went nowhere. Olivia realized just how much she’d missed chicanes. “Can you keep this private?” she said in a voice quavering with trepidation.

  “It’s just between the two of us. It’s nobody’s business.”

  There was no more denying it, no fighting it. Who was she kidding anyway? She knew she’d wanted him the moment he’d hyperventilated and looked at her with helpless green eyes.

  She kissed him again, her tongue delving into his mouth to tease out another throaty murmur. The sound he made was welcome and she was pleased she could elicit a response that was more telling than simple physiology. She drew back, her breath as ragged and rapid as his. With a sly smile, she pushed him backward and slipped over his hips to sit in the spot where he would feel the most heat radiating from her body, feeling his too. She reached up behind her neck to untie the halter of her dress. “You promise, Emerson?”

  Emerson smiled at the sound of his name and watched her slip down the front of her dress. His fingers skimmed over the gentle slope of one breast. He half whispered, “This is just between you and me, my something more than friend.”

  Softly, his hand moved with a delicate, circling caress. She closed her eyes, tipping her head back, arching her spine to give in to the sensation of his touch, yielding to the promise of his body pressing sensually into her.

  In an instant, the bedroom door swung open with a bang and Ella swept inside, pirouetting and shouting, “It’s here! It’s here! It’s fina—Oh my God!”

  She didn’t freeze in place with her mouth agape. Instead, with her hands moving like hummingbirds, she backed from the room, her mouth working around words that wouldn’t form, and closed the door with a soft click.

  Emerson’s hands had momentarily stilled on delicate flesh and Olivia felt her mouth drooping open like a stretching lump of warm saltwater taffy. “Tell me,” she said, “did you lace that cucumber eye gel with LSD last night?”

  “You’re not tripping, Olivia.” He dropped his hands and sat up with a big chuckle, licking at the edge of his mouth. “That was Ella.”

  Helpless to stop the groan, Olivia plopped her forehead onto his shoulder. “This is unbelievable,” she said, her voice muffled by his chest. “I get caught with you and my clothes nearly off again.”

  Emerson lifted her chin, one finger tucking hair behind her ear. “While I’m sure the image is burned into her brain, she didn’t have a camera to capture the moment like Timmons did.”

  “What?” Dread flickered across her face. “Timmons had a camera?”

  “I’m kidding.” He chuckled again.

  “Doesn’t anything embarrass you?”

  He cupped her bare shoulder. “Claustrophobia.”

  “I’d like to be in a box right now. Well, what do we do?”

  Sunlight was edging into the room through the open doors, filtering through the gauzy curtains and in the emerging light he looked into her hazy, dark eyes and was suddenly short of breath all over again.

  She nearly said something, a lone syllable made its way out of her mouth, but her lips parted and met his with an unfathomable need she hadn’t realized was there. For a long, long moment, all she heard was the sound of her own heart. She felt lightweight, billowing the same way the filmy bedroom curtains did in the breeze.

  Emerson sighed deeply against her mouth. She tasted of toothpaste and a spellbinding, unique sweetness all her own. His arms went around her and they fell sideways into the pillows, their legs twining together. They kissed and kissed, tongues unifying, hands caressing and blindly exploring the planes of each other until their passion had built up to an unbearable certainty.

  Two light tugs of the short zipper on the side of her dress and Emerson pushed at the material, removing it slowly, his fingers leaving a trail of ticklish, sensual heat all the way to the back of her knees. She wiggled out of the dress, kicking it to the floor, and led his hands to her breasts. “These are beautiful,” he murmured, skimming his fingertips around them softly, bending to brush the contours with his lips.

  “Thank you. I grew them myself.”

  With a soft laugh, he trailed a procession of delicate kisses up her throat and buried his face in her neck. She smelled of sleep, of lavender soap and cucumber eye gel, of summer morning. He wanted to make her smell of him. He wanted to be able to smell himself on her and he pressed against her, listening to her soft breathing accelerate.

  Touching him, his heated skin, his raspy face, and feeling the pressure of his weight upon her was astounding. She could hear herself saying his name, his first name, Emerson, that one boundary had kept things from getting personal, but why had that been so important? Why did she reject this was what she wanted, what she needed? The chemistry had been there from the first tense moments in the elevator, she’d admitted that much, but was it really possible to feel this depth of emotion for someone in such a short span of time?

  Crowding close, she ground against him, feeling how hard he was and groped for his bottom to push him closer. She wanted Emerson, wanted to be with him, to be part of him, and her fingers felt for the drawstring of his pants, her knuckles brushed the trail of dark hair on his stomach while she untied the string knot and suckled his earlobe. When she reached inside and drew her fingers along the hard length of him, his breath hitched. With a series of small movements, she drew his pants halfway down his thighs, slipping them to his knees and pushing them down to his feet with her toes.

  Naked, he ran his hands along her spine, through a kind of morning dewiness that had sprung up on his skin as well, and Olivia arched back as he began to kiss her again softly, with delicate, teasing pleasure. He liked the soft, helpless little sounds she made as he touched her.

  She moved closer to bite his neck. Her fingers wound into his hair, and he slid down her body, kissing a trail from her throat, following the path along the valley between her breasts, stopping just below her navel, the stubble on his chin sandpapery and erotic as it grazed her flesh, his lips and tongue soothing the pinkish rasp.

  Emerson glanced down at her lace-edged lilac panties then back to her face, watching her when he slid them off with one hand, lingering to dip his fingers into the captivating wetness between her thighs. His thumb skimmed through the slick, rising up over the narrow valley and little knotted crest, and she shivered. He watched her twitch and rise into his circling touch.

  He brought his hand up to his mouth and sucked the flavor of her from his thumb. “I know,” he murmured, “exactly how good you taste. And nothing, nothing tastes as sweet.”

  Olivia bit her bottom lip and tightened her hands in his hair. “Kiss me. Kiss me now.” Her rich eyes were illuminated from within as well as by the glowing rays of dawn, her body as soft and welcoming. “Do everything you can think of now.”

  Moving back to capture her lips, Emerson hovered above her for a moment, groping sideways for the little bedside basket of condoms meant for Jason. Seconds later, her hands slipped to his hips, her fingers digging in with an even pressure as she lifted slightly to meet him. They both gasped when their bodies joined, and, for a moment, they remained motionless to relish the precise moment of their union.

  Swallowing, Emerson sank deeper into her, feeling her tighten around him. She moaned softly, gripping his shoulders as he began to move, stroking with a slow rhythm that quickened her heart and breath.

  “Emerson?”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “Good God, yes.”

  Emerson started to laugh, but the sound caught in his throat whe
n she slid a leg around his backside and began to rock against him, joining the tempo he’d set. “Jesus, God, Mary, and Joseph, don’t stop doing that.”

  “This?”

  “Exactly.”

  “How about this,” she bit his shoulder, “and this,” nipped his neck, “and this?” Her teeth nibbled up along his ear.

  “All of it,” he said, slipping his hands under her hips, lifting her, easing in and out of her. “All of it.”

  She panted suddenly, “Higher. I want you inside, higher. Closer. Deeper.”

  Emerson wrapped an arm around her and rolled onto his back. She plunged down onto him with a satisfied little groan, rising and falling all around him, her dark hair swinging across her rosy mouth.

  “Holy shit,” he marveled.

  “No kidding.”

  With his eyes half-closed, his fingers combed the strands from her lips then slipped down her throat to roll over a hard nipple. He filled her, and she held him, all of him. She rode him and he pushed up, meeting her, joining her rhythm that drew them both toward a high peak of sensation.

  “Emerson?” she breathed.

  “What?”

  “I think we should thank God you’re claustrophobic.”

  “Amen.” Emerson grinned and thrust upward, easing down and up, gaining speed along with her movements.

  Moaning, Olivia snapped back and forward, raking her tongue over her bottom lip. She fluttered and tightened around him, her release imminent. Blinking, she took two quick breaths and swayed side to side.

  It was enough to drive him over the edge. Emerson cried out, his voice booming, and he yanked her against his chest, burying the sound in her neck. Her eyes widened, her mouth opened, and her breath came out in a rush, every nerve firing as she shuddered, sharing the pleasure.