Love Is

by S. E. Harmon

  And then his mouth was on mine, insistent and demanding. The thick slide of his tongue filling my mouth sent something warm and shivery down my spine. My fingers tangled in his thick hair as he slanted his mouth over mine again and again. It wasn’t simple as a kiss, but something more relentless. Reckless. Possession.

  I groaned my approval as those rough, skillful hands mapped an achingly slow path down my spine, ending with a handful of my rear in each hand. He pressed hardness into yielding softness and they fit perfectly, like interlocking puzzle pieces. My legs left the ground before I even realized what I was doing, and I wrapped them around his waist, anchoring my heels in the small of his back. He began to rock into me, slowly, pressing soft kisses down the side of my neck, and fuck, it was…indescribable.

  “Beautiful,” he murmured. His eyes locked on mine, and it was like there wasn’t a part of me he couldn’t see right then. Worse yet, he could see me, the real me, and everything I was trying to hide. It was romantic. Meaningful. Unnerving.

  I pushed at his shoulders until he had to let me down. He made a frustrated growl as my feet hit the floor and I was able to step away. “I thought you wanted…”

  His voice trailed off as I stripped off my underwear and bra, and sent them flying toward the ottoman. “I did and I do.” I made my way over to the bed. I didn’t try to walk sexily because I was pretty sure that would end up with me falling on my face. “Do you think we could possibly do this without declaring our undying love for one another?”

  He stared at me, muscles working in that square jaw, eyes boring into mine. I was tempted to close them, mostly because I knew he could see everything that I wasn’t able to say. For a second, I thought he might call me on it. But then his eyes narrowed, and he cocked an eyebrow. “On your knees, then.”

  I felt the loss immediately. But fuck it all, his voice was low and rough, and made me wetter than ever before. I complied slowly, taking my time even as I felt the tension rolling off him in waves. He wanted to fuck me, fuck me hard, and seeing laid-back Jackson this close to losing his cool made my breath come in short stutters in my chest. I lay flat on the bed, ass exposed, propping myself up on my elbows.

  He made a low growl in his throat and grabbed a pillow from the head of the bed. He lifted my hips with one hand and jammed the pillow underneath me. I tried to catch my breath from the new position, almost feeling too exposed, too vulnerable.

  But this was Jackson. And I had absolute trust that he wouldn’t do anything I wasn’t comfortable with. I spread my legs a little more, just going with it. I wanted him in me. On me. Deep inside me, moving, thrusting as hard as he could manage.

  His hands caressed my skin, down my shoulders and back, shaping my waist with his fingers, and then over my ass. He gripped the cheeks firmly and pulled them apart, fingers hard enough against my hips to leave imprints.

  My breathing quickened as I waited…waited for that first strong, sure stroke. That full feeling of him surging inside me, filling me, and then—

  His low chuckle made me growl. He knew exactly what he did to me, and right now I needed him a little too much to be embarrassed. “Don’t play with me, Jackson,” I demanded. “Fuck me.”

  “Bossy, bossy,” he whispered.

  One of his hands reached around to cup my sex, rubbing the heel of his hand against me, making me undulate against his hand despite my intentions to stay still. The head of that thick cock finally breached my sex, snatching the breath clean from my body. And then he was deep inside of me, and every nerve in my body was suddenly alive. Perked-up. Ears upraised. Ready to receive sensation.

  I widened my stance even further, my back dipping automatically as he began to thrust. Hard, long, sure thrusts that made me lock my elbows to even remain upright. Then I gave up, dropping my torso flat on the bed. I buried my face in the tangle of sheets, gripping the edge of the mattress with tense fingers.

  He didn’t seem to mind that I was in danger of being smothered by Bed Bath & Beyond’s finest sheets. He braced one arm, corded with tension, next to my face, while the other hand fisted in the length of my hair. The sounds in the room were filthy. Obscene. And they were really getting me the fuck off. The sound of his skin slapping against mine rhythmically as he worked me over. His mouth open on my neck, breathing harshly in my ear. The cries I couldn’t hold in. My moan was muffled as he hit that fucking spot and I was pretty sure I was being asphyxiated. Worth it.

  “Oh God,” I managed, muffled and choked. I wasn’t sure if I was praying for air or an orgasm, but I needed one of them pretty soon.

  That strange, tingly feeling gathered clear in my toes, but I didn’t signal him to back off. I didn’t want to slow down and build up again. I wanted that rush…wanted that falling feeling to slam me so fucking hard.

  “Jackson,” I whispered, the word choked and strangled. It was all I could manage as the storm ripped through my body like a tornado, my hands balling parts of the comforter in my fists tight enough to rip it clean apart. The clench of my walls around him seemed to trigger something primal as his teeth nipped at my shoulder. Actually, no, that wasn’t a nip, that was a fucking bite, right at the juncture of neck and shoulder. Bastard. The pain and the pleasure mixed together in a way that made my mind go absolutely blank for a moment.

  The man had given me fucking amnesia. Sweet baby Jesus. I stared at the headboard grimly. As soon as I remembered who the fuck he was, I was going to kill him.

  “God…fuck…Avery—” His voice broke off as he came, shuddering, face buried between my neck and shoulder. He rested there, breath sawing through his lungs, sweat-sheened skin slick and warm against mine.

  I wasn’t in much better shape, as I lay there like the dead. He finally rolled off of me, falling back on the bed. My body satisfied but my mind turbulent, I fell asleep.

  *

  It was still dark when I woke, still tangled up in the sheets. A cool breeze wafted over my skin, smelling like a mixture of salty sea air and…fresh laundry, maybe. I had a vague memory of Irene telling me that she liked to air-dry their sheets in the backyard. I turned my head and sure enough, we’d left the window open. The floral curtains rustled slightly from the wind, the white fabric pale and ghostly in the dark.

  Jackson murmured something incomprehensible somewhere behind me, his arm snaking around my waist to pull me closer. I was glad he was getting rest because he’d said he was leaving pretty early. Just the thought of that made my stomach lurch sickeningly. I stared at the shapes the moon and curtains were creating on the wall, finally acknowledging the difficult truth.

  Something was happening to me, and it was something I’d said I wouldn’t do. Oh, was it dastardly. Horrible. Disturbing. More disturbing than Art wearing the same board shorts two days in a row and turning them inside out for the third. More disturbing than how Lane and Rick were starting to dress, and look, alike. More disturbing than Julian’s perpetual defense of the manpurse.

  I was falling for him.

  I stared at the morphing moon shadows. It looked like some sort of unicorn. Which was kind of appropriate, because I was considering some pretty fantastical things. Would it be so foolish to fall for someone again? Did I even have a choice? Being with Jackson made me feel…things. Dangerous things. The kind of things that turned otherwise sensible women into love-struck fools. Things that made one want to slap on a pair of tight pants, Oliva Newton-John kind of tight, and skip down the street singing “You’re the One that I Want.” Ooh-ooh-ooh.

  I was not ready to ooh. But I wasn’t ready to let him go, either. I sighed and turned in his arms, away from the patterns on the wall. When I glanced up, Jackson was looking right back at me. I blinked, startled. “Did I wake you?”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Talk about what?”

  “I can almost hear your mind working. You’re thinking so hard, you’re actually disturbing satellites in space.”

  That was going to be hell on WiFi. I frowned for a minute
, thinking about it. The thing to do would be to tell him what I wanted. And hope like hell that was what he wanted, too. I looked up to see him looking expectantly at me. Waiting.

  My brow furrowed. Well, I couldn’t say it to his face. Jeez. What kind of person did he take me for? “I was thinking that maybe…maybe we could keep seeing each other when we get back,” I proposed to his left ear. “I mean, it’s not like either of us are in a relationship right now. There’s no reason we have to stop.”

  “Stop…” He dragged the word out, waiting for me to clarify. When I didn’t, he filled in the blanks. “Having sex?”

  “Well, yeah.” If you must cut to the chase. “When we get back home. We can pick up right where we left off. If you want to,” I added hurriedly. “What do you think?”

  “Still doubting that I want you?” He smiled at me crookedly, but his eyes were troubled. He reached out to tuck a piece of my messy, tangled hair behind my ear. “You’re so beautiful.” His voice was quiet and almost inaudible in the dark.

  I raised a brow. “You do realize that Lasik eye surgery is actually pretty affordable.”

  He chuckled. “Shut up, AJ. Learn how to accept a compliment.”

  “Is that what that was?”

  “It was.” And then he was kissing my neck, and I had nothing sassy to say. The soft brush of his lips on my skin was an automatic aphrodisiac, and I stretched my neck to give him more access. Only…he hadn’t answered my question.

  My eyes fluttered open. I hadn’t realized I’d actually closed them. “You never answered my question.”

  His teeth sank into my earlobe gently, and he tugged at it. “What question?” he asked, distractedly.

  “That we keep being…friends when we get back home.”

  “I don’t want to be your goddamned friend, Avery.”

  “Jackson.” I was suddenly desperate to get him to understand.

  “I don’t want to talk.” His hands pulling the tangled sheets away from my body were insistent, and I didn’t say no. I tried to get on my knees, but he grabbed my ankle and flipped me effortlessly. “No. Like this.”

  He moved between my spread thighs and entered me slowly. I groaned, trying to force him deeper, faster, but he moved at his own pace. The final thrust that sheathed him completely wrenched a groan from both of us. I struggled to catch my breath as he buried his face in my neck. He began to thrust in me slowly, and I gave up on trying to see everything. My hand tangled in his hair, and my eyes fluttered shut as I just decided to feel.

  When I woke up, I knew I was alone before I even opened my eyes. So I didn’t. I lay there instead, the sun warming my bare shoulders, smelling the salty sea air and fresh sheets drying, pretending that Jackson was still right there beside me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I flew back with Adam.

  It was a very mature step for us, almost like a wordless acknowledgment that our chapter had truly been closed. I had nothing against him and hoped that we could eventually be friends again. Which was the mature way to say I no longer wanted to take a Louisville slugger to his privates.

  We made our flight in plenty of time and I spent most of it sleeping in a fugue state, that restless sleep that I did when I was in public. I kept dozing in and out, waking briefly here and there. At one point, I woke to the stewardess asking Adam something regarding refreshments, but I was too groggy to really tune in to what. I was jarred awake again when he jostled my knee going to the bathroom, and again when he came back.

  By the time I finally opened my eyes for good, the flight was halfway over. I glanced over to find Adam playing Scrabble on his phone, headphones firmly planted on his ears. I watched for a moment as he squandered a double letter space on the word “door.” He gave me a smile and pushed his headphones to his neck. “What? Do you see a better word?”

  “Yeah, you missed ‘dourly.’ But at least you still have the y.” I yawned. “What time is it?”

  “A little after six. You missed the drinks.”

  “Damn.” I craned my neck, trying to locate one of the flight attendants. I spotted one all the way down the aisle. I tried to catch her attention, and she smiled before giving me her back. I couldn’t really blame her—serving refreshments to a couple hundred passengers with different likes and dislikes could test the patience of a saint.

  Adam offered me his cup with a raised eyebrow. “We can share.”

  I shrugged before taking it. Why not? I took a long sip of his cranberry juice before I realized it was liberally laced with vodka. I coughed and sputtered for a minute while Adam tried to pound me on the back. I finally waved him off successfully, cheeks red, eyes a little teary. “You could have told me.”

  He shrugged. “How was I to know you were going to drink it like a Big Gulp?”

  Despite my almost death, I took another sip. The hum of the plane was soothing as I stared out the window, watching the clouds go by. Feeling some strange need to fill the silence, I cleared my throat and tried to think of more than inane chatter. “When we land, you feel like sharing a cab?”

  “Jackson’s not picking you up?”

  “No, he’s going to be in a meeting.”

  Even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew it was the wrong thing to say. I was kind of tired of lying. I didn’t need to pretend my life was better than it was. I had my family. I had my health—reasonably, considering my attachment to bacon, and pretending that I was something I wasn’t seemed like a huge step backward.

  I sighed. “Actually, that’s a lie. Jackson isn’t picking me up because he and I weren’t really a thing. I asked him to be my fake date, and he agreed to help me out.”

  He looked at me for a few seconds in complete silence, brown eyes gone wide with surprise. He finally shook his head. “Why…why would you do something like that?”

  “I wasn’t over you.” I bit my lip, surprised at my own words. There was confessing to a fake date, and then there was this. This confessional was approaching deathbed-worthy. Determined to see it through, I repeated, “I wasn’t over you. And maybe…maybe I missed what we used to be.”

  “Yeah well. Nic seems to think I do, too.”

  It was a moment before I processed what he was saying. “Oh jeez. Are you guys…”

  “We’re taking a break.” His mouth twisted. “Until I figure out what it is I really want.”

  “Wow. That sounds like a direct quote.”

  “It is.”

  I knew that I should probably inquire further about that, but the sad truth of it was that I didn’t care. At one point, I’d wanted to marry him. Build a life with him. All I felt now was a slight fondness. He didn’t make my pulse race fast enough to break an oximeter. He didn’t make my face flush or my palms sweat. He didn’t make me so frustrated that I wanted to throw something. Or laugh so hard that I thought I might pee on myself. I swallowed. No, he wasn’t the man that made me feel those things. That man? I’d let him go without a word.

  “So you and Jackson,” Adam said. “You guys are just over?”

  “I told you. We never really were—”

  “I’m not deaf, AJ.” He scowled at me. “You can call it whatever you want, but I know what I saw. And you never looked at me that way. The moment I saw you guys dancing together, I knew I didn’t have a chance.”

  “Dancing?” I thought for a moment about when he would’ve seen us dancing and frowned. “I didn’t see you at the wedding.”

  “Obviously.”

  My mouth opened and then shut again. I didn’t know what to say.

  “I followed you out to the balcony and saw you guys dancing. I decided then and there that I should leave.” Adam wasn’t quite done as he leaned over and took his glass back from my limp hand. He took a sip and rattled his ice. “You telling me that’s really worth throwing away?”

  I scowled. The man was determined not to make it to forty. He just was. “Are you seriously giving me relationship advice?”

  He waved a hand. “Everything
looks better from first class. I can afford to be generous with free refills on the horizon.”

  I bit my lip. “I don’t want to talk about Jackson.” Especially with you.

  “So was I right?” He didn’t look at me as he spoke.

  “Right about what?”

  “That I don’t have a chance?”

  I blinked. I’d never even considered getting back together with Adam. Picturing it now was like trying to squeeze into an old suit, trying to squeeze my new life into the casing of the old. I couldn’t go backward. Didn’t want to go backward.

  “AJ. Baby.” He grabbed my hand. “We could make it work. I could make you happy.”

  I knew he could. We would have a very nice life together. A quiet life in a subdivision with our kids and a couple dogs. Our work schedules were compatible. Our decorating styles were the same. We’d had a good sex life. Not the kind of sex that Jackson and I had, but maybe that was a good thing. Our sex life had been more of the “I’m here, you’re here, and we’re both still awake” variety. And Adam’s pickup line had usually involved some variation of the oh-so-sophisticated, “You wanna?”

  But it had been good. We had been good together. And it had all been perfectly…vanilla. I tilted my head. I liked vanilla. Fuck love, with all those cartoony hearts in your eyes. We didn’t need it. Love was confusing. Exhausting.

  But even as those treacherous thoughts crept through my mind, I knew that it wasn’t enough. I wanted it all. The love. The passion…I wanted someone who drove me crazy. I didn’t want a placid, settled type of “like.” I didn’t want vanilla. I wanted chocolate with a jalapeno kick just when I thought it was over.

  In the end, I guessed I wanted my Disney story. Move over, Rapunzel. Bitch, you know there’s room in that tower for two. I wanted my happily-ever-after kind of love.

  Or nothing at all.

  From the look on my face, he knew it, too. He sighed, letting my hand drop. “Well, that answers that,” he said to no one in particular.

  “Adam.” I spread my hands helplessly. That was all I could manage. But he knew what I meant.