Losing to Win

by Michele Grant

  She groaned. “I don’t know.”

  Sliding a leg between hers to open her up, I grasped her wrists in my hands and pulled them over her head. I shifted my hips forward and then back, applying pressure against her heat and then backing off. Waves of heat echoed back and forth between us, cocooning us in hot steamy air. I kissed her lips with the same staccato rhythm. Then I paused. Her hips chased mine, her lips pouted for more. Her mind may not have known what she wanted, but the rest of her was completely on board. I waited for her lashes to rise and our eyes to meet before I spoke. “Maybe you need reminding.”

  “Reminding?” Her eyes went cloudy with confusion and desire.

  I turned her so she was facing front against the wall. I surged against her and kept her arms above her head. “Leave them there.” I commanded before reaching for the tie on the halter top of her dress. I released it, then flicked open the bra underneath. Both of us groaned as her breasts fell into my hands. I’d definitely missed these. They were ample and overflowed my hands as I squeezed and molded them. I rolled the hardened nipples between my thumb and forefinger. She held her breath and released it in a choppy moan. The sound of that moan raked across my nerves, arousing me further. I’d missed that sound.

  “Later on tonight, when I’m not hustlin’ to get inside you, I’m going to play with these with my tongue and my lips and my fingers over and over again until I watch you come apart. You were always so sensitive here. I could take you over with just two damp fingertips. Remember how I used to do that?”

  She flung her head back and let out a low keening sound but didn’t speak. She ground her hips into my hardness, enticing me to hurry. I gritted my teeth against the temptation.

  No way was I letting her get away with that. I dropped my hands to her hips and held them still. “Answer me. Do you remember?”

  “Yes. I remember.” Her voice barely registered above a whisper.

  “I thought you did. I can’t forget. Do you how many times I’ve been in bed at night thinking about how we were together? I would touch myself wishing it was you. Thinking about all the ways we burned together. How you used to melt into me, match me, challenge me, satisfy me?” I raised the hem of the dress and pulled down the pastel panties she was wearing. “Do you know?”

  “No.” She shook her head frantically.

  I slid a finger through her moist heat and she gasped. “It’s happened more times than I can think about. You are so wet, Cari. Is it mine? Is it all for me?”

  “Oh, Mal,” she implored me.

  “Tell me, is it me that makes you steamy and dripping, hungry? Is all this hot honey for me, Carissa?” My fingers explored her, reaching the tight quivering nubbin of sensation. I caressed it in slow circles, reveling in the unevenness of her breath. How she quaked when I stroked just so and purred when I rubbed right there, there, and twice more with two fingers and a squeeze there. I slid one long finger inside her warmth and her walls clamped around my finger.

  “Mal, please!”

  Nothing in the world like having the woman you want begging for more. Nothing. “What do you want? What can I give you, baby? Talk to me.”

  She whipped around with her eyes flashing and reached for the fastening on my shorts. In record time she had them open and down on the floor. I pulled off my shirt and she pushed her dress the rest of the way off. She reached into my boxers and freed the straining, desperate part of me that leaped at her touch. “You know what I want. Stop. Playing. Games. With. Me.” She punctuated each word with a squeeze and a downward stroke of my hardness. I had to lock my knees to fight the swell of sensation.

  I pushed her away and turned her back toward the wall. We had to do this my way. Reaching down, I grabbed my wallet out of my pocket and extracted a condom. I rolled it on and looked up at her. Tempting as it was to stop and slowly taste my way back up, I had more urgent needs to deal with.

  I pressed myself full length along her back before adjusting her position. I tilted her so she was leaning against the wall balanced on her hands, her hips aligned to mine, her ass out and raised to receive me, her legs slightly spread. “God, you look so sexy right now. You remember that time when we’d just bought the house and I came up behind you on the stairs. Do you remember?”

  “I remember.” She whimpered, straining closer to me.

  “Do you remember how I bent you over, pressed against you, and you wiggled your ass against me? How I wrapped my hand around your waist?” I wrapped my arm around her to hold her steady. “And then I slid inside of you just like this?” I slid inside of her warmth in a single stroke, inflaming the both of us. “Do you remember, Cari?”

  “Oh my God. Yes. I remember everything.” She clenched her internal muscles around me and I growled low in my throat.

  I drove into her with long, deep strokes, driven by a tidal wave of emotion and pleasure and things I wasn’t ready to define. I struggled to stay in control. A part of me just wanted to stop and bask in the fact that I was wrapped around Carissa Melody Wayne and she was wrapped around me. That in this moment she was mine and mine alone. That in this moment, we were happy and together and there was no future and no past, just this one perfect sensation of oneness. Me, encased in her heat, savoring every liquid slide of my length. So many more thoughts and feelings bombarded me than I could control. “Just remember how this feels, Carissa. This.” I plunged. “And this.” I retreated. “And this.” I dove in again. “This is us. This is who we are. This is what we do. This is how we make each other feel. No one else. Just you and me. Are you listening?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me.” I slowed to short, shallow strokes teasing every ridge and nerve ending inside of her. It was addictive, the heat of her, the smell of us, the feel of this. How had I ever let this go?

  “God, you make me crazy when you get like this,” she breathed, raising up on her tiptoes as I hit a sensitive spot inside of her.

  “Like what, baby?”

  “All alpha male.”

  I grinned. “You love it when I make you feel. When I make you sweat. When I make you come.”

  She peered over her shoulder at me and rasped in a sultry voice full of promise and tension and sex, “Remind me.”

  Two little words and I went wild. I couldn’t get deep enough, fast enough. I wanted everything she had to give. I slammed into her with everything I had and snaked my other arm up to tweak her rock-hard nipples. Every time I brushed her nipples, she clenched tighter around me. It was heaven, it was hell, I couldn’t get enough. Stroke, tweak, clench, stroke, tweak, clench . . . it was too much for both of us. She screamed and her molten walls fluttered around me, triggering my release that erupted from the depths of my soul. I shouted her name as the sensations flooded through me and I had to brace my knees to keep both of us from falling backward. Long moments passed while aftershocks sparked from her to me and back again, before our breathing settled and our brains re-engaged. With extreme reluctance, I pulled out of her and went to dispose of the condom in the hall bathroom.

  When I walked back toward her, she was lounging back on the staircase, resting on her elbows. “Had a point you were trying to make, Mr. Knight?”

  I loved it when she was like this with me. This was one of the things I adored about her. She was a lady for the entire world to see, but then with me, in our private time when she let down her guard, she was open, uninhibited, daring even, and a little brash. My equal in every way. I stood in front of her, uncertain of what would come next, and shrugged. “We tend to do our best communicating with elevated heart rates.”

  “Hmph,” she snorted while eating me up with her eyes. She was staring at me with consideration and something else I couldn’t clearly define. But it was stirring me up; I felt myself starting to rise to the occasion.

  I raised a brow. “What?”

  She stood up and started ascending the staircase. “I guess this part was inevitable.”

  “The naked part?”

  “The nake
d, got-to-have-you-give-it-to-me-right-now part, yes.”

  “With you and me, it’s always just below the surface.” I stood at the bottom of the stairs wondering if I was about to get kicked out on my ass.

  She paused and looked down. “And now that you’ve unleashed the monster . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I want more. Suit up, baller; you’ve got some work to do.”

  I snatched my wallet off the ground where I’d dropped it, praying I had more than one condom still left in there. It promised to be a long, productive night. “Yes, ma’am. Reporting for duty, ma’am,” I joked and jogged up the steps. When I entered her bedroom, she was lying in the middle of the four-poster bed on her back.

  “But Malachi?”

  Uh-oh. Here it came. The catch.

  “Yep?”

  “This is just about the sex right now. Okay? I’m just looking for a little kitty maintenance, not trying to resurrect our dead romance. Understood?”

  Ouch. That hurt. A lot. Our romance was dead? I didn’t think so. But I also did not want to be kicked off of kitty maintenance duty. Especially knowing someone else was waiting in the wings to pick up anything I left behind. If that’s the way she wanted to play it, so be it. God knew some of Carissa was better than none at all. “I don’t necessarily cosign, but since I’m not sure what I’m bringing to the table for the long term, I understand.” I crawled across the comforter and gently bit the tip of her right breast while twirling the tip of the left in my hand.

  “God, you’re good at that.” She leaned back and closed her eyes.

  I pinched lightly to get her attention. “But one thing, Cari?”

  “Um-hmm?”

  I rolled so she was lying on top of me, her breasts level with my mouth. She arched her back as I sucked passionately, and when she least expected it, I smacked a hand across her butt cheek.

  Her eyes flew open. “What the hell? Have you gotten kinky? Kinkier, I should say?”

  I chuckled. “Just making sure you’re paying attention when I tell you this.” I smacked her again lightly and watched her squirm not entirely in displeasure. Hmm. Kitty liked a little slap and tickle. Something to play with later.

  “I’m listening, Mal. What is it?”

  “I don’t share.”

  She frowned down at me. “I don’t cheat.”

  “I’m just saying. I know Jordy is feeling you and I don’t know what is between you two, but while we’re like this, for however long we’re like this? He gets none. Nothing, nada, nary a taste, never a whiff. Understand?”

  Carissa rolled her eyes. “I’m not an idiot. And I do know you, Malachi. I know what you will and won’t put up with. We’re on the same page here. And same goes for you. Until we both agree to walk away—”

  “—or to stay,” I interjected.

  “Not likely, but fine. Until we both agree on what’s next, we’re a party of two.”

  I kneaded her ass and spread her legs before sliding myself along her already moist slit. “Good, ’cause we’ve got a lot of catching up to do, here.”

  She wrapped her arms around me and lightly bit my shoulder. “Well, time’s a-wasting. Let’s get to it. Slow this time and then fast again.”

  “As you wish.” I was always good at being coached.

  18

  She has a point

  Carissa—Tuesday, July 12—10:57 a.m.

  “I’d like to thank you for joining us today, Mrs. Wayne,” Dr. Julie greeted my mother as we walked into the room. How damn clichéd was it for a therapist to ask you to bring your mother in for a session? Just how screwed up did she think I was?

  “Baby, let’s just go and see what the woman has to say,” my mom had lectured me this morning on our way in. “Nine times out of ten, these things aren’t as bad as you make them out to be. You know you’ve always had a flair for the dramatic.”

  I let that go. Everyone knew Ruby was the drama queen in our family. All I wanted to do was make it through the day without airing any more dirty laundry on film. Simultaneously, we settled into the two deep club chairs in front of Dr. Julie, crossed our legs, and folded our hands in our laps. Dr. Julie smiled reassuringly at us, nodded to the cameras to start rolling, and then dropped a bombshell.

  “I’m wondering, Eloise—can I call you Eloise?” she addressed my mother.

  My mother inclined her head regally in assent.

  “Eloise, do you think it’s possible that the repetitive abandonment by her father caused Carissa to be insecure in her relationship with Malachi?”

  Both of our mouths dropped open. “I beg your pardon?” my mother asked.

  “What I’m wondering... what I’ve been thinking is that due to the unreliability of her father, do you think Carissa was ill equipped to handle a man like Malachi, who was in the spotlight, frequently absent, and not forthcoming with his intentions?”

  Well, hell. I sat back in my chair with a huff. Ain’t this some shiggity? Not once did I consider that Blue’s shiftless existence played a role in the outcome of my relationship with Mal.

  My mom reached over and grasped my hand. “I think Carissa, more than anybody, has amazing depths of coping capacity. I also think that her father did us no favors with his actions and I’m sure I’m partially to blame for allowing it to go on for so long.”

  “Oh, Mom—”

  “Hush now, let me talk. One thing you need to understand is that Blue is a big talker. And when he talks, you find yourself believing him. Mostly because you want to but also because he’s an excellent bullshit artist. For years, Blue would call and tell Carissa and Ruby that he was coming back and that when he came back, we were going to be a real family. And every time he came, he disappointed us all and left. Now, I fully expected to be disappointed by Blue, and Ruby is just the sort of person who never takes anything that seriously. But Carissa wants to believe in people. She needs to believe in their inherent goodness. Especially in the people she loves. So time after time she believed that Blue was going to do right by us and he never did. The worst time—”

  I winced, knowing where she was going with the story. “Mama, you do not have to tell all of this.”

  “Baby, she needs to understand.” She patted my hand and continued. “One time, when Carissa was about ten or eleven, Blue came and took her away with him for the weekend. Ruby was at camp and didn’t go. Blue promised to take Carissa with him to Dallas for the big Texas State Fair. He was performing with that band, I can’t recall the name. Won some Grammys that year, three albums? Anyway . . . off he went with Carissa in tow, thinking that she’d won the jackpot weekend with her father.” Her voice thickened and she threaded her fingers through mine. I squeezed as she took a deep breath to steady her emotions.

  “Anyway, they got there and Blue patted Carissa on the head and then promptly turned her over to one of the groupies and told her he’d be back after the show. She watched him play and that was the last she saw of him for that day and most of the next. The groupie finally called me the next day to come get Carissa because she didn’t know where Blue had gone. I don’t even want to think of where my child spent the night and in whose company. I got to Dallas that night. I will never forget seeing my baby girl sitting on a curb outside of a 7-Eleven clutching a suitcase and a Cherry Slurpee. When we tracked Blue down, he was climbing on a tour bus to go to the next gig. He’d completely forgotten about his daughter’s existence. He actually looked surprised to see us standing there. He got off the bus, gave both of us a kiss on the cheek, and said he’d see us before long. Carissa waited until he was almost back on the bus before calling out to him. ‘Daddy?’ Her little voice halted him in his tracks. ‘Don’t bother coming back.’ He just smiled, told her she didn’t mean it, and climbed back on the bus. We didn’t see him for about five years after that. By then, none of us cared anymore.”

  The room was silent while everyone digested that pitiful tale from my childhood.

  With a deep sigh, Eloise finished making her
point. “All of this to say I think you have it skewed. I don’t think Carissa was incapable of dealing with Malachi. I think she was unwilling to put herself in a situation that might mirror mine at all.”

  “Now, Mom, this has nothing to do with you.”

  “Oh, yes it does. All you saw was me allowing a man to yo-yo back and forth into our lives and you were determined to be nothing like me.”

  “No, Mom. I am like you, in so many ways. Creative, stubborn, smart, outspoken but polite to a fault. But I don’t have your patience and forgiveness. I damn sure did not want a relationship where I couldn’t count on the other person in it. I saw what waiting on Blue to do right did to you. I just couldn’t wait on Mal, Mama. I just didn’t trust him to ever do the right thing.”

  “And what was the right thing?” Dr. Julie asked.

  I realized she was still in the room and the cameras were still rolling. “The right thing would’ve been marrying me and not making me wonder what he was doing and who he was doing it with.”

  “And then what would’ve happened?” she probed.

  I blinked in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “What happens after the man of your dreams marries you and does right by you?”

  “I’m guessing that ‘they lived happily ever after’ is not what you’re looking for here.”

  She smiled. “I think you need to figure out what happily ever after would look like before you expect a man to give it to you.”

  “She has a point,” Eloise murmured.

  I shifted on the chair. I knew she had a point.

  “If you are going to move forward in your quest for overall wellness, you have to come to grips with your feelings for Malachi and what you would want either from him or whoever you decide you want to build a life with.”

  “Mal and I are somewhat okay with the past. We’re trying to be friends again.” Yes, that was a massive understatement for how much time we’d spent naked in each other’s company over the past few weeks, but I didn’t see where that was relevant right now.