Harley & Rose

by Carmen Jenner

“Nope, just showing you how much I missed you.” I give him a coquettish smile, and slide my foot over the bulge in his pants. He catches my ankle and presses a kiss to my inner arch, and then he widens my legs in order to get a better look. In the past this always made me nervous, him studying my body so closely, but I’d lie here forever just to have him look at me this way.

  “I missed you, so fucking much,” he says, climbing up the bed and dipping his head low to my crotch. “Okay if I tear these with my teeth?”

  I laugh. “Whatever you want, QB1.”

  “Fuck I love it when you talk football,” he growls.

  Harley lowers his head and covers me with his mouth, panties and all. I moan, because it feels so damn good to have his lips on me again, and I grasp a fistful of hair, tugging until he looks up the length of my body to meet my gaze. He sinks his teeth into my panties and pulls them like a dog with a chew toy caught in his mouth. They don’t break the way he was so obviously hoping, and I erupt into peals of laughter.

  “What’s the matter, QB1? Couldn’t hit a homerun?”

  “Stop,” he says seriously. “You’re mixing your sports metaphors. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Eat me.”

  “Oh, I plan on it. Don’t you worry.” He takes the thin wisp of fabric hooked around his fingers and pulls, hard. The stitching breaks, the fabric tears, and the elastic snaps against the sensitive skin of my hip and inner thigh. I gasp, and a bright red welt forms on my flesh.

  Harley presses his lips to the injury. His tongue darts out, soothing the raised welt like a balm. He trails his mouth over me, separating my labia with his tongue. He licks my wetness and groans, closing his eyes, and I can’t help but smile, because I’ve missed this too.

  My quiet laughter quickly turns into a cry of pleasure as he buries his head in my pussy, eating me out as if I were his favorite meal. I writhe against his face, gripping his hair hard enough to pull it out by the roots. Heat rushes through me, and my orgasm begins building, but just as I’m about to fall over the edge of that precipice he draws away, pressing a kiss to my inner thigh. I groan in frustration, my heart pumping furiously against my ribcage as Harley removes his jeans and climbs up my body. His erection digs into my belly as he leans his lower half on me and I wriggle against him, tasting myself on his mouth. I always loved kissing him right afterward, when his lips and chin were slick with me. I wrap my legs around his hips. Harley slides a hand between us to guide his cock to my entrance and then he slowly pushes inside. Our eyes lock as, inch by delicious inch, he moves deeper, and I can read exactly what he’s thinking because I’m thinking it too.

  “Welcome home,” he says with a grin.

  “Oh,” I cry out, as he seats himself balls’ deep. “Shouldn’t I be the one saying that, given that you’re inside me and all?”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, Rose.” He sounds close to losing it, but his thrusts are slow and measured, and I know he’s setting a pace that’s comfortable for me because if it were up to him, he would have jackhammered me through the wall by now. Not that a bit of that isn’t nice. “Stay with me.”

  He’s not talking about right here and now, because I’m exactly where I should be, present and feeling every second of his thick cock moving inside me. “I can’t.”

  He shoots me a warning look and pulls out almost all the way, and slams back in, as if he’s punishing me for that little reply. “Stay. We’ll get a place, just you and me.”

  “I have school,” I pant, and squirm beneath him as he pistons his hips.

  “So? You … can do … that anywhere. Jesus, fuck.” He supports his weight on one hand and slides the other between us, softly stroking my clit, so different from his sharp, punishing thrusts. Still, it’s a heady combination, and I arch my back as I come, clenching tightly around him. I don’t know if it’s the time apart, or that we just need furious and primal fucking to reconnect, but whatever it is, it’s hot, and it’s enough to tip him over the edge, too. I squeeze my muscles the way he likes as he comes in thick, hot bursts.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, love,” he groans, sucking in a sharp breath as the last of his come spills inside me. He collapses against me, caging me in with both arms and legs and that large torso that seems to have only gotten bigger since he left. Everything about him looks bigger, though perhaps it’s just the distance between us playing tricks on my mind. I’d forgotten how it felt to be dwarfed by him, enveloped and made whole again as I lay beneath him.

  Panting hot breath in my ear, he says, “If you stayed, it could be like this every day.”

  I laugh, but the way his body stills tells me he’s not joking. “Harley—”

  “I miss you too much, Rose.” He leans up on his elbows, our bodies pressed together at the waist, his cock still firm inside me. “I can’t concentrate. I fucking hate this distance between us.”

  “I do too, but—”

  “Then stay. You can get a new internship; it’s not like they don’t have florists in Baton Rouge.”

  Is he serious? This internship might be a pain in the ass, but it’s my pain in the ass. I’ve wanted to study under Sara Lau since I first saw her designs in Vogue Weddings six years ago. She might be a bitch, but she is a genius, and I still have a lot to learn from her. I’m not the one who changed the plans—he is. LSU was never a part of our plan.

  I don’t say this, and I let his blasé comments slide because I know he’s just feeling everything at once the way I am. I should be glad that he wants me to stay so badly, but it bothers me that suddenly my career path isn’t as important to him as his is to me. We’ll talk about this later, no doubt. For now, I don’t want to argue, so I concentrate on being here with him after so long apart, and I marvel that our bodies haven’t forgotten one another in our long absence.

  ***

  I lie naked in Harley’s bed, save for his arms around me and his leg thrown possessively over my thigh, and we drift in and out of sleep for several hours. It feels right; I do feel as if I’m home, and I never want to leave, but something in the back of my mind tells me that this is just the endorphins and my vagina talking.

  “You know I’m never washing these sheets again.” Harley burrows his face in my neck.

  “Eww.”

  “I’m serious,” he says, sliding the palm of his hand over my exposed nipple. He lowers his head and bites down over the sensitive flesh. I cry out, but he kisses it better and all is forgiven. “Not until the next time you come to see me.”

  “That’s seriously disgusting.”

  He shrugs. “Say whatever you want, but this way I’ll get to smell you every time I climb into bed. I don’t want you to leave.”

  “Enough talk of leaving, already. I just got here, and you promised me all the flavors of Baton Rouge, so get dressed. You’re taking me to dinner.” I climb out of bed and start searching the dimly lit room for my clothes.

  “I’d rather just stay in and eat you.”

  I laugh. “Well, I’m not sure vagina is one of the four main food groups, so get up.”

  “I love it when you talk dirty,” he says, grabbing his junk, which is already thickening and ready to go again.

  I pick up a pillow and swat him with it. “Get up.”

  “I’m already up,” he says, fisting his beautiful cock. Long fingers glide over his length, and I watch with rapt attention. I also let out a huff, because I know I’m not going to be eating anything that isn’t penis any time soon.

  Harley pulls me back to bed, where we stay until well after midnight when we run through the house half-dressed, me in his football jersey and no panties and him in a pair of workout shorts, no shoes, no shirt. We hit the drive-through Five Guys on campus and garner some very strange looks from the cashier. She shouts something about Sunday’s game as she hands us our food, but it’s drowned out by the blood pumping in my ears and the whoosh of butterflies that take over my stomach when Harley presses his lips to the back of my hand, allowing just the smallest hint of tongue to graz
e my flesh.

  I scarf down three French fries before Harley pulls over in the lot of a darkened building. The night around us is pitch black save for the streetlight several yards away, but I don’t need light to see by because I’ve known every plain and angle of his face and body from the time I was five years old. I learned them all again when he changed at puberty, and then again after that when he became the hulking, gorgeous man he is today.

  He unfastens his seat belt and slides across the cab, taking the bag of food from my hands and tossing it over his shoulder.

  “Hey,” I protest. “I’m hungry.”

  “Me too.” He kisses the sensitive flesh of my neck, and trails his lips over me as if he could devour me with each kiss.

  ***

  In the morning, I wake to warm hands on my body and Harley’s mouth on my neck. I groan and turn onto my side. I ache all over, and it’s barely even light outside, so why is he trying to kill me?

  “Let me see those pretty eyes,” he whispers, kissing my shoulder, my collar bone, and finally trailing his lips over my bare breast. He sucks my nipple into his mouth hard, and my eyes fly open as I take a slow, hissing breath. I run my fingers through his hair and stare down at him. “I gotta go. Coach is making me run drills before practice for cutting out early yesterday.”

  “No,” I complain. “It’s snuggle time; how does he not know this?”

  “I got a game tomorrow night; I’m pretty sure snuggle time is the last thing on Coach’s mind.” He chuckles darkly. “You gonna be okay here? I hate to leave you in a house full of frat brothers, but they know better than to fuck with you.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ve been dealing with unruly assholes my whole life.”

  He raises a brow. “Oh really?”

  “Yup, lived right next door to the very worst of them.”

  “Cute,” he says, biting my flesh as he moves down my torso.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper, because I’m afraid if I talk too loud he’ll stop. “Aren’t you late for practice?”

  “Yeah, but Coach can wait just a little longer. It’s not every day I wake with this gorgeous a specimen in my bed. I may need to examine it more thoroughly.”

  “I better be the only specimen waking in your bed.”

  “Always,” he says, pulling the sheet away before covering me with his mouth. It’s exquisite, and as he leaves me with a long, hard kiss and the taste of me on his tongue, I think that I could get used to waking like this every day, just the two of us, no parentals around, no climbing in through windows and sneaking back out before we get caught. Just us, getting lost in one another for hours, the way we did last night. Just us.

  ***

  I can’t put off going to pee any longer, so I stand and stretch next to the bed. My eyes roam the floor for my clothes when the door opens and the tall, nerdy guy I met briefly last night stands in the doorway with his jaw hanging open, his eyes roaming my body unchecked.

  “Oh my god,” I squeal and reach for the sheet, wrapping it hastily around my body from chest to ankle. I curse the fact that it’s white, and with the early morning sun streaming in through the window, he can probably see everything anyway.

  “Shit! I’m sorry,” he says, turning and giving me his back.

  “What are you doing in here?” My tone is sharp and accusing, and I think I may have frightened him a little because he flinches.

  “Er, just trying to get some clothes.” Covering his eyes with his hand, he turns around, and peeks through the gap between his ring and pinkie fingers. I’m still shielded by the sheet. Too bad if I wasn’t. He drops his hand. His eyes dip from my scantly covered body to the ruined panties on the floor, and he presses his lips tightly together. Then he drags his gaze back up to my face. “So I’m not late.”

  “What?”

  He points to the built-in wardrobes across the other side of the room. “My clothes. I need to get dressed.”

  I inhale sharply in surprise. “Wait, is this your room, too?”

  “Yeah,” he says nervously. “I … er, Harley asked me to take the couch while you’re here.”

  “Oh my god, I am so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  He shrugs, and the gesture just looks so odd while he’s standing there with his hands fidgeting at his sides and his cheeks are beet red. “It’s okay. Though could you maybe not tell Harley that I walked in on you naked. He’s … kind of likely to beat my head in.”

  I laugh nervously. “Don’t worry. Secret’s safe with me.”

  “Thanks, so … I’m just going to get some things.”

  “Okay. I’m really sorry we kicked you out of your room.”

  “It’s fine. Happens all the time.”

  My smile falters, and my heart skips a beat. “Wait, what?”

  “In the house, I mean, not in this room, but in the others. There’s always someone getting kicked out and sleeping on the couch.”

  “Right, of course.”

  “Harley isn’t like that.”

  “I know,” I say, though not very convincingly.

  “I mean, plenty of other guys would. QB1 gets offered more pussy than he can handle, but he doesn’t … he’s not … well, he doesn’t pay them any attention. He’s not interested in other girls. He jacks off to your picture a lot, but …”

  I laugh, and he runs a hand over his face.

  “Okay, I’m just gonna …” He trails off and heads to the closet, grabbing a handful of clothes without even really looking at what he’s doing. Then he moves to the desk and stuffs pens and books and a laptop inside. “See ya.”

  “Bye,” I say. The door closes softly behind him. I let out a huge puff of air and fall back on the bed.

  This distance between me and Harley has me losing my mind. I know this man; I know he’d never break my heart that way, so why am I always waiting for the other shoe to drop?

  Chapter Twenty

  Rose

  I’ve always cried at weddings; it’s what I do. It’s more than just the idea of two people coming together to say their vows. It’s more than the dress, the cake, the flowers, or the way a groom watches with bated breath and a tear in his eye as his beautiful bride walks toward him. It’s so much more than that. Over the course of several months, and in some cases, years, I develop a relationship with the bride, and it becomes more for me than just helping her big day be as beautiful as she imagined it would be as a little girl. It’s more than just a job—it’s about creating a memory and a snippet in time that they’ll remember long after the petals have fallen from their bouquet and turned to dust, when their groom is driving them mad by not putting the garbage out every week.

  TV weddings are largely different from a regular ceremony. There’s the grueling hours, numerous takes, and what seems like cameramen and crew everywhere, but there is still something magic in this wedding that extends beyond the enchantment of TV, and it’s here in the wisteria wonderland we’ve created. We did this. Dale Tutela might be a 'roid-raging Oompa Loompa in desperate need of a Xanax, but he’d given me a gift with a big budget and TV airtime. Though I guess Harley had been the one to make it all possible.

  The wedding was taking place at the Legion of Honor, SF’s finest art gallery. I’d dressed several weddings here in the past, and each one was classic and beautiful. I didn’t know how they’d booked the venue so late, because ordinarily they were reserved months in advance, but that’s the magic of Hollywood for you.

  I kept the ceremony in the Court of Honor elegant, reserved and all white to match the huge stone pillars around us. Rose pomanders hung from each aisle seat, and the altar was set with stone column pedestals overflowing with snowy white orchids, roses and anemone, but it was inside the Rodin Gallery where the arrangements were really spectacular, and this was the current cause of the tears that threatened to spill from my eyes. The entire room was strung with wisteria in pale lilac, frosty pink and whites. Guests dined under great arches of it, huge vases of it lined the table as centerpiece
s, and the bronzed statues of Rodin juxtaposed the soft feminine feel of the room. The bride had been wanting roses everywhere, and I’d given her that in her ceremony, but they weren’t the flower for her.

  I didn’t much like this woman, and I knew she didn’t like me from the first time we’d met right up until last night’s cast and crew rehearsal dinner, but that didn’t matter. Because I’d seen her face when she’d seen her ceremony decorations and met her groom at the altar, and I’d seen the way her eyes misted over and her mouth fell open when she entered this room. She’d been transported back to her childhood when she’d dreamed of a day just like this. I know, because that’s what all of my brides do. They light up when their dreams are realized. It’s what I hope to do one day, light up like a damn Christmas tree when I walk down the aisle surrounded by lush peonies and orchids, paper lanterns and an April sunset—my best friend waiting at the altar in a tux, a soft smile on his face and a glimmer of tears in his eyes as he watches me take those final steps toward him.

  But it’s a little hard to marry your best friend when he clearly doesn’t love you, or even return your calls, for that matter. One week. That’s how long I’ve given him. One week. I must have dialed that number a thousand times. I walked by his apartment; I banged on the door. I shouted up at his window, and nothing.

  I know it is pathetic. I know I am pathetic, but this whole time I hadn’t given up on him, and that’s wrong. I need to let him go, because he’s already released me and I’ve been too stupid to see it. I have to put childish things aside and give up on the idea of having him love me back. And so, with a heavy heart and a guilty conscience, early this morning I’d sent a card with Dermot’s arrangement with only one word on it: Dinner.

  He hasn’t called yet, and maybe that’s for the best, but I’d had to do something.

  Dale sidles up beside me. I plaster on a smile, but all at once the weight of the last week rests heavy on my shoulders, and it falters. He clears his throat. “It’s a celebration. You’re supposed to be having fun.”

  “I am,” I say, sipping my drink. All I really want to do is gulp it down but I don’t, because you never know who’s watching, especially with a camera crew involved.