by Lisa Levine
“Do you want to come home with me?” he asked with reservation as he looked over at me in the passenger seat. “It’s okay if you don’t.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
When we got to his apartment, he poured a glass of whiskey to dull the pain and sank down onto the couch while I put some ice into a bag and went into his bathroom to get some bandages and antiseptic. I knelt in front of him on the couch and cleaned up all the cuts on his hands. His knuckles were so swollen, and it looked like he might have even smashed one good enough to break it. After I cleaned it all up, and he had taken swigs of whiskey with each grimace of pain; I wrapped his right hand in a pretty tight bandage since it was the worse off of the two. Then I held a bag of ice to it and looked at him.
“You know,” I said, “as much as it kills me to say this, Easton. I think that we might really be better off as friends like I said before. It keeps causing us both a lot of pain every time we try to be together. I mean, look; you probably broke several bones in your right hand tonight. And for what? Protecting my honor or something? Layla’s friend is right, you are slumming it with me, and maybe we should stop trying to force the issue and go back to being friends.”
As much as I loved him and as much as it hurt me to say it, I felt like it might be the right thing to do. Easton didn’t say anything right away. He looked weary and frustrated, and as if he were all out of options to consider.
“Is that what you really want?” he asked me.
I couldn’t answer that question without lying, so I just remained quiet and sat up next to him on the couch. After a few minutes, I thought of something to say that wasn’t really an answer but would serve the purpose. “I think it might just be best.”
Easton nodded without saying anything as he brought his whiskey glass to his mouth again and took a long sip. He sat next to me with his hands resting on his lap. We could both sit here and agree that being friends was the best thing for everyone, but it still couldn’t erase the tons of heat that lingered in the space between us.
“Do you want to go back to your apartment?” he asked.
I hesitated before answering, and so he spoke again.
“I don’t want to take you back to your apartment, but I will if that’s what you want to do.”
I sat and thought about it some more. I didn’t want to go back to my apartment, either, but if I stayed here after we had just talked about going back to being friends, it would make things even harder.
“I think maybe the best thing to do would be for me to go home, now that you’re all bandaged up, and then tomorrow we can meet at the bookstore again since it’s a Saturday and go back to having our best friend dates. I don’t want to spend time without you again; maybe that’s a good way to reset everything back to the way that it was.”
Easton stared out into the open space of the living room, and after a minute or so, he nodded his head vacantly.
“Okay,” he said as he poured the remaining contents of his glass down his throat. “Let me just go grab a clean shirt before we leave because this one has blood all over it.”
“Okay,” I said meekly as I stayed on the couch to wait.
I watched as he pulled his shirt off over his head and tossed it down the hall in the direction of the laundry room. Then he went to his bedroom to get a clean shirt as I waited. When he came back out, I noticed that there was a bit of blood on his chest as well.
“You’re bleeding,” I said as I stood up and walked closer to him.
I touched my finger to his chest, where there was a small gash just below his left nipple. It must have happened during the brawl at the nightclub. He sucked a quick breath in when my fingertips touched his skin, and I realized that I had done it without thinking and probably shouldn’t have. He closed his eyes and then opened them again to look up at me through half-lidded eyes without raising his head.
“Ivy,” he said slowly. “This isn’t going to work if we keep touching each other because I honestly can’t stop feeling things for you.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just saw that you were—”
It didn’t matter. I stopped my own sentence short because the only part of this that mattered is that for as much trouble as we had being together, it was even more difficult trying to stay apart.
Easton took a step back away from me to grab his keys, and with his shirt in one hand and his keys in the other, he motioned toward the door. “Ready?” he asked. There was as much hesitation in his voice as I felt inside my heart.
“Yeah,” I said as I walked toward the door.
I hoped that this was the right thing to do. I hoped that going back to being friends with Easton wasn’t the biggest mistake I’d ever made in my life. But he seemed to agree with it, or at least not resist me on that choice. So it must have been, at least in part, what he thought we should do, too. At least now, we would go back to being friends, and we would still have each other in some way. It would be easier for both of us. He would go back to focusing on his career and on finding a woman he could settle down with and who could keep up with his lifestyle. And I would go back to my shifts at the bookstore and to scribbling down poetry in my spare time, even though most of the poetry that I wrote was inadvertently about him. Also, the thought of his being with another woman made me feel like I was pulling out my own heart through my throat. I wondered if he would still tell me about all of his escapades with dating, or if that part of our “friend relationship” was done for good.
I reached for the door handle, knowing that this was a final decision and that after this, there would be no more point in daydreaming about being with Easton because now it would never happen.
And it hurt.
21
Chapter Fourteen (Easton)
Without thinking, I ignored what we had just said and what we’d just agreed to do. I saw Ivy’s hand touch the handle on the door, and I knew that if I let her go tonight that I would lose her forever, at least in this way. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let her go.
I dropped both of the things in my hands, and just as she started to pull the door open a tiny crack, I pushed my palm against the wood above her head to slam it closed. When she turned around abruptly to look at me, I grabbed her hand from off the knob and turned her around so that her back pressed up against the door and kissed her. I took both of her hands in mine and held them above her head as I pushed my body into hers until she felt me everywhere. My chest pressed against her breasts, and my swollen cock pushed between her thighs while I kissed her as if my life depended on it. Our tongues circled around our mouths furiously, and I heard her whimper and gasp for breaths as we kissed. I couldn’t stop myself, not tonight.
I let her hands down and hoped to God that she didn’t try to push me away, but as soon as I let go of her, she grabbed my shoulders and tried to pull me closer. When I tried to pull my tongue from her mouth for just a second to let her breathe, she moved her hands to my face and brought my mouth to hers as if she couldn’t bear for us to be apart in any way at all, no matter how minuscule.
To hell with being just friends—I wanted Ivy.
I lifted her up in my arms and set her onto my hips as she wrapped her legs around my torso. If we both hadn’t had on clothes, I would have slid her down onto me right now, just like this as I held her in my arms hovering just above my ready cock. I carried her into the bedroom and hurried to pull the clothes from her body, taking my mouth from hers only for small seconds to remove her clothing and mine.
I looked again at her beautiful, naked body sprawled against my bed, and I was filled with an insatiable longing to be inside of her. When I crawled over her, I felt her body squirm and move beneath me with excited, nervous energy that radiated from her very pores. I laid myself against her so that she could feel me there, and I let her hands explore my body as I kissed her on every soft spot that I could find. She touched me, and her fingers wrapped around my shaft, and I moane
d at the upward stroke. This was her first time, and I wanted her to know that my body was hers. I wanted her to see what she could do to me and how she could make me feel. She was in control, right up until the time that she wanted me to be.
I tilted my face back toward hers, and as she leaned up to kiss me, she wrapped her legs around me and pulled my body down to her more. Her thighs opened, and her hips rolled upward as she urged her body against me. I hesitated for just a brief moment to make sure that she was okay. I didn’t want to stop this time as the muscles in my body quivered, and I was quickly losing control. I looked in her eyes as I kissed her, and she spoke her words directly into my mouth.
“Make love to me,” she whispered.
At her command, any last bit of control that I was holding onto was lost. I pushed into her body, slowly and steadily, relishing in every heightened sensation of the tight and powerful movement. I felt her nails dig into my back and heard her guttural moan as I moved deeper inside of her until I filled her body completely. Her body trembled beneath mine as I kissed her open mouth and pushed my tongue inside of her. She was giving me control, and I would make her feel a pleasure that she had only dreamed of.
As I started to move within her, even I was so overcome with stimulation at the feel of her body around mine, that I felt my eyes roll up toward the ceiling. Our bodies fit together as if they were an extension of each other, and I had never felt this way during sex before. Even with all of the experience that I had, this felt so much different than ever before. It was the first time for both of us in a sense, because not only was it the first time I had ever made love to a virgin; it was the first time I had ever been in love.
I made the sensual climb as slow as I could possibly make it because I didn’t want it to ever end. I pushed my muscles to their limit and my mind to the end of madness as I tried to stretch out the moments without giving in to it. I held her close to my chest and kissed her relentlessly as she reached the pinnacle of her climactic moment and unraveled around me, making the most fulfilled and involuntary moan that echoed throughout the walls of my apartment. As soon as she did, my body succumbed as well, and I exploded inside of her as I tried to keep my weight from crumbling down onto her while she rendered me completely and helplessly at her mercy.
When it was over, I lay against her to catch my breath for a moment before rolling to my side and bringing her onto my shoulder. I looked over at her as I pulled the sheet over our still-trembling bodies and gently pushed the sweaty strands of hair away from her beautiful eyes.
“How do you feel?” I asked as I checked on her and kissed her damp forehead.
“I feel like I want to make love to you every single night for the rest of forever,” she said with an urgency in her voice. “Can we do it more than once in a night?”
I laughed. “I will make love to you as much as you want,” I smiled. “Every night for as many times as you want. And yes, I can definitely do it more than once in a night.”
She beamed up at me, and I felt a happiness rise in my chest that I had never, ever felt after sex before. I was as if we had joined our bodies together in a way that transcended all reason.
“How do you feel?” she asked me as she looked wide-eyed at my face to read my expression.
“I feel as though I am finally home.”
That night, we fell asleep, knowing that this was what we were meant to be, more than friends.”
In the middle of the night, something woke me up, thanks to my ongoing libido that somehow felt Ivy move against me in her sleep, even though I wasn’t even awake. I gently kissed her until her eyes fluttered open, and she looked at me sleepily and in a curious confusion about why I was waking her in the middle of the night.
“Remember what you asked me?” I whispered to her in the darkened light. “About more than once? I want to make love to you again now.”
She grinned and reached down to feel me. When her hand touched my hardened desire for her, she pushed her body close to me and hooked her leg around my torso to bring me over onto her again. We made love for a second time, and it was no less satisfying and encompassing than the first. If this was the way that making love to Ivy always felt, then I was afraid I would never want to get out of the bed. This was perfection, her and I.
22
***
In the morning, we both slept in late. We were exhausted from our night of pleasure, and we laid lazily in each other’s arms until our bodies stirred us. They didn’t stir us to get up, though; they stirred us to be together again. By the time we had stopped needing to make love to each other on repeat, it was well into the afternoon, and we were both severely late for work. Both of our phones had a zillion missed messages, and both of our workplaces were spiraling into a small frenzy of panic about where we were. We looked at our phones in bed as Ivy laid against my chest, and we both laughed about it.
“If only they all knew that we were together, maybe they would calm down a bit,” she said.
“Maybe,” I chuckled. “You know, I love this part of things, too.”
“The part where we freak out all of our friends?”
“No,” I laughed. “The part where we have just had the most tantalizing night of making love that either of us has ever had, and we can lay in bed the next morning, still completely sexually engaged, but also tied together as friends as we laugh at our phones.”
I had expected her to laugh or agree with me, so when Ivy remained quiet, I looked over at her to see what was up. I was surprised to see her eyes wet and glistening.
“What is it?” I asked as a small panic crept over me. “What’s the matter?”
No, please don’t let anything be wrong right now, not after last night when everything is so wonderful.
“You think that making love to me was the most tantalizing night of sex you’ve ever had?” she asked.
Oh, thank God, they were happy tears.
“Yes,” I said as I smiled gently at her. “It was.”
We were going to be even later to work now because we started back up at it again as she pulled me on top of her and we both dropped our phones onto the mattress beside us.
23
***
Ivy and I walked into the bookstore together, after I had decided to call Janet, put out the little fires over the phone, and give her the confidence to be able to handle the rest of the day without me. Ivy had texted both Bridget and Ben, and although neither one of them was too awfully upset about her being four hours late to her shift, they were both a bit skeptical about it and worried that she was okay. I knew that if we both sauntered into the bookstore together, me holding onto her hand as if I would never again let her go, and Ivy wearing a glowing post-coital glow, there probably wouldn’t be too much dispute about it. She was fortunate to have such a cool manager who didn’t fire her, though. I owed Ben a bit of thanks for that.
“Look who decided to show up,” Bridget teased as she took one look at us and then smiled. “Okay, you’re forgiven.”
Ivy laughed and then went to apologize to Ben.
“If you hurt her again, so help me God,” Bridget warned me with the most serious expression that I had ever seen her wear before.
“I’m not going to hurt her,” I said.
“You already did.”
“I’m not going to hurt her again,” I said. I felt my mouth curve downward into a frown. I was trying really hard to make up for my past wrongs and move on.
“I’m kind of starting to like you,” Bridget said. “You grow on people. But Ivy is a good person, and you put her through hell. She doesn’t deserve to ever have to deal with that again. I’m glad to see her happy, and I’m glad to see both of you happy together. I know you’ve been her friend a lot longer than I have, but there’s one thing that makes me have her back in a way that you never will—we’re both females, and we know what it’s like to have a guy break our heart. So don’t you ever do that to that sweet woman again, or I will kick your ass.”
&n
bsp; I didn’t know whether to be grateful that Bridget was such a good friend to Ivy, pissed off that she assumed I would hurt her again, or mildly scared at how actually ruthless she sounded. It didn’t matter, though, because I wasn’t going to let anything touch Ivy and me.
“Okay,” Ivy said with a smile as she came back to where we were standing. “Ben’s not mad.”
Bridget smiled at her as if we hadn’t just had that disturbing little heart-to-heart.
“Of course he’s not,” Bridget grinned. “I told him not to be.”
“So, things are going well between the two of you then?” Ivy asked her.
Bridget glanced over at me as if I were intruding on private girl chat, so I excused myself to go pick up a few more books. I owed Ben a big book purchase again anyway. But I couldn’t help but linger in the next aisle over to eavesdrop just a little bit. I wanted to hear if they said anything about me. I was hoping Bridget wouldn’t be too brutal.
“Yeah, things are great between Ben and me,” Bridget said. “How about with you and Easton? You seem to be rather glowing this morning.”
“He made love to me,” Ivy said, and I could hear the joy seeping from her voice. “And even though it was my first time, he made love to me over and over again until we were exhausted. I’m so in love with him, Bridget.”
That made me smile.
“Oh, Ivy,” Bridget said with a bit of a sympathetic lilt in her tone. “You were a virgin before Easton?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Well, he’s one hell of a guy to lose your virginity, too, that’s all.”
Hey, careful now.
I stood behind the shelf and wondered what that was supposed to mean.