by Daisy Jane
It’s true, I want him. I don’t know how I could possibly know—there’s no logic in this choice. It comes straight from my heart. I want him, body and soul. I know it, as he fills me with his hard heat, his soft lips pressed to mine, the scent of our writhing bodies making me heady.
“Britta,” he growls, one of his hands going to my hip, forcing me to hold still, to stop moving. We lie there together, still, his cock stretching and filling me, pulsing gently as he holds his orgasm back. “Be mine.”
His erotic valentine sends a jolt of ecstasy down my spine, ignites a spark inside me, my body flaring with confidence, security. I didn’t know I needed this as much as I do.
I lift my head to meet his lips and our mouths clash together, ruthless and raw, and his hips move a few more times before I feel my core tighten, my legs tremble.
“That’s right,” he coaxes. “Come, come Britta, I know you want to.”
Hearing him say those words gives me a thrill I’ve never known. My heart thuds in my ears, fireworks fill my brain, my vision goes black. My body wants to snap closed, like a Venus fly trap, the pleasure is so intense. I can’t breathe yet I’m speaking but not real words, just jumbles of feelings on heated breaths. And as my body grabs and releases, taking pleasure from the steel inside me, I feel him go still again, holding himself there, deep, so deep. My entire body is whirring with pleasure as he fills the condom, throb after throb, pulsing into me, his breath heavy against my ear.
When we come down, he slides out of me and I feel hollow, placing my hands over myself, wanting to remember how he felt there just a moment ago.
He disposes of the condom and comes back with a small towel, wiping the insides of my thighs and my swollen and tender pussy. When he settles back into the bed next to me, the curves of my body seem to meld to him, our skin sticky and warm.
My eyes go closed as my body grows exhausted. He’s so comfortable, safe and though we’ve just had sex, my heart continues to flutter like a butterfly in storm. Being with him is too good and suddenly I’m afraid to not be with him.
“He’s not worth it,” I say, wanting to take my brain’s focus off of how utterly and completely I’m falling for Brooks. He’s forty-eight years old! My mother was only thirty-nine! But I find the silver that peeks through his sandy hair a complete turn on. The way his skilled fingers know just what to do and where to go, for how long and how much. He says the right things and treats me like I’m just a normal person; not a maid, not a young girl—just his girl.
“Who?” he questions, his hoarse and throaty voice sending heat searing down to my toes.
“Mr. Nolan. Going over there, hitting him, threatening him, doing anything to him. He will most definitely call the police and he’s just not worth it.”
I know he’s not because Brooks suddenly being plucked out of my life for hurting someone like Mr. Nolan? Awful. I may be on borrowed time with Brooks, in case he gets tired of me, so I don’t want to speed up the time we have together. I know it must be limited. Britta’s don’t end up with Brooks’.
“You’re worth it, and that’s all it was ever about.”
His answer is unexpected and the wires from brain to my heart works so fast is makes my chest twist. That was incredibly romantic and causes a heavy breath to flutter up from my belly, but I cage it in before he hears. My fingers dig into his bare flesh as my lips press against his chest.
“He said he was going to get us fired. We talked to the agency, but I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I admit to him, my fingers working circles around his nipple. I’m mesmerized by the sight of his ripped body and while he felt solid through his clothes, naked is something else.
“Britta, I will make sure you don’t lose your job, I promise you that.”
I believe him.
That’s the problem, I believe him because I trust him.
Because I’m falling in love with him.
14
Brooks
I bring her downstairs and sit her at a barstool in the kitchen, grabbing a handful of things from the fridge, tossing them onto the counter. She looks sexy as fuck wearing just my t-shirt, the hem just a few inches above her knees. She’s petite with ample curves and I’ll never forget the way they feel pressed against my naked body. She’s so beautiful and she doesn’t even realize it. Her lightness and gentle demeanor make me want to put a ring on her finger so I can wake up and have a breath of fresh air in my life every day.
I’m the older one of the two of us. I should know that things can’t move this fast, it’s not rational. I’ve known her, what? A couple of days? And I’m getting her address, hunting her down, time after time, fucking her then making her an omelet and marrying her? That’s not it’s supposed to go. I knew that I should steer us away from what I thought we were both feeling right now, which was the intense and overwhelming feeling that this is more.
“Anything you don’t like?” I ask. I watch her eyes move over the vegetables on the counter. She breezes past the items and looks to the eggs then up at me. She takes a bite of her dahlia pink lips as she thinks.
“I like it all,” she says finally, a shy curl in her lips. “I’ve never had an omelet actually.” Her cheeks flash a pop of color and I realize she’s embarrassed. Still gorgeous.
“No?” I slice the peppers and scoop the seeds out, her eyes steady on my hands, mine on her. She watches me and the way she looks at me is like I’m her hero, though I’ve done nothing to deserve it, it fucking feels good. Tossing chopped vegetables into the bowl, I realize she’s saving me. Bringing me back to life. And I’d do anything to chase that feeling. I try to push away the fact that I have to tell her about Darcy, because it will likely be a hurdle.
“I grew up a cereal kid,” she rested her chin in her palms, elbows on the counter, and I have a flash of taking her there yesterday, my fingers curled to the knuckle inside her tightness. My cock stirs as I turned the omelet over in the skillet.
“Is your father alive?” I’ve not heard her mention him, and I want to slowly pull all the details of her existence from her.
She shrugs casually, though when she looks down to her plate, I see a dip in her brows, just for a moment, and I know there’s more there.
“Don’t know him,” she admits, and I let it sit. I just want her to feel good when she’s with me and let those admissions come organically, so I don’t press her. Instead, I tell her about myself. As her chest lifts and her eyes come back to me, I realize she’s very interested.
I tell her about my first and only wife, Lucy.
We married when I’d just started working with my dad, making small investments while under his wing, to get my name out there. Lucy was working in a law-firm, trying desperately to make partner, but finding herself exhausted and overwhelmed. She and a handful of other associates there were spending a lot of hours together on briefs, vying for perfection, trying to stick out of the bunch. Because we both worked so much, the time we spent together was limited. A lot of dinners in the car, conversations in the dark, rundowns of our days over a quick cup of coffee. With that, I still loved Lucy very much. She was fun, bright, intelligent, and caring. But after our first year of marriage, she told me that she didn’t love me. She had, in fact, fallen in love with another man at her firm. She didn’t want to work it out with me and she almost immediately wed him once our marriage was annulled. It destroyed me. For many reasons. I didn’t love investing but I did it for us to have the life she’d wanted, the life my dad told me I needed. And I stuck it out because I knew once we got through the difficult years, we’d have time together and that time would be more enjoyable by being financially comfortable. Without her and the dream of our future together, I lost the drive to do anything.
I took a full year off of work, living in the house we used to share together, though she’d paid me for half of it so she could be completely done with me. I wrote a ton. A lot of poems, loose thoughts, some short stories. Finally, after wallowing and wondering what
life is about, I decided enough was enough.
My broken heart healed as I devoted myself utterly and totally to work, growing Bennett and Barrow into a thriving investment firm, building my current home, and taking vacations whenever I pleased. I dated and fucked a myriad of women but never felt emotionally connected to a single one. Never had a single fucking butterfly in my belly since Lucy.
Not until I met Britta.
And I shared that with her, which caused her to grow silent, pink-cheeked, a smile on her lips. It was true, though, and as hard as it was to admit out loud, I hadn’t thought I’d ever be in a relationship—a real one—again, until Britta.
I tell her my parents were married many years before my dad had a heart attack and passed away, over fifteen years ago. High-stress investments, lots of booze and cigars, little exercise and lots of indulgences—I explain, made him a prime candidate. Ripe for the cardiomyopathy picking.
“So that’s why you take good care of yourself?” she says, blowing on a bite of hot food. The way she eats and moans with pleasure after nearly every bite makes me never want to eat another meal without her.
“That and exercise helps combat depression.”
It’s true. A long run always puts a good chip in the mounting darkness I feel when the loneliness feels all encompassing.
“You’re depressed?” her eyebrows lift and she stops eating, and the empathy that drips from her face nearly melts me. My chest pulls at her expression. How can this person be so young and yet converse like a woman twice her age?
“I’ve been depressed,” I rake a hand up the back of my head and take a seat next to her on the bar, picking up her fork and passing her a bite. Her lips wrap around the metal then I kiss her as she chews, the taste of peppers and eggs mixed with her sweetness.
“Seems silly, right?” I smile to her, dropping my head into my hand resting on the counter, watching her eat.
She chews a bite thoughtfully and stretches her legs out over mine and I rest my hands across her knees. I could do this every night, a hot omelet after scorching sex, a conversation about life with my hands on her soft skin.
“No,” she says finally, resting the fork on the plate, pulling her glass of water to her lips. “Some of the best times in my life had nothing to do with what I had. It was who I was with.”
My hands work the spot above her knees, kneading her soft skin, making my cock lift from my thigh. I’m growing insatiable for her; I feel like we’re both twenty.
“What do you like to do, when you aren’t working?” she takes the last bite and pulls her legs from me, taking her plate to the sink. She starts washing it and I tell her she doesn’t need to do that.
“What, you gonna leave it for the maid?” she throws a playful wink over her shoulder as she rises to the balls of her feet, reaching to turn the water off. The bottom of her ass is exposed, a strip of pink in the form of her panties settled in the split of her. Before I can stop myself, I’m behind her, smoothing my palms down those delicious little mounds, her spine curving, ass pushing back into me.
“Mmmm,” a rumble of delight comes from deep within her, getting trapped behind her closed lips.
“You can be loud with me if you want, you know,” my lips are at her ear when I tell her and I inhale her scent, sweet cake and raw heat. My dick stands on end now. I spin her around by the hips and drop to my knees in front of her, peppering her thighs with rough kisses. She moans again, broken and quiet but her mouth is open, emerald eyes darkly fixed on me. Sliding my fingers under the waistband of her panties, I tug them down and let them pool at her ankles, exposing her to me.
Leaning forward, I cover her bare pussy with my mouth, roughly sliding my tongue through her folds, against her clit. Her fingers tug at my hair and with each pass I make and I feel her thighs begin to tremble, more and more.
She’s soft and sweet, selfless and gentle. She’s fiery hot and sexy, more than meets the eye. She’s my wildest dreams come true. She’s the promise of something more, a happier life.
“Take me back to your bed,” she whimpers, and I rise immediately, hoisting her over my shoulder, padding across the living room to the stairs. I never carried Darcy. I never made her an omelet at ten o’clock at night. They’re both small things in the big picture, but it my neatly organized life, they are something. It isn’t lost on me that this is something.
Once in my bed, we’re reckless and wild, hands and legs everywhere, mouths twisting together. We fondle one another, searching for any pockets of untouched skin, desperate and hungry to explore it all. I kiss her deep while I fuck her slow and she moans, god she moans so loud when I fill her. The sounds of her coming undone will be my undoing, I know it.
When we come down, I hold her hand, our fingers interlaced against my heart.
We lay together that way, naked, sticky, our hands one against me, and talk. She tells me about her mother and how it was growing up with an alcoholic. She shares with me how going to culinary school has always been her dream, and that she did a semester at junior college for her mom, before dropping out to be a caretaker. Much like my dad steered me away from writing, Britta’s mother steered her from baking, saying a “regular education” has more potential with it. I listen, committing it all to memory, down to the tiniest of details. She begs me to share more and I do—though I am far less interesting despite being more than double her years. She hasn’t had it easy but her ability to see it through rose colored glasses is tremendous and makes me want to take care of her, give her everything she’s ever wanted.
As light creeps into my room, we drift off, not moving for the few hours of sleep we manage to get. I wake and despite not getting my normal eight hours, I feel energized and ready for the day.
Sleeping next to her felt more intimate than sleeping with her. And it felt really fucking nice.
15
Britta
Brooks isn’t annoyed when I wake in a frenzy to get back to my apartment before it’s time to leave for work. I don’t want Melody knowing I spent the night, not yet. After what happened with Nolan, she’d be skeptical and distrusting of Brooks, much like I was. And I just didn’t want to explain anything to her, not yet. It would ruin the small honeymoon vibe I was getting from my time with him.
“Thanks,” I breathed against his lips after a passionate goodbye kiss.
His tanned hair was poking out from the sides of a baseball cap, glints of age in his trimmed beard catching the morning light. He was sexier like this, rough and tired, than in his suit and glasses. I like how he looked when he was relaxed.
“Call me, I don’t have your number,” he said, lips turning up coyly as he wove his fingers through mine in the air, my arm the last part of me in the car.
“Oh yeah,” I pulled my hand back and stepped back onto the curb, throwing a quick glance up at the apartment on the 3rd floor. Lights were on. “I’ll call you,” I said, then I blew him a kiss like a reckless fourteen-year-old, and it felt great. He smiled, my chest tingled, and I went inside to get ready for work.
I’m running a little late when Melody knocks at my door, asking me if I’m ready to go.
“Yeah, it’s open,” I call back, pushing my hair into a loose ponytail on the top of my head. I slide into my work polo and grab my smock and step out of the bathroom to see Melody there, in the doorway, tapping her foot.
“We gotta go, girl,” she says, hand on hip, gum popping in her cheek.
“Okay, okay,” I grab a banana from the counter, throw my bag over my shoulder and pull the door closed behind us. Not too bad for less than twenty minutes, I think to myself, a private smile on my lips as I walk down the stairs behind her.
Once we’re settled in the car and headed towards that hills that linger just outside the city, Melody brings him up. We made it exactly three minutes.
“You know, I’m glad you were at the apartment this morning,” her tone is cautious and low, as if she thinks the ice could be thin.
“Why?” I ha
te playing dumb, but I do it anyway.
She selects her words carefully. “I thought maybe you’d go to his house last night, you know, I could tell he wanted you and I thought he’d try to, you know, rescue you.”
“And you’d be against that, had he rescued me?” I ask plainly, not crabby. Okay, maybe a little crabby.
She exhales a laugh, a cross between sarcasm and surprise. “I’m not against you being rescued, girl. I’m not anti-fairy tale!” she glances in the rear view, her hoop earring swaying gently back and forth. “But I want a good guy to rescue you, not just a convenient one.”
“Can’t convenient also be nice?” I ask, silently refuting the idea that just because Brooks happens to be under my nose doesn’t mean we aren’t good together. We are. We are very good together, despite the years (and everything else) between us.
“Sure,” she answers too loud and too quick, and my stomach rolls over at the breath she sucks in after she speaks. “But,” she begins and I knew there’d be a but. There’s always a fucking but.
“But with a good guy. I mean, Brooks Bennett is probably no different than the Nolan guy. I mean, he slept with a prostitute for like, months,” she whispered to me across the cab of her car, despite the two of us being alone.
“He what?” I control the shock in my tone, the surprise that soars through my veins and makes my fists curl closed. My heart twists in illogical jealousy and anger.
“Yeah, like six months ago I was cleaning the second level. Mavis was downstairs,” she lets the wheel slip through her fingers, telling the story at a leisurely pace, not knowing her leisure is killing me, the anticipation of it all nearly crushing. “A woman came out of the master suite; she was like, really pretty. Anyway, she stopped in the hall and just started talking to me about my job. Asked me how many houses I cleaned, stuff like that. I didn’t think much of it. Well, later on, Mavis told me that Mr. Bennett pays a service for her. I guess she slept with him twice a week. Mavis said he’d done it for months.”