Before Girl

by Kate Canterbary

  "Yes," she replied, a bit louder this time. She looked up at me, met my gaze, opened her legs. "Yes."

  Perhaps it was superstition. Perhaps I could've left her on my bed and retrieved the protection without incident but this was better. Her awkward position on the countertop, the mirror over the sink reflecting the luscious line of her body back at me, the harsh overhead light. The way my cock pointed straight at her as if it knew its way home. This was better. The awkward and harsh and perfectly right was better.

  I tore the condom open and suited up. Took myself in hand, teased her folds. A rush of arousal met me, slicking my cock, my hand. "Yes?" I repeated.

  "Yes," she repeated. I dragged the head of my cock around her clit. Watched the exact moment when I got it right and her gaze turned cloudy. If I glanced up to study myself in the mirror, I'd find a smug grin staring back at me. "I want—yes."

  I brought her knee to my waist, anchored it there. Pressed my hand to the small of her back to keep her steady. Bowed my head to her breast, the one I'd marked and claimed and now planned to conquer. Closed my lips around that bud, licking at first and then sucking. Sucking hard. Slammed into her in one rough, starved motion.

  I stayed there a moment, my tongue tracing the round of her nipple and my hips flush against hers, and I remembered it. The feel of her, the overwhelming heat, the orgasm pulsing inside me, the tsunami swell of emotion. I steadied myself just enough to remember this moment because I knew I'd carry it with me all my days.

  "Cal," Stella groaned, her nails making half-moons on my skin. "Oh my god, Cal."

  I pulled back slowly, dragging my cock from her channel and releasing her nipple with a loud pop. As I moved, I looked down at her belly, at the thatch of dark curls on her mound, at the place where I lingered inside her, where her flesh stretched to accommodate me. I nearly came at the sight of us, thick, wet, throbbing.

  But I returned to her nipple, sucking like I wanted to draw the very essence of her out through that tight bud. She whispered to me, a chorus of ohhhh and yesssss and fuuuck and more and Cal, Cal, Cal. And I thrust, hammering her hard enough to rattle the cabinets and knock my toothbrush to the floor. I wanted more, wanted deeper, wanted her body spasming out of control.

  "You are so beautiful," I said, the words faltering as her inner muscles pulsed around me. My hips rolled against hers, fast and demanding. In the periphery, I heard water running, felt droplets on my hand. I didn't stop to connect those sensations to an origin. It could wait. Everything could wait. Everything else in the world could wait while I fucked my woman like I could make her mine if I hit deep enough. My teeth closed around her nipple, biting harder than before and—and then I felt it. The throb of her cunt, the rush of wet and warm. I didn't stop, didn't slow down as her body quaked.

  That I'd lasted this long was heroic.

  "Please," she whispered. "Please don't stop."

  "That's amusing. As if I would." I looked up, ran my scruffy chin over her breast. The ripple and pulse of her inner muscles sent a shiver through my shoulders and a laugh tumbling from my lips. It wasn't funny—it was overwhelming. It was every sensation sparking to life, circuits overloading. "Fuck me, Stella, do that again. Do it again and I'll give you the world, the whole fucking world."

  "Me? You do it—oh, fuck, yes—you do it again," she hissed.

  I twisted my hand around the band of her bra, using the leverage to work her over my shaft. "This is what you want, isn't it?" I asked, the words ground out through my rigid jaw. "You want me using you, using this cunt any way I please. This is what you came for. Isn't it, sweet thing?"

  "Yes, yes, yes," she chanted.

  Her words were the red flag and I was the bull, and my release barreled through me with an angry snarl. I wanted to bury my face in her hair, her breasts—but I had to watch. I had to watch while I pumped myself into her, wishing for the first time in my life that we didn't have a thin layer protecting us from each other. Wishing I could mark her cunt the way I'd marked her breast.

  A soft, sated grin swept over across her face, popping her dimples, parting her lips. "Yes, yes, yes."

  I was spent. Words, thoughts, breath—all of it, gone. I stood there, Stella's legs around my waist and my palm wrapped around her bra, panting into the crook of her neck while my cock pulsed and twitched inside her. Stella said nothing, only smoothed her hand down my back and rubbed her lips over my jaw, my chest, my shoulder.

  Goddamn. Just…goddamn.

  "Are you all right?" I asked, my lips covering the birthmark under her ear.

  "All right? Yeah, that's one way to put it," she laughed. "I knew you were going to murder my vagina."

  "I still don't know what that means."

  Stella huffed out a laugh, her breath warm on my skin. "It means I'm going to need you to carry me to bed because these legs are not so steady." She glanced between us. "And I'm looking forward to the creaming portion of these games."

  "Honey, that happened a couple of minutes ago," I said. "You were busy scratching the shit out of my back and screaming at the ceiling."

  "The other creaming," she drawled. "The one where you're gonna use that thick baby lotion on my boob—the one you ate as a midnight snack—and then I'll go full cowgirl on you."

  "Is that what's happening?" I asked.

  "I mean, I'm here for it," she said. "It would be great if my ass stayed dry for that go-round though. I've experienced far too many instances of ass wetness—and not the fun kind of ass wetness—since meeting you."

  For fuck's sake. The water was running. I must've knocked the faucet at some point, turning it on and bathing her ass. I nudged it off, reached blindly for a towel to dry Stella's backside. "Sorry about that."

  "I don't know how you can apologize at a time like this," she replied. "Would it be weird to high five? That would be weird. We shouldn't do it. But that's where I'm at—I want it up high and down low and I want to dump a cooler of Gatorade over your head."

  I groped her bra to find the clasp, finally releasing it. Our bodies trapped the lace in place but I was more interested in softening my grip on her. Holding her instead of pounding her, caressing instead of biting. A bed and blankets rather than the bathroom countertop and accidental waterslide.

  I held up my hand. She glanced at me, a sparkling smile pulling at her lips, and slapped her palm against mine. "I want to do this again," she said.

  "Yeah, you do," I growled. "You're going full cowgirl next."

  She ducked her head, laughing. "No, I mean," she started, her hands warm on my flanks, "I want more than tonight."

  "It was never tonight," I replied, the words quick and rough. "You didn't come here for tonight."

  She nodded once. "I know. I know." Another nod. "But this"—she wagged a finger at the bathroom—"definitely confirmed it."

  It did. It definitely did.

  23

  Stella

  "All I'm saying is this doesn't require an expert," Flinn said, both hands held up in condescending surrender.

  "But you're the one person who can do it," Tatum replied.

  "I don't want anyone else fucking up my systems," he argued. "I don't want to hand over my documents and spreadsheets to some idiot without the common sense to preserve my formulas. I'd end up fixing it and spending twice as long as I would've if I'd done it myself." He wagged his hands, one last burst of surrender, before slapping them down on the arms of the chair. "But it doesn't require an expert."

  "Not an expert but not an idiot," Tatum snarked. "Got it."

  I blinked at them, not sure I knew what they were arguing about this time. Not sure I cared. More often than not, Tatum and Flinn debated everything down to the time of day and color of the sky. They were also the best support staff I could find and I'd looked. They got the job done, they did it well. Who was I to complain if they also sparred every free minute of the day?

  "Stella, I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this," Flinn said. That was the corporate-speak version of "M
om! Tatum's being mean to me!"

  "I don't have thoughts on the matter," I replied. "If you're electing to add work to your plate, that's your choice. As long as that choice doesn't interfere with our team and our priorities, I don't care."

  I reached for my phone, turning my attention to the screen as Tatum launched another attack on…something about Flinn's time management that she considered relevant. Devoting this much of our morning huddle to winless, fruitless debate wasn't great time management either but we'd handled the essentials and I had a ton of new messages and alerts flashing at me.

  McKendrick wanted scrambled egg whites and felt the best way to meet that need was a group text to—basically—everyone he knew. Awesome.

  My boss Rebecca wanted a status report on two other clients but made the entire email about McKendrick and my promotion and how nothing was definite until my client was back on the field. Fabulous.

  A sports news (but mostly gossip) blog wanted me to know they planned to run photos of me and McKendrick looking "cozy" at a number of public events last week. Cool cool cool.

  It wasn't entirely unexpected after avoiding the world for a weekend. Save for handling a few calls and texts, I barely got out of bed. Not that Cal gave me many opportunities.

  That man, he wasn't like the rest of them.

  And I was gradually walking myself around to the realization that I liked it that way. Cal was a species all his own—genus man-brick—and while I'd known that from the very start, I embraced it now. I wanted him this way, rumbly-grumbly and demanding as fuck and obscene. My god, was he obscene. I knew some filthy guys but Cal was running some multi-dimensional dirty talk game.

  But the biggest thing—bigger than everything else—was the complete lack of chaos. Right or wrong, I believed the world would turn upside down if I deviated from my carefully curated sex-only lifestyle. So far, the earth hadn't flipped on its axis and I wasn't driving any struggle buses.

  I was sitting on a pillow again but that was a small price to pay for the best weekend I'd had in years.

  It was also the first weekend I'd spent with one man in years. The first bed I'd shared for sleep and sex. The first time I wasn't thinking about getting dressed and going home the minute he pulled out. The first time I didn't rush to enforce the boundaries when he inquired about seeing me next.

  Cal was all my firsts. All the ones that mattered.

  "Did you want to weigh in on this, Stella?" Flinn asked.

  I looked up. "No," I replied. I didn't know what they wanted but I did know they had to handle more issues on their own. "I'm sure you have it covered."

  "Mostly, yes," Flinn drawled. "This situation really does require your stamp of approval though. We wouldn't want to rush to action."

  "Please," I said with an expansive wave. "Rush. Act."

  Tatum winged a folded paper at me. "We're talking about lunch."

  I plucked the menu from my lap, glanced at the items. "I'm sure you know what I'd like. I trust your judgment, Tate."

  "Mmhmm," she replied, a cheeky grin cutting across her face. "That's what you get for daydreaming."

  "I was not daydreaming," I cried. I was working hard at the faux indignation. "Thoughtful work requires deep thinking."

  "Real smooth, boss," Flinn quipped. "Like butter." He pointed at my chair and the decorative pillow under my ass. "Are you doing all right? Or are you all right?"

  I had to fold my lips between my teeth to keep from laughing. "Not your concern," I said. "But yes, I'm just fine."

  That was the truth. And no one was more surprised about it than me.

  24

  Cal

  Every flu season, popular news outlets liked to cobble together lists on how to stay healthy. Most of them centered around drinking plenty of water, sleeping an adequate amount, eating fruits and vegetables, exercise, flu shots. The norm.

  The earthy, crunchy ones touted garlic and elderberry and an assortment of essential oils.

  But it was the racy outlets that recommended sex. They claimed a healthy sex life was like an infusion of vitamin C. An orgasm a day kept the viruses at bay.

  As far as my professional opinion went, I landed somewhere in the middle. But I liked to believe the one about sex.

  Unfortunately for me, sex wasn't enough to protect me from Stremmel and his fragile West Coast immune system. He was the fucking angel of death. He picked up every damn cold and flu and passed them to everyone in a fifty-mile radius. Even though I never got sick—I couldn't remember the last time I'd had more than a mild cold—I found myself knocked on my ass with a bitch of a late spring flu.

  And here I thought the sex was going to save me.

  I was half awake, half fever dreaming when I heard a knock at the door. I figured it was part of the dream and rolled over, pulling a pillow over my head to block out the afternoon sunlight. I was contagious and woozy, neither of which belonged in the operating room today. I'd skipped the trail this morning too. I hated doing it but the last thing I wanted was infecting Stella. Or worse, orchestrating another accident by virtue of sinus pressure fucking up my inner ear and equilibrium.

  Five minutes later, I heard the door swing open and snick shut. I thought I heard it but it was possible the virus was fucking with my senses. Yeah. Probably that. No one was breaking into my apartment. And if they were, I didn't have the capacity to fight them off. I was too far removed from my Ranger days to manage anything like that.

  Then I heard Stella's voice. She called, "It's just me and I'm putting a few things on the stove. You stay where you are, with your germs."

  I was certain it was Stella. I'd heard that. Real, live Stella. Not a fever dream.

  "Who let you in?" I asked. Because that was the only way to greet the woman in my life. Firing off rude questions about how she came to invade my home.

  "Don't talk, you sound awful," she replied. "Riley let me in."

  I didn't realize Riley had a key but puzzling through that required more energy than I had to spare. Instead, I went back to the fever dreams. I slept in fits of hot and cold, alternately whipping the blankets off me and then huddling under them. Weird scenes played in my head. Nothing I understood. A traffic jam of balloons on Commonwealth Avenue, dogs with bananas for tails, a dark-haired beauty wielding an enormous knife.

  When I woke up, it was dark outside and I was drenched in sweat. My apartment smelled like spices. I couldn't name flavors from scent alone and I was too congested to discern much of anything, but my stomach offered a rumble of interest as I stepped into the shower.

  I stayed in there for longer than I'd planned but the hot spray did wonders for me. I felt human again rather than a discombobulated cluster of limbs, organs, and virus. As I toweled off, I hoped Stella was still in the kitchen but I wouldn't blame her for getting the hell out of here.

  Emerging from my bedroom in a fresh t-shirt and sweats, I found Stella stirring a large pot of wonderful. She pulled her earbuds loose as I approached and offered me a concerned smile. "How are you?"

  I shrugged. "I've been better but I've also been worse." I pointed to her phone. "Are you on a call?"

  "Just wrapped up a few minutes ago. I've been listening to the Red Sox game."

  I gestured toward the flat screen television mounted on the wall. "Is that a nostalgia thing for you or did you not want to watch it?"

  "I didn't want to wake you," she replied.

  "Don't worry about me," I said, pulling together all my macho. There wasn't much of it right now. "I went through Special Forces training, Stel. The flu is a mild annoyance." I edged closer to get a look at the pot. "What is this goodness?"

  "It's not soup," she said. It was delivered as both warning and apology. "In my family, we don't do soup when you're sick."

  "I didn't ask for soup," I replied.

  "It's typical, the soup," she continued. "Everyone thinks chicken soup is the best remedy. But that wasn't my upbringing."

  I shook my head. "Can't be. Not when there's"—
I took the spoon from her, stirred the contents—"this."

  "Spicy peppers, roasted garlic, and red sauce. And some spicy sausage," she said. "My father's family on his mother's side is Sicilian and they're big believers in peppers and garlic. His father's side is from northern Italy but they also believe a big bowl of spicy peppers will cure anything that ails you. My grandmother on my mom's side, she tried to adapt this and give it a pollo guisado twist. That was one of her mother's recipes and she went to her grave angry that she'd never perfected it." Stella slipped a pair of mitts over her hands and opened the oven. "I baked some warm bread too. No messy story about grandmothers and Sicilians or northern Italians, just some dough I picked up from the North End. It's good for sopping up the sauce."

  If I didn't know I was in love before this point, I knew it now.

  "You made this," I said, glancing around at the utensils and cutting boards on the counter, the dishes in the sink, the homemade bread coming out of my damn oven. "You did all this. You cooked for me."

  Stella turned to set the bread on a rack. "Didn't think I had it in me, huh?"

  I didn't see her expression as she spoke the words but I tasted the bitter bite in them. "No, I don't doubt you at all. You have everything inside you."

  "Go sit down," she said, glancing at me as she shucked the mitts. "You're gray and clammy, and now is not the time to bathe me in compliments. I'll bring a bowl over—"

  "And some bread, please," I said.

  She pressed her hand to my chest, nudging me toward the sofa. "A little bit of everything," she said.

  "Will you stay? We can watch the game," I said, giving zero fucks about how pathetic I sounded. "I'll sit on the other side of the room and breathe away from you."

  "Go sit down," she repeated. "Listen to me, Cal. I'm not putting up with your rumbly-grumbly sweaty pine tree thing tonight and I'm pretty sure I can knock you over with a light push."

  I coughed for a solid minute. Motherfucking Stremmel. He wasn't going to hear the end of this. "Your point?"