He nodded. “Yep. I figure she’ll have her own work in time. She’s got a real eye for remodels, takin’ what’s there and makin’ it better. Loves the work.” He clapped me on the back again. “Go. She’s missed you like hell.”
I got back in the truck and headed across town.
Her house was a little white ranch with a gray roof and red shutters, squared-off box shrubs under the bay windows, flowers along the little path to the front door, a detached garage and a small fenced-in backyard. Fuckin’ adorable.
I pulled into her driveway, and the trailer barely cleared the sidewalk.
By the time I had the engine turned off, she was out the front door and pulling my door open. The night was cool, early fall in Alaska, and she was out there in a T-shirt and not a damn thing else.
She didn’t say a word of hello, just climbed right into the truck and onto my lap, leaning back against the steering wheel, cupping my face in her hands and kissing me with all the words neither of us had.
I kissed her back with three months’ worth of loving her from thirty-five-hundred miles away.
She pulled away enough to meet eyes with me, her hands still on my face. “Say it, Rhys.”
I knew what she meant. “I love you, Torie.”
“Three months apart didn’t change that?”
“Three months apart made me realize I love you more than I even realized.”
She kissed me again, as if she couldn’t help it. She wriggled against me, and her breath was sweet and warm, her skin soft under the shirt where my hands roamed.
“I was so afraid it had all been a dream,” she whispered against my lips. “It was such a whirlwind of…of everythingness, and then you were gone and it was like it never happened, but I just had you in my heart and you wouldn’t get out, and I fucking—I dream about you every night, Rhys.”
“I’m sorry I never called. I wanted to so many times, but I just—”
She touched my mouth to shush me. “No. It was better that way. Easier to miss you and just sort of…try to forget while holding on to hope. If we had talked every day it would have been fucking awful missing you, wanting you, hearing your voice, feeling like you were close but not…” She shook her head, the loose pigtail braids shaking. “No. It was better how it was. I understood, and it was for the best.”
I just held her against me, her nose in my neck, my hands under her shirt exploring the curve and knobs of her back down to the swell of her hips and her thighs where they splayed to straddle me in the driver’s seat. I just inhaled her scent.
“Missed you so fucking much, Victoria.”
She shivered. “I like that.”
“I signed that letter RJ as a joke.”
“You’re Rhys, to me.”
“I told Lucas I was RJ when I was drunk, that night before I left. It’s gonna happen.”
“You’ll always be my Rhys,” she breathed. She pulled away, nose to nose with me. “Carry me inside and make love to me.”
My answer was to slide out of the truck and stand up with her latched around my waist, her T-shirt hiking up to expose her bare ass. She kept her nose in the side of my neck and her arms around my shoulders and her hands in my hair as I carried her inside. I found her bedroom, a small room with a king bed taking up most of the space, a small bureau, a closet with a tri-fold door and some clothes poking out on hangars. Three candles were lit on the bedside table. Six more on the bureau. Her bed was made, pillows plumped and neatly arranged, the quilt turned back. There was an en suite bathroom with a clawfoot bathtub visible through an arched entryway, with steaming water rising and more candles around the base of the tub and on the sink and the windowsill.
My breath caught. “Tor, what…?”
She wiggled, and I let her slide down to stand up. She peeled my shirt up, caressed my abs, and gazed up at me with soft limpid passionate eyes. “Mom texted me that you were on the way over. I only had a few minutes and I wanted—I had to do something to…to welcome you. To show you that I want to be yours. I thought about getting dressed up or something, but I didn’t really have time for that, and I don’t really dress up anyway and I don’t have any lingerie, so…”
She was rambling from nerves.
I shut her up with a kiss, and she tossed my shirt aside. Undid the button and fly of my shorts, tugged them off along with my underwear and I stepped out of them. I helped her out of her shirt.
Naked together again, finally.
And this time, there would be no stopping at fooling around.
I palmed the lush weight of her breast. “I have a bit of a fail to admit.”
She pulled back to meet my eyes. “And that would be what?”
“I don’t…I didn’t bring any condoms. I may have some somewhere in my stuff in the back of my truck, but…”
“Have you been with anyone?”
“No. Not since a few weeks before I met you, almost four months ago.”
“So you’d be clean.”
“Absolutely.” I swallowed hard. “But…I would be anyway, because I’ve always been safe, you know?” I hesitated. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I got on birth control not long after you left. I’m saying, I just want you.” She grasped me, caressed me with a sigh as if relieved to have me in her hand again. “I don’t want anything between us. I want our first time together to be…just us. Nothing else.”
“Tor, even birth control ain’t a hundred percent guarantee against pregnancy.”
“If I got pregnant, would you leave?”
“Ain’t a thing could happen that could get me to leave, now I’m here.”
“Then we’ll take that risk.”
Her fist gliding down my length was glorious—I’d obviously been celibate since leaving her, obviously, except for frequent use of my own fist accompanied by thoughts of her and the things we’d done together. Her hand on me, then, was utter heaven.
I let her touch me for a minute, and then lifted her up and set her on the bed. She refused to let me out of her touch, and when I pulled away so I could kiss her throat and then her breasts, she palmed my head and grasped my shoulders, and as I kissed lower and lower, she gathered my head in her hands.
“Oh god, Rhys, I’ve dreamed of you between my thighs. Your mouth. That stubble.”
I tasted her. “Been thinking about growing a beard, if I’m gonna be an Alaskan.”
She laughed, and the laugh became a gasp. “I don’t think it’s a prerequisite for living in Alaska, but I’d love to see you with a full beard.” Another gasp as I lapped at her, swirled my tongue around her clit. “I bet it would feel so good on my skin when you’re going down on me.”
And then there was no more talking as I brought her to the crumbling, desperate edge. She got there, but pushed me away before she fell over the edge. She pulled me up.
“I’ve had such trouble reaching orgasm without you,” she whispered. “I’ve tried so many times, but I just…I’d get close, but I can’t get all the way there.”
“So why not let me take you all the way?”
She slid lower so she was fully under me, lined up perfectly. She spread her thighs apart, grasped me, and brought me to her slit. “Because when I finally come again, it’s going to be with you inside me.”
“It’s been so long without you that I ain’t gonna last long,” I told her, growling as she writhed against me, grasping me, teasing her slit with the head my cock.
“Good,” she whispered. “We have all night, all day. We have the rest of our lives together. I just want this to be…beautiful, and desperate.”
“I’ll try to be gentle.”
“I know you will.” She held my eyes, one hand on my cock, the other wrapped around the back of my neck. “You’ll take care of me. You’ll make me feel so good. So loved. So beautiful.”
She bit her lower lip, sucked in a deep, slow breath. Held it. Nestled me between her lips. Hesitated. I wanted this part to be at her pace, her way. So I
held still, let her lead, let her guide. She paused, let out her breath, shaky, emotional. Then she tilted her hips and slid more of me into her, and holy fuck she was so tight, so tight it was like a vise, and she was already squeezing me, I felt her walls clamping and pulsing around me.
“Oh god,” she breathed.
“Okay?” I whispered.
She nodded. “It’s good, it’s just…a lot. Just…be patient. Okay?”
“All the time in the world, love.”
She held the back of my neck in a tight grip, her other hand now possessively, affectionately on my buttock, holding, gripping. Pulling.
She held still again, and I felt her tense, and then relax, and her walls squeezed and pulsated. Fucking so tight, and it was such hot slick wet perfection that not moving and not letting go required every last shred of restraint I possessed.
And then she pulled my head down so our foreheads rested together, and she was gasping, panting. “Oh god, Rhys. I’m so glad it’s you.”
“Only me, always me.”
I felt a…resistance within her. She pulled me closer, cheek to cheek, panting in my ear, and then tilted her hips hard and pulled at my buttocks, and I felt our hips meet, and she was gasping, sharp, shrill, her breast heaving against my chest.
Then a slow sigh as the tense squeeze around me loosened, and she was still tight but not vise-grip tight.
“Oh god,” she breathed, and this time it had a different quality. An awed tone, as if understanding had dawned. She inhaled slowly, held it again, and rolled her hips. “Oh my fucking god.”
“Tor?” I whispered.
“Move with me,” she gasped. Clutching my ass in both hands she pulled at me. “Move with me, Rhys.”
I felt her hips roll, and met her movements with my own—slow, soft, gentle. Careful, and shallow. She kept it there for a while, testing the roll of her hips, pushing against me. Then, gradually, she found a rhythm, and her gasps matched it, sharp panting whispers of my name, again and again.
“Torie, you feel so good.” I rested my lips on her chest, between her breasts. “So fucking good. You’re mine, Tor.”
“I’m yours, Rhys,” she whispered. “And you’re mine.”
“All yours.”
She gazed up at me, then. “Are you holding back?”
I nodded. “I wanted to let you get used to it. I don’t want to hurt you.”
She lifted to kiss me. “Don’t hold back. You won’t hurt me.”
Still, I matched her intensity, gauged her responses. And truly, the more I met her and gave her myself in thrust after thrust, the more she gasped, cried out my name.
We moved together, then. In perfect unison. I had to hold back, couldn’t let go until I felt her find her own release. As we slid together, our lips meeting clumsily in gasping kissing, hands sliding and sweat-slickening skin, she pressed her palm between our meeting bodies, and her fingers found her clit, and I moved to make room, and she touched herself to find what she needed.
Her eyes met mine, suddenly, her hand freezing. “Wait, is it okay?”
I touched her hand, set it to moving again. “Anything. Everything. This is about us.” I smiled down at her. “Not just okay, Tor, it’s beautiful and it’s right and it’s perfect.”
“Oh thank fuck, I just need to…” she trailed off. “A little more…oh fuck, oh god, Rhys.”
Her hips began to tilt, to pump and gyrate. Holding back became more than difficult, it became impossible. But I wanted her to come first, so I gritted my teeth and growled as I moved with her, but what I needed was to let go, to take her, to feel us driving into heaven together.
Her whimpers became desperate, shrill. Her movements erratic and thrashing. Her eyes met mine, liquid and tearful, awed. “Rhys, I love you, god this is so fucking amazing—I love you, I fucking love you. I don’t want it to end, never end, but I have to come, I have to…”
“Come for me, love,” I breathed, snarled. “Please come. Let me watch you come.”
Her fingers flew and our hips met, and she cried out, and I felt her spasming around my cock, and that was it, that was everything I could take. I couldn’t hold back anymore. Not with her crying my name, sobbing my name, sobbing that she loved me, her walls clamping around me.
“Tor, Victoria, god, my love, Victoria,” I gasped, hoarse, my cock throbbing, my balls aching, pulsing, my cum boiling inside me. “Come, so I can come.”
“With me, Rhys,” she sobbed. “Come with me, Rhys. Right now.”
“Now, love. Now, Torie.”
Now.
I felt her clench around me, tight hard and wild, and I felt myself unleash, and I couldn’t have held it back for anything. I cried out, and I knew tears were in it, but I didn’t care, she was crying too and holding me tight, pulling at my ass, and her legs were clinched around my waist and she was writhing against me and sobbing my name as I shouted hers, and I poured into her, unleashed, and felt her move with me and clench around me and it was an eternity of heaven we shared in those moments, everything, together, always.
Us.
Perfection.
Love.
Torie
We slept after that first time.
We woke up together, and I was sore, but it was beautiful. He pulled me on top of him and filled me, and I knew then I was a cowgirl kind of girl, because that was the most intense orgasm of my life, riding him, screaming on top of him, slamming onto him so hard my tits bounced ’til they ached. And I couldn’t get enough. There wasn’t enough.
I collapsed sideways, passed out, and when I woke up again, he’d relit the candles and refreshed the hot water in the tub, and carried me to it. Set me in it, and got in with me, and we lazed in the tub together talking about our lives together until the water got cool, and then we got in the shower and I discovered that shower sex was, in fact, highly overrated, but at this point any sex with Rhys was amazing. I made him breakfast, and we drank coffee—in my house. Zane texted and told me to stay home today, and so that’s what we did. We stayed home all day, talking, making plans, and making love.
Again, and again, and again, until I knew my poor hoo-ha needed a break. So we went out and I showed him a place Zane and I had been working on. We took the Jeep, and I drove into the more industrial area of town, to a small building with a For Sale sign on it. The sign had a SOLD slider on top, however.
It was a garage. Four bays, two lifts, an office, with a fenced-in yard out back and a small pole barn off to one side.
He sat in the passenger seat and stared, musing. “That’s a nice place. Says it’s sold, though.”
I nodded. “It had like three interested parties, but Mom, Zane, and Dru snapped it up for a steal. We’ve been working on fixing up the office, which hadn’t been cleaned since roughly 1976. We ripped everything out, stripped it all down to concrete and bare wood, and Zane and I are putting in a new built-in desk, some shelves, all the necessary auto garage office stuff. Replacing the chain link fence, cleaning the concrete in the bays, new pegboard for the tools.”
He eyed me. “Tor.”
“I don’t want to be presumptuous, or speak for you, or make plans with your money since I’m only just getting started, but…”
He laughed. “You want me to buy it?”
“I know Mom, Zane, and Dru would give you a hell of a deal.”
“Will you be my business partner?”
“I’m your partner in everything, Rhys.”
“Then you’re not making decisions for me, or speaking for my money. It’s our money.” He glanced at the building again. “I think this is a good investment, and I did make a nice profit off the sale back in New Haven.”
“Mom and Dru say it’s a prime location, that this area is building up.”
“Let’s do it,” he said.
I nodded. “I still want to get into remodels, but I want to work on cars with you more than just about anything.”
“You wanna know what I discovered, working for Jeremy?”
“What?”
“I don’t like major construction so much as the finishing touches, taking something partway there, still a little ugly or unfinished, and making it beautiful.”
I grinned at him. “Like that truck.”
He nodded. “Exactly. So we can split our businesses. Remodel houses, and build vintage four-by-fours together.”
“And lots and lots and lots of sex.” I bit my lip and grinned at him.
“I latched onto a hurricane with you, didn’t I?” he asked with a smirk.
I nodded, wide-eyed. “I feel like there’s not enough time in the day to have all the sex I want to have with you. I want to try everything.”
“Like what?”
I licked my lips. “Maybe you could show me something new and fun.”
“I can think of a few things.”
“So…let’s go back home and get started.”
Home. Our home. In Alaska. I was a homeowner, I had a boyfriend who loved me, a future in business with him, and I wasn’t a virgin.
I think Alaska is turning out pretty good.
* * *
THE END
Epilogue: Poppy
Three and a half months earlier
“This just isn’t for me,” I told my advisor. “I’ve been fighting the realization for a long time, but the degree, the hoity-toity art world, it’s just not what I want.”
Mrs. DuPuis, my art school advisor, tutted. “You have such talent, though, Poppy. Such promise. I know the classes can be hard, but—”
“The classes aren’t hard,” I interrupted, a bit snippily, “they’re boring. Useless. I just want to be an artist, Mrs. D. I want to do art. I want to see the world. I want to meet a boy out there and be wild and irresponsible. I want…I want to live, and I’m not doing that stuck in the damn classroom.” I gestured at the world beyond her office windows. “Life is out there.”
She nodded, pushed at her mass of natural curls, touched a turquoise fingernail to her elegantly arched African-American cheekbone. “Well, I do understand. I took a gap year after high school, and the gap year turned into living in Spain for three years, teaching English and painting orange trees and flamenco dancers and cute little cafes.” She pointed at a painting of a bull and a bullfighter. “I did that in Pamplona. I ran with the bulls two years in a row. I didn’t settle down until I knew what I wanted to do.”
A Real Goode Time Page 29