by Carly Keene
The only thing that interrupts this embrace is my stomach growling. He laughs in my ear with a catch in his voice, and pulls back a little. “Hungry?”
I nod, and swipe at my nose with a tissue from my pocket. “God, I’m sorry, I’m snotting all over your jacket.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “Come on, doc, I’ll feed ya.”
FOUR
Tommy
She runs into my arms like she’s coming home.
I’m halfway between laughing and crying, because it’s everything I imagined. The feel of her in my arms. There’s more of her to hold, all woman, and she smells the same, like cut grass and polished wood and vanilla, my Ali.
I’d stand there holding her forever, except that her stomach growls. I promise to feed her.
We walk out of the place. People are probably staring, but I don’t care. I don’t care.
There’s a chain breakfast place close by, and that’s where we go. As soon as we’re sitting in the booth across from each other, I’m rethinking the seating arrangement. This way, I can look at her, but if I sat next to her I could touch her.
She orders a giant breakfast combo. I haven’t even looked at the menu, so I just tell the waitress, “Same for me,” and go back to looking at her.
Still so beautiful. That big cloud of dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail, those hazel eyes that see everything. Her heart-shaped face. I can’t see them below the table, but those curvy hips and long legs are still there.
It’s still there, too, the pull between us. I have to adjust myself inside my pants, and that’s the same too, my dick always trying to escape when she’s close by.
We stare at each other. I could be seventeen again, except for my scars.
“It’s been so long,” she says, and blinks tears away. Her smile is shaky.
“Too long,” I say. “My fault.”
“No,” she says. Then, “Yeah. So tell me about it.”
“About the Marines?”
“Why you didn’t come sooner, Tommy. Why you didn’t call.”
I’ve been just Riley for so long, it’s funny to hear her call me Tommy.
“I tried, but not having a phone number for you after you moved out of that dorm . . . people are so touchy about security these days.”
Her eyebrows go up. “Says the military guy.”
I laugh a little. “I wrote to you at your mom’s house.”
“She never said. I wrote your mom,” Ali says. “Turns out she moved away.”
Waitress brings coffee. Ali stirs cream and sugar into hers. She licks the spoon, and my hard-on gets painful. I shift on the seat.
“Yeah. She moved back here,” I tell her. “To be with my dad. He had cancer.”
Ali sets the spoon down. “I’m sorry.”
“I was so pissed. Took me a long time to get over it.”
“When was this?” she asks, frowning.
“Before you came back from Connecticut.” I shrug, as if it still doesn’t hurt. “It’s why I went into the Marines, actually. She went back to him, and I couldn’t believe it. You were still gone, Mom went back to the asshole . . . I had nobody. I guess that’s why I wanted something stable.”
“Did you like it? The Marine Corps?”
I nod. “Yeah, mostly.” I should tell her now. “Mostly. It was like an instant family. I loved that.”
“Family,” she says, and puts her hand on mine. It’s warm from her cup, and if it’s possible, my dick gets even harder. “It’s why I stayed with Granny Pat.”
“I got that. Finally.”
“But you’re out of the Corps now?”
I nod, wondering whether to explain how I just couldn’t do it anymore. How losing friends made it just too hard to stay in.
Waitress sets plates in front of us, interrupting.
Ali immediately digs into her scrambled eggs. It makes me smile to watch her eating with the single-mindedness of a little kid, sitting there in her doctor coat. She’s still got a stethoscope around her neck. When she looks up and says, “What?” through a mouthful of bacon, I laugh.
“Eat up, doc. More where that came from. Want my pancakes?”
She shakes her head. “Don’t change the subject. Tell me about being a Marine.”
“Not right now. Later. Tell me how you like being a doctor.”
She likes it. She says she doesn’t want to continue in emergency medicine because she hates the hours. Likes the patients, hates being so exhausted all the time. I get that. I’m ready for a daytime job myself, something that doesn’t involve panic and huge shots of adrenaline.
“What are you thinking of doing now?” she asks cautiously, a little frown line between her brows.
I tell her about the physical therapy program I’m applying to. She says it sounds perfect for me, and then she asks if I’m going to be in the area.
“My mom still lives here,” I say. “I’m staying with her while I get settled.”
“How is your mom? She was always so nice to me.”
We talk about our mothers. Mine’s still working a dry-cleaning job, going to church every time the door’s open, and working a pocket-size garden in the backyard. Sunshine’s still in Rose Bay, making pottery and smoking weed. (We never would have gotten away with half the shit we got away with if she’d been anything like a normal mother. Or if my mother wasn’t working every hour possible.)
Every minute that goes by, I want my Ali more. My stupid dick is sucking all the blood out of my brain. I get up and go sit beside her and realize it was a bad idea because any second I’m just going to go up in flames. I lean over and smell her hair again, kiss the curve of her earlobe. “Ali,” I whisper.
She turns to face me. We’re sitting so close that her face is almost touching mine. “It’s been so long since I’ve been Ali. So long since I’ve been anything other than good-girl Alison who keeps things together and behaves herself.”
“I’m here now.”
“Take me home,” she whispers against my cheek.
FIVE
Ali
The minute we get to his car, I’m in his arms again, and we’re kissing. I’ve got him pushed up against the side of the car and his hands are so warm on my back under my coat, his lips so warm against mine. Then the kiss goes deeper and I lose my mind. My Tommy. The way our tongues dance together, the feel of him hard against my belly, it’s all so familiar and so good I could cry. I am practically liquid from the waist down: my knees are water, and I know my panties are wet.
Somebody walks by and wolf-whistles at us, and I pull back enough to catch my breath.
“Thought you wanted to go home,” Tommy says into my ear, and trails his tongue delicately down the side of my neck.
I moan. I can’t help it.
He kisses across my collarbone and I moan again, pressing myself closer against him. I let my hand find him through his jeans, and a deep tremor goes through him.
“Take me home,” I say again. “Now.”
I like my apartment, a clean two-bedroom with modern kitchen in a new building. But right now, I’m cursing because it’s taking too long to get there. Even with kissing at stoplights, and his hand on my upper thigh, I feel like I’m going to die if I don’t have him soon. But eventually we get there, racing up to the third floor on the steps because the elevator is too slow.
My heart’s pounding. My hands are shaking as I fumble the key in the door. He steadies me.
And then we’re inside. Alone. Alone together. No clothes needed, and they’re coming off fast. I think I might have ripped a seam on his t-shirt just now, getting it off him. We drop clothes where they come off on the way to my bedroom.
There’s enough light from the hall shining in that I can see all of him, and he’s beautiful. I can’t stop touching him. I can’t stop staring at his chest and shoulders, so much bigger than they used to be, and now decorated with tattoos that are so sexy I can’t stand it. I keep saying his name.
His hands are on
my breasts, playing with my sensitive nipples, while his mouth is waking up every nerve ending in my neck. Then I’ve finally got my hands on his beautiful cock, so long and thick and hard for me, stroking the shaft. The skin is so velvety soft there, over the rock-hardness underneath.
“I want you so much,” he whispers just under my ear, licking the tender skin there. “I’ve wanted you so long.”
“Me too,” I whisper back, stroking him a little faster. Everything has sped up and become more intense. I can hardly breathe for wanting him.
He kisses and licks down from my neck to my collarbones, to my breasts. He flicks his tongue across my nipples, then sucks each one, each pull on my nipple causing a deep ache in my pussy. “Tommy, please,” I beg, not knowing exactly what to ask for—but more than this. “Please.”
He kisses farther down, across my belly and my hipbones, and positions himself between my thighs. I moan in anticipation, and then he’s there, his tongue making long slow swipes from my opening up to my clit, over and over, as I try to get enough breath. My nipples are tiny, stone hard under my own fingers, and then his long fingers are inside me, finding that good spot and rubbing it firmly while his tongue bumps gently back and forth over my little button.
I lose my mind. Stars burst behind my closed eyelids and fireworks illuminate my whole body, from my clit outwards.
When I can breathe again, my Tommy is still between my thighs, fingering me soft and slow and pressing kisses to my bare Venus mount. “Okay?” he asks, voice hoarse with his own desire. I nod. “I like this shaved,” he says. “I can see everything.”
“Waxed,” I explain, sending a fervent mental thank-you to Leilani, who made me go to her spa with her a few weeks ago.
“You could paint it green and I’d still like it,” he says, with a hint of humor. “But this way is hella sexy.” One more kiss on my mound. “Want another one?”
“I want to come with you inside me.” I raise my head and take another long look at his more-than-ready cock. It’s so hard that the head is almost purple. “Come here.”
He doesn’t move right away, instead turning to look over the side of the bed. “Shit, where’s my pants?”
“Your pants?” I say, incredulous.
“Rubbers in my wallet.”
“I’m still on the pill. I’m clean.”
He looks at me, those pewter-gray eyes intense and heated. “I’m clean too.”
“Then let’s have nothing between us.”
We roll together on the bed, hot naked skin on hot naked skin. He has a ridged scar on his back, over his liver, and another long one down one thigh. “Does it bother you?” he whispers as my fingers explore.
“You’re alive,” I whisper back. “You’re still you.”
He rolls me on top of him. “I need you, Ali. So bad.”
I move up a little and straddle him, taking his massive hardness inside me a little at a time. We always had to go slow back in the day, and I’d thought it was because I was so new at it. Even as soaked and ready as my pussy is, he’s just so big that it takes time to lock us together. “You feel so good, Tommy. You’re so big, I think I can feel you as far up as my throat.”
I know anatomy doesn’t work that way. But that’s how his rock-hard penis feels, stretching my cunt, filling me up completely.
He puts his hands on my butt and pulls me even farther down. I moan as shivers break out all over me, making my nipples tight and aching.
“You feel good too,” he says, panting. “Kiss me.”
Our tongues are wild in each other’s mouths, his shoulders firm under my hands. His hands are spread out across my ass, and then at least a couple of fingertips are touching my perineum, between my pucker and my pussy. It feels amazing, especially when I move my hips against his, sort of grinding my whole pussy against his groin while we fuck. He moans into my mouth. “Fuck, Ali, you feel so good.”
The tension is building in me, all the heat mounting so high that I don’t know how much longer I can keep going. I try slowing down a little, but Tommy’s fingers move to the place where his cock is stretching my pussy, petting me around that. “Don’t stop,” he says between his teeth. I can feel his thighs tensing under me, and he feels so fucking huge that I know he’s close too. I’m trying to control the pace, but I can’t do it. Two more hip movements, and my back arches on its own as everything hits a peak and my whole body almost shuts down from pleasure.
“Don’t stop,” Tommy growls again, but I literally cannot move one muscle on purpose yet. He makes an inarticulate noise, and then I’m on my back and he’s driving hard inside me, stimulating already-sensitive tissue to respond, and it does. I come again, with my arms tight around his back and my pussy clenching tight around his cock, and then Tommy groans, pushing far in and staying there for several seconds, flooding me with liquid heat.
It takes a few minutes for me to realize that the curve of my neck is wet, where his face is buried while we gasp for breath.
“I love you,” I say, and kiss the side of his head. “I love you. I never stopped.”
He raises his head to kiss my mouth. “God, Ali. Me too. I love you too.”
SIX
Tommy
Same old responsive Ali. Same old horny me, alive to her every move and every word. Same old us, still can’t get enough of the taste and touch and smell of each other.
I’m not sorry. It was everything I dreamed of while we were apart, whether that was in San Diego or Afghanistan or in a VA hospital: our hearts and bodies together. I’m only sorry I didn’t trust it and come home sooner. The Corps was my career and my family until it just wasn’t anymore, and I wasn’t sure I could trust anything ever again.
I wait until I’m calm again, the post-coital overload that caused twenty seconds of tears finally leaving me. It was so much, and it was so long in coming. I roll to the side, facing her. She turns to me, and I lean to kiss her face. We’re still breathing hard.
“Don’t think I’m not still mad at you for not calling me,” she says, but her voice is tender.
This girl. No, this woman. She can slay me with a glance.
“You could have found me if you’d looked,” she adds. She starts tracing the eagle and globe tattoo on my right pec with her forefinger. “I missed you.”
I missed her too. I tried finding my family in the Corps, but it was never complete.
“Tell me again why you didn’t call. And don’t say you didn’t have my number. I was all over Facebook.”
“I don’t have a Facebook account.”
“You don’t know anybody with one? You wouldn’t get one to look for me?” She’s moved on to trace the Riley family crest on my upper arm.
I inhale and exhale, long and slow, trying to let go of the tension her questions have raised. It’s not working. I was alone too long.
“You didn’t look for me either,” I point out. “You didn’t tell your mom to look out for letters from me. You didn’t write me back. I put my address and phone number on every damn one of those envelopes.”
She sits up, and her beautiful breasts bounce. “I didn’t get those letters. How can you blame me for that?”
The truth is, her mom is unreliable. We’ve both always known it. Sunshine was just the only certain way I knew of getting hold of my Ali. “You tell me what I should have done, then.”
“I just said! Facebook. Johns Hopkins student directory. Mutual friends at Rose Bay High School. Something.”
I sit up too. “This is stupid. Are you gonna be mad at me, or are you gonna be glad I found you?”
She frowns. “Both. We’ve lost so much time that we could have been together, Tommy!”
“You wanted me to leave the Corps?”
“We could’ve been in touch. I wouldn’t have wasted my time on other guys, and I wouldn’t have been so disappointed in them.”
My blood is suddenly boiling. “Other guys?” Ali glares at me and crosses her arms. I get a whiff of the smell of our sex r
ising from the sheets, and I’m so angry I can’t talk right. “You slept—you were with—you fucked other guys?”
“Well, were you around to stop me?” she snaps. “I just told you they were disappointing. If we weren’t together, you can’t object.” She pokes me with her finger. “Are you seriously going to tell me you never slept with any other girls?”
Well, that feels like a bucket of cold water. I sputter.
“Yeah, thought so,” she says, as cold as that imaginary water. She sniffles.
“They didn’t count. Ali, you’re the one I wanted.”
“How many?” she demands.
“Three. And I never barebacked with any of them.”
“What does that matter?”
“It matters to me! And how many other guys did you fuck?”
She crosses her arms, lifting her pretty tits. I can see a flash of her pink slit between her thighs, and pissed off as I am, I’m still instantly, instantly hard. The wave of desire makes me suck in some air. I’m in two minds here: 1, get the fuck out and stop this pain before it gets worse, or 2, roll her on her back and lay claim to her pussy once and for all.
“Four,” she says.
That hurts so fucking bad.
“And none of them were like you,” she says, furious. “They didn’t make me feel anything. They were just bodies. Guys I liked, and I tried to love them but I couldn’t, because they weren’t you. So they didn’t matter.”
Although I’ve done the same thing, I can’t stand the idea of any other man with her. It hurts.
“You don’t own me,” she says.
Of course I don’t own her. I just thought . . . I don’t know. I can’t stand this.
I get off the bed and try to find my jeans.
“Where are you going?” Ali snaps. She gets off the bed too.
“If I stay here,” I grit out, “I’m gonna do something I’ll regret.”
“No. Stay here and hash this out with me,” she says. She points at the floor. “You’re staying right here. If we’re going to be together, you have to stay and talk to me. You can’t just run off and avoid me like you did before.”