by J. Bengtsson
“And maybe she’ll do the same for you.”
I nodded, although I was wondering whether she already had. I now had a mission more important than myself, and it felt good.
“Oh, and just a heads-up. I think Syd might have a crush on you, so keep the strolls through the bus in your underwear to a minimum.”
“I’ll do my best to refrain from public nudity.”
“Thank you. And, I have to say, you don’t seem all that surprised that she’s crushing on you.”
“Because I already knew that.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. She’s always mean to me. That’s how crushes work at that age. You’d know that if you hadn’t been a card-carrying tomboy growing up.”
“Hey, this tomboy had crushes. Lucky for you I threw the athletic shorts and jerseys away long ago. I’m all woman now,” I said pushing my bosom into him to prove my point. His hands went straight for my breasts like a moth to the flame.
“If I promise to be really quiet,” he said, his voice so low I had to strain to hear, “do you think we can get it on?”
I stood up and held out my hand. “I think that can be arranged.”
We tiptoed past the bunk bed and confirmed two sets of eyes were soundly closed before sneaking into the bedroom.
“Lock the door,” I said as I crawled quietly onto the bed. “And Jake, I’m not just talking once – check that damn lock no less than three times, then tip-toe your ass over here… but don’t forget to keep your mouth shut along the way.”
“Jesus, that’s a lot of instructions to remember.”
“If you can’t recall three simple steps, then you don’t deserve to have sex.”
“Easy, woman,” he said, placating me with his hands, “I didn’t say I couldn’t remember them. I was just pointing out the excessive number of demands. And might I add, this is almost as hot as the sex talks we had prior to our baby-making sessions.”
“I promise this will be hotter.”
Jake formed his fingers into a V for victory and headed straight for the bed before stopping himself and turning back around to check the lock.
“Only checked it twice,” he whispered.
“Get over here,” I laughed, as Jake crawled onto the bed, grabbed my hips, and slid me along the bed until I was snugly wedged between his legs, his erection pressing firmly against me. I wiggled a little against him, watching for his reaction. His eyes blazed at he stared down at me with an insatiable longing. Unable to keep my hands off him, I ran my nails up his abdomen, causing the band of muscles in his stomach to swell and contract with a seductive shiver.
I thrust my hips into his hardness, frenzied with desire for him. Our clothes still in place, Jake pushed repeatedly against my dampening mound, sending darts of pleasure rushing through me and drawing a loud moan from my lips. Our eyes widened instantaneously as we remembered our houseguests on the other side of the wall. Jake dropped down over me and covered my mouth with his hand, and we both stared at each other in amusement.
“Shhh,” he said, breathing roughly, as his free hand found its way between my legs and he began applying liberal pressure to the area. I bit down into his hand to suppress the moans that rattled in my throat as my thrusting hips made contact with his increasingly quick movements. And then suddenly he removed his enchanted hand, causing an intense throbbing right down to my core.
“Easy,” he whispered, placing two fingers on my lips. “I want this to go on forever. I’ve missed you so much, Casey.”
Before I could reply, his soft lips were over mine and our mouths moved in the most sensual dance. Jake’s tongue pushed forward, teasing my lips apart. Grabbing his strong jawline, I held him steady as my own tongue pressed and stroked against his. When he drew back, we were both panting and our eyes were glazed over in lust.
Jake slowly trailed his fingers downward, past my jaw, gliding smoothly along my throat and into the crevice of my breasts. His mouth then pressed into the cloth, dampening it, as his tongue circled my pebbled nipples. I heaved my bosom, welcoming his tender lapping. Jake sat back up and, grasping my waist, pulled me into him once more. His hands were now on my stomach, riding my shirt up as he glided across my sensitive skin. After pulling my top up and over my head, Jake took both breasts in his appreciative hands. I was wearing a fairly standard issue bra, but he seemed unbelievably riveted by the sight of my full, up-thrust breasts, although I suspect his excitement had more to do with the fact that I was heaving them upward due to all the heavy breathing I’d been doing.
Jake gently began massaging my hardened nipples through the silk, running his thumbs in little circles over them as he dipped his head down to my arched neck, slicking his tongue along its length and sending delicious heat radiating outward. My nails rode up his back, forcing a soft groan that reverberated through the hollows of his throat. Acutely aware of the amount of clothing we were still wearing, I pulled Jake’s shirt over his back before sucking his lower lip into my mouth and continuing on with a duel of feverish kisses.
Our bodies writhed with a labored impatience. It had been a long time since either of us had felt such intense cravings. Jake placed his arms on either side of my head and he hovered over my body, staring at me with a hunger that raged through his cloudy eyes.
“You’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Jake said, sounding gravelly with desire. He gripped the waistband of my jeans and unbuttoned me, and I lifted my rump to aid in the removal. His fingers tickled over my bare flesh, sending goosebumps across my skin. I couldn’t get him close enough.
“I need you,” I breathed out slowly, reached for his throbbing length. Jake lowered his jeans just enough to free himself from the fabric, and his hardness pressed forward. In one fluid motion, I opened to him, wrapping my legs around his waist as he sank into me.
The bed moved to the rhythm of his slow and methodical thrusts, my hands grasping his buttocks as I brought him down harder. Jake’s fingers circled my nipples, tightening them to his touch. I curved my back upward, stretching my shoulders back, and thrust my chest against his constantly moving body.
Reaching behind me, under the flow of my hair, Jake deftly released the clasp of my bra and dipped his head to swirl his tongue in a tantalizing tease over my taut, prickled skin. I clutched his head with both hands, running my fingers through his damp brown hair. A warm, delicious feeling of pleasure began coiling deep inside me. We moved with more intensity now, both letting go of the tension that had gripped our lives for too long. Why had I deprived myself of his love? No more. Tightening my legs around him, I rode his storm all the way to the euphoric end.
There was a renewed closeness between Jake and me after that night. We were like newlyweds again, sneaking in butt pats, neck nibbles, and near consecutive late night romps after the kids fell asleep. There was no more talk about babies and ovulation. Having the kids with us changed my mindset. Of course I still wanted a baby, but I was no longer going to force it. I had plenty of time to be a mom; but right now, what I wanted to be was a committed aunt, a loving wife, and a ravenous lover.
Jake was fully on board with the change in my demeanor. There was a playfulness to him that I hadn’t seen in a long while. For the first time, I really understood how much my sadness had been dragging him down. When the angst had been on the other foot and it was I who watched him suffer, I’d felt that heaviness too. But as we’d moved past the struggles, the sun began to shine again.
That’s what I had to do now. This past week had convinced me that I needed to lift the layer of fog that was clouding my heart and begin the arduous task of living life without my brother and his wife. It wouldn’t be easy. I missed Miles and Darcy every day, but just as I’d said to Sydney the first night she arrived, they wouldn’t want us to waste our lives away crying for them. The only way to truly honor Miles and Darcy’s memories was to keep moving forward, to keep living the life they’d want for us.
Contentedly watching Sydney and Riley laughi
ng and splashing around in the hotel pool, I looked up to the sky. “Do you see?” I whispered. “They’re okay.”
I hoped Miles was looking down on his babies with a smile on his face, knowing that they were loved and cared for, that Mom and Dad were doing right by them, and that Jake, Luke, and I would make sure his kids were afforded every opportunity life had to offer. Sydney and Riley were the bright, beautiful legacies my brother and his wife had left behind, and as a collective group, we’d see to it that they shone just as brightly without them as they had with. It might take time and patience, but it would happen. These kids would live their lives to the fullest. That would be how we honored their memories. Not by crying or wasting our lives away, pining for what was no longer here. We would live big, laugh loud, and love hard.
As we rolled down another interstate, I longed for the comfort of the hotel. These extended stretches of driving were tough on the kids. They got bored easily, and without a play structure to swing on or a pool to swim in, their excess energy was directed at us. Even off the bus, I was constantly trying to come up with fun new experiences. Sometimes I scored, and other times I crashed and burned. It really was a learning curve, and only through trial and error had I figured out what was and was not fun for them. For instance, informational stops where there was no climbing involved – not fun. Parks – fun; but only if they didn’t have ‘baby’ playground equipment. Nature reserves – not fun; at least not without a functioning bathroom nearby. I only needed to clean poop out of one pair of pants to figure that out.
The only surefire way of keeping the kids happy and entertained, I discovered, was if Jake or Kyle were around… or better yet, if they were both present at the same time. For whatever reason, the guys were always way more fun than I was. They were like the fun dads who swooped in after the work was done and sucked up all the glory.
It was with those awesome fellas that I’d left the kids while I was in the bedroom working out some numbers for a client. An hour later, I reemerged to find the ‘fun dads’ sprawled out on the brown leather sofas looking as if they’d just run a marathon instead of spending an hour in the confines of a bus with two little kids. The TV was on and a princess movie was playing. Clearly Sydney had won whatever battle had happened in my absence. And I was sure there had been one since Jake would never willingly submit himself to such torture. The one time I’d convinced him to watch a ‘princess movie,’ a live-action version of Cinderella, he’d grabbed a bottle of whiskey and took a pull every time someone said ‘true love.’ Needless to say, he was drunk by the end of the movie.
Since Riley appeared to have the anti-princess gene as well, he was entertaining himself by climbing all over the lethargic guys. He was currently straddling the top of Jake’s head.
“Do you know what personal space means, Ri?” he asked, trying to dislodge my nephew.
“No.” Riley giggled as he shifted positions, a Twizzler stick protruding from his mouth.
“I didn’t think so. Let me explain the meaning to you. It’s when you allow the person you are annoying a small buffer of space. In this case, I’d settle for six inches.”
“I don’t know what you said.”
“Which part?”
“None of it,” Riley said, poking his finger in Jake’s ear. “How come your ear is so big?”
Jake swatted his hand away. “I don’t know. I wasn’t aware that it was. Hey, I have a good idea. Why don’t you play with Kyle? He doesn’t care about giving people personal space either. Do you, Kyle?”
“Nope,” he said, grinning, as he chomped on his own Twizzler.
Jake extracted Riley and dumped him onto his brother. And like a flea clomping on to a new host, Riley immediately latched onto Kyle, refusing to let him go.
“Hey, you have big ears too,” he said, poking his finger into Kyle’s ear canal.
“Get your finger out of my earhole.”
Now Riley was examining his face up close and personal.
“And don’t even think about sticking that finger of yours in my nose hole.”
Sydney broke from the movie to comment on Kyle’s word choices. “Does everything have a hole with you?”
“Anything that’s important does, yeah.”
Grinning like a fool, Sydney observed Kyle with starry eyes. I was pretty sure her crush on Jake had jumped over to him. She absolutely loved having Kyle around, so he began accompanying us on any outings that required security. That arrangement not only made the kids happy, but Kyle as well.
Turning Kyle’s face toward him once more, Riley said, “Your nose is big, too.”
“Only because you’re seven. If you were normal-sized, it would look smaller.”
“Really, Kyle?” Jake questioned, his brows raised in amusement. “Is that how it works?”
“Do you see Riley questioning my explanation? No. Not like your whole personal space speech. You’ve got to get down on their level, bro.”
Riley was now busy prying Kyle’s mouth open when I noticed him holding something.
“What’s that in your hand?” I asked.
“My tooth,” Riley said, totally unconcerned.
Jake and Kyle both bolted upright as I hurried over to check his mouth. Sure enough, there was a big gaping hole where his tooth used to be, and droplets of blood on Kyle’s shirt.
“You didn’t even tell me one was loose,” I said.
“It just got loose when I was eating the Twizzler, so I yanked it out.”
Jake and I both startled at the information.
“Didn’t it hurt?” I asked.
“Nope. They’re just baby teeth. And I get money when the tooth fairy comes.”
“I love this kid,” Kyle said, nodding his approval. “He’s a trippy little dude.”
I stretched my hand out for the tooth and set it in a plastic bag. I wasn’t sure what the protocol was for baby teeth, but I figured it was best to keep it until further notice.
Once I’d cleaned Riley up, I plopped down next to Jake, who had taken to watching the movie.
“Look at you all into the movie,” I teased, patting his thigh.
Jake’s eyes rolled up as his tongue lolled out. “You cannot tell me that there isn’t another woman in the entire kingdom who has her same shoe size.”
“That’s what you have a problem with?” I laughed, poking him in the side like Riley had been doing earlier. “Not the mice who turn into horses or the pumpkin that turns into a carriage?”
“I’m just saying, Casey, if you were a slovenly maiden – which, let’s be honest, you sometimes are” – he smiled mischievously, flinching away in anticipation of the smack he both expected and deserved – “and then suddenly you put on a ball gown and did your hair up all fancy and shit, I’d still be able to tell it was you.”
“It’s a fantasy, Jake. It isn’t meant to be psychoanalyzed. And watch your language around the kids.”
“Sorry, guys. I meant shucks.”
I could already hear Riley mimicking Jake’s fancy and shit in a faint whisper and knew it would be resurfacing sometime in the near future. Sydney was no longer focused on the movie but on Jake’s lively retelling of it.
“My point is, that prince is totally shallow. If he loved her that much after one dance, he would’ve been able to pick her out of a crowd without a damn shoe.”
“Jake,” I reprimanded again.
“Dammit. I mean darn it. Not swearing is really hard.” He sighed. “Anyway, listen up, Sydney. A guy like that is not worth your time.”
“A cartoon prince?” she asked, confused.
“Well, no, not him specifically. I’m talking the living, breathing kind. Those kinds should like you even in a pair of Chucks.”
“Wow, Jake,” Kyle said sarcastically. “Such a beautiful sentiment.”
“Can you do better?”
“Yeah, actually, I can. Sydney, don’t ever date a douche. Six words. Bam!” He made his fist explode to complement his advice.
�
�Kyle!” I scolded. “Language.”
“Sorry, I meant boom.”
“That’s not…” I began, before stopping myself. These guys were hopeless, and I refused to be their mom. “Oh, whatever.”
“You’re looking at swearing all wrong. Think of dirty words more like sentence enhancers,” Kyle said.
“You two are twenty-four and twenty-five respectively. I feel like there are less offensive ways of getting your points across.”
“Well, you’d think,” Jake said, sounding every bit like the troublemaker he was, before grabbing me around the waist and knocking me sideways on the couch. He was on me in a second, blowing raspberries into my collarbone. I squealed, wriggling my way out of his hold, but just as I was about to right myself, the kids, having watched our display in anticipation, took the opportunity to dog pile on top of us. We were already screaming when Kyle dropped into our love circle. The noise level only escalated from that point on as we screeched with laughter.
From the front of the bus, Lassen opened the partition and hollered, “Shut the hell up!”
And without skipping a beat, we all yelled in unison, “Language!”
17
Jake: The Rookie
We woke up the next morning to uncontrollable crying. Riley. Casey and I shot out of bed just as he was entering the room with Sydney’s arm draped over his shoulder.
“Sweetie, what’s wrong?” Casey asked, dropping to her knees and checking his body for injuries.
Wiping at the tears with the palm of his hands, he sniffled, “She didn’t come.”
“Who didn’t come?”
“The Tooth Fairy.”
It felt like I’d taken a punch to the nuts. I forgot the fucking Tooth Fairy! I had one job last night, just one, and it was to not forget to put money under Riley’s pillow. Epic, goddamn fail. Casey and I traded horrified glances, each trying to blame the other for dropping the ball. Her eyes were all accusation and mine all contempt. Sure, I forgot, but it was Casey’s fault for trusting me with such an important job in the first place.