by Mae Wood
“Yes. I’m going with that being a one-off. In fact, I’ve repressed half of it already. No repeats.”
“I will do my damnedest on that front. Today was great though.” He reached for his toothbrush and the toothpaste. I nodded and moved away from the sink. I wrapped my arms around his lean torso and rested the side of my face on his muscular back. I smiled as I jiggled slightly in time to his brushing. He spat, rinsed his brush, tapped it against the sink a few times and dropped it back into the holder. “So your mom doesn’t want us eloping?”
My head shot up. He heard that? “Yeah. Seems like it.” Be cool.
“Don’t think I haven’t gotten the same talk. Come here.” He turned and took me in his arms. “I just find it funny that our parents are about ten steps ahead of us.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure how to manage their expectations.”
“Do you really think I’m going to break your heart? Because I’m not. You, however, are utterly ruining me. Bed?” He nipped at my neck and I nodded.
We shuffled out of the bathroom and towards the big bed covered with a plush down duvet that we pushed to the floor.
Winter really is going to come. He bought me a treadmill. He wants me here. I want to be here.
I crawled under and snuggled into his side, resting my head on his chest with one leg slung over his thighs.
“This is heaven. I love Sleep Position One.”
“Sleep Position One?”
“Yeah, that’s this. You’re just so damn comfortable on me this way. I always start to fall asleep when you do this. London was hell. I couldn’t get comfortable. Even tried placing a pillow on top of me to simulate you. Didn’t work, but I was desperate.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come with you.”
“But you will sometime, right?”
“Of course,” I said, listening to his heart beat for a few moments. “So, if this is Sleep Position One, then there are other sleep positions?”
“Yes, but this is the best. The others are all tied in the top five, but SP One is definitely number one.”
“I like this, too. SP One. I like listening to your heart and having your arms around me.”
We kissed languidly. Unhurriedly, we explored and caressed our shared topography. He rolled me to my back, kissing my neck while his hands stroked my breasts. He tweaked a nipple and a bolt of sensation shot down my spine. A moan escaped my lips.
“Please, please,” I chanted.
He growled. I laughed. “Did you just growl?”
“Yes,” he spoke into my stomach. I felt his smile on my skin near my navel. He moved his attention and grazed my hipbone with his teeth. I bucked and resumed my pleading. His hands found my hips and restrained them, while working his body in between my legs. He swiped a pillow and shoved it under my hips. “I’ve been thinking about this all day. All day. About how good your pussy tastes.”
Holy shit.
He began to work in earnest and all coherent thought left my brain. I became wanton, entirely present in our entwined bodies. My fingers toyed with my nipples and tugged at his hair. I rose and crashed and found myself flipped onto my knees. He entered me from behind, playing with my clit while I ground my hips on the tops of his thighs.
“You like it like this? You like fucking me from behind?”
His response came out between panting breaths, punctuated by hard thrusts as his thighs slapped my ass. “You. Fuck. Oh. God. Marisa. Always. Fuck.”
He began to shudder and I felt myself break apart. My legs gave way and I collapsed onto the bed. Trip pulled my hips up and with a final thrust came inside me.
Oh wow.
He draped his body over mine, our mouths moving in tandem while we drifted down from our orgasms.
“Wow. Wow. Just wow.” I couldn’t move. Not a muscle.
“See, I get speechless Marisa all the time. I don’t know what Josh found so strange about that.” Trip kissed my shoulder and pushed off of me.
After a leisurely shower, we crawled back into bed. “SP One?” I offered.
“No. I want to hold you. Sleep Position Two, please.”
“What’s that?”
“I think most people call it spooning.”
“Oh, I love SP Two.” I rolled onto my side and Trip molded his body around mine, with a protective arm thrown across my waist.
“And I love you.”
“I really hope you mean that.”
“I do.”
“I do, too.” And I fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-four
“Damn,” I said, setting down my coffee on the breakfast table. “I forgot to stop by Joseph’s yesterday to get a final fitting on that dress like your mom wanted me to do. I meant to ask you to stop after Whole Foods, but I got a little distracted by your and Josh’s frat boy routine. And it’s Sunday and they are closed.”
“Don’t sweat it. And my mom can pick it up for you.”
“I’m really not comfortable with her doing things for me.”
He shrugged. “She loves being needed. It would make her happy. Just ask her to do it.”
“It feels weird.”
“Not a big deal. Plus, I’m sure the salespeople will like her stopping in. So think of it as some sort of community service.” He winked. His sandy hair was a mess and he looked lickable in a faded cycling race t-shirt and plaid flannel pajama bottoms.
“My week is pretty slammed. Hey, I do have this client who tried to book lunch with me every day this week. What’s up with that?” I pushed up the sleeves on Trip’s navy flannel bathrobe I’d claimed for my own and rested my crossed arms on the table, giving him my best suspicious look.
“Every day?”
“Well, his assistant tried. He’s down for three.”
“He’s down for more than three lunches, let me assure you.”
“You.” I shook my head. Exasperating. And lovely. “Anyway, so, you’ve got lunch three days. I’ve got a conference call one day and my ‘lady lawyer lunch’ another day.” I pushed back from the table and sorted through the newspaper sections until I found the Commercial Appeal’s Style section
“There are more than one of you?”
“More than one of me what?” I asked, surreptitiously perusing the engagement and wedding announcements for familiar faces and names.
“Lady lawyers? And you get together and lunch?” He did a fake shiver. “Let me know where you meet so I can avoid it. I do not care to be eaten alive.”
I set the paper down and stared at him. He lives to tease me. “Whatever. It’s a networking thing. We refer each other business, complain about judges who call us ‘sugar’ from the bench, practice our sour expressions, and negotiate volume discounts on our purchases of dowdy black skirt suits. This quarter we’re looking into seeing if we can go in with the lady bankers group to get a deal on some jackets with huge shoulder pads. You know a la Melanie Griffin in ‘Working Girl.’ Gonna be a big meeting. I can’t miss it.”
“Y’all really buy clothes like that?”
“No. Are you crazy? It’s a networking thing through the Tennessee Bar Association. But otherwise, you’ve got me for lunch three days. The question is why do you want me on your calendar for lunch for three days? Please don’t say nooner.”
Trip set down the New York Times Book Review. “Nooner.”
“I’m not fucking you in your office in the middle of the day.”
“I didn’t think you would. Just wanted to say ‘nooner’ because you told me not to. And, also don’t think I’m not totally amazed that my girlfriend would think lunch meeting equals nooner. Good to know you’re down with one, fucking me in the middle of the day but not at my office, and two, fucking me at my office but just not in the middle of the day.”
“You are such a lawyer.”
“Am I wrong?”
I shook my head and a smile escaped my lips. Might as well be honest. “Nope. That’s pretty accurate.”
He laughed. “No. No nooner on the cal
endar, I’m sad to say. I want to have the work meeting that we should have had when we met if I had been able to think straight. I want to know where our current exposure is and what’s the risk. I want to know what weaknesses you see in our human resources department and practices. I want to know what changes you strongly recommend we make and what changes we should consider making to keep in line with industry best practices. I want to know what’s going on with this case you’re trying for us in December and how much it’s going to cost me. I want a budget through trial and an appeal. Any other lawsuits you’ve got percolating, same thing. I want an early case evaluation and budget. Then we’ll go through them.”
“Wow. Tall order before nine o’clock on a Sunday morning. I’d better get cracking.” I rose from the table. “Okay, so I’m going into the office for a bit today.”
“Because of that? If so, we can push back our business lunch until later in the week.”
“No, not just because of that. I also note that you just deemed a singular lunch to be about business. So the others are personal?”
He nodded. “Nooner.”
“You. No, I do have some other clients and a big trial coming up. So what are your plans this week?”
“I’m here. Thank God.” I put my empty coffee cup in the dishwasher and tossed the yogurt cup. “So, can I ask you something?” he offered.
“Sure,” I tentatively answered.
Those are never good words. It’s like ‘We need to talk.’
“What are we doing this week?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Besides lunch, what are we doing?” He gestured between us.
Decision time. “Um, I don’t know. What do you want us to do?”
Nice punt, Marisa. Now let’s see if he gets the ball and runs with it.
“You have to guess?”
Aw, fuck. This is Trip. He’s going to ask me to move in again and I teed it up for him.
He smiled. “You, home with me.”
“Really?”
“Of course, really.” He pushed back from the breakfast table and walked over to me.
“Are you sure you’re going to want me in your space at the end of the day? I mean, I can work kind of late. I don’t know what your thing is.”
“You are my thing. Can we give this a test run?”
“Like me being here for real?”
He placed his hands on my shoulders and peered at me. “Yes, for real,” he replied earnestly.
“Isn’t this too fast?”
“Does it feel too fast to you? Because to me it doesn’t.”
“I don’t know, Trip,” I whined.
Great. Now I’m whiner.
“What don’t you know? You know I love you. You know we have a great time together. Let’s make this work.”
I nodded. “Okay. Can we take it one day at a time?”
“Whatever helps you sleep better, Marisa, but you know as well as I do that isn’t the truth.”
“I thought you weren’t going to push this.”
“I wasn’t, but I’m past that. I’m done. This is going to work.”
“You are so headstrong.”
“And you’re not?” His blue eyes danced with amusement. “Christ, Marisa, I’m not asking for forever. Not yet at least.” My jaw fell open. He kissed my forehead and returned to the Sunday papers, strewn across the breakfast table.
I looked at my hands.
I’m a jerk. He’s been nothing but nice. This is all me worrying too much.
“Okay.”
He lowered the Book Review and beamed at me. “Excellent.”
“You are a tough negotiator, Mr. Brannon.”
“Ah, Miss Tanner. That’s wasn’t a negotiation. A negotiation is when two sides have incompatible desires.”
“Okay,” I said, sauntering towards him.
My lovely man.
“And what are these compatible desires, Mr. Brannon?”
He pushed back from the table and patted his lap. “Come here. Let me show you.”
***
Stepping into the shower, Trip began to laugh. “What?” I snapped, suddenly feeling very naked and embarrassed.
“You have newspaper ink smudges all over your back.”
I blanched then laughed. “Whose fault is that?”
“It’s not a fault.”
“Good. See what fun we can have when I’m not worried about your mom walking in unannounced.”
“Hell, I’m changing the locks tomorrow.” I titled my head.
Is he serious?
“Kidding. She’ll respect our space. Also, I’ll get back the garage door opener that Bert has.”
My eyes grew wide. “So, exactly how many people could have walked into your house this morning and seen us going at it on top of the Sunday Times?”
He paused and looked up at the ceiling.
Oh, shit. He’s trying to remember who all has keys to his place. How long a list is it?
“My parents, Ophelia, Bert, the cleaning lady.” His voice trailed off. “My mom has a clicker for the garage like you do. I don’t ever lock the kitchen door to the garage, but let’s start doing that when we’re here, okay? Just in case?”
Chapter Twenty-five
On our way home from dinner with the Levitz family, we swung by my condo to pick up my work clothes. Trip parked in what I’d come to think of as his space. We walked hand in hand, chatting and laughing and making silly faces until we got to my door.
I dropped his hand and fumbled in my purse for my keys. My condo felt stale and stuffy. I haven’t been here in days. I dropped my purse on my dining room table and trundled off to my bedroom. I miss my home.
“You know, we can just stay here.”
“No, it’s okay,” I shrugged, opening my closet and pawing through my rack of conservative work wear.
“No, really. I’m being selfish. You’re going to have to start telling me when I’m acting like an asshole.”
“Fine. But you’re not in asshole territory. I do miss my own bed.”
“Good,” he said, kicking off his blue sneakers. “I don’t care where I’m sleeping as long as I get SP One.”
“I’m not sure if there is milk for breakfast. I don’t have the same level of service at Chateaux Tanner that you’ve come to expect at your place.”
“Fuck that. It’s nine-thirty on Sunday night. I’ll run and go get milk. And strawberry yogurt. You got instant oatmeal?”
I nodded. “You’re going to the grocery store twice in two days?”
“Only for you, Marisa.”
He slipped his shoes back on and left. I flopped on my bed and stared up at the floral-papered ceiling. Jumping in the deep end. High wire act with no net. Double or nothing.
***
Monday lunch with Trip was completely professional. We ate in his office with Carlos, Branco’s Human Resources Director. Trip peppered me with questions. Good questions. Some of them were hard questions. Like telling him where I thought Branco was weak or making policy suggestions that I knew weren’t cheap. He took it in stride. I was thankful I’d spent Sunday afternoon at the office getting ready for this meeting. He was right. This was the meeting I’d been expecting several months ago when I’d gone over to meet the new General Counsel.
Trip was Trip, but he wasn’t my boyfriend. No roving hands. No sly smiles. No belly laughs or gentle caresses. But by the time my sandwich was half-eaten, I had an even bigger crush on him.
“Let’s talk about this Dave Priddy lawsuit,” said Trip, steering the conversation away from best practices and toward the item I’d been most looking forward to discussing. “Where are we on this?”
“Well, trial is in a month. I’m about to start preparing jury instructions, opening and closing arguments, and witness examination outlines. I’ve got to prep our witnesses.”
“And the budget?”
“I sent you over an Excel spreadsheet mid-morning. The to-date spend is approximate
ly eighty-five thousand dollars. Trial is going to be another thirty. Appeal another thirty to forty on top of that.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“It is.” I nodded.
Yes, it is a lot of money, which is why you’ve got to run a tight ship and not let managers ask employees to strip at bachelorette parties.
“How do you read the tea leaves?”
“We’re going to get a verdict against us.” Trip’s face turned into a frown. “The facts are not favorable and, while I’m good, I’m not a magician. The question is how much of an adverse verdict are we going to get. I’m guessing right around two hundred thousand.”
“So, you’re telling me that I’m looking at spending another thirty in order to get to pay two hundred?”
“Yes. The last settlement demand we got was for three hundred thousand. I think we can talk them down to just north of two.”
“We’re not settling this. He got one bad performance review and his raise was delayed by six months. It’s not like she touched him.”
“Trip, she asked him to strip for her. For money. Juries do not like people being propositioned at work by their bosses.” I held up my hands in defense. “Look, I know it wasn’t for sex. I’m being the devil’s advocate here. A jury won’t like it. They won’t hate it, but they aren’t going to like it. And you’re right. Things were made right, but his raise was delayed because of that one performance review.”
“And you think he’s telling the truth about being asked to be a stripper? You think a jury is going to believe him?”
“Trip, have you even seen Dave Priddy?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Does it matter?”
“In this case, very much so. Every woman in that courtroom will look at him and imagine licking him.”
“Every woman?”
“He was fucking Mr. July in the Munford Volunteer Fire Department calendar, Trip. Mr. July. The hottest month.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No, it’s in the case evaluation I prepared for you.”
“I read that. I’m just curious about whether every woman in the courtroom will be thinking about licking the plaintiff. That was not in the memo you gave me.”