by Alexa Davis
“The doctor is optimistic,” I said.
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.”
We sat there in silence for several long minutes. Nick stared at the television on the wall. The news was on, but the sound was muted. I stared at a poster about getting checked for STDs. It was awkward, to say the least. I had no idea what to say to him. Finally, he broke the silence. “I missed you, Karli.”
I tore my eyes from the poster and looked at him. God, why does he have to be so perfect? I didn’t know what to say. Should I admit that I missed him, too, or did that just make me look like one of his pathetic groupies?
“Dad really asked you to bring him here?” was what I settled on.
He smiled and that only made my speech problems worse. “He didn’t ask me; I volunteered.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm because I volunteered or because Charlie accepted?”
“Both.”
“I volunteered because he was obviously upset and I didn’t think he needed to be driving across town. He accepted because he knew I was right. On the way over here, he asked me what was going on between you and me. I was surprised he didn’t already know.”
“He and I haven’t done much talking lately. I’m still so angry with him about Kevin that things have been kind of awkward between us.” I cringed as I asked him, “What did you tell him?”
“I told him how I feel, and I told him he’d have to ask you if he wanted to know your thoughts. I wasn’t going to pretend to know how you feel.”
I was afraid to ask the next question, but too curious not to. “How do you feel?”
He reached down to run his fingers lightly through my hair as he tucked it behind my ear. I shivered and didn’t try to hide it.
“I miss you. I feel like an idiot for letting you walk out the door. No, for pushing you out that door. I’m sorry that I handled that so badly. I panicked, Karli. I saw that note from Kevin, and I heard you on the phone with your dad, and I thought about comforting you and worrying about him, and suddenly, I felt like I was drowning. This past week I have wanted to call you about a hundred times, but I didn’t because I wanted to be sure – absolutely sure of how I felt before I talked to you.”
“And, you’re sure now of how you feel?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m positive. I had you in my life for just a little while and those few weeks were the happiest of my life. I hadn’t ever felt that way before, so I was afraid of it. Change is not easy for me. But I think you’re worth it, Karli. I think we’re worth it. I want you in my life, and I want us to take this one day at a time to see where it goes without either of us letting preconceived ideas in our heads get in the way of that.”
I felt tears stinging the corners of my eyes. My hand was shaking as I lifted it up and rested it on the side of his face. “That’s what I want, too, Nick.”
He smiled and ran his lips across mine softly. “I won’t hurt you again, Karli,” he whispered.
I smiled, too. “I don’t think it’s possible for two people to have a relationship without hurting each other. But it takes a big person to say they’re sorry, and I forgive you. I’m sorry, too. I should have stayed and talked this out instead of walking out that door. Can I ask you what my dad said when you told him how you felt?”
“Well, he listened while I talked and didn’t say anything snide or sarcastic, which was nice and unexpected. When I finished telling him pretty much what I just told you, he calmly looked over at me and said, ‘If you hurt her, I will fucking kill you with my bare hands.’”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “Oh, you think that’s funny do you?” he asked with a smirk on his handsome face.
“A little bit, yeah.”
“You know, I’m not even a little bit worried about it.” I raised an eyebrow and he smiled. “Don’t look all cocky over there. I’m well aware that Charlie can kick my ass. What I meant was, I don’t plan on ever hurting you, so he won’t need to.”
I used my grip on the front of his shirt and pulled him down into my lips. No matter how many times I kissed him, it was always like the first time. Skyrockets had nothing on the explosions in my head and the vibrations that rocked my body.
I’m falling in love with him, but I know it’s too soon to tell for sure. I was willing to take a wait and see approach as long as it involved lots of kisses and lots of touching and…
Dad cleared his throat, again. Shit. I never knew what an astute cock-blocker my own father could be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
NICK
I got some stern looks from Charlie while Karli was back visiting her uncle, but no lectures and no threats. We were making progress. After Karli came out, Kevin reluctantly went in. Half an hour later, he came out smiling from ear to ear – Lenny had woken up. After Karli saw him once more, she and I left. She tried to talk Kevin into going with us, but he wouldn’t leave, so she asked me to take her home and left him her car.
I was completely okay with that. I’d missed her like crazy over the past week. I was dying for some time alone with her.
“Kevin says he’s going to have this out with Dad tonight once and for all.”
“The kid has a brass set, I’ll give him that.”
She laughed and reached across the seat for my right hand. Holding her soft one only made me want more. I drove way too fast, especially after she said,
“Maybe I could stay with you tonight and give them some space?”
“Hell, yeah!”
As soon as we got to my house, I closed the door behind her and pushed her up against the wall. Our kiss was slow and sweet at first, but it quickly escalated until we were clinging to each other like our bodies couldn’t get close enough.
I finally picked her up and carried her into the living room. I wanted her in the bedroom but at the moment, it just seemed too fucking far away. I stopped in the living room and sat down on the couch, pulling her down onto my lap. She sat sideways on top of my raging hard-on and we made out like two horny teenagers. My hands were everywhere that I could touch her, underneath her shirt, against her warm, soft skin. She smelled and felt so fucking good I thought I might just blow in my pants.
We kissed like that until we were forced to pull back and take a breath. We locked eyes as we both gasped and panted, and I could see the excitement, the burning intensity, and lust in hers.
She looked at me like that for a long time before I felt those soft, sexy hands travel down my chest and to grab onto the bulge in my pants. I groaned, which only encouraged her. She ran her hands up and down the length of me, and with a sexy smile, she dropped to her knees on the carpet and her hands went to the waistband of my jeans.
I sucked in another hard breath as she unbuttoned and unzipped them, and then she teased me again by cupping my balls through my underwear. I moaned and cursed as she smiled up at me with that simmering, sexy look just before she reached into the front of my shorts and pulled me out. She held my erection in her hand and looked at it like she was committing it to memory.
I felt it throb against her palm. She began stroking me slowly from base to tip. My breath caught in my chest, and I held it for a long time as I watched her. She was so fucking sexy.
She parted her lips, and I could see a pool of saliva in the center of her tongue. She let it slide off of her tongue and onto the head of my cock, and then she used her tongue to coat the entire head with it. She had her eyes half closed, and she looked like she was savoring the taste of me as she licked the length of me, running her tongue across my balls before she made her way back up to the tip.
Then she took a deep breath, exhaled, and sucked my cock as far into her mouth as she could get it. I could feel it touching the back of her throat. I moved her hair so I could watch her. I was so fucking tempted to just come in her mouth, but the urge to be inside of her was stronger.
I held back, letting her continue licking and sucking until, suddenly, she slid her right hand down between her legs and
underneath the waistband of her pants. The look of ecstasy she already had on her pretty face became even more lustful as she rubbed her clit and sucked me hard and fast, bobbing her head up and down and moaning around its girth.
“God, Karli, I can’t take anymore, baby!” I pulled her off my cock and stood her up in front of me. I unbuttoned her pants and pushed them down to her knees, along with the little, lace panties she was wearing, and then I dove into that pussy.
I loved the way she smelled and tasted. I loved the way she moved her hips and moaned when I hit the right places. I loved the way she wrapped her fingers up in my hair to pull it, using it to move my face where she wanted it. I licked and sucked and nibbled until she was shaking so hard, I was afraid she would collapse.
I reached for her right hand and moved it so that her fingers were pressing into her clit, and while she rubbed herself, I reached up and pulled her face down to mine. She started licking my face and my lips and sucking on them. The taste of herself on me seemed to fuel her lust, and she rubbed herself harder and faster.
I reached up to slip a finger into her pussy. She was dripping wet, and I moved my fingers in and out of her while she masturbated her clit. Suddenly, her left hand was in my hair and she was pulling on it, hard. Her hard body began to tense and the smooth walls of her pussy clamped down tight around my fingers as she cried out. So fucking sexy.
I worked her through her orgasm and then I stood up and finished stripping off the rest of her clothes so that I could get a taste of those hard, delicious nipples. When I finished teasing and tantalizing her nipples, I stripped off the rest of my clothes and said,
“Turn around.”
She turned and rested her hands on the back of the couch. I pressed on her lower back and she instinctively lifted her sexy ass. I gripped her cheeks and massaged them before I ran one hand between her legs and coated it with her juices. I brought it up to my face to breathe her in, and then I gripped my cock with my wet hand and pushed it against her opening. I wanted to slide it into her like this so badly…skin to skin…but we hadn’t discussed birth control and I knew I wasn’t ready for a baby.
I said, “Hold on,” and got a condom out of my wallet and put it on. I got back into position and when she felt me press into her again, she moaned loudly and pressed back into me. I let my cock slide in about halfway, feeling her soft but tight muscles stretch to accommodate me a little at a time.
I leaned down to take one of her luscious tits in my hand and pressed my lips into her ear. I whispered to her about how sexy she was and how good she felt as I pushed into her deeper. The words, the feel of my breath against her ear, or the rough groping of her breast produced another rush of her hot fluids all over my cock and the feel of it sent me over the edge.
I couldn’t go slowly any longer. I grabbed her hips with both hands and I fucked her until she screamed. She was still whimpering and shaking when I reached my peak. So fucking good. So fucking hot.
********
“How many women have you had sex with?” The sound of Karli’s sexy, sleepy voice startled me. We were lying in bed, tangled up in each other’s limbs. We’d made love again once we made it to the bedroom, and I’d thought that she’d passed out.
“What?” I hoped that I heard the question wrong. She wiggled around and turned over onto her back so that she could look at my face.
“In the interest of getting to know each other better, I was just curious, how many women have you slept with?”
I chuckled nervously. I wondered if the question was less about how many I’d been with and more about whether I’d be honest about it or not. I tried doing calculations in my head, but the numbers were too large. “Two or three a week, on average, for about six years…”
She propped herself up on her elbow. “Seriously? That’s like…almost… Jesus, Nick, really?”
“On average…” Fuck. She was looking at me like I was a slut. “But now you get to reap all the rewards of that practice.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “Nice way to take the heat off of you and refocus on me.”
“Is that what I was doing?” I ran my fingers down her arm and felt the goosebumps follow.
She shivered and said, “You knew exactly what you were doing and you know exactly what those fingers do to me.”
“So…” I raked them up the opposite way. “How many for you, beautiful?”
It was her turn for a nervous laugh. “Nowhere near eight hundred.”
“Eight hundred?”
“Yeah, I just did the math. Well, not quite eight hundred, 780 to be exact.”
“Wow.”
She poked me in the ribs. “Don’t sound so proud of yourself, you…” She stopped there.
“Slut?”
She giggled. “No, I wasn’t going to be so harsh. Man-whore maybe.”
I chuckled. “I think you might be the one deflecting now. How many, babe?”
“Three.”
I nearly choked. “Three? Including me?”
“Yes, including you.”
“Wow…really?”
“Yes, really. Did you think I seemed like the one-night-stand type or what?”
I pulled her against me tighter and kissed the side of her face. “Nope, not at all. It’s just hard to believe.”
“Why?”
“Seriously, babe? Have you seen you?”
She snuggled deeper into me. I was irrationally happy that she’d only been with two other men besides me. I had no right to be considering the near thousand women I’d been with…but regardless, I was. I hated thinking about anyone else touching her. Mostly, I hated the thought of anyone else being intimate with her. I could get used to sleeping with one woman – this woman to be exact.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
KARLI
Halloween came and went and we were barreling toward Thanksgiving at a break-neck speed. I usually liked Thanksgiving.
Dad and I always cooked a huge dinner and invited all the guys from the gym and their wives and girlfriends or temporary dates, whatever the case might be. Michaela would come and bring whomever she was with at the time. Last year, it was Trent. Thank God that asshole was out of her life. She and Ethan were getting closer by the day, and I’d never seen her so happy. She’d even begun teasing me about us becoming sisters-in-law someday.
But I was digressing, letting myself revel in the memories of cooking turkey with Dad trying to peel and eat the skin and peeling potatoes by the dozens. Instead, I should have been focusing on what I was going to wear to Gregory Grant’s huge, fucking mansion when I sat down to Thanksgiving dinner with my boyfriend, his dad, and his brother. I was a nervous wreck about it, but I couldn’t very well tell Nick no.
The craziest part was that he’d asked me at the gym right in front of Dad and instead of telling me or Nick he couldn’t stand the thought of having Thanksgiving without me, he had said,
“That sounds nice, Karli; you should go.”
“But what about our dinner, Dad?”
“I was thinking about taking a step back from all of that this year, anyways.” That was the point where Nick excused himself and left us alone to talk.
“Really?” I pulled my eyebrows together. “You love our Thanksgiving dinners.”
“I do, baby girl, but maybe this year we’ll do a Christmas dinner, instead. See, the thing is…Kevin asked me to fly out to Philadelphia with him.”
Dad and Kevin had had a heart to heart the night Uncle Lenny was in the hospital. I don’t know what all was said, but the next time I saw them was when I got home from Nick’s the next day. They were watching football in our living room and Kevin had moved back in. The next thing I knew Kevin, was looking after Uncle Lenny during the day and Dad was calling him son more often.
“So, are you going as a family friend?”
He reached for my hand and said, “I know you lost a lot of respect for me over all of this. I’m not making excuses because there really is none. But I wi
ll tell you what I told Kevin. Linda and I did something horrible. We were attracted to each other and we acted on it.
“At the time, we rationalized it. Linda and Frank weren’t getting along. Frank was losing a lot of fights and always in a bad mood. Linda wanted to have a baby, but Frank wasn’t doing his part. I told myself that as long as Frank never found out, we weren’t hurting anyone. It was a lie so that I could do what I wanted to do without the guilt I should be feeling.
“Three months after that first time we were together, Linda called and told me she was pregnant and not only did she know it was my baby…but Frank did, too.”
“Oh my God. All this time, Frank has known?”
“Yeah. I left you with the neighbors and flew from Minnesota to Philly. The first thing Frank did when he saw me was punch me in the face. I didn’t hit back. I let him punch me several more times until he was finished and then the three of us sat down and talked.
“I wanted my son, and I was sure that’s what Frank would want. I had thought about it on the flight, and I expected him to want a divorce and to never want to see me again, or the baby. As it turned out, that was far from what he wanted. He wanted Linda as long as she promised to never cheat again, and he wanted the baby.
“He had a secret of his own. He was sterile, and he’d known about it for years. I said no at first, but Karli, I was in my mid-twenties with a four-year-old daughter to think about. I’d betrayed my best friend and this was what he wanted in return for that betrayal. I felt like shit every day of the past nineteen years, but I knew my son was being well taken care of. I knew he was safe and happy, and I knew I’d given my best friend the most precious gift in the world.”
“Why didn’t you tell Kevin this when he first started asking?”
“Because I promised his parents that I would never tell anyone. I talked to them finally and told them how badly this was tearing him up and then I told him.”