by Julia Kent
I’d had sex. Sex. Last night.
And it had been amazing. AH-MAZE-BALLS.
But right now, Liam’s eyes were combing over me, his mouth curling into a smile that made that tingling come right back with a big old roar, but he looked like a man out of The Walking Dead who was three seconds away from being zombie feed.
“We need to clean you up.”
“I don’t mind being dirty.” He lunged across the bed, pulling me down by the (naked) waist, all my soft, squishy parts pushing against his hard, chiseled parts, and it felt soooo good.
“I don’t want to reopen that wound, and if you—” He tried to kiss the words out of me, but Professional Charlotte kicked in. If this were one of my students I’d insist they seek medical treatment, right?
Then again, if this were one of my students, I wouldn’t have chipped a clipboard at their head and then fucked them three times in the course of six hours.
So I shouldn’t be throwing my professional standards into the mix, here.
Liam, thank God, was not a student.
“I’m not getting stitches,” he insisted, sliding reluctantly off me and walking into the bathroom. I turned over on my belly and propped my head in my hands, enjoying the view. How could a man’s ass move like that, without the padding on the hips, and with so much animal grace that you just wanted to watch it forever?
The muscles around his spine were like a vine of ivy—turn just an inch in one direction and the whole chain moved. The thick little spot of hair at the cleft of his ass was new. Hadn’t been there five years ago. He’d thickened out everywhere, and I do mean everywhere.
“Shit!” he called out. “You really got me.”
I winced. “I told you it was bad. Let’s go to a walk-in clinic. Insurance will—”
“Don’t have insurance,” he said quietly. “I’ll just clean this up. Myself.” He turned on the sink and the running water made it impossible for him to hear me.
Which was the point.
“No insurance?” I asked as I walked into the bathroom. A huge wave of self-consciousness struck me. Cover up? Throw on a robe? Wear pajamas? But Liam’s openness and casual nature rubbed off on me. I decided to go with the flow, even as I was an internal wreck, trying to reconcile the flood of eight thousand emotions inside.
Right now it was easier to worry about his gash.
He waved his hand. “Dad was supposed to keep me on his plan, but he says he’ll only insure me if I come work for him.” Liam’s dad’s dealership was enormous.
“Pressuring you?” I leaned against the doorjamb as he wiped the blood away. I struggled not to laugh inappropriately. He had dried blood in, um, some interesting places. Along his ribs, in his belly button.
I pulled back and opened my mouth to start another question and he burst out laughing, staring at my belly. “What’s so funny?” I demanded, instantly worried that my curvier figure was now under scrutiny.
“Check out the Liam trail.” His chest puffed out with pride.
I looked down. A little rust-colored line from one nipple to the other, then right down the center of my torso to my mons.
“You’re better than GPS,” I joked.
“That is one trail I don’t need a map for,” he said, then winked. Then winced, because he used his injured eye to wink.
“Your dad wants you to work for the family business?”
“Yep.”
“What does he think of your stripping?”
“He’s so proud.”
“You know I’m going to ask all these hard questions, right? You can go all quiet and taciturn like you always do, and I’ll just keep poking and asking until you open up.”
“Nothing’s changed in five years.”
“Everything’s changed in five years.”
He pulled away from the mirror and looked at me, his fingers peeling back the skin of his scalp. I could see pink, but not white, thank God. I hadn’t gotten him to the bone.
“You have any Super Glue?”
“What?”
“I need to glue my head.”
Liam
Some part of me couldn’t quite believe I was standing in Charlotte’s tiny little tiled bathroom, naked, covered in dried blood with the scent of her on my nose, in my stubble, on my lips and coating my cock, while she nattered at me like a nervous mother bird.
And I liked it.
She was so lush. My eyes couldn’t stop landing on that body, her belly a little curved slope that begged for me to rest my cheek on it, those hips needing to be palmed, that ass womanly and divine. I was getting hard again looking at her, and I knew that if she saw me standing at attention it would be awkward. There’s only so much making up you can do when you’ve had a breach like ours.
So far, so good, though.
A weird hissing sound started in another part of the apartment. “Boiler?” I asked, searching through her medicine cabinet for alcohol or hydrogen peroxide. I found the H2O2 and prepared for pain.
“Coffeemaker.”
“You’re a goddess.”
“A goddess who made you bleed.”
“A goddess who will bring me coffee in bed.”
“That an order?”
“A fantasy.”
“You have low expectations.”
“You set a high bar for all other woman.”
“And given how many women you’ve been with, I am going to hope that’s a compliment.”
And…game. Set. Match.
I knew when to quit. The sting of the hydrogen peroxide helped drown out that little zinger. Soon I had my face cleaned up, though I was still covered in my own blood. Charlotte looked like something out of an anthropology student’s grad school project. She’s refused to give me Super Glue—said it was in her office and she didn’t want anyone to discover I was here.
“I almost hate to take a shower with you,” I said as I took my first grateful sip.
“Who said anything about showering together?” Her eyes bugged out. But she stayed naked, legs crossed casually, as if it were the most normal thing in the world for us to be nude at her kitchen table, drinking coffee on a Saturday morning in her little university apartment.
And it was.
But it wasn’t.
“I did.”
A slow, sultry smile stretched that beautiful face, making her more of a woman, mature and blossoming. And…I was hard.
“I see the caffeine is waking part of you up.”
I took a deep sip. “That’s not the caffeine.”
She looked down at her breasts, eyes flicking between them, then looked down the crest of her belly. “I do think a shower is in order.” Keeping her chin down, she tipped her eyes up, those orbs framed by long lashes. “Care to join me?”
I abandoned the coffee and sprinted to the bathroom so fast, reaching in to turn on the hot jets. Charlotte followed, laughing, still carrying her coffee. I pointedly found my jeans, pulled out a condom, and felt her eyes on me every inch of the way.
Why be coy when we both knew the score?
I tucked the condom on the bathtub’s edge and reached for the mug in her hands. My dry palms smoothed her hair, her face turned up to look at me, the worry lines that I’d noticed between her eyes now gone.
“This,” I said as steam rose up from behind her shower curtain, “feels so good.”
Her hand wrapped around my cock.
“This?”
I hissed as I inhaled, then reached down and reluctantly peeled her fingers off. I had a point to make before anything else, and I couldn’t make it with her fingertips milking me. That’s the surest way to make my brain take a vacation to Lustland.
“This,” I said, enveloping her in a hug more intimate than most sex acts. I just held her, so sure and happy to be back where I knew I belonged. All the hurt, all the unspoken pain was still there, but it was less potent somehow. More dull. The edge had been filed off, and while it needed to be handled, we’d do it. One step at a time.
I reached into the shower and tested the water. Then I pulled back the curtain and took one look at the shower head.
“There is no way that is university regulation plumbing equipment.” The shower head had two parts to it and looked like something out of a half espresso machine/half sex toy catalog.
“That is the single, celibate woman’s guide to nirvana.”
I sized it up. “My competition?”
“My hydro-boyfriend.”
Charlotte
There are times when you’re in the mood for deep, penetrating, soulful lovemaking where you’re in the groove with each other’s hearts and bodies, warm flesh shocking the other’s blissful skin with the allure of desire and need, mutual pleasure the pinnacle of the day’s activities.
But sometimes you just need to be fucked silly against your shower wall, water pounding your back.
And your guy pounding your backside.
Liam yanked the shower curtain open and pulled me in, the needling spray making my body tingle. I made a squealing sound as his wet hand slipped between my legs, fingers finding my clit, his movements making me groan and flower, open for him.
The shower quickly made his hair turn dark, long lashes sprinkled with globes of hanging water as he pushed against me from behind, hard and slick, his shaft riding up the cleft of my ass as his fingers played me to perfection.
Guiding me, he used his free hand to lift my right leg up, propping it on the edge of the tub. My breasts smashed into the wet tile, the water pulsing against my back, the insanity of so many good sensations drowning out my own conflicted, uptight mind.
Go away, Ms. Goodie-Two-Shoes, I ordered. You’re not wanted right now.
Liam peppered my shoulders with little bites, just hard enough to make the pain cut through all my ecstatic centers, and then cold air hit my back for a split second. Ah. The condom.
The rush of fulfillment as he entered me from behind, his tip up and in me with a delicious groan from us both, made me wish we had a soundtrack. Something from classic rock, a 1970s beat that would drive me out of my mind and make us crack the wall.
“You are so fucking hot, Charlotte,” Liam said as he pulled back, then hammered me with three quick strokes, so deep I gasped and held my breath. One of his hands tilted my hip just so, the adjustment allowing his tip to touch something inside me that made every muscle scream at once like I was—
“I’m coming, oh, Liam,” I cried out, shaking from some inner core I didn’t know I had. He pounded me from behind, his thighs tight, the steam from the hot water enveloping me as my hands splayed against the tile, fingers curling to grab something, anything, everything, my body vibrating with some frequency I’d never heard.
“You…” Liam drew out the word as his hand clamped my breast, digging hard, his cock bearing down as he rode to his release, the sudden halt in movement behind me barely noticed as I struggled to stay upright. My legs were rubber bands. He sensed it, pulling out quickly, then turning me around to face him, our wet fronts connecting.
“That was unbelievable,” he growled.
“Unprecedented,” I added, reaching for the soap. I didn’t know what to say, what to feel—I didn’t even want to talk. Didn’t want to waste the energy to form words. The glow that infused my skin, my clit, my eyes, my wholeness was tempered only by my words.
So I acted.
Liam
The feel of her hands on my back, soaping me up, like a ritual cleanse, gave me a peace I hadn’t felt in so long. Years of trying to find something—I didn’t know what—in the arms of too many groupies, chicks who wanted to touch me as a trophy, faded as I melted under her strokes, her caresses, her tender care.
The shower was like a baptism, and we could start anew, refreshed and reset. As the blood washed off and Charlotte carefully examined my head wound, declaring me “insane, but probably okay, and if it scars it will be hidden by your hair, anyway,” we stepped out into her bedroom with towels and hope, drying off the holy water of shared forgiveness.
Our phones buzzed in unison. Charlotte tensed up, then sprinted for hers.
“Hi, Mom,” I heard her say as I took my time reaching mine. Mrs. Greyson—er, Caitlyn—was a really nice woman, if a bit severe. I felt like she would just as soon have a nice stout with me as rap my knuckles with a ruler. She was closer to my grandma’s age than my mom’s.
Charlotte wrapped a towel around herself and began that kind of meandering you do when you’re on the phone, while I grabbed my phone and answered it without looking.
Apparently, moms around the world all decided to call their spawn at the same time.
“Liam!” Mom exclaimed.
“Hi, Mom.” I clamped the phone between my ear and neck as I wiped down with a towel. It was weird being naked, post-sex, talking to my mom. Not my fault, though.
“Your father says he’s having a hard time reaching you.”
“You mean pressuring me into working for him.”
“You can’t be serious about this stripping thing,” she said for the thousandth time. “It’s…it’s not why we sent you to college.”
“Why did you send me to college?” I walked into Charlotte’s kitchen and poured myself a cup of overcooked coffee, grimacing as it hit the back of my throat. Charlotte shot me a sympathetic look and mouthed, Lecture?
I nodded.
“Good old Sybil,” she whispered, her hand covering her phone’s mouthpiece.
Yeah. Some things never change. Mom could be cool about stuff like letting Sam stay with us after his old man beat the shit out of him, but God forbid her precious son be caught shaking his nibbly bits for pay.
“You really should call him.”
“I should.” I let that hang in the air as I searched Charlotte’s cabinets for coffee-making stuff. Everything was military precise. My own cupboards looked like a tornado hit them.
I guessed at the amount of grounds to put in as Charlotte chattered on about Portland and some cottage her mother was going to.
“Who’s in the background?” Mom asked with an arched tone.
“Charlotte,” I snapped. Truth is the best defense.
She laughed without amusement. “That’s a sick joke, Liam.”
So’s this conversation. The words were so fucking close I could taste them, but Charlotte had some preternatural sense for knowing something was wrong. She ended her call with her own mom and took the coffee scoop out of my hand gently, the side of her breast brushing against my shoulder, making me want to continue talking with my mom as much as I wanted to go on a date with Joe’s ex, Suzy, wearing a Wilfred costume and being sounded with a coffee stirrer.
“Gotta go, Mom. Talk later.” Click.
Being independent meant I didn’t have to submit myself to lectures like that.
My eyes ate up the naked ass in front of me, how her feet shifted and her hips moved when she closed the coffee machine and turned it on.
That ass?
I’d submit myself to that.
And then I did.
Chapter Fourteen
Charlotte
“I can tell by the way your eyebrow isn’t all tensed like you’re wearing a monocle that you finally had sex,” Maggie whispered in my ear as we sat at a conference table in the student center, stuffed on chocolate-dipped sugar cookies and cafeteria coffee.
Homecoming weekend always brought out the alumni, and we had to mingle at two or more events. We’d already made the rounds and looked for Jan Murphy, our boss, so she could mentally (or physically) check us off for attendance.
“You monitor my facial muscles that carefully for signs of copulation? You need a new hobby.”
“You’re wound so tight that the difference is pretty extreme.”
“Nice. What a friend.”
“Friends tell the truth.”
I sized her up. “Then I have to say that
the orange hair makes you look like Syndrome from The Incredibles.”
Her jaw flew down. “You take that back!”
I snatched one of her tiramisu cookies. “Just being a ‘good friend.’” I added finger quotes to the insult.
“But you slept with him, right?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“How was it?”
“Let’s just say I might not need my shower head for much longer.”
“You’ll give up your hydro-boyfriend?” she said a little too loudly. People with white paper name tags looked at us. Luckily, Maggie’s punkish appearance made folks stay away.
“I said might. Might.”
“Did he explain what happened five years ago?”
I knew this was coming.
Liam and I had formed a little bubble for that one night, and now I was living in the harsh light of day, interacting with other people, finding myself accountable, even, to close friends like Maggie. Okay, my only close friend—who knew the score.
Was I a wimp for taking him back? For not broaching the subject of what happened when he left me—and our baby? So many shoulds and expectations and external constructs about how I was supposed to act had filled my brain for years.
Right now I just wanted to feel. Feel. To enjoy the little secret smile that invaded my face when I thought about seeing him again next week. Or how it felt to think about him with expectation—and not automatic pain. How he looked all naked and man in my bed. How I’d felt so mature and alive and on fire when his lips, his mouth, his fingers his—oh, my—had touched me, licked me, tasted me, driven him inside me to form a connection that drove us to release and just be within the other.
“Did he explain? No.”
I choked out a simple answer and stared at Maggie like a deer in headlights. I felt a wave of shame, of carefully created validations for my choice, and as they bubbled up to the surface, screaming to get out, she just examined me like one would a specimen and said:
“Give it time. When you’re both ready, it will all come out.”
That’s it? I’d braced myself for a long lecture and instead got an even-tempered, almost nonchalant response?