“Garrett,” I replied, and let go. No more holding on for him. I just let go, and a torrential rain coursed through me as I came. I wiped the tears away before he could see. I was still wiping my streaming eyes when his semen, hot and somehow comforting, splashed my lower back, leaving an invisible brand on me. His. In my heart, I was his. And only in my heart, it seemed.
My mother died eight days later. I didn’t stop coming to the hospice, though. My presence was accepted by the staff on two levels. One, I was still mourning my mother, and I came to feel close to her. Two, I was Garrett’s support now and there to comfort him. Both of these were true to a degree. I didn’t feel close to my mother, but after months and months of visits, I felt very comfortable at the hospice. And Garrett was there. Any chance to be near him, any venue, was acceptable to me.
He was on the sofa, feet propped up, arms tucked against himself in a defensive gesture, looking more fatigued and thinner than normal. I had the urge to straddle him and cover his face with kisses. With the staff about. With the door open. I swallowed hard and pushed back the urge.
“Can we walk?” he asked without looking up. His voice was harsh; his throat sounded clogged.
“Of course. It’s colder than cold. It’s snowing, too,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.
“That’s okay. I like the snow. I like the cold. It’s cleansing.”
I felt a heaviness take up residence in my chest. Fear too. What was this sudden shift in mood? I wanted so badly to know and yet was afraid to ask. Had something happened? Had I done something? Was I about to get the “we need to talk” routine? I wouldn’t let myself think it. Instead, I shoved my hands back into my cream-colored gloves and laughed. “Well, you will be all kinds of cleansed after a walk outside tonight.”
Then I took his hand, in case it was my last chance to touch him.
He squeezed my palm and led me out the side door mainly used by staff. Four flights down, he held my hand through the glove. We exited the building by a door that was supposed to be alarmed but that we both knew wasn’t. The smokers used this door. Luckily no one was there, but the smell of smoke lingered.
Garrett headed to the back of the grounds. Before the land had been donated to the facility, it had been a horse farm, and the length of the acre was enclosed by a rustic wooden fence. We often used the property as a reprieve, walking the perimeter of the land then heading back inside to the realm of beeping equipment, catheter bags, and crash carts.
“I’ve missed you,” he said and came up behind me. His arms circled me and yanked me back to his chest. He was warm, even with the frigid wind finding the small entrances in my clothes, the cold worming inside my coat and biting my skin. The warmth came off of him, out of him in waves.
“It’s been only two days. Normal,” I said and laughed. I laughed because the fear swelled up inside of me. What did it mean?
“I dream about you,” he said. He always did. He always told me that he dreamed about me, and it never failed to light me up inside—light me up in a place I hadn’t known existed.
“Are they dirty dreams?” I teased.
He backed me up against the rough planks of the fence and pushed at my leggings. Pushed in that greedy way that made my blood grow hot and my pulse ratchet upward. I want you, is what that gesture said. I wiggled as his fingers hooked and pushed, and my leggings lost the battle. My long sweater and my driving coat shielded me from the wind and any possible prying eyes.
“Not dirty dreams,” he breathed, pushing a finger slowly inside of me. Finding me wet, he made that noise deep in his throat that always gets to me. My cunt seized around his fingers, eager. “Beautiful dreams. I get you. All of you. I get to slide into you and stay there. I get to fuck you, Adriana. Slow. Fast. More than once. I get to have you, in my dreams. See, I never get to have you in real life. Not really. Not all of you. I get you in bits and pieces. I get you in fits and starts. But that’s the last time. . . . ”
When he said that, my body seized up all over. Not just my cunt, but my heart and my throat. Surely, it was the end. I felt the tears and squeezed my eyes hard. They found a way out anyway.
His zipper sounded like a gunshot despite the wind and the hiss of the naked trees blowing in the gusts. I considered saying no. No, you cannot use me one last time. My heart rebelled at the thought. If I had only one more time with him, then one more time would have to be enough. I meant to turn, to offer him my back, my ass, myself in the position he seemed to favor.
“Face me,” was all he said. And then he hooked my cold and naked leg around his waist and slid into me. Not his fingers or his tongue or a cool glass bottle from the kitchenette fridge. His cock.
My eyes locked with his, and the tears didn’t dissipate, but trebled. My vision went from weak to nonexistent as I soaked in the feel of him. Warm steel, hard suede, iron flesh. He thrust into me hard and then harder still. The fence bit my ass, leaving splinters as souvenirs. I would take them and cherish them.
“The last time with my fingers. The last time with my mouth. I love the taste of you, Adriana, but I love this so much more. So much more,” he whispered. Then his face changed from serene to frantic and his rhythm turned chaotic. “I’m sorry,” he said, with a half laugh, half cry.
I surprised him. I came with him with a half laugh, half cry of my own. This meant one thing and one thing only. She was dead. He was free. He was mine. He was crushed.
I was ecstatic. He had suffered loss and we had a chance. I felt a surge of joy and then a wave of guilt. I wasn’t reveling in his loss of her but in my gain of him, and yet I felt somewhat sinister for my happiness. It would pass.
Garrett kissed me, yanked me to him, and my naked thighs pressed against his cold jeans. “Hang in there with me,” he said. “I’m confused, Adriana.”
I nodded. “I’m right there with you,” I said. I burrowed closer, and a deep chill set into me. I started to shake.
“Let’s go.” He pulled up my leggings as if I were a child. I let him.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I’m taking you home. To bed,” he said, and led me through the snow. I tried to walk directly in his footprints and leave just one set. For the most part, I succeeded.
I wasn’t sure whose bed we were going to, or if he would stay with me. But now the choice was there for us. And that was okay. That was something.
BEHIND BARS
Saranna DeWylde
The air shimmered with broiling heat, and Betsy Tamsyn Blue sat, baking herself quietly in a non-air-conditioned cell house, on a bastard day in July. She was musing on the physics of sweat, that is to say, the inherent draw of like to like, the way mercury is drawn back to itself. She was thinking about the convergence of flesh as silky beads of water and salt sluiced down between the valley of her breasts, the concave dip at the base of her spine, and the junction of her thighs.
Her hair, escaping from its rigid pins, clung to her neck and forehead in sticky ringlets. Her sight blurred when a droplet of sweat splashed down onto her eyelashes.
Betsy rubbed at it casually with the back of her hand and blinked owlishly to clear her vision. She took a breath, but it was like breathing fire, a back draft sucking down ambient heat into her lungs.
She updated the logbook slowly, hoping that the longer it took, the less time she would have to spend out on the run with the inmates, where it was even hotter under the blazing sun.
As if you could crank up the thermostat in hell.
Betsy looked up to see her sergeant, Chad Jensen, open the office door.
Well, what do you know? Think of hell and the devil presents himself in the flesh. The oh-so-delicious flesh. Her eyes rolled in an involuntary motion, but slid back to Chad. That uniform fit him so well, especially when it was damp with his sweat. The shirt clung to the width of his back and shoulders. And the military fatigue pants . . . she could only imagine what might be hidden in all of those pockets. The cut of the material seemed to have been
optimized for displaying his cock. Even his duty belt seemed angled to direct her vision down to the package. A package that she’d been tempted to unwrap more than once.
“See something you like, Betsy Blue?” He arched his brow, a prelude to his knowing smirk.
“Yeah, maybe. If I didn’t already know that you’d rather be fucking yourself.”
“Who wouldn’t? Look at me.” Chad shrugged as if he couldn’t help himself.
“Isn’t that what started the conversation?” Betsy shot back.
“Your turn for a security check.”
“I’m updating the logbook.”
“We have to make fifteen-minute checks on Parsons. He’s suicidal.” Chad made finger quotes in the air and rolled his eyes.
Parsons wasn’t suicidal. He just couldn’t pay for his dope. Everyone knew that.
Betsy snorted. “He can wait. I’m going up to the counselor’s office to see if I can reset the AC.”
“The night shift will just run it too hard and too cold. We’ll be out of luck again tomorrow.”
“Nah, we’ll turn it off before we leave.”
“That’s pretty shitty. But fuck ’em. They broke it. You’re still doing the next check.”
“Is that an order?” She curled her lip, daring him to say it was.
“Would you like it to be?”
“Oh please, Jensen. I’m not one of your groupie pincushions. Not every word out of your mouth is manna from heaven.”
“Could have fooled me.” Chad closed the distance between them. But he didn’t have to; his presence seemed to suck all of the oxygen out of the space.
“Just because I window-shop doesn’t mean I want to buy anything.”
“Who’s talking about buying?” He leaned in closer to her. “And window-shopping implies that you just don’t have the funds to get what you want. I never knew you were so low on self-esteem.”
“No, doll-face. Low self-esteem would be if I spent too much on something I didn’t really want, but just liked to look at every so often.”
“Oh, Betsy. Did I hit a nerve?”
“That would be the only thing you’ve hit. According to Peterson. She says you’re the worst lay she’s ever had.”
“Talk about a pincushion! She’s been stuck more times than I can count. So, I won’t feel bad if out of the thousands of needles, she wasn’t impressed with mine.”
“She said you were dumb too, couldn’t count without your fingers.” She tapped his chest for emphasis and had to resist the urge to keep touching it.
“Okay, Blue. I give; that was harsh.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to check that AC or what?” Chad drawled.
“I’m going.”
Betsy folded the logbook closed and took a drink of water, which seemed to be an exercise in futility. It would have been easier if she’d dumped it on the floor, cut out the middle man. She hated sweating.
Betsy was sure she looked like sixty-two kinds of mess. It wasn’t fair that the heat only made him look better, what with that dark hair curling across his forehead, making him look like a surly angel.
She cringed inwardly at her own description. Surly angel? Where had that tripe come from? She’d never know. She had bigger problems to deal with. Like the fact that he was unwilling to move his delicious self out of her way.
He was still blocking the door. Betsy tried to move past him, but he was like a brick wall. Solid and immutable, barricading the exit.
“You have to move if you want me to go upstairs.”
“Make me,” he smirked.
There were a lot of things she’d like to make him do, if he was asking.
She pursed her lips and shoved him as hard as she could. Betsy was pretty sure he only moved because it amused him to do so. Not to mention that it trapped them together in the doorway. She was flush against that broad wall of a chest, and her face flamed; she tried to look anywhere but up at him. If she looked into his eyes, she’d be caught like a bear in a trap.
Betsy tried everything, up to and including thinking of her grandmother naked, to erase the lust-filled images that burned her sexcrazed brain.
The touch of skin on skin was impossible to ignore, especially in the heat. Their flesh seemed to meld together where they touched under that silky sheen of sweat.
Damn him. He even smelled good. On the other hand, she was sure that she smelled like a sack full of donkey balls. It should be illegal for him to look so good, smell so good, and be such an asshat.
“It’s too hot for this, Jensen. Move.”
“Is that an order?”
“You’re the sergeant. You tell me.” She wanted to wipe that smirk off of his face, but she couldn’t decide if she wanted to do it with her lips or with the open palm of her hand.
“If it’s too hot, why are you still lobbing them back across the net?”
“It’s never too anything for me to not have the last word.”
Chad seemed to chew this over and, in the end, stepped aside. Betsy couldn’t help but feel that she hadn’t won that round. There was an unholy light in his eyes.
She shrugged it off as she trudged up the stairs, trying not to shake her ass and trying harder still not to check to see if he was looking.
The counselor’s office was surprisingly cool. Her nipples tightened instantly, almost painfully. Betsy had been sure that if they’d gotten any harder rubbing up against Chad in that doorway, she would have been able to dial a phone with them. Now, she was sure she could cut glass.
She pulled out two of the filing cabinets and found the reset button for the air conditioner. Betsy had to reach over the cabinets, as she couldn’t pull them out any farther. They were getting stuck on the corner of the rug. She could have gone down to ask Chad for help, but she wasn’t up for any more banter.
Truth be told, she wouldn’t have minded being one of his pincushions. Just once. She didn’t want to date him; she didn’t envision long walks on the beach or sunset picnics. She just wanted to ride him like a mechanical bull at the rodeo. Once.
Betsy had a veritable stock of fantasies when it came to Sergeant Chad Jensen. Unfortunately, he’d hit on one of them earlier when he’d asked her if she wanted it to be an order. Betsy had a thing for law enforcement.
She’d been thinking it would be okay if he wanted to pat her down, strip-search her, then bend her over the desk and . . .
Perhaps not the desk in the officers’ station, because the inmates could see through the glass. But maybe up here, in the counselor’s office. Yeah, right here, bent over the filing cabinets. He wouldn’t have to say anything. In fact, it would be better if he didn’t talk. She really didn’t like much of what he had to say, anyway. At least that’s what she told herself. That beautifully sculpted mouth would be more suited to other activities, such as studying to be a cunning linguist. She giggled at that one.
Better yet, what if it were him that was bent over these filing cabinets instead of her? She could see it now. She’d bend him over the cabinets, naked and hard and wanting. She’d prop her leg up on the cabinet next to him and push his mouth into her slit and . . .
She was so wet and ready. Her clit ached. Betsy wondered if she could get away with jilling off before heading back down to the workstation.
Damn! She still hadn’t hit the reset button. Betsy reached a little farther and found that one of the handles on the filing cabinet was rubbing against her clit. She couldn’t resist squirming a bit more before pressing and holding that reset button in.
It was then that she felt the heat of a male body behind her and hands on her hips.
For one horrible moment, she thought it was an inmate. She bucked back, but the two hands held her firm.
“It’s me.”
Chad! For another moment, she didn’t know if she should continue to fight. She didn’t know if she wanted to. That was a lie, of course, she knew. But was she supposed to struggle? Was that part of the chase?
Betsy was hyperaware of everything about him, the thrumming heat of his body on hers, the way her skin burned everywhere he touched her, the stubble on his cheek that scraped against her softness. The sweet caramel scent of his breath.
She wanted and dreaded the culmination of this moment. She’d fantasized about him for months, but she had seen how he treated them when he was done, his women. Now here he was, his thighs pressing her into the filing cabinets like she’d fantasized he would, his knee between her legs, holding them wide, his cock hard and thick, ready to be deep inside of her. Betsy’s innocent white knickers were clinging to her, soaked with her desire.
“It’s okay. The whole house is locked down. Even the front door to the cell house. We’ve got an hour.” His hands slid from her hips to her waist as he kissed her cheek softly, moving down to her jawline and then to her throat. “If this is what you want.”
There was nothing between them. Nothing but flesh and blood and bone. Nothing but a moment out of time, here in this place, in this jail that was so full of brutality. This coming together was merely the effect of mercury, a mindless convergence of skin to skin.
She arched against him in invitation, but he wanted more than that.
“Tell me this is what you want. Right here, right now. Me.” His breath was harsh and ragged in her ear, and it sent chills through her body.
“I want this.” Her voice was a whisper, a traitor to her mind, but a slave to her body.
He exhaled heavily, pressed his lips against the tender and vulnerable part of her neck. His teeth grazed her skin lightly, but marked her all the same. That bit of pain coiled like pleasure in her very core, radiating out like lightning.
Chad’s fingers made short work of her fatigues, pulling them down her legs and exposing the white boy-short underwear beneath. If she’d known that she’d be showing them to Chad oh-my-god Jensen, she would have worn the red ones.
Nice Girls, Naughty Sex Page 2