by Cara Bastone
Laughter mixed with Mary’s tears, and she settled the cat on her lap. “It’s okay, Ruth. It’s okay.”
“What’s happening?” John asked nervously, having just poured his entire heart out and now desperately unsure if it had been well received or not.
Mary brushed at her tears with the shoulder of her T-shirt. “I always knew that people like you existed. That there was a man like you out there, and that I deserved him. But my mother almost, almost had me convinced that I was wrong.” She held up two fingers a centimeter apart to show how close she’d come to succumbing to her mother’s beliefs.
“Someday,” John said, “if I ever meet your mother, I’m bringing a foghorn to drown out every single thing she says to you.”
Mary burst out laughing. “Then she’d just take it upon herself to email me her opinions and complaints.”
“Seriously, it sounds like your mother has a very skewed view of the world.” Taking a deep breath, John scooted forward and shooed Ruth off Mary’s lap. “I’d really like to be the person who counterbalances all her whacked opinions.”
Mary laughed again and then stood up all of a sudden. John felt like she’d ripped Velcro off one whole side of him. He’d been about to kiss her, but she was striding away into the kitchen, gulping more water from her glass, and then into the bathroom. She left the door open, and he heard the sink running.
“So,” she called through the open door. “You like me for the sum of all my experiences, huh?”
“And more,” he called back, wondering if he should keep sitting on the couch like a dope or if he should stand up and go to her.
She answered that question a moment later when she came striding out of the bathroom and toward the couch.
John was hit all over again by the sight of her long legs in those short red shorts. He liked her in a simple T-shirt with her wet hair in a messy knot. She looked like she had much more important things on her mind than how she looked, which he knew was the case even when she was in her fancy sundresses and high heels. Even so, this look felt private. Like in her casual clothes, she’d dressed for the honesty of this moment. Guest list: two. Well, three if you counted Ruth.
He grinned in surprise when instead of sitting back down on the cushion beside him, she plunked directly into his lap. Her long legs fell off to the side, and her arms went around his neck.
“I like you for your hairy legs,” she informed him crisply.
He laughed. He liked this rascally version of Mary. She seemed so light. So free. Free of insecurity, he realized.
Regret threatened to tidal wave him that he’d contributed to that insecurity with his stupid-ass comments about her age and their stages of life. But he swerved the feeling. He didn’t want to get bogged down in regret. Right now, he wanted to match her mood.
“There’s a hairy chest that goes with the hairy legs,” he told her.
Her eyes widened and she leaned forward, tugging the collar of his shirt a few inches and trying to peer down his spine. “And a hairy back as well?”
He laughed harder. “Not yet. But maybe someday. I can only aspire.”
She laughed too, cuddling into him. She was warm and smooth, and John fully succumbed to that humming zing that happened when two people touched with intention.
He glanced at the clock over his stove. It was 6:00 a.m. Could all this have possibly happened before an even remotely reasonable hour this morning? He had to be at work in an hour. Two hours at the latest, if he really pushed it, and he was willing to scramble for the rest of the day. Which he obviously was. Mary had to open her shop by nine.
They didn’t exactly have endless time to luxuriate with one another. But was he going to reject this moment for something as trivial as not quite enough time? He most certainly was not. He didn’t need this to be a sweeping, dizzy, sexy twirl off the dance floor of a Friday night. He didn’t need a weekend to sprawl out in front of them in order to enjoy Mary. He didn’t care that they both had work today. Or that it was just any old Thursday. To him, that was perfect. Because he didn’t want Mary to exist in the sexiest, most relaxed parts of his life. He wanted Mary in every part of his life. Including Thursday mornings before work.
She was sprawled in his lap, one of his arms holding up her back and the other looped under her knees. She had one hand flat on his chest and one arm around his neck. She used her nose to draw a line from his forehead down between his eyebrows.
“Do you still have a headache?” she asked in a whisper.
“How did you know I had one?”
“You always press your fingers against your forehead when your head aches.”
He pushed his face forward, pressing his nose against hers, nuzzling into her neck. “No. It went away right around the time I realized you weren’t leaving.”
“I’m not leaving,” she confirmed, tipping her head to one side to give him clearer access to her throat. He didn’t kiss her exactly, just sort of walked his mouth up the long, smooth column to her ear.
“Mary.”
“Hmm?” She leaned back into his arm, giving him her weight and the impression that he’d just turned her into liquid caramel in his arms. He liked liquid-caramel Mary, loose and warm and open.
“I have a very important question to ask you.” His voice was even more shredded than usual. It didn’t surprise him.
She used her nose again to draw a line, this time up a tendon in his neck and all the way to the corner of his jaw. “What’s that?”
“Were you wearing a bra last night? Under your dress?”
She smiled and pulled back from him. Her eyes were dozy and heavy but still alert. “Why?”
“Because I spent the entire time at the bar trying to figure out where the hell your bra strap was.”
She laughed. “It was a strapless bra. Nothing too fancy, to be honest.”
He grunted. “Doesn’t have to be fancy to get the job done.”
“And what job is that?”
“Driving me out of my mind, apparently.”
She laughed again. “I take it you were a fan of the dress?”
He grunted. “I have a major crush on that dress.”
“Confession—I have a major crush on your bed. I think it’s the greatest bed of all time.”
He blinked at her for a moment, confusion settling in when he realized how sincere she was being. “My bed?” He glanced over her shoulder at the piece of furniture in question. It was so ordinary in comparison to the extravagant five-star ordeal she slept in at her house. “Really?”
She nodded. “It’s safe and warm and smells like your aftershave.”
He leaned forward and took a quick sip from her lips. “I’m safe.” Another sip. “I’m warm.” Another longer, more lingering sip. “I smell like my aftershave.”
She shivered each time their mouths connected, and on the last one, she chased him forward, spoke against his lips. “Let’s be naked now.”
“Yeah,” he agreed immediately, rising up with her in his arms.
She squeaked and gripped at his shoulders. “John!”
“I’ve got you.” And he did. He felt the same way he had when he’d lifted her against her door the night before. The weight of her was reassuring, comforting, thrilling all at once. Something about holding Mary’s body up with his body made John feel more a part of the human race than any other thing he’d done in his life.
The light was full now, but it still had that pre–7:00 a.m. magic that shadowed certain things and made other things glow. John wanted to collapse onto the bed in a pile, but more than anything, he knew that seeing was believing and he needed to see Mary on his bed. He set her down and stood back.
Mary immediately flopped backward, stretching her arms above her head, mussing the covers and making an mmm sound like she’d just tasted something delicious.
Jo
hn took one step back and then another, until he was far enough away to get the whole frame crammed into his memory. The image of those red shorts on his boring, blue bedspread. Yow. That was so freaking hot.
Someday, he’d like to watch her strip out of her clothes while she lay on his bed, but then she looked up at him, reaching her hand out for him, and the distance part of the morning was officially over.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JOHN STOOD FIVE feet away with one hand tugging down the bottom half of his face. Mary took a mental snapshot of the man who was looking at her like she was literally everything he’d ever wanted.
Mary knew that insecurities ran deep, and they weren’t anyone’s duty to dispel but her own. But still, the look on John’s face right now certainly helped. He wasn’t wishing her to be anything different than the person she was.
She reached her hand out to him, for him, needing him. And as she’d known he would be, he was there immediately. Palm to palm, fingers threaded and then, yes, his mouth on hers. John put one knee on the edge of the bed and leaned over her, taking deep draughts of her mouth. He tasted her fully, slowly, as if they had all the time in the universe, as if the light weren’t changing that very moment, as if the world weren’t marching on all around them, as if the two of them weren’t changing and growing and aging even as they clutched at one another, as if this moment had its own set of orbiting planets, its own gravitational force, its own history.
He shifted his weight and sheltered her, the bed dipping as he planted a hand and took even more from her mouth. His tongue was both soft and overbearing at once and Mary reveled in it, how perfectly John that combination was. Sweet and obliviously intense. He tasted delicious, like toothpaste and fresh coffee and how much he wanted her. She felt his breath fan out over her cheek and it wasn’t steady.
She thought of how he looked from afar, broad shoulders, hands in pockets, black and white. Steady. Substantial. Unshakable. But his hand was trembling as he laid it over her hip and stomach. His fingers shook, just slightly, as he slid them down and then back up, catching under the bottom hem of her shirt, under fabric, to touch her bare skin. His fingers flexed at the dip of her waist, pressing into her softness, testing the line between her body and the rest of the world. The edges of her.
He leaned back, one knee on the bed, one foot on the floor, and his eyes were bleary as his pupils grew and shrank. He gripped the bottom of her shirt in both hands and determinedly pulled it up. She’d thought he’d yank it right off, but halfway there, he made a strangled noise and fell down on her again, his mouth opening against her hip bone, his stubble rubbing at her navel, his forehead planting at the V of her ribs.
She let out a half laugh, half groan because joy was rising in her as fast as her arousal was. She grabbed her own shirt and yanked it off, and John looked dazed when he tipped his head and saw her nothing-special bra. Beige colored, because her shirt was white and she’d wanted it to be invisible. Even so, his nostrils flared like she’d just revealed the finest lingerie. He gripped her ribs with one hand and yanked at her bra strap with his teeth.
She laughed fully now. “What is it with you and bra straps?”
“They’ve never lost their mystique,” he told her in a gravelly voice. “Ever since I was a kid, it’s never failed to amaze me that sometimes, depending on what a woman is wearing, you can just casually see part of her underwear. Bra straps are freaking hot.”
“I’m sorry I robbed you of bra straps with my strapless bra last night.”
“Don’t be. That was hot too, a little mystery. Bras are girl-magic. So hot.”
As if to prove it, John’s hands were suddenly everywhere. Cupping her breasts over top of her bra, gliding and pressing, in almost-chaste second-base action. But then, in the blink of an eye, he tipped her to one side, flashed his hand behind her back and unhooked her bra smoothly. He didn’t pull it away yet, though.
“Wow,” she commented. “Most men fumble the clasp a little bit.”
He smirked at her. “I’m a bra expert, Mare.” Then he promptly tipped his head to one side, somewhat sheepishly. “My high school girlfriend held me at second base for about a year and a half. There was nothing to do but learn how to remove a bra really well.”
Mary did that laugh-groan-gasp thing again. Because she loved learning about his dorky past. And he’d called her Mare, the way only those closest to her did.
She craned up, needing to kiss him, and he obliged instantly. His lips were firm, his sweeping tongue soft and reverent. He groaned into her mouth, and Mary felt it down to her lungs. She deepened the kiss, their teeth clacked lightly and Mary grabbed at his hair. His hand slipped under the loosened cup of her bra, and they both made a sound akin to pain. When she opened her eyes, it was to see John’s clamped closed, the fringe of his black eyelashes almost disappearing. He pulled away from the kiss, his eyes coming open as his thumb strummed across her nipple, and Mary arched for him.
He sat back on his knees and tugged the bra away.
“Mary,” he whispered. “Jesus Christ, you’re gorgeous.”
She lay topless on his bed, her body burning under his bright gaze. She dropped her eyes and saw that he was tenting his basketball shorts indecently. She lifted one leg and planted the flat of her foot against his thigh. Her knee fell to the side and his nostrils flared as she opened herself to him.
He briefly covered his eyes with one hand. “You trying to get me to fuck you with your shorts still on?”
Mary went tight and liquid between her thighs all at once. “Is that an option?”
He laughed, but it was pained, harsh. He reached down and undid her shorts, tugging them away. “Someday. For now, let’s keep things simple.”
His fingers tangled in the sides of her white underwear, but he didn’t move them. Instead, he fell forward and started kissing at her chest. Mary gasped for air when he sucked one of her nipples into his mouth, almost harshly. He scooped at her breasts, rounding them, pillowing them, burying his stubbly face in her softness. He started an unfamiliar rhythm. A tug-scrape-smooth using his lips and teeth and tongue against one nipple and then the other. Mary felt a string pull tight inside her, and she opened her mouth, chasing the feeling as she stared unseeing at the sunlight and shadow on his ceiling. His rhythm was methodical, purposeful, the way some men went down on a woman with a specific goal in mind.
Her hips started to buck underneath him. She hooked a leg around him and began to grind herself against his body, any part of his body, seeking friction at all and every cost.
“John,” she gasped, tossing her head to one side as her fingers ached from how hard she gripped his comforter. “John.”
He was going to make her come with nothing more than his mouth at her breasts, his strong hands caging her in.
At the last second, he pulled away, roughly pushing open her legs and tugging the seam of her underwear to one side. John ducked his head and tongue-kissed her between her legs, ending on a seeking suck that, like a star pulling tight in the moments before explosion, had her trembling on the edge of something world-ending. He slightly softened the suck, flicked his tongue, and Mary was gone.
She screamed his name, grateful he was pinning her thighs down because her entire body shook violently. Her world tumbled, dragging Mary along with it. She gasped for air, but it didn’t help the rainbow of spots that appeared in her vision as she said his name over and over again.
He kneaded at her wetness softly with his tongue and lips, as if making certain to press out every single aftershock. When she was finally able to look down, she saw immediately that his gentle mouth was at direct odds with his blazing eyes. Black and white, two-toned voice, rude and sweet, two men at once. He watched her with a look she’d never seen before from him.
She reached down and grabbed a handful of his shirt, yanking hard enough to stretch the fabric. He heeded. As he came up onto hi
s knees, she sat up with him and they both ripped his shirt off. She barely had time to see the thatch of hair across his wide chest, his strong arms where they plugged into round shoulders and smoothly arcing collarbones. She barely saw it because he tumbled her backward.
He pressed her down with his weight, both hands cradling the back of her skull, tangling in her hair. “Let me, Mary,” he said. He bent his head and bit lightly at the pulse in her neck, but then his eyes were back on hers, and she was swimming in them, tumbling, lashed to him and spinning, just the two of them. “Let me,” he said again, part command, part plea.
“Condom,” she gasped, and he scrabbled at his nightstand drawer, grappling for a moment, before he brought an unopened box to his mouth and tore it gracelessly open. Condoms flew in an arc over the bed and onto the floor, but thankfully there was one in easy reach. Again, he was on his knees over her, shoving his shorts and boxers down to midknee.
He bounced free, his shaft almost touching his own stomach he wanted her so badly. Mary gasped, needing more oxygen than the hot, close air this room was providing her. His shaft was blunt and wide. Mary took the opportunity while he was tearing the condom open to sit up and get a better look. But she didn’t have time to do more than that. His hands came down, and he firmly slid the condom on.
He barred a forearm across her lower back and dragged her hips up to his, tossing her backward onto the bed, cradling her head with one palm as he came over her.
“Yes,” she whispered, reveling in his obvious desperation for her, like he couldn’t go another second without her heat. “Yes.”
With one dexterous hand he pulled her panties to the side and firmly slid a finger, and then another, inside of her, opening her up for him. She hooked a leg around his waist. Mary gasped, huffing air, as John pushed the head of his shaft up against his fingers, docking himself an inch inside of her.
His attention went from between her legs to her face. “Yes?” He crooked his fingers inside of her, rubbing at her G-spot in a crazy-making motion.