by S Doyle
“Please, Tessa. Talk to me. Yell at me. Tell me I’m an asshole, but please stop ignoring me. It’s killing me.”
“Why?”
“Why am I an asshole?”
“No, why is it killing you? We’ve gone months without speaking before. You’ve never felt any great need to talk to me when you were off on tour before.”
Because he’d always known she would be there when he did get around to talking to her. She’d been his constant. His steady girl. There for him when he needed her, absent when he didn’t. Of course, saying that would make him an asshole. In fact, thinking it pretty much made him one, too.
“I’ve changed, Tess. I know that sounds like the biggest cliché in the world and anytime anyone says it, they’re lying. But I think it’s true. I realized something when I saw you again. Out of all the women I’ve had in my life, you’re the one I keep wanting to come back to. Then I thought about what it would mean if I didn’t have you to come back to because maybe you were with me.”
This was answered with silence, but Kenny had no idea if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“I want us to try and be something. A couple,” he pressed.
“That’s funny. Funny all of this should happen now with Reilly in the American.”
Kenny heard the derision in her voice but he didn’t understand.
“What does Reilly have to do with this?”
“Kenny, have you ever considered one of the reasons you like to come back to me is because of how I make you feel?”
“Yes. You make me feel great.”
“I make you feel like you’re the king of the world. I do that because I have always loved you and worshipped you and treated you like a god. That’s what you need from me. Not me the woman, just the worship. You joke about carrying Reilly’s clubs for a living but I think deep down it bothers you on some level. Makes you feel less than a man and the easiest way to fix that is a dose of Tessa worship. Now, she’s in the American and maybe you think you need a lot more than a dose of me this time, but it will go away. When all of this is over you’ll stop needing me and that’s what I can’t deal with anymore. I can’t take the fall again. I won’t. No matter what happens.”
This time it was Kenny’s turn to be speechless.
“You think that? Really? You think I don’t care about you?”
“What’s my middle name?”
A test. She wanted to give him a test to prove how little he cared. How could she not know… “Elizabeth. Tessa Elizabeth. You used to wish it was your first name.”
“That was an easy one,” she puffed.
“Okay, how about this for hard. You used to wear braces as a kid until you were fifteen, which was longer than everyone else so it made you self-conscious about your smile. To this day you try not to show them when you do smile, but sometimes when you laugh really hard, you forget. When you laugh really, really hard you snort and that always makes you laugh harder. You wanted to be a vet when you grew up but you couldn’t handle the idea of animals dying so you decided to be a teacher. You have a wicked soft heart when it comes to cute little things animal or child, but you have no tolerance for bullies. You like vanilla ice cream instead of chocolate but it has to be smothered with hot fudge and you make a mean apple pie mostly because you got the recipe from my Grams. I could go on for hours on the topic of Tessa Elizabeth. You think I didn’t care? That wasn’t why I kept leaving, Tess.”
“Then why?”
“I didn’t think I could do it. I didn’t think I could make it work. A real relationship. I didn’t think I had it in me and I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“You think this doesn’t hurt?” she asked.
He could hear the catch in her voice and swallowed back a ball of regret.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Forgive me.”
“I don’t know.”
“Forgive me,” he pleaded.
“You need to let me think,” she whispered. But he heard her.
He didn’t think letting her think was such a good idea. Too many cons to add under his name, but he wasn’t sure he had a choice. If nothing else, at least now she was speaking to him.
Listening to him.
“Okay. You think and I’ll call again. Goodnight, Tessa Elizabeth. Sleep tight.”
“Goodnight. Tell Reilly I’m rooting for her.”
“I will.”
The connection ended and Kenny felt immediately better. Progress. It wasn’t much, but he would take it.
25
“Are you ready?” Reilly called out from behind the closed bathroom door.
Luke glanced down at the tented sheet over his lap. “Oh, yeah. I’m ready.”
“I went for complete normalcy.”
“Me, too.” A faded T-shirt and a pair of flannel boxers. Luke figured it didn’t get any more normal. Typically, he slept naked but he had to admit the feeling of his erection poking through the open pocket of the boxers was rather erotic.
“Okay. I’m coming out!”
He rubbed his hands together as the door opened. She, too, was wearing a short-sleeved T- shirt and he could see the shape of her perky breasts free underneath the cotton. Her nipples were hard but not as hard as they would be when he got his mouth on them. For bottoms she wore a mismatched set of loose cotton pants and on her feet were a pair of white bobby socks.
“Holy shit, that’s hot.”
Seeing his gaze pointed at her feet she lifted a leg on the bed next to him to give him a better view.
He wrapped his hand around her exposed ankle and then slid it up inside the pants to touch her calf and then behind her knee. He felt her leg jerk as he brushed a finger against the sensitive skin there.
“You shaved your legs.”
“That’s what couples do, right? When they want to get lucky.”
“Come here,” he said thickly as she pulled back the covers and climbed inside the bed with him.
“We should turn out the light.”
“Nope. I’m going to want to watch. It’s been a while since I’ve had you under me. I’m not missing a moment.”
“Lights on, huh? That borderlines on wildcat sex.”
Luke rolled over and adjusted his dick so that it was pressed against her flat, now impossibly hard, belly.
“Not if you keep your T-shirt on, it doesn’t. Perfectly within bounds.”
He bent down to kiss her and inhaled the scent of her moisturizer as he did. It intoxicated him like no perfume ever had. She wore no makeup. She’d pulled her hair up into a ponytail high on top of her head. On her lips he could taste the mint toothpaste she’d used.
It was all so new. Nothing like he’d ever had with her before and it was driving him crazy. The idea he could kiss her now, then in the morning was mind-blowing. It made him want to rush through all the preliminaries so he could be inside her, coming, knowing it would be the same the next night and the night after that.
Anytime he wanted. With Reilly.
He settled his lips on hers and breathed in the cool mint. He felt her mouth open and dipped his tongue inside to lick and play with hers. He settled more of his weight on her so he could press his chest against her breasts and feel the tiny pebbles of her nipples digging into him. But he was careful not to smother her.
A husband’s job was to be considerate of his wife’s needs. He’d never been that kind of husband before, so this was also new to him. It wasn’t that he hadn’t cared about the women he’d been with, but he’d never considered what he did mattered one way or the other as long as they got off. There’d never been any sharing during sex. Just giving and taking. When he lifted his mouth he could see her lips curl up.
“You are taking this slow.”
“Kissing is a lost art. We always rush through this part.”
“I guess it’s because we always seem to be in a hurry. Even when we spent a weekend together we were rushed for time.”
“We had to do it as many times as we could because we
knew the clock was on. But there’s no clock now. We can kiss all night and start again tomorrow. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
She nodded and tilted her chin up. “Yeah.”
Luke dipped his head again and ran his tongue over her bottom lip. Then he teased her top lip. Then he covered her mouth and let himself explore her. Taste her and know her like he couldn’t ever remember doing with her or any other woman. Hot and slow they kissed for what could have been eternity.
Needing more, Luke ran his hand along a patch of skin at her waist exposed between the T- shirt and her cotton pants. He slipped his hand up her shirt to capture her breast, never once releasing her mouth. Slow and methodically he rubbed his palm over her fullness. He felt her nipple tighten even more as he pulled it between his finger and thumb, twisting with enough pressure to make it pleasurable rather than painful. The sensation of her skin under his hand and the soft cotton of her shirt caressing the top of his fingers were sensual in a way her nakedness wouldn’t have been.
Rolling off her to gain access to her other breast, he trailed a finger from one tip of her breast, down into the swell between the two valleys and then up to the other tip that seemed to beg for his attention.
Reilly twisted under the onslaught of his unhurried touch and reached down to remove the shirt, but Luke stopped her with another kiss.
“Nope. Shirt on. But I think we’ll take those pants off.”
On his side now with his head propped on one hand, he used his other hand to trace the invisible line down the center of Reilly’s body. His finger stopped just above her belly button and then dipped in. She squirmed, which made her breasts jiggle so he did it again. Then he was pulling at the strings that had been tied in the center of her pants and watched in great fascination as the bow came undone and the string loosened its hold on her waist.
Slipping his hand inside, he felt her whisper-soft blond curls and then as he continued to explore, he found her wet heat. Reilly twisted her body again as he dipped his middle finger just inside her. Ruthlessly he held it still until he knew all she could feel was the sense of barely being penetrated.
“Do something,” she muttered, arching her hips up in an effort to bring him farther inside, but instead of plunging ahead he removed his hand and rested it on her stomach. Her muscles clenched under his caress and he wondered if the next time she asked him to hit her in the stomach if it really would hurt her.
His little warrior.
Reilly sat up on her elbows and glared at him. “Why are you stopping?”
“I’m not stopping. Just giving you a chance to catch up.”
Reilly rolled onto her side so she was facing him. She smiled and leaned in to kiss him as slowly as he’d done, this time with her tongue taking the lead. She tasted the same toothpaste she’d used from his bathroom and for some reason, that made her ridiculously sentimental about what they were doing. A normal couple, making love, after both brushing their teeth at the same sink with the same toothpaste. She couldn’t say she hadn’t done the same with either of her former husbands, but with them it just hadn’t mattered.
Nothing mattered as much as it did with Luke. Why hadn’t she realized that sooner?
Just as he did with her she found where his shirt didn’t meet his boxers and she ran her hand along his exposed back. She knew from experience the gentle swell at the small of his back right above his buttocks was particularly sensitive to touch. She used a single finger to trace a circle there and watched his eyes close on a deep moan.
Then she brought her hand around and ran it along his furred chest. The hair on his chest was darker than his light brown hair and she was tempted to make him take off his shirt so she could see him as well as touch him, but shirt removal was against the rules for tonight.
In some ways it made it sexier. Touching him, feeling his nipples hardened into little buds, using her hands to guide her instead of her eyes, made it seem more intense. She followed the path of hair down his belly and then dipped under the elastic band of the boxers.
She paused there with her fingers just inside the band and listened to his breath quicken.
He opened his eyes when she continued to keep her hand still and she could see in them the gleam of impatience.
“What are you waiting for?”
“I wasn’t sure this was allowed,” she teased. “You know as soon as I touch you, you tend to get a little crazy and the next thing you know we might end up having wildcat sex.”
Luke said nothing, but grunted and pushed her hand lower. She found his shaft and circled it with her fist and listened as he moaned in delight. He rolled onto his back and she got to her knees to have better access to his body. She spent time squeezing and teasing until without warning, she dropped down and took the tip of him in her mouth. There she held him captured, the heavy head of his cock inside her warm wet mouth. It was his turn to squirm as he reached for the back of her neck to either move her lower or force her to release him altogether.
“You’re killing me,” he whispered when she resisted his efforts.
Reilly lifted her head with one last lick to study her handiwork and was very satisfied. The heavy thrust of his arousal called to her body and she knew she didn’t want to play anymore.
Understanding the look on her face, Luke acted. He pushed the boxers down over his hips and kicked them off his legs. Reilly did little more than wiggle out of her loose pants and climbed on top of Luke, settling herself so that her wispy dark blond curls brushed against his erection each time she moved.
“I like nice sex,” he sighed as he wrapped his hands around her hips and pulled her higher over her him.
Then as if struck by a thought, he rolled on top of her.
“Missionary style seems appropriate tonight.”
Reilly laughed and wrapped her thighs around his hips locking her ankles together.
“Just as long as we can mix it up every once in a while.”
She watched as Luke reached down between his legs and pushed his sex against where she was slick and swollen. A gentle push and she could feel her body accept him. He braced his weight on his hands, flexed his hips again and sank deeper. Reilly moved her hands on his ass and then again she was reaching for that spot at the small of his back that she knew made him howl like a dog in heat.
Luke tipped his head back and groaned. And she could feel the sound of it deep in her gut.
He pushed against her again until he was buried to the hilt and waited until she’d adjusted to his size within her. Then he began to rock against her, nothing urgent, nothing that would push them both toward climax too quickly. Just the deep steady motion of two bodies sliding back and forth against one other.
“I could do this forever, “ Luke whispered. “Spend the rest of my life making love to you in a T-shirt.”
But soon she was arching her hips higher against his and the circles on his back were teasing him into a frenzy. Shifting his weight to his knees, he used his free hands to cup her breasts over the cotton and then when that didn’t satisfy him, he pushed the shirt up and over her head.
“The rules,” she gasped.
“Screw the rules.” He tossed off his shirt and threw it to the floor. Still connected to her, he bent over her body first to kiss her lips. Then her chin. Then her neck. God, he’d forgotten how soft her neck was and how much she loved the feel of his mouth
pressed just below her ear. She whimpered and he reveled in it.
He loved that he knew her body. He loved that he knew each spot on her skin that was sure to drive her wild. He loved that they were here, in his house, in his bed, now with nothing between them and him deep inside her body. Together, not just physically but emotionally.
The smell of her. The feel of her around him, squeezing him inside and out. The flush of scarlet on her skin rising up over her breasts and neck and cheeks. The sounds Reilly made, only Reilly, when she was close to the edge of satisfaction. Sounds he knew were for him and him alone. L
uke felt something inside of him clench so tight he thought if he didn’t act he might be blown apart from the inside.
“Reilly,” he groaned, hearing how raw his voice sounded. “Hold on.”
“Luke?”
“Don’t let me hurt you,” he told her just before he snapped his hips and felt a surge of energy flow between their bodies. He pushed against her again and again, pulling himself back until he nearly came out of her so he could thrust back inside so deeply he thought they would never again be separated. He pounded into her like a mindless animal and never once thought of holding himself back. Of holding anything back.
He came hard and fast but the explosion of orgasm seemed incidental to the bigger picture. He’d given himself to her in a way he never had before and he’d taken more from her than he’d ever thought she would be willing to give.
Falling on top of her without any pretense of trying to spare her his weight, he let the feeling of warm contentment and sexual satisfaction slide over him in a nice long wave.
“Please tell me you came,” Luke mumbled against her ear. “I sort of wasn’t paying attention there at the end.”
“I did,” she breathed back. “But it was a pretty close thing. You might have to work on your timing in the future.”
Luke lifted himself onto his elbows and smiled lazily. “The future. Sounds good.”
She raised a hand to cup his cheek. “It does sound good. So what do you think? Did we achieve normalcy?”
“I don’t know. It got a little out of control there at the end. We might have to do it again and this time tone it down a bit.”
He pushed his hips against hers and caught the gasp of sensation with his lips. He thought he’d been teasing her with the move but he felt a jolt of energy in his sex that belied his age. Testing the waters he flexed his hips again and then again.
“Wow! You are trying to impress me,” Reilly teased, even as she tilted her hips to give him deeper access to her body.“You think I’ll decide to live with you on the premise that you can keep me satisfied sexually?”