Kneading You

by Simone Belarose

  My eyes only made it halfway. They were fastened to the countertop we had made love on. I felt an exciting warmth spread across my belly thinking back to the way he touched me. The feel of his body against mine, the strength of his arms holding me securely to him.

  Before I knew it he swept me up in a hug and I had my arms encircling his neck. He kissed me, and I wondered if I’d ever get used to the stars bursting behind my eyelids, the faintness I felt when our lips met.

  My thoughts blanked out and all I felt was a hunger for more.

  I had thought the urgency and need of his kisses last night was a passionate affair, the result of years of build-up with no release. And yet the morning after, he kissed me the same, and again right now with that same heated need. The yearning hunger that made me feel like I was the only woman who had what he needed.

  He broke the kiss with a gasp and I stared back, dazed into his blushing face. His ears nearly glowed. I reached up with a smirk and gently traced the edges of his left ear.

  His delicate shiver of pleasure was so adorable.

  Could I ever get used to the weight of responsibility he placed upon me without even knowing it? I had been trusted to right the ships of floundering multi-billion-dollar companies, but I quailed at the thought of this beautiful man placing his heart willingly in my hand and trusting me not to hurt him.

  It made me equal parts deliriously happy and utterly terrified.

  “Hungry?” he said, reading my intentions, if not my thoughts, correctly.

  “Famished.”

  “Sweet or savory?” he asked, letting go of me and guiding me up to a counter filled with unbaked croissants and what looked like half-formed Danishes without any filling yet.

  “Sweet and savory,” I replied.

  “I like the way you think.” He was a whirlwind of motion, whisking back and forth through the door to the front where all the fresh baked goods were on display.

  He came back with a tray of cold cuts, buttery and golden croissants, my favorite scones, a cinnamon bun, pretzels, and a couple of pale-colored cookies. All alongside a steaming mug of coffee and fizzy red juice.

  I looked at him suspiciously. Did he really remember I liked soda water and cranberry juice? His smug grin told me he had in fact remembered, and his gentle pat on my head was his way of punishing me for doubting him.

  I ducked my head so that he wouldn’t see how much I loved it.

  “I’ve got a few customers out front, but if you don’t mind waiting a minute or two I’ll come eat with you.” He pushed aside trays, shoved a few into one of the many huge ovens he had, and took others out to cool.

  I had a lot more room to eat, no longer crowded by delicious works-in-progress. “I can wait,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

  He lit up with a smile when I took a sip of coffee. There was nothing said about not drinking. How does he do it? I wondered to myself. The coffee, the pastries, the food, and oh my God the sex.

  This man was a damn unicorn and here I was having second thoughts that I was going too fast. I was. It wasn’t a question but a fact. I was definitely going too fast, but in the back of my mind, I wondered if it wasn’t fast enough.

  How a man like Thomas hadn’t already been snatched up was one of the great mysteries of our age. Crazy hot, buff, incredibly considerate, defensive, treated me like an equal in business, could put any French chef to shame, and treated me like a Goddess in private.

  If I was dreaming, I didn’t want to wake up.

  There was no way a nerd like me deserved him, but I would be damned if I let somebody else swoop in and steal him. Maybe I was a touch skittish at times or scared of the depths our relationship was reaching. I’d been alone so long I got used to it. I was comfortable like that and I didn’t know how to be like that with another person.

  I was scared I couldn’t be what Thomas wanted. That he’d realize I wasn’t actually worth all that pining. I feared all those years of fantasizing had placed me on a pedestal that I could never reach, not the real Claire anyway.

  Would he see how I’d fallen so tremendously short, realize I wasn’t the girl he loved and dump me?

  I shook my head to clear the nagging thoughts. All day I had spent in my head, I needed to get out of it. What I needed was to let go and just be. It was what Jemma was good at, she could live in the moment like nobody else.

  She also routinely failed to show up to important engagements because she was busy living in that same moment. So maybe she wasn’t the best role model.

  My thoughts were still buzzing around me like mosquitos when Thomas came into the back and slipped off his white-powdered black apron and hung it on a hook near the door. He carried a plate of food similar to mine in one hand and plucked a bottle of orange juice from the fridge on his way to me.

  For as many years as we’d been friends and the closeness we shared last night, I still got butterflies in my stomach when I saw him. And when he looked at me like that, like I was the only land in a stormy sea, the only safe haven to shelter him from life’s chaos, I felt blessed and a little petrified.

  How one man could instill so many emotions in me was mind-boggling, but I did my best to cling to the positives. To feel special, not fearful of any misplaced faith. I wanted to have the chance, to prove to him that he was right to feel the way he did about me.

  I could be everything he ever wanted if only I could get out of my own damn head.

  The stool scraped against the tiled floor and he gave me a curious look. “What’s on your mind?”

  I took a bite of scone to buy myself some time. It worked, but my mind was set adrift in a sea of pumpkin spice bliss and when I came back to the shore of conscious thought I still had no answer.

  Thomas smirked and propped his head on his palm, resting his elbow on the steel countertop, content to watch me. God, I loved him.

  Wait. I loved him?

  I blinked rapidly and shoved hard at the thoughts. I suspect most people are fully aware of their own feelings and don’t have them creep up on them in their own mind like a thief in the night that clubs them with emotional epiphanies.

  Must be nice, I thought.

  That was a lot to unpack, and I needed to do it another time. A time when his dreamy eyes weren’t watching me with almost painful affection and patience.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, giving myself another good shake. “I’ve been on the phone all day long trying to settle my dad’s affairs, getting his estate in order, that sort of boring stuff.”

  He watched me with rapt attention, as if every word that dripped from my mouth was intensely interesting. I felt self-conscious again, and the urge to say something that was actually interesting - which would include literally nothing I did today - was overwhelming.

  “What about you, how was your day?” I asked, trying to take some of the pressure off me. His gaze was so intense, so intimate it was like we were the only two people on the planet.

  His answer was a lopsided grin, and a sip of coffee. “Is that where we’re at now, asking each other how our day has been? I like it.”

  I bit my lip uncertainly and tried to look anywhere else, but his eyes drew me in no matter what I did.

  “There were a few tourists that got lost and found the town,” he said taking a bite of a banana nut muffin. “Business people I assumed, they ordered a fair amount of muffins and puff pastries before asking how to get out of the valley. I gave ‘em directions and sent them on their way. About the only interesting thing that happened today. The rest was all normal day-to-day stuff.”

  “That is interesting,” I said surprised at the sincerity in my own voice. He could talk about long division and I’d be hanging on his every word. Was this how he felt about me? Something he had said caught my attention and I pulled at the thread until the thought unraveled. “How long has it been since people from out of the valley came into town?”

  “Years. I doubt we’ll get many more, it’s hard to miss the closed down shop
s. Tends to turn people off.” He chuckled, but it felt a little hollow. It mattered more than he let on. “We’re just some sleepy mountain town.”

  That was one of my worries. Sunrise Valley was a small town, but once it had been a bit of a tourist attraction for upstate New York. Beautiful maple trees that were beginning to turn gold littered the town and the valley proper. Wildlife and expansive fields of nature were still left untouched here in the valley.

  It was sheltered from everything else, it felt like it moved at a pace all its own. Already, just a few days here and I could feel the constant stress of living in such a busy place as New York melting away.

  Maybe there was something I could do about that. The opposite coin of consulting was marketing, and I had my share of business contacts I could call on if I needed.

  I pulled away from my thoughts and forced myself to live in the moment. For now, my goal was to make sure the bakery could stay afloat and that Beth didn’t swoop in and somehow manage to buy the land out from under us.

  After I had a solid foundation here, then I could think about a bigger picture. I snuck glances at Thomas as we ate, wondering how our relationship would be once everything reached that point.

  I didn’t even know if I was going back to New York, or if I wanted to.

  “Claire?”

  I looked up, couldn’t help but smile at his earnest expression. “Yeah?”

  “Do you think after closing up tonight, we could have that business meeting?”

  Did I hear him right? That had to be a mistake. “You want to have a business meeting tonight?”

  “Like you planned for us to have, in the back of your dad’s bookstore. Unless you’d rather have it somewhere else.”

  In my line of work very few men actually want to have a business meeting with a woman, even a woman that graduated top of her class from Columbia and they were paying way more than was necessary to help fix their mistakes at their own company.

  It was like pulling teeth, I suspected they didn’t want to hear how they’d screwed up and how I was going to tell them to fix it. I still got paid, either way, billable hours and all that. But it was astounding and infuriating that so many grown men balked at such a small thing.

  What I wouldn’t have given to grab one of them and shake their thinning hair off their pasty head and tell them, Listen to me you old goat, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if you sunk your business betting on DVDs being dominant for the next decade instead of streaming.

  You screwed up. Here’s how so you can learn from it, and here is how we’re going to make sure your company doesn’t go belly up and you fire all these hardworking people making you money while you leap from the burning building with a golden parachute so large your feet never touch the ground.

  But I never did that. Usually, we played schedule-tag for a few weeks until their stock went so low they panicked and requested an immediate meeting at some terrible hour in a ridiculously transparent power move.

  And I would always go because that was my job.

  “Of course,” I said with a hint of excitement. “I figured out how much we owe to bring everything current and I’ll take a closer look at everything before tonight. Is seven o’clock good?”

  “Sounds perfect,” he said as he pushed away from his cleaned plate. “I need to reopen the shop and get back to work.” He paused. I could see he wanted to say something but he just shrugged and gave me that sheepish smile that made my legs turn to jelly.

  I wanted to know what he was going to say but had no idea how to ask, so I let him go back to work. I packed the remaining pastries onto a napkin and let myself out the back door once I could walk.

  14

  Thomas

  I heard the back door shut and mentally kicked myself for not asking her to stay the night. To stay at my place instead of at her dad’s. The only problem is I didn’t know how to broach the subject.

  It wasn’t like I could tell her that I thought living in the same apartment her dad had died in was probably not mentally healthy for her when she already has so much on her plate. Jemma wasn’t even here to help her, and I wondered if she would even make it for the funeral.

  With no way to ask without overstepping my bounds or coming off like I was moving too fast and wanted her to start living with me - which I wouldn’t have been against - I dropped it.

  It felt bad to leave it unsaid.

  I know how much stress she was putting on herself. One of Claire’s best traits was her bravery to face down new, difficult things head-on. It was something that inspired me when we were younger and it’s something that I kept in mind to this day.

  As I went back to work, rushing between the front and back as customers came in, my mind drifted back to last night.

  There was a large part of me that still couldn’t believe it. Just remembering the taste of her stirred my dick to rapt attention and it took a considerable amount of willpower to make it go back down. It didn’t help that my mind continued to play snapshots of her sumptuous curves, and firm ass at the most inappropriate times.

  Despite the difficulties, I loved the effect she had on me.

  The day wore on and the customers began to dry up. For the most part, it was safe enough to close around five or six in the evening. I didn’t get too many late-night shoppers and since Sunrise Valley became a ghost town there weren’t any tourists.

  I’m pretty sure I had been optimistic when I told Claire it had been a few years since I last saw a tourist. I wasn’t entirely sure I had ever seen one in my shop, it was only about three years old now and each year pulled in less and less revenue.

  Claire must have seen that. The town was dying, and like it or not I had shackled myself to it. The thought of selling it and moving to New York with Claire would be appealing if it didn’t mean going through Beth.

  I was wary of her advances and general pushiness before. Now I had even more reason to dislike her and more reason not to sell to her. I wasn’t able to shake the feeling like I had a golden opportunity here.

  Nobody knew Claire and I were together, and Beth certainly didn’t know we had discovered she was the one who played us both like idiots and set us at odds. There might be a play here that I could make to get Beth to tell me who was buying up all these properties and leaving them to rot.

  I didn’t have a degree, but even I knew that was bad business sense. They bought properties well over market value and then just let the town die around it? They were literally throwing money away, and Beth as the real estate agent that was brokering these deals had to know who they were if not why they were doing it.

  Except she wouldn’t talk to me without a good reason. She wasn’t dumb, she’d know that even if Claire and I hadn’t patched things up that I couldn’t sell the shop on my own. I’d have to convince her Claire and I wanted nothing to do with each other so badly that we were willing to sell it just to be rid of each other.

  That was something I couldn’t do.

  Folding my arms on the shop’s wooden counter I laid my chin atop my forearms and watched the glass door. Shadows stretched out like black taffy until the whole of Main Street was darkened. A few minutes later the streetlights flickered on fitfully.

  I could still make out the spot Claire had nearly run me over. Chuckling at the memory I realized how close I had come to actually being run over.

  I wasn’t used to people driving down Main Street after dark, and when the pedal to the bike flew off after I hit that pothole I hopped off and went to grab it. When I stood up, I just managed to hear the sound of crunching metal and the squeal of her tires against the asphalt.

  The bike was still mangled, which meant I had to walk everywhere. I ended up taking it and putting it in my closet. The metal was all bent and it was practically junk now, but I couldn’t put it away. It was important to me.

  What would the town look like if it was something more than this rotting husk? I couldn’t imagine it. This was all I’d ever known, even when Sunrise V
alley was doing well I wasn’t part of that prosperity.

  My mother was a waitress, my father a drunk abuser. Every day I used that poor excuse for a man as a yardstick to measure myself against. Was I more or less like him today than yesterday?

  Did I get short with somebody beneath me that I should have had more compassion for? Was somebody hurt by an offhanded comment I said? On and on the tally went. Some days were better than others.

  It had been a relief when he died.

  He was the reason I was so afraid to get into a committed relationship. You hear all the time that victims of abuse often become the abuser and start the cycle again. I wasn’t going to be like that. I would never lay a hand on those that I loved. Even if it took never letting that person I know loved them in the first place, that was a consequence I was okay with.

  Yet, here you are. Head over heels in love with your schoolboy crush. Would you give her up if it meant ensuring you never turned into your father? Could you be selfless enough to break it off to spare her even the possibility that you would one day strike her because you got mad?

  I would have said yes before. Now, I wasn’t so sure. It was just a chance anyways, it wasn’t like I had to repress some dark rage inside me. I barely drank, and never to the point of drunkenness. Didn’t even raise my voice most of the time.

  The fear was still there, no matter how ridiculous it was. Once you saw the way a man can tear a family apart and yet hold everybody captive at the same time, it changed you.

  I think Richard knew. We had agents from child services come over, but every time my mother lied for him. It was all I had known growing up. If not for Claire’s family and the love her father showed her I might have thought my situation was normal. Richard always made sure to invite me over for dinner, or made up some lame story about it being too dark out for me to walk back home and insisted I stay over.

  He had to know. What other reason would a father want a young boy staying in his house with his two young daughters? If I had been braver it would have been a recipe for disaster, but I was so grateful for a warm bed and full belly that I barely thought how strange my circumstance was.