Her eyes lock on mine. Her hair is mussed and there’s this wild-eyed look about her. If she needs permission from me, I’m already there. One word and I’m in her, finding home. The day has left us both splintered and whirling, and I know that we can get ourselves back to center by centering ourselves.
One thrust, one kiss at a time.
“No, we can’t,” she says again.
And then: “—with an unlocked door.”
I break the sound barrier as I cross the room, lock the door, and return to her. She’s pulled herself up on my desk and her legs are spread open, inviting me.
She’s not wearing any panties. This is becoming a meme, and one I quite enjoy.
Our mouths are hungry, taking and giving, her hands frantic on my belt and fly. Nimble fingers unclothe me just enough. She went on the pill a few months ago so condoms are like the buggy whip. An artifact of a bygone time.
(Yet the whip has a practical use in the bedroom, too, sometimes...).
I look behind her. My desk is littered with business documents and scribbled notes that used to be important but are now impediments. Obstacles preventing me from sinking into her and burying myself in her warmth, my nose in her hair, my tongue loving her teeth.
With one grand sweep I reach behind her and fling everything off the desk.
“Your laptop!” she cries out as the thin, silver computer bounces onto the carpet and makes a distinct beeping sound, like R2D2 protesting being roughed up.
“Don’t care,” I say, hands pulling off her suit jacket, roaming over her lush breasts. “I can replace it. What I can’t do is wait one second longer for this.” And with that, she opens herself to me, and the surge of power that has hummed through me finally unleashes. I’m home, warm and fevered, her mouth, her core all mine.
Mine.
She’s so damn exquisite under me, the glass-topped oak desk better than any bed, bathtub, kitchen counter, car, limo, helicopter, lighthouse, alleyway behind a piano bar, drive-in, er...place...we’ve ever made love. The flush in her cheeks, the way her eyes dance under her closed eyelids, the thin vein that stretches just past the corner of her eye, and the way she moans my name are all its own reward.
Getting to make love on top of all that is like being handed the keys to the kingdom.
Her hands pull at my shirt and I feel a button pop. Then another. A third as I thrust into her, the power surge morphing into a glow that makes me love her so hard I think my heart is about to thrust inside her, too. Shannon rips my shirt open as her back arches up, her little fingers digging into my chest as she clenches in every way you can imagine.
And that’s all I need.
“Look at that city, Shannon. That city is yours,” I murmur in her ear, one hand on her jaw, gently turning her head toward the expanse of glass to our side. “Ours. We’ll make our mark in the world together.”
We’re doing incredible deeds right now.
Her eyes stay focused on my face, mouth open, tongue caught against her top teeth. “You’re the best view I could ever want,” she says. “And the only mark I want to make with you is this.” Her lips bruise mine as she kisses me, hard, her hands grabbing my back with a frenzy that makes me feel as craved as any man has a right to expect.
Out of the corner of my eye the tops of buildings sprawl in an endless series of brick and steel, pouring out into the Back Bay like sand on a beach. Enormous and imposing and yet, in the span of centuries and millennia, just grains of sand.
Eternity makes everything insignificant. Even buildings and empires.
And that is why love is so important.
“You are so perfect,” I groan as we crest, my hands and mouth unable to touch her enough, her fingers embedding marks that will remain for three days and leave me with a secret smile every time I see them.
As we climb to heaven and then fall, gently, floating back to earth, the desk becomes an unbearably uncomfortable slab of glass and wood. I pull back to standing, eyes eating up Shannon’s disheveled form. We look like something out of a cheesy amateur porno film.
I’m good with that.
Her eyes widen and she looks out the window, then at the door, her bra loose around her breasts, shirt pulled up, skirt bunched around her hips.
“I’m a mess!” she groans, sitting up.
I bend down and kiss her, that succulent mouth like sweet honey poured against my lips.
“You’re hot.”
“I’m sleeping with my boss at the office!”
“It’s a condition of your employment.”
She pushes me off her and stands, pulling her skirt down and straightening her shirt. “We just broke about nine Human Resources rules in nine minutes.”
“Let’s go for ten next time.”
“There won’t be a next time,” she protests, reaching back to hook her bra and readjust her breasts. “It’s bad enough everyone thinks I only got a job here because I’m screwing my boss, but to actually be screwing my boss at work is just a little too...” She makes a shivering movement that sets the tops of her breasts jiggling.
I start drooling.
Between the fight our fathers just had, Marie’s inappropriate dressing down of my dad, Shannon spraying my father and the revelation that Dad is fucking his nineteen-year-old admin, I’d say having a quickie on my desktop is the highlight of the day.
Week.
Month.
Okay...week.
And now she’s talking about never doing this again? C’mon. You don’t give a guy a taste of the forbidden and expect him to forget it.
She scooches off the desk and looks presentable in seconds. The kiss she plants on my jaw is too chaste. Too perfunctory.
Too little.
As she turns to walk out of the room I grab her. She spins and falls against me, sighing deeply. I know it’s not that she has any less desire—she’s just freaking out on the inside, overwhelmed by too much input.
Same here, except I deal with these emotions by pounding them out.
Shannon eats ice cream.
I like my coping mechanism better.
“Dec, I seriously have to go.”
I kiss her.
“Mmmm, mmmph serious!” she says.
I kiss her again.
She steps on my foot. Ooooo, pain. I like pain.
Now, let me say for a moment here that I know I’m being an ass. And if she demanded I let her go, I would. I just feel like a thousand BBs from a BB gun all shoved inside a large glass jar, being shaken by a hyperactive seven-year-old boy. All that kinetic emotional energy makes me feel the impulse to do something, but I lack the coherent emotional centeredness to know what to do.
Doing Shannon is pretty much the only tool in my toolbox.
Well, I have another tool, but—
SPRITZ!
A mist of water smacks my cheek and ear.
“What the hell?” I shout, my palm wet as I reach up and wipe my cheek. Stubble greets me. Damn. It’s after five, isn’t it? Time for my second shave. My eyes register a spray nozzle and then—
SPRITZ!
“Are you spraying me?” I choke out, dodging her before she can get me again.
Shannon’s face is determined, her jaw set in self-righteous anger. “You won’t stop wrestling with my body, you get the spray bottle.”
I’m a little too turned on, suddenly. “I’ve been a bad, bad dog.”
She throws the bottle at my head. I dodge that, too (thank you, Milton Academy fencing instructors...) and laugh.
“You are impossible!” she hisses as she edges toward the door.
BZZZZZ.
I don’t want to answer Grace’s intercom. I know it’s someone in Madagascar ready to scream at me because a website widget is three pixels out of order. Or the New Zealanders complaining the exchange rate isn’t favorable and that people don’t want to spend $212 for their foreskin-based youth cream but are fine with $199.
“That’s why you love me,” is all I can say t
o Shannon as I kick the spray bottle under my desk.
Her back faces me as she storms out, but she pauses in the doorway, manicured hand grabbing the threshold, her other hand on the doorknob. I have so much I want to say right now.
Thank you.
I love you.
You’re awesome.
You told my father that I matter.
I have never met a soul as incredible as you.
Your tits are the best I’ve ever—
Yeah. A lot of emotions inside.
“I do love you,” she says under her breath. Turning slowly, she faces me, face flushed, eyes wild. Her body’s perfectly composed now, and you’d never guessed that two minutes ago I was between those lovely, creamy thighs.
Her eyes narrow but her mouth widens with a smile that could blind the sun.
And then she’s gone, leaving me with a matching grin.
If all goes according to plan, I get that woman for the rest of my life.
What the hell did I do to deserve her?
Chapter Eleven
One day before the proposal…
I’m driving home when the dreaded Text of Doom arrives.
Want to come over?
I text back:
No. I refuse to sleep with you in your apartment any more. I’ll have the driver come and get you, though.
I’m in the limo and we’re stuck in traffic. Construction in Boston is like a fifth major sport. You have the Patriots, the Bruins, the Celtics, the Red Sox and the Orange Cones.
Shannon texts back:
I don’t want to come to your apartment. Too boring. And who said I offered to sleep with you? Amy and Amanda and I are playing Rock Band. Come on.
She really knows how to make it so appealing. Three women with the vocal skills of a paralyzed moose singing songs from the 1980s.
Makes a fundraiser for clean water in the Sudan chaired by Jessica Coffin look like fun.
Plus there’s that whole not-sleeping-with-me part.
My phone rings. It’s Shannon.
“Why won’t you come over?” Her words have a sloppy feeling to them.
“Are you drunk?” I ask, perking up. Hmmm. Hope. “Is this a drunken booty call?”
“No. I mean, yeah, I’ve been drinking, but no. Not a booty call. We just want you to pick up some Thai food and ice cream. This is a lazy call.”
Wait a minute. “We” means Shannon, Amy, and—of course—Amanda. Two women who live together and their third arm want me to pick up Thai takeout and ice cream?
I suddenly realize I’m definitely not getting any tonight. This is a Period Errand.
Any man who has been in a relationship with a woman for long enough goes through the initiation of The Period Errand. It starts with a sudden craving for ice cream and ends with the Purchase of Shame. You know the one.
Ibuprofen, the super-size box of tampons that is bigger than an NFL linebacker, Reese’s Cups, and two pints of ice cream. (And neither of those pints is for you).
After you survive the clerk’s smirk, you drive home to your woman, who is on the couch wearing her “fat pants” (not my term, don’t blame me) and who greets you with eager anticipation and a quick kiss on the cheek.
She then makes love to the ice cream and you’re stuck watching some Nicholas Sparks novel adaptation on the Oprah channel while she sobs on your shoulder and begs you never to die.
I’ve been moved into new territory, I see, as seconds pass and she becomes impatient. I’m now expected to run Period Errands for Shannon’s entire female pack.
On some level, that means I’ve gained some kind of trust from all three women, but on another level I feel like my balls have shriveled to raisins that Ben & Jerry’s will put into their new flavor:
Emasculated Marshmallow (Pussy) Whip.
“Please, Declan? Please?” she begs.
I sigh. Heavy is my heart (among other body parts...). I want to see her, and Amanda and Amy are fun to hang out with. The day has been as crappy as I expected, and the idea of drinking a few beers and belting out a Queen or Beatles song sounds about right.
“Fine. Just place the order, and—”
“So, at the store,” she adds, the pleading tone long gone. Now that I’ve acquiesced, she shifts into take-him-for-granted mode. “I need you to get—”
“Ibuprofen and tampons,” I say.
“How’d you guess?” she whispers.
“Pure luck.”
We get off the phone and I buzz my driver, Lance. He rolls the divider down and looks at me via the rearview mirror.
“Change of plans, Mr. McCormick?”
“Yes. We need to go to Shannon’s place. And swing by the Thai place on Route 9.”
He smirks. “You need me to go to the grocery store on the way there, too?” Great. The smirk.
I smirk back. “Yes, Lance. Only this time, you can go in and buy what Shannon and her friends need.”
He pales.
I feel better.
We pull into Shannon’s driveway to find a picture of Marie plastered all over Amanda’s car. The Viagramobile. Amanda and Josh must have traded cars. Who has the Turdmobile? Carol? Poor Jeffrey and Tyler. It might be funny now, but wait until they hit middle school and their friends start calling them Turdboy.
I make a note to offer karate lessons as a birthday present. That’s what uncles do, right?
The thought dissolves as the front door opens.
“You are a god!” Amanda declares as I appear at their doorstep, Lance carrying everything for me. Amanda and Amy descend on him like hungry locusts and he takes in Amy like she’s eye candy.
“That’s my girlfriend’s little sister, Lance. Don’t even think about it.” I give him a good look. “Besides, she’s easily fifteen years younger than you.”
He backs off and goes out to the limo. Good man. Then again, Amy’s wearing one of those spaghetti-strap tank tops, no bra, and yoga pants that say “bootylicious” across her ass.
Not that I’m looking.
Something protective rises up in me, and I feel a need to grab Jason, a shotgun, and to start cleaning it. With my driver’s teeth.
I’ve never had a little sister before. Suddenly I get a glimpse into the future, my and Shannon’s daughter on her first date. I feel really sorry for her first love.
Amy’s red curls bounce along with, um, other parts that my driver shouldn’t be watching as she takes the food and scampers off to the safety of the couch. I walk in and Shannon greets me with a big kiss. It’s sweet and salty, her tongue bold and urgent. A guy could get used to being greeted like this.
“Thank you,” she murmurs against my jaw. Her hand reaches up and she scratches my neck. “Long day? You have stubble.”
“All men have stubble by ten o’clock.”
“Your stubble is thicker than most.”
“It’s the testosterone. It thickens everything.” I nudge my thigh against hers so she can feel how thick everything is. She just laughs. Great. I love it when she laughs at my hard on. Just love it.
She’s right, though. I generally have to shave a second time before late-day business meetings if I want to look more professional.
“I like it,” she says, nuzzling. Mixed signals. She’s sending me mixed signals. Why is she coming on to me in a room with Amanda and Amy?
There’s only one good reason: she wants something from me. And not sex. This would be so much easier if it were sex. But it’s never sex. When a woman you’ve been with for more than a year spontaneously comes on to you during her period, there’s an ulterior motive.
Chuckles approaches me like I am part of the Coast Guard and have a basket to lower from a helicopter to save him from drowning in the ocean. He begins to purr, a loud, rumbly noise that makes Amanda jump from across the room and stare at him. Chuckles never purrs. Only for me.
I pick him up and stroke his fur. We get each other. We’re the only men in the room. The testicled have to stick together.
Exc
ept he’s neutered, so...
“How was your day?” I ask Shannon in a fake voice.
She scowls. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I love you.” The only correct response when your testosterone is outweighed by a ratio of 3:1. Chuckles doesn’t count.
“This pad Thai is amazing. Thank you, Declan!” Amy calls out from the couch. She and Amanda are digging into a carton with separate forks. They don’t even bother with plates. Same with the pints of ice cream. It might say “four servings” on the side but what it should say is “get three different flavors together and four spoons and have at it.”
The marketing folks at Ben & Jerry’s really ought to do a data blitz and start tracking specific female customers’ cycles. Send a coupon out the week before. Think of the uptick in sales.
Hmm. File that one away for future campaigns.
“No problem,” I answer Amy, hoping they’ll spare the other carton for me and Shannon.
“Hey -- would you grab the extra soy sauce?” Amy asks me. “It’s in the cupboard.”
I open cabinet doors and stare at a sea of samples. Shannon’s idea of culinary delight is anything she can get for free on her mystery shops. A mudslide of soy sauce packets threatens to pour out like a ping-pong ball prank. I grab a handful, shove the pile back in, and close the door.
I’m not marrying her for her cooking.
“Want a beer?” Amanda asks as I plunk the soy sauce on the table in front of her and Amy. She’s dressed like Amy, but has a hoodie on. The logo is for a water delivery company I recognize from our facilities division. They deliver thousands of gallons for pool fillings. Her sweatshirt is so oversized it comes down to her knees.
“Sure.” She reaches down into a camping cooler filled with ice and hands me a brand that Jason must have left here for his daughters.
“That’s clever.” I’ve never seen the cooler in the living room before.
She shrugs. “We’re being efficient.”
“We’re being lazy,” Shannon and Amy intone together. Amanda’s face looks weird. Puffy. Like she’s been crying.
The room feels a little too small suddenly. The sound of Shannon popping the top off my beer slows down, as if I’m in the Matrix movies. Every second stretches into ten more and a dawning horror hits me.
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