One Last Time: A Second Chance Romance

by Roxie Noir

  Then I force myself to turn around, head into the bathroom, and take a shower.

  “Mind if I join you?” I call across the rooftop patio, letting the door swish shut behind myself.

  Jesus, the floor is cold, and I’m barefoot. I wish I’d known to bring sandals, but I didn’t think to do so on a skiing vacation and Delilah forgot to warn me.

  “Of course not!” says one of the women. “Come on in, the water’s great!”

  I set my beer down, pull off the fluffy white robe that I got from the condo, hang it up and get to the hot tub as fast as humanly possible. The sun’s fully behind the mountains now and the temperature’s dipped even further from today.

  “We were just debating whether we should get a massage or go make margaritas,” the other says as I ease myself into the water, beer once more in hand. “What would you do?”

  I settle into a seat across from them, find myself smiling. They’re both wearing bikinis, both probably in their forties, both reasonably attractive. Both watching me attentively in a way I recognize so I stretch one arm along the rim of the tub, take a sip of my beer, look from one to the other.

  “What kind of massage and what kind of margarita?” I ask. They both laugh, even though it wasn’t funny. The one on the right leans her head on one hand, stretching out her neck.

  “Swedish, and on the rocks with a salt rim,” she says.

  “I’d probably go margarita, then,” I admit.

  “Told you,” she says to the other woman, and they both laugh again. Then she leans forward, holds out one hand. “Hi, I’m Amy.”

  “Kate.”

  I introduce myself. We make small talk about all the bullshit you’d expect: ski conditions, the weather, what there is to do in a ski resort town at night. It’s nothing, and it’s going to stay nothing, but deep down I know sparked interest when I see it, and God help me, it makes me feel good.

  I don’t want it to. I want the fact that these women are flirting with me to make me feel nothing, but the box in the closet sticks in the back of my mind and each smile, each laugh at nothing, each flirty look gives me the tiniest boost.

  “Four brothers?” Kate is saying. “My gosh, you must be tough as —"

  The door opens, and we all look over.

  Delilah walks out, hair piled on top of her head, wearing a fluffy white bathrobe. I feel my face nearly split in two.

  “—nails,” she finishes.

  “Hey,” Delilah says, sounding breathless. “Oh, my God, it’s freezing out here.”

  “You gotta move fast,” Amy advises. “Don’t think about it, just go!”

  Delilah laughs. Shrugs off her robe, hangs it, kicks off her flip flops, rushes to the hot tub and my mouth goes dry.

  She’s wearing a black swimsuit. It’s one-piece, the straps crossing over her back, the neckline plunging further than anything I’ve seen her wear since we’ve been dating. Her tattoos are vivid even in the fading lights: ocean and mountains, Kraken and vines, sinking ships. The clockwork heart, the swell of her breasts around it. The lace garters on each thigh, a swirl of stars around one, the roots of a tree snaking through the other. The way the elastic digs into the soft flesh of her hip. I imagine it under my palm and shudder despite the hot water.

  The muscles in one thigh flex as she steps down with a soft oh, her arms out as she balances, then sinks slowly into the water until it bobs over her chest.

  I want her. It’s that simple, one small fact at the center of a frenzied knot, so much looped and tightened around it that it seems complicated. Three words, eight letters, somehow enormous enough to blot out the sky.

  I want her. I’ve always wanted her. I think I always will.

  “Hey,” I tell her, snake an arm around her waist, kiss her. And kiss her.

  I meant it to be a simple hello, darling kiss but I can’t seem to end it at the right spot. It’s longer, deeper, and when I finally pull back, I’m breathless. I clear my throat.

  “This is Kate and Amy,” I tell her.

  “Delilah,” she says.

  “My girlfriend,” I offer, as if they didn’t know. They shake hands, across the hot tub. Delilah settles in next to me, her hair tickling my face, her hand settling on my leg.

  “You know, Delilah, I have to tell you,” Amy says. “I don’t normally like tattoos but yours are beautiful. Did they hurt?”

  Delilah just laughs.

  “Yes,” she says. “Though not as much as you might think. Arms aren’t too bad, but I’ve got one right here —" she pushes herself out of the water slightly, points at the spot where the raven is, across her ribs, pale cleavage shining as water sluices off, “— and that hurt.”

  “Ooh, I bet,” Kate says. “Is that the most painful spot?”

  “I think feet are worse, or at least, that’s what people seem to have the most trouble with. I’m also a tattoo artist,” she explains.

  Kate and Amy are fascinated, and I can’t blame them. Delilah’s fascinating. We talk tattoos, then piercings, then bad haircuts, and there’s something wonderful about watching Delilah work her magic on these two strangers. No wonder the tattoo shop has taken off.

  The whole time, her hand stays on my leg. Sometimes her fingers move, and I can’t tell whether it’s with the water in the hot tub or whether she’s teasing me as she talks. I just know that by the time Amy and Kate head off to margaritas — they finally decided — every hair on my body is standing on end, the whole of my mind dedicated to the path her fingers are taking.

  “Have a great night!” Amy calls from the doorway, and then the two of them are gone and we’re alone up here.

  Delilah tilts her head back against my arm, her cheek against my shoulder. She presses her hand into my leg and all I can think about is four fingers and a thumb, the length of her thigh against mine. The way she looks at me and her neck curves away from her collarbone, the plunge of her neckline, the swell of her breasts.

  “I have bad news,” she says, raising one eyebrow.

  “I’m the worst skiier you’ve ever met.”

  Delilah scoffs.

  “Shut up, you did great,” she says. “You’re sliding down a mountain on slippery sticks. It’s hard.”

  “Every toddler I saw begs to differ,” I point out.

  “You’re much further off the ground than they are,” she says. “A kid falls down face-first, they barely notice. An adult falls down face-first, it’s an ER visit. I once watched Bree tumble down half a flight of stairs and then bounce up still asking for ice cream.”

  “What’s the bad news, then?” I ask.

  Her hand moves, or maybe it’s the water. Half a centimeter up. I feel like my skin is glowing with heat.

  “I can’t leave this hot tub,” she says. “It’s too cold. It was cold before I got in, and getting out is gonna be even colder, so I live here now. Promise you’ll write.”

  “You’ll just get my letters all wet,” I tease.

  “Seth, I would be so careful with your letters,” she says, laughing. “I would hold them super far away from the water while I read them.”

  “But then your arms would be cold.”

  “That’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to read your letters,” she says, her head still on my arm. “A very small part of me can be cold.”

  Her hand on my leg moves, I think, or maybe it’s the water. Another half-centimeter, the distance geometric, my desire logarithmic. I’ve been fighting myself since she walked out here in a bathing suit, but I’m losing.

  “You do know there’s an indoor hot tub, don’t you?” I point out, just to tease her. “By the pool. First floor.”

  “But that one gets crowded, and this one’s on the roof,” she says. “A little privacy is probably worth never being able to leave.”

  My own fingers alight on her thigh, just below the garter. Her face flickers. Her chest rises, falls, breasts swelling above the water and then sinking beneath the surface again.

  She’s soft, slippery, f
lesh and muscle. Watching me with her lips parted as my hand pushes between her thighs, gripping her just hard enough for her soft skin to bulge between my fingers.

  Nothing about her yields. She’s soft the way the earth is soft: welcoming, giving, unconquerable. I’m falling toward her, parachute forgotten.

  “And why would you want privacy?” I ask. I move my thumb along her skin, still gripping, and I feel her move her hips in response: microscopic, the angle of her leg changing by half a degree, but Delilah is a song I know by heart.

  “Because my self-control is fraying at the seams,” she says. Her fingers play with a fold on my swim trunks, and my whole leg shivers. My cock swells. There’s nothing I can do. “Because you kissed me hello like you hadn’t seen me for weeks.”

  I lean in, slowly. She straightens, her head lifting from my arm, her dark eyes locked on mine, and I brush my lips against hers.

  Just a taste. Just a tease, just a test, just to see if I can do it and still pull away. I can, but not far. I can, but not for long.

  It’s slow as a first kiss, but nowhere near as tentative. I explore her mouth with mine. Gently, patiently, even as below the water my fingers sink further into her thigh and my thumb finds the edge of her swimsuit, the spot where fabric meets flesh, crosses the boundary.

  She straightens, locks her other hand through my hair, traces her fingers over my neck. She parts her thighs and drapes one over my leg, her hand still between us, the side of my finger finding the edge of her bathing suit between her legs.

  Delilah sighs, and it crashes over me like a wave. I pull her onto my lap and she bobs onto me, arms going around my neck, laughing as she leans in.

  “See?” she says. “This would be so awkward with other people around. Can you imagine us making out in a hot tub while Bob and Jim discuss golf five feet away?”

  “I’d rather not,” I tell her, pulling her in. Her mouth is soft, open. “I hate golf.”

  She laughs, shifts on my lap, takes my shoulders in her hands. Squeezes until her fingernails dig in, then lets go. I’m hard as a rock underneath her, every tiny movement she makes echoing through my body.

  “Nobody likes golf,” she says. “They all just think everyone else does, so they pretend.”

  “I’m sure someone does,” I say, and I wonder who nobody and everyone are. I wonder if they’re in the box.

  “Sure. One person, somewhere,” she teases. “Everyone else just likes driving that cart around.”

  “You gonna make me do that next?” I ask. My hands are on her hips, pulling her in sideways.

  “Are you saying I made you go skiing?” she says. An arm around my neck, a hand on my chest.

  “Just that if it weren’t for you, I’d probably be driving four-wheelers through the mud and shouting yeehaw! this weekend,” I say. “You know, some lowborn redneck shit.”

  “That does sound fun,” she says. Her mouth finds mine, pushes it open. Her body presses against me, and she pulls away, leans her forehead against mine.

  Squirms on my lap until suddenly she’s straddling me in the water, the heart tattoo right in front of my face, both sides bowed in by the swell of her breasts, shining even in the low light.

  Her nipples are hard as pebbles in the cold air, and I close my hands around her ribcage. My thumbs on her sternum, breasts in the valley between finger and thumb as she rocks against me softly once, twice, a loose curl bouncing against my temple.

  The tiniest movement, and I’ll be across the line we’ve set. The line that’s become the bond between us. The line that keeps us from falling off a cliff.

  “So, you’d rather be out muddin’ than here?” she teases, softly. “I’m not sure I believe you’ve ever even been.”

  “I went once,” I say. I hook my thumbs beneath the fabric over her sternum, pull it down until I can see the very top of the raven’s head, the fabric over her breasts denting into them. “It was enough. You get real dirty, turns out.”

  I pull harder on her swimsuit and this time she comes down, kisses me open-mouthed. Locks her hand around my neck, the other still on my chest, her hips grinding slowly against me.

  I’m crumbling, fast. I don’t want to think about the wedding album and the box, but I do. It’s there, below the surface of my mind like a whale about to breach. The vast unknown of what he was to her, what she was to him. Why.

  But I know what I’ve been, and I know how to make her forget everything else. I know how to possess her, at least in body, so I unhook my thumbs from her swimsuit and slide them across her cut-glass nipples.

  Delilah moans. Her mouth is still on my mine and the sound vibrates through me, surprised and breathy. Loud enough to echo off another condo building and come back to us as she claps her hand over her mouth, faces still inches from mine.

  I lean forward, take a knuckle between my teeth. Run my tongue across the ridges and wrinkles as I push my thumbs over her nipples again, this time flicking my thumbnails over the flat.

  She takes her hand off her mouth and kisses me, dragging her fingers across my face. She rolls her hips and makes a noise as she presses her clit against the thick ridge of my cock.

  I groan. I’m not as loud as her but it’s an accident, not intentional. I cup her breasts in my hands, pinch her nipples between my forefinger and thumb. I roll them, and she whimpers, works herself against me.

  “Ever come in a rooftop hot tub before?” I ask, pinching even harder, the fabric skipping between my fingers. I’m afraid of hurting her, but she just sighs.

  “Not yet,” she whispers, and I push away the fabric of her swimsuit until her nipples are out, pink and puckered.

  I stroke, roll, pinch. She rides me through two layers of fabric so hard I’m afraid that I’ll come first, and this is a communal hot tub.

  “Tell me you miss this,” I growl, low and breathless. “Tell me —”

  “I miss this so fucking much,” she whispers. “I miss being with you like —”

  The rooftop door opens and she pulls back with a gasp, bolt upright. Tugs her suit back into place as I grab her hips, keep her steady.

  “ — And white is so cute, though, especially for a baby,” Ava’s voice says.

  “You have to be fucking kidding me,” Delilah mutters.

  They come into view: two women and two men, though in the dark at this distance, I can’t tell them apart.

  “You don’t think it’s kind of girly?” Olivia asks, stepping out onto the patio. “Ooooh! That’s so cold!”

  “Told you to wear your flip flops, babe,” says Michael, her husband.

  “It’s not girly, it’s white,” Ava says, and then waves. “Hey, guys! Delilah, isn’t white totally neutral? Like it’s the absence of color?”

  “Technically, it’s the reflection of all colors,” she says. Still straddling my lap, still breathing harder than normal. “Black is the absorption of color.”

  “I’m just saying, white is kind of feminine,” Olivia says, carefully making her way toward us. “So I don’t know if I should…”

  “Go,” I tell Delilah, voice low. “Now. Go.”

  She pushes backward, stands. Hops up on the lip of the tub and swings her feet over.

  “Bad timing,” she says to her sisters, casual as you please. “We were just heading out, we’ve been in too long.”

  “Oh, boo,” Ava pouts.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Delilah

  “Sorry!” I say brightly, lunging for the robes and towels we brought out. “We’ve been here a while, and you know, you’re not supposed to stay in a hot tub for too long…”

  I grab a towel, wrap it around myself, glance back at Seth. He’s giving me an urgent look that I’m pretty sure translates to I don’t want your family to see my dick, and I grab the other towel, move back to the hot tub.

  “Well, I’m not even supposed to be in the hot tub because of the baby,” Olivia says. She’s started emphasizing the baby whenever she says it, and it’s not my favorite li
nguistic tic of hers. “I’m just going to dangle my feet in and keep an eye on Michael, haha!”

  Seth glances their way, then in one smooth motion, he turns his back and spins over the side of the hot tub, feet hitting the ground at the exact same time he grabs the towel. It’s around his waist in a flash, and no one but me notices that he’s pitching a circus-sized tent.

  Then his eyes meet mine, and he winks. I scrunch my toes against the concrete floor as we grab our robes, pull them on.

  “You don’t even want to stay to hang out?” Ava says, holding something. “I brought the canned wine!”

  “Ugh,” Olivia says, not quietly enough.

  I’m already putting on my flip flops, belting my robe.

  “What? It’s good,” Ava tells her sister.

  “Nah, I gotta go get ready for dinner with Vera and Dad,” I say, walking. “And, you know, my hair, it’s —”

  I just sort of wave my hands in the air and hope it’s explanation enough.

  “Seth could stay,” she offers. “I feel like I’ve barely gotten to hang out with you.”

  That gets me, and I pause for a split second. Seth practically runs into me, his hand on my lower back.

  Ava wants to hang out with Seth? Someone in my family wants to hang out with my Ford-driving, townhouse-owning, middle-class boyfriend?

  “I gotta help her,” Seth says, and makes the same hand motion I did.

  “Have fun, guys,” Thad says, his arm around Ava, guiding her to the hot tub. “C’mon, babe.”

  Then I’m inside and the door shuts behind us and as soon as we’re out of sight Seth spins me. Grabs the lapels of my fluffy white robe, pulls me in with a force that takes my breath away, crushes my mouth with his.

  It can be easy to forget how powerful he is. I know he’s tall, broad, and has muscles I want to lick, but I rarely see how well he can use it. Yesterday, with the suitcases, maybe. A few weeks ago when he pulled himself up onto a tree branch to retrieve a projectile for Rusty.

  Or now, when I’m the object of his power unleashed. He walks me backward, guiding my feet with his, not letting me go for a second