He held me, wiped the tears away, used the hem of his shirt to clean my face.
"I can't do it," I said, when I had enough breath to speak. "I just want to run away from both of you. I can't hurt you. I can't hurt him. There's no right choice." I hiccupped. "I need a cupcake."
Jeff kissed my forehead, then each cheek, and then, last, my lips. "Don't worry about right or wrong. Just worry about what's best for you."
"But I don't know what's best for me!"
He kissed my lips again to quiet me, and this time he kept kissing. The sweet, familiar taste of his lips swept me away, his body beneath mine cradled me close and comforted me, and his hands ghosting over my curves pushed thoughts to the background.
Distraction was welcome. A fragmentary thought flitted through my head: This is only going to confuse me further, later. But I didn't care. Kissing Jeff was all that was right in my life. My tears subsided and my sobs quieted and my confusion drifted to the background, all subsumed beneath the storm of need for Jeff.
I moaned as his tongue swept into my mouth, and then twisted on his lap so I was facing him, my knees digging down into the crack between couch back and cushion. This was all I needed.
Desire erupted within me, gouging all thoughts from my mind. All I knew was Jeff's mouth, his cock hardening beneath me, his hands on my waist and slipping upward to cup my breasts. I arched my chest into his hands, dragged my fingers through his close-cropped hair and down his sides. My fingers caught the bottom of his shirt, and I lifted it up over his head.
He broke the kiss and pulled back, searching my eyes. "I don't want to make anything harder for you," he said.
I stood up, his shirt balled in my fist, and led him by the hand into my room, closing the door behind us.
He stood uncertainly with his back to the door. "Anna, I don't wanna confuse you--"
I peeled my shirt over my head, unhooked my bra, and then took a step closer to Jeff. He backed up, his hands reaching for me even as he tried to protest. He bumped against the door, and I crushed myself against him.
"Shut up and make love to me, Jeff. I know it's not gonna fix anything, but I need it. I need you. Please."
I popped the button on my jeans and shimmied out of them, then turned my hands to Jeff, tracing the heavy muscles of his chest and the broad, hard bulge of his belly. He ran his hands down my arms, his eyes raking over my body, hungry, burning with lust and shimmering with love. I pressed a kiss to his shoulder, then his pectoral muscle. He thumped his head against the wooden door, rumbling in his chest as I opened his pants and shoved them down.
His thick, hot, hard cock filled my hands, the veins pulsing against my palms, his sack tightening as I cupped it. I ran my hands up and down his length, murmuring in pleasure as I kissed his chest, then his stomach, sliding to my knees in front of him and caressing the cool curve of his ass.
He caught at my shoulders as I knelt, bent to lift me up. I glanced up at him, took his hands in mine, and tangled our fingers. Breaking my gaze away from his, I lowered my mouth to his cock, wrapped my lips around the tip, and carved circles around his crown with my tongue.
"Anna," he groaned.
I wasn't sure if it was a protest or a sound of pleasure. Both, probably. I took him deeper, let him bump against the back of my throat and then backed off. His hands tightened on mine, refusing to let go. I licked his length from base to tip, then swirled my tongue around him, tasting him, teasing him. He moaned again, and I took him deep into my mouth once more, opening the back of my throat until I couldn't take any more.
"God, what are you doing to me?" Jeff asked.
I spat him out and smiled at him. He used the momentary distraction to pull me to my feet. His lips met mine and his hands gripped my hips, pulling our bodies together, crushing his cock between us.
"Anna--" he began, but I silenced him with my mouth, as he had me.
I pushed away from him, lay down on my bed, feet drawn up, knees apart, waiting. Jeff took a step toward me, then another. I cupped a breast in one hand and skimmed my fingers down my belly to my cleft.
Jeff's hands clenched into fists and released, and then I saw the last of his indecision fade away. His lips curled into a sensual smile, and he crawled onto the bed. He prowled toward me, his head going between my knees, his eyes locked onto mine across the expanse of my body, and then lowered between my thighs. I felt a tremble of anticipation waver in the muscles of my legs and belly, gushing through my pussy as a wave of heat and wet desire.
My knees fell apart as his tongue ran up the inside of one thigh, my back arching and my fingers tangling in his hair. I had no thoughts, no mind, no problems, no past or future when he touched me this way, when he kissed my most sensitive and intimate flesh. His fingers touched my folds, found them wet and slid in. His tongue lapped against my lips, then dipped in between them as his fingers curled up as they drew out. I moaned, gasped, whispered his name, pressed his head closer to me. His tongue searched up along the cleft of my labia, found the aching nub of my clit and circled around it, drawing my hips up and my back into a convex bow shape. He knew exactly how to draw the whimpers from me, how to touch me and give me the most pleasure. This was all I needed, all the answers I could ever find, here with him, alone and naked and vulnerable.
Slow swipes around my clit, careful slips of his finger against my G-spot, were replaced by swifter licks and more insistent sliding in and out. I moved my hips into him, whispering his name as climax boiled through me. At the moment of orgasm, my body wracked with shuddering waves, Jeff slid up and drove into me, piercing me in one smooth motion, gliding deep. I shrieked and curled into him, clutching his heavy, hard body against mine, wrapping my legs around his waist and crushing our hips together.
Jeff moaned into my mouth, his thrusts long and slow. His hand cupped my breast, hefted it and squeezed it, and then his fingers rolled my nipple until I shuddered, an aftershock turning into a full-blown orgasm, each thrust of his hips now driving me to further heights of desperate orgasming desire.
I couldn't get him deep enough, couldn't feel his body far enough inside me, pressed hard enough against me. I bit his shoulder as I continued to come, thrusting madly against his measured strokes.
"Harder, Jeff. Harder, please!" I said, each word a whimpered plea.
He answered me with his body rather than words, crashing his cock deeper into me, arching his back and lifting my breast to take a nipple into his mouth. He nipped gently, just hard enough to make me jerk in surprise and come with a curse.
Jeff's motions became ragged and arrhythmic, no longer slow, measured thrusts into me but hard and fast and deep. He cupped the back of my head and lifted me up into a kiss, biting my lower lip as he came, a quick hard pulse of hips against hips and a flood of hot seed inside me. Feeling him come drove me to climax yet again, this one harder than all the rest, curving my body into a spasm of ecstasy.
"Oh, god, Jeff, yes, don't stop," I moaned, feeling the climax drawing out as he continued to thrust, riding the waves of pleasure.
I held him close, feeling him quiver within me, still hard and still pushing deep and pulling out. He kissed me again, kissed me hard and thrust deep.
I felt him softening and pushed him to his side, curling against his chest. He kissed the top of my head, lifted my chin to kiss my lips.
"I love you, Anna, no matter what," Jeff whispered. "I'll always love you. Only you."
Something sharp and hot and bone-deep shifted in my soul. "I love you, too, Jeff. You're my best friend. I don't know what I'd do without you."
In that moment, satisfied in my heart, mind, body, and soul--if only for a fraction of time--I thought I knew what I wanted. If I could have stayed there in that moment forever, I wouldn't have had to make a choice. I nestled close to him, as close as two bodies could be, and wished with all my being to stay there like that forever.
Jeff didn't ruin the moment with further words. He only held me, and left the silence full of our
words of love. Decisions could wait. Right then, there was only him and me.
*
Daylight came, and with it knowledge of Jeff's body spooned behind me, his palm splayed across my belly and his other arm wedged between us. His morning erection was a hard rod against my ass, but his breathing was slow and deep, soft snores telling me he was still asleep. I'd woken with him like this before. It was one of my favorite things, honestly. Early morning light filtered through the window, the air beyond the blankets wrapped beneath our chins was cold, and the warmth of our naked bodies comforting and familiar.
I tangled my fingers in Jeff's hand and moved it to cup my breast, then slipped my fingers down to my pussy. I didn't often touch myself, not anymore. Jeff's hand tightened on my breast as I circled my clit, letting moans whisper past my lips as I spread damp heat through myself with slow-moving fingers. When I began to near climax, I lifted my leg, reached behind me to guide Jeff's stiff cock to my moist entrance. With a sigh of pleasure, I drove him into me, moving my hips in slow flutters on his hard shaft.
I felt his breathing change, felt his body begin to move in time with mine. His fingers on my breast flattened as he stretched, groaning, thrusting into me as he arched his back.
"Goddamn, what a way to wake up," Jeff said, his voice sleep-muzzy.
I tilted my neck back to kiss his jaw, gyrating my hips into his. He moaned, cupping my face in his broad, callused palm, then ran his hand down my throat, pausing to dip in the hollow between throat and chest. Farther down then, to the expanse of skin above my breasts, down between the gravity-pulled flesh, palm spreading to lift a breast, rolling the nipple with gentle, piercing pressure, then resuming the southward journey across the ivory plain of my belly, up the gentle mound of my pudendum. He thrust slowly as he touched me, making love to me with his hand, his lips pressed against the back of my neck.
He rolled with me, pulled me to lie on top of him, back to front, his body pillowing me, his manhood impaling me deep, deep, my knees drawn up between his. His breath huffed in my ear, my name whispered on his lips, and now both his hands roamed my flesh, held my breasts aloft and cupped them and pinched them and paid homage to them, and then his hands curved down my sides to the swelling rise of my hips and to the round muscle of my thighs and inward, to my pussy. He slid into me with a roll of his hips; I lifted my head and craned my neck to watch as he pulled out and pulsed back in, his slick length pistoning into me, his fingers delving into the shallow cup around my clit.
I fell back onto him with a shrieked sigh, feeling a spear of fire shoot through me. His fingers rolled my nipple, the left one, the more sensitive one, and his fingers traced around my throbbing clit in alternating fast-slow, rough-soft circles. I writhed on top of him, my body gone haywire and out my control, my hands gripping his head and clutching at his hands and clawing at his hips.
"Anna, Anna," Jeff said, a note of pleading in his desperation-rough voice, "I love you so fucking much, Anna. You are so beautiful, so amazing."
The utter vulnerability in his voice shredded my heart. I couldn't stop moving, not with climax rocking through me. I couldn't deny the raw love in his words, in his touch. I wanted to deny it. It scared me. I didn't know what to do with it.
Even as I continued to come apart on top of him, I felt fear ripping at me. I didn't know if I could love him as he loved me. He had no doubts, no hesitation, no reason to hold back. He was in love with me, and he'd owned it.
"Jeff..." His name was all I could push past trembling lips.
He pushed into me, his long middle finger curling down and in to find my G-spot at the very moment I peaked in climax, driving me to scream his name, unable to control even the volume of my voice. I'm sure every neighbor within three apartments heard me, and I didn't care. Not then, at least.
He came as I screamed, clutching both of my breasts and holding tight with primal strength, bellowing and thrashing into me, lifting me high with his thrusting hips. I wrapped my arm behind his head and rode him as he bucked into me, the other hand gripping his thigh with clawed fingers.
He stilled, and I lay back on top of him, panting. After a moment, I rolled off him, carefully pulling him out of my cleft.
"Holy shit," Jeff said. "I haven't even had my coffee yet."
I laughed. "I woke up and you had a hard-on. Seemed a shame to let such a beautiful erection go to waste."
He laughed with me, but I noticed the humor didn't quite reach his eyes. There was sadness lurking in his deep brown eyes, something hard and hollow. He kissed me, a quiet touch of lips, and then left the bed. He cracked my bedroom door and peered out, looking for Jamie, seemed satisfied that she wasn't around, and then disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the shower start, and I was alone in my room with my thoughts.
Now that I didn't have Jeff to distract me, an overwhelming wave of pain rolled through me. Jeff loved me so completely. How could I walk away from that? He expected me to, that much was clear from the sadness in his eyes. He'd tried to hide it, and I don't think anyone else would have seen it but me. It was buried deep. It was in the shine of his eyes, the way his glances lingered on me, in the wrinkles at the corners, in the downward tilt of his mouth seen only for a moment before he forced a smile on his lips.
I glanced at the floor, at the pile of clothes. Jeff's jeans sat on top, and I could make out a square bulge in one of his pockets. I knew what it would be even as I lifted the heavy denim, jingling with change and keys. I dug in the pocket, found the small soft black velvet box. When I opened it, the diamond glittered in the early morning sunlight.
The ring was so beautiful. It was simple, not extravagant or gaudy. Just a band of platinum with a single stone, elegantly cut. Like any girl, I'd always loved diamonds, always dreamed of wearing them. I knew what made an expensive ring; this had cost Jeff a lot of money. He wasn't a rich man, not by any stretch of the imagination. He drove a truck he'd bought five years ago, and he took immaculate care of it, kept it clean, tuned the engine himself once a month. His house was paid for, I was pretty sure. He had some money saved from his time in the Army, but his only income was DJing. He didn't have the kind of money lying around that he could just suddenly decide to buy a ring as pricey as this one.
He'd never asked me my ring size. I couldn't help wondering if it would fit. It wasn't a conscious decision, but I found myself lifting the ring from the slit in the box, angling it to catch the light, then slipping it onto the ring finger of my left hand.
It fit perfectly.
My throat closed up at the sight of Jeff's ring on my finger, knowing he'd bought it with me in mind. He'd spent a huge chunk of his savings on this piece of metal and mineral.
He wanted to marry me. He wanted to spend every single day for the rest of his life with me. Both of us came from broken homes, parents who had divorced and left distrust and pain in the wake of their ruined marriages. One of the things Jeff and I had talked about, in the long soft hours of afterglow, was how if either of us ever married, it would be once, forever.
When you grow up shuffling between Mom's house and Dad's house as I did--watching them fight in the kitchen every evening in the years before the split, watching them snipe at each other every holiday, every time they ended up face to face with me in the middle--you end up hating the thought of divorce, hating the thought of making so poor a choice of husband that you hate him after a few short years of vicious arguments and tumultuous makeup sex.
I stared at Jeff's ring on my finger, thinking for the first time in many, many years about my parents. They'd split when I was nine, and they'd had me less than a year after they were married. I'd long suspected I was the reason they'd married. The math added up, to my adult brain. If I turned nine the year they celebrated their ninth anniversary, that pretty clearly pointed to a shotgun wedding. I knew both sets of grandparents well enough to be fairly certain if Mom had turned up pregnant at twenty, they'd have pushed my parents into a rush wedding.
Brian and Laura Dev
ine hadn't been a happy couple. They were attracted to each other, that much was clear to me even at a young age. They were always touching each other. I'd heard them having sex all too often as a child, and had walked in on them more than once. They'd just yelled at me to get out, and then told me to mind my own business when I asked what they'd been doing. I learned quickly, without "the talk," what they were doing. As often as they had sex, they fought even more. I fell asleep more nights than not with the sound of their yelling voices. I never knew what they fought about, and I still don't. I can guess, now, though: everything. They were not a good match. They were both stubborn and headstrong and quick-tempered, passionate and physical. Neither was ever willing to compromise, or listen to the other side.
They were attracted to each other, and I understand now as an adult that they had an intense sexual relationship, but it was never enough to make the relationship work long-term.
I layered my understanding of my parents' relationship over top of my relationship with Jeff. Did we have a relationship outside of sex? I didn't even have to ask that question. We had been close friends and partners for years before we ever had sex together. I could assess Jeff's mood just by looking at him. I could almost hear his thoughts sometimes. I felt myself wondering what our relationship would be like in ten years, or twenty. If I felt now, after a few weeks of being with him, that I knew him inside and out, what would it be like in twenty years?
The thought set my hands to trembling.
I didn't want to be like my parents had been. I knew Jeff felt the same way. His dad had walked out on Jeff and his mom and brother when Jeff was eleven. No warning, no reasons, no note. Just packed a suitcase and walked out, in the middle of family dinner. Jeff hadn't ever seen him again, or heard from him. His mother hadn't remarried, Jeff said.
All this bubbled in my head as I gazed at my left hand with the spot of silver brilliance on the ring finger.