Unexpected tears sparked behind her eyes. Damn emotions. Too many feels. He was so good at poking them out of her, even when he wasn’t trying.
She squeezed his hand. “That’s good to know.”
She wanted to kiss him all over his face right then, her desire so strong it was as fierce and physical a hunger as any she’d ever had for food. He must’ve seen it on her face, because his expression shifted into something hungry, too. His thumb moved against her skin in steady, relentless circles.
“I have a better idea of what we can do after dinner,” Alice said. “And the best part is, I don’t need to change my clothes first.”
She did need a shower, though, which she insisted on as soon as they got to her place. Not alone, though, she told him with a grin over her shoulder, as she kicked off her shoes and headed for the bathroom. Mick didn’t waste a second.
“Cold!” he shouted when he stepped in.
“Crybaby.” Alice adjusted the temperature from chilly to lukewarm and sighed with pleasure as she tipped her face into the spray. “It’s too hot out for a hot shower.”
“You’re crazy,” Mick muttered, stepped back out of the spray. “It’s freezing!”
Alice laughed and turned to splash him a little, laughing again when he yelped. “C’mere. I’ll warm you up.”
“Now that’s what I’m talking about.” Mick let her pull him closer.
Belly to belly, thighs to thighs. Water sluiced over them both as she pushed on her toes to kiss his mouth. His hands smoothed over her slick skin. She moved against him, delighted at the rise of his cock between them.
“I love touching you,” she told him.
Her hands moved down his back to the curve of his ass to cup it. She pressed him closer to her. His tongue slid inside her mouth as his hands buried in her hair, and when he moved to nibble at her jaw and throat, Alice broke out in gooseflesh that had nothing to do with the water temperature.
Mick gave an appreciative sigh and bent to take her erect nipple in his lips. He suckled gently, making her shiver again. His hands roamed her back and hips before grabbing her ass to grind her against him.
With a look over her shoulder, Mick found her washcloth and added some shower gel, making sure to suds the cloth before smoothing it over her body. Breasts, belly, legs, back. His fingers delved between her legs, and Alice gave a small, choking cry. He looked at her, his gaze steady and unrelenting as he slipped a finger inside her. Then another. His thumb pressed her clit.
Alice dug her fingernails into Mick’s shoulders. “Oh …”
When he went to his knees in front of her, she let out another low cry. Mick pushed her gently to sit on the shower’s molded seat. He spread her thighs and bent his head between them. His mouth found her clit with the same determination and ease his thumb had a few minutes before.
His hands kept her from sliding off the seat. His mouth worked on her flesh. Nibbling, teasing strokes of his lips and tongue. Every so often he’d shift to the side to let the water from the shower spatter onto her pussy—never hard or direct enough to send her over the edge. All she could do was shake, her muscles tensing and releasing. Pleasure building.
Mick went down on her like it was Judgment Day and the only way to get into heaven was by making her come.
With a moan, Alice gave herself over to the ecstasy. It lasted and lasted, and because she hadn’t turned the water very hot, it was a long time before it started to run cold. By that time she was wrung out from mini-climaxes, until finally Mick stopped teasing her. The flat of his tongue worked on her clit, and he slipped two fingers inside her to curl upward.
Alice came so hard she wouldn’t have been surprised if the world really had ended. The final orgasm left her spent and shuddering. Mick eased his fingers free of her clutching pussy and kissed her clit. Then her belly. Finally, her mouth.
“It’s freaking cold in here,” he said. “Can we please get out now?”
* * *
I was always that kid who touched the hot stove just to make sure it would still burn me, even if I’d already blistered my fingers on it a bunch of times before. A lesson learned easily isn’t learned well, that’s what my dad always said, and I guess I took him to heart. Somewhere along the way, though, I figured out what my dad really meant by that. It wasn’t that you should keep touching that hot stove to prove that it’s still going to burn you. What he meant was that it’s easy to keep on touching that stove because it’s always going to remind you that it burns; what’s much harder is reminding yourself that you don’t need proof if you’ve already learned your lesson.
—Alice to Mick, unsent
* * *
“Here, honey, get warmed up,” Alice said sympathetically as she handed him a thick terrycloth robe and used a towel to wrap around her hair.
He hadn’t minded the cool water so much when he was on his knees in front of her, his mouth on her heated flesh, but toward the end the spray had become frigid. Like needles. His back still stung from it, but drying off now, all he could do was grin.
“That’s a self-satisfied smile,” Alice noted.
Mick took the towel she handed him to scrub dry his hair. “I love making you come.”
“Mmmm.” She came up behind him, still naked, and slipped a hand into the folds of the robe. “I like it when you make me come.”
Her fingers found his half-hard cock, and she murmured in delight as she moved around to his front. It took only a stroke or two to get him erect again—eating her pussy in the shower had been sweetly torturous because he’d needed to keep both hands on her to make sure she didn’t slip off the seat. He’d been unable to stroke himself at the same time.
Now Alice’s fingertips found the slick, clear bead of pre-come and spread it around the head of his cock. Muscles in his belly and thighs tensed. His dick throbbed, then jerked in her hand when she let her fingertip smooth down the divot below the head.
Eyes never leaving his, Alice brought her finger to her lips and sucked it gently. The sight of her cleaning that slick fluid off her own skin made him almost finish right there—but Alice wasn’t finished with him. Taking his cock in her hand and walking backward, she led him to her bedroom, smiling wickedly the entire time.
There she pushed him back onto the bed. The robe fell open. She climbed up next to him and, without warning, engulfed his cock in her mouth. All the way down to his belly, her lips brushing his skin. Her hand cupped his balls, stroking, before moving up to circle the shaft as she slid her mouth off him.
Perfect. Almost too good; he wasn’t going to be able to hold out for long. When she shifted to put her pussy back on his mouth, her lips and tongue still working their magic on his cock, Mick groaned. The muffled noise of his pleasure against her pussy made her laugh, and though he was too far gone to do anything but moan, the sound of her glee pushed him harder to the edge.
He loved making her laugh, he loved making her come. He loved everything about this woman, he thought in that last incoherent moment before the only thing he could think about was exploding. He’d teased her forever before letting her finally orgasm, but Alice was kinder to him than that. She was going to finish him within minutes.
He wanted to make love to her, be inside her, but he couldn’t make himself move. His tongue slid along her slick folds and found the hardness of her clit. She cried out when he flicked it—shit, he wanted to make her come again. He wanted her bucking and writhing and covering his face with her desire, but he didn’t think he could last long enough to get her off again.
It was all over when she pressed a fingertip to his asshole, pressing just hard enough and surprising him into bucking upward inside her mouth. Every single thought left his brain except the single, repetitive beat of “yes, yes, yes.” He cried out, incapable of words.
Alice moved off him a moment after that. At the loss of her he managed to feel a pang of regret that he’d been unable to make her come again. She turned, kissed his mouth and snuggled up next to
him with a leg flung over his and her head nestled into the curve of his shoulder. He didn’t feel so bad, then, when she gave a happy sigh and said, “Wow.”
He dozed, vaguely aware of her getting out of bed and going into the bathroom. When she came back she turned off the light and turned on the ceiling fan, then pulled the sheet up over them. Her breathing slowed and softened.
When her phone rang, she was swift to answer it, cutting off the noise at the second ring. Mick checked the clock—barely eleven. He guessed the days of them partying until two in the morning before stumbling home to fuck had passed … and that didn’t bother him at all. This was much better.
“No, it’s okay,” Alice said into the phone. “Are you okay? Is it your head?”
Her sister. She’d told him about how the car accident had left Wendy with intense and frequent migraines, but not much more than that. The accident was a sore subject, seeing as how it had partially led to the fighting that had ended them the first time around.
Alice laughed, so it didn’t seem like there could’ve been an emergency. “No, I’m actually in bed, believe it or not. That’s what happens when you get old, I guess. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too, because Mom asked me about it. For the kids, right? Yeah. Yep. No, that’s okay, I told her that one was fine. Yes. One block to the beach. Yeah, it’ll be fun! Okay, talk to you later.”
She disconnected and put her phone back on the nightstand, then snuggled back next to him with a yawn. She kissed his shoulder. He pressed his lips to her still-damp hair.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah. My mom was sending my sister links for this house they’re renting for the beach, and she wanted to make sure I was cool with sharing a bathroom with the kids. Usually Mom and Dad rent the same house, but this year we decided to get a little closer to the ocean. I guess she hadn’t really paid attention a few months ago about the bathroom situation when they rented it. But it’s no problem for me.” Alice yawned again.
Mick shifted to relieve some of the pressure on his arm. “You’re going to the beach?”
“Yeah, they get a place down in Rehoboth Beach every year over the Fourth.” She sounded sleepy, but Mick was suddenly wide awake.
“The Fourth? Of July?”
Alice chuckled softly. “Um, yeah.”
“As in, next week?”
She paused before answering, her tone cautious. “Yes.”
“Well … shit, Alice.” Mick sat up.
Alice sat, too. “What?”
“I thought you were going to go to Bernie and Cookie’s house. I mean, we’re all going. Jay’s not going, I guess, because of Paul, but …”
“Yeah, I know.” She didn’t reach to turn the light on, and in the shadows all he could see were curves and silhouettes. “I told Bernie months ago I’d be going to my parents’ for the Fourth. I’ve been going there with my family for the past five years.”
Shit. Dammit. Mick turned on the lamp on his side of the bed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I guess it didn’t occur to me. It’s my family thing. I planned it long before you and I …” She hesitated. “Look, you’ve known for weeks, at least a month, about this Fourth of July thing. I know you have, because I got the invitation, too. You didn’t say a word about it. If you had, I’d have told you that I already had plans, but you didn’t say anything. I figured maybe you had plans, too.”
“I did. Plans with you.”
“Then maybe,” Alice said icily, “you should have told me about them instead of assuming I could read your mind.”
All his euphoria faded. “When were you going to tell me about this thing with your family?”
“I don’t know, Mick. When were you going to ask me about going to Bernie’s?” Alice said. Just that. Nothing else, though clearly by the way her mouth thinned, she had other words that wanted to come out.
Mick frowned. “I didn’t know I had to ask. You never said anything about it.”
She was pissed off. He knew it by the way she turned on her side, facing away from him, even though it wasn’t her normal side of the bed. By the way she punched her pillow and shifted away when he dared to come an inch closer.
He hated it when she stewed.
He clicked off the light. On his back, he made sure not to touch her. He listened for the sound of her breathing to slow, meaning she’d fallen asleep, but all he heard was the soft huff of her breath, in and out. Ragged.
Alice sat up. Mick tensed. Bring it, he thought. Come on, then.
“Things really haven’t changed. Have they?”
Mick sat, but didn’t turn on the light. Somehow this seemed like a conversation better held in darkness. He wished he could get up and find his briefs, but something told him it was wiser to stay put.
“Of course they’ve changed, Alice.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not really. You still want to slide through this thing like it’s some kind of game. What, do you get bonus points for fitting the pieces together all last second, like Tetris or something?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Alice cleared her throat. “It means that unless I specifically lay out what we’re going to do, we never make plans. I never know what, exactly, is going on. Sometimes I swear you have conversations in your head where you tell me things and then you act like I should just know them, but I have no clue what you’re talking about!”
“Like what?” he demanded.
“Like last week, when you said, out of the blue, Mary had finally decided to go back to school and she was going to quit working to do it, and her husband was being an ass about it.”
Mick paused. “… Yeah?”
“You said it to me like I had any idea that your sister had ever been considering going back to school. But here’s the thing, Mick, it was the first time you’d mentioned it. I’ve met your sister like, three times. I don’t know what’s going on in her life.”
“But I told you about it. So then you knew.”
Alice sighed. “Yeah, but then there was the time you called me to find out why I was late, and I had no idea you’d meant the CinemaEight instead of the CinemaCenter we usually go to.”
“Why would you have assumed it wasn’t? It’s the one closest to you.” He remembered that conversation. She’d been mad then, too. “What difference does it make, you got to the movie on time.”
“It’s not the one closest to where I work. And yes, I made it on time, but that’s not the point.”
“What is the point, Alice?” Mick cried, frustrated.
She sighed again and was silent for a few seconds. “For you, this is fun. That’s all. Right? So it doesn’t much matter where we go or do, it’s all just … fun.”
“It should be fun. Shouldn’t it?” He took a chance and moved closer to her. He didn’t touch her, but he was close enough to see her in the dark. “I’m not sure what the problem is. What’s wrong with fun?”
“There’s nothing wrong with fun,” she said in a defeated, helpless tone he didn’t understand at all. “Fun is great. Fun is fun.”
He tried again to hug her, and this time, she let him. Her body didn’t mold itself to his the way it usually did, but after a second or so she did put her arms around him. Mick buried his face in her hair, breathing deep. When her shoulders heaved, his heart sank.
“I don’t want to make you cry, Alice. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t answer him with words, but the shaking of her body told him more than he wanted to know. Mick held her closer, and again, she let him but it wasn’t the way it had been before. He pushed her gently away, gripping her upper arms, and tried to see her face through the shadows.
“Don’t cry. Please.”
She drew in a snuffling breath. “I’m okay.”
“You’re not. C’mon, I don’t want to fight,” he said.
“No. Me neither.”
“That’s no fun,” he continued, trying to make a joke, to make light. Anything to keep thi
s from going south.
Her chuckle was halfhearted and waterlogged and a little strangled. “Right. Fun. This all should just be fun. Only fun.”
It didn’t sound like she was agreeing with him, but he took it. “Yep. All fun, all the time. Okay?”
“Sure,” Alice said. “All of this is just fun.”
And then she hugged him hard enough to make him believe things were going to be all right.
* * *
Have fun at the beach without me. I’m going to miss you. You should have told me you had other plans, I would have changed mine.
—Mick to Alice, unsent
* * *
Perfect beach weather. Sunny, bright, warm enough to make running into the still-chilly Atlantic waters worthwhile, but not hot enough to make you wish you were in hell, where it would be cooler. With a book and a beach towel and a new bikini, Alice was all set.
The only thing missing, of course, was Mick.
She’d met his family a few times, but he’d never met hers, so inviting him along on this vacation, no matter how sexy the prospect, had not been an option. The last place she wanted to introduce him to her parents was in the house where they’d have to be sharing a bed. And it was nice, too, to have time to herself to sit and relax and read and read and read. With Mick along, she’d have been go-karting and paddle boarding and body surfing, she was sure of it.
There were advantages to time apart in a relationship. Ten years ago, Alice hadn’t known that and probably wouldn’t have believed anyone who’d tried to tell her so. She’d been convinced that being with the person you loved was necessary, like breathing, and being away from each other meant you ached and bled and gnashed your teeth. Well, she was older now, and if she wasn’t wiser, at least she was a little more self-aware.
Her time at the beach was something she looked forward to every year and built her vacation time around. She’d never taken a boyfriend along. Either she hadn’t had one or whatever relationship she’d been in at the time hadn’t been the sort you brought around your family.
Which sort, she wondered, was Mick?
They hadn’t tossed around the words boyfriend and girlfriend. Maybe at thirty-three it was silly to label whatever they were doing that way. Or maybe they weren’t serious enough to be giving each other titles, she reminded herself. Maybe, she thought, they were just having fun.