Keepsake: True North #2

  “You’re killing me,” she panted.

  “Nah,” I said, trailing my tongue back up, crossing her abdomen until her muscles quivered. “You’re tough. You can take it.” Parting her thighs with my palms, I put my lips over the satin center of her and exhaled slowly. In my arms, Lark began to tremble. She let out a whimper. “Take them off,” she begged.

  “Nope.” I kissed her pussy over the silky panties. “It’s my present. I’ll open it when I like. Now roll over.”

  She shivered at the command, and then she rolled onto her stomach, resting her cheek against the bedding. If I’d been worried about whether she was enjoying this torture, her smile would have given her away.

  I took a moment to appreciate the perfect globes of her ass, palming them one at a time. Then I let my fingers dip between her legs, and she gasped in pleasure. “You ready?” I whispered.

  She nodded, her eyes closed.

  Taking one thigh in each hand, I tugged her down on the bed until her hips were right at the edge. That allowed me to ease the panties off her hips without snapping the delicate things in half. She looked so beautiful all spread out on the bed for me. It gave me big ideas. Taking myself in hand, I teased her between the legs.

  “Fuck, yes,” she said, digging her toes into the rug underfoot. “Please.”

  Enough with the teasing. I grasped one of her hips in my hand and thrust forward. Her body yielded, welcoming me with a liquid grip that had me groaning out loud. The sight below me was almost too much—Lark splayed out, her dark hair fanning on the comforter, which she gripped in her fingers as I began to move.

  Holding her hips in my hands, I tried to go slowly. But the sight of our joining was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my life. The visual was so stimulating that I had to take a deep breath and close my eyes.

  Easing Lark’s hips onto the bed, I leaned down, my forearms beside her head, my stomach covering her back. “You are the sexiest woman alive,” I whispered in her ear, while my hips moved with the rhythm of my heart.

  She turned her chin another degree and I leaned down to kiss her. She moaned into my mouth, and it sounded like encouragement. Kissing her deeply, I worked my eager body against hers, as she drank in my moans and kisses with her own.

  It was so, so good.

  “Turn over,” I panted, wanting even more of her. I pulled out and the two of us worked to hastily roll her to her back. I joined us again, and she dug her heels into my hips, and now I could hold her in my arms as we fucked.

  “Yesss,” she panted as I picked up the pace, her breasts bouncing, her cheeks flushed. I wouldn’t last much longer. And I realized Lark had made a good point about our union. I wasn’t so afraid for her anymore. The sex was fast and sweaty and just the kind of enthusiastic romp that two people can share when they’re not trying to hold one another’s psyches together.

  “Oh!” She arched her back and gasped, her fingernails digging into my back.

  That was it for me. As soon as the bliss settled across her face, I burst like a firework. Burying my shouts in the comforter beside her head, I shuddered and pulsed until finally I was still.

  “God,” she whispered into the silence. “I think we really needed that.”

  I wasn’t even sure I could move, I was so spent. Gingerly I pulled out and then prowled up the bed beside her. “Come. Here,” I muttered.

  Her flushed face appeared beside mine. We kissed lazily, and caught our breath. “I waited at least twenty minutes after you stepped into the house to jump you,” she said.

  “You don’t hear me complaining,” I mumbled.

  “Stay with me tonight?”

  “All you have to do is ask.”

  “Mmm. Do you think we could get under the covers? Still not sure I can move my limbs.”

  “We’ll give it a whirl. In a minute.”

  She kissed me again.

  * * *

  Eventually I sat up, and Lark showed me to the luxury bathroom in the hallway. When we got in bed again, I held her in my arms, and it was at least as good as the sex. “I can’t stop touching you,” I whispered as my fingers drifted over her breast and down to her hip once again. There were soft caresses and lazy kisses.

  Neither of us was in a hurry to sleep. “How’re the nights treating you?” I thought to ask.

  “Not bad. The dreams still show up sometimes, but they don’t feel as raw. It’s like watching a storm blow out again after the worst is over.”

  “Mmm. All right.”

  “It is all right. I don’t know how to explain it. I’m not as upset as I was before, so it’s getting easier to roll over and go back to sleep.”

  We drifted off for a little while. But at some point Lark rolled over and shut off the light. The friction of her skin against mine felt so good that I opened my eyes again. And then we were kissing, and touches soon followed…

  Until someone knocked on her bedroom door.

  “Lark?” It was her mother’s voice. “Are you all right? Can I come in?”

  I froze like a deer on a country road at night.

  “Uh, give me a second,” Lark said, sounding unfazed.

  She slipped out of the bed and pulled a bathrobe over her naked body. Then she left the room, shutting the door behind her. I heard whispered voices, which then moved away from the door.

  It was five minutes or so until she came back. “Sorry,” she said, tossing the robe aside and slipping into bed. “I’d left all the lights on downstairs. And…” She began to laugh.

  “What?”

  “I left my regular underwear on the dining room floor when I changed into the bombshell lingerie. Not my smoothest move.”

  “Um…” I clapped a hand over my eyes. “So your parents assume we had sex in their dining room?”

  “I’m twenty-four years old, Zach. Even if we did have sex in the dining room, it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

  “I could drive home,” I suggested.

  “No! It’s almost one in the morning. Tomorrow we’re going to wake up slowly and go out for breakfast together.”

  That sounded pretty nice. And even though I wasn’t looking forward to greeting her parents in the morning, I cuddled her and fell asleep.

  * * *

  Waking up slowly was just as great as it had sounded. When I opened my eyes in the blueish morning light, there were snowflakes floating past Lark’s window. My girl was sleeping with her head on my chest, her sleek arms wrapped around my body.

  I just lay there, drinking her in, feeling lucky.

  Eventually she stretched and yawned. I rubbed her back, and she began dropping kisses on my chest. My dick stood up to say hello, and Lark took me in hand.

  “We shouldn’t,” I argued while she stroked me.

  “Shh,” she said, climbing on top of me. “I’ll be absolutely silent. Besides, I can hear my father’s radio playing. He never goes without his NPR while he showers and shaves.”

  So I lay back on her mattress while she seated herself on me. And while the news of a cease-fire in Syria played faintly in the background, she rode me toward a leisurely orgasm. It was the slowest we’d ever made love. I took deep, shaky breaths, staring into her heavy-lidded eyes as she smiled down at me. Each thrust ratcheted me a little closer to the brink. My hands wandered her magnificent body, cupping her swaying breasts. When I stroked her nipples with my thumbs she closed her eyes and bit her cherry-colored lip.

  I loved watching her pleasure play out in slow motion. “You’re so beautiful,” I whispered. “Thought so the first moment I ever saw you.” I slid my fingertips down between our bodies, finding that soft, luscious nub where her arousal bloomed.

  She dropped her head and sucked in a breath. And then I felt her pulse around me. The shimmy and the sudden slickness tipped me right over the edge. I clamped my jaws shut to avoid moaning as she milked the seed right out of me.

  I saw snowflakes in front of my closed eyes just before she collapsed onto my chest. “Wow,” she said in
a gust. “Feel free to drop by whenever.”

  Smiling, I pulled her closer. “That was hot.”

  “It’s always hot.” She sighed. “Hot was never our problem.” We snuggled quietly for a while longer. “We should shower and go downstairs,” she said eventually.

  “I don’t want to go downstairs,” I admitted, and she laughed.

  “There’s coffee down there.”

  “That helps.”

  She kissed my neck. “But first a shower.”

  After I’d scrubbed myself clean and combed my wet hair, Lark found me a travel toothbrush. I shook the wrinkles out of my shirt and put myself together as well as I could.

  Even so, my face burned as we descended the stairs.

  Lark was unflappable, though. Taking my hand, she led me through to the kitchen, where her father was reading a newspaper at the table, and her mother sipped from a coffee mug beside him. “Good morning to both of you,” her mother said calmly enough.

  “Good morning,” I said quietly as her eyes studied me. “Happy Christmas Eve.”

  “Is there coffee?” Lark asked breezily. “Or shall I start another pot?”

  “I made plenty,” Jill Wainright said. “But I haven’t started breakfast yet, because I didn’t know your plans.”

  “I thought Zach and I would go out for breakfast,” Lark said. “Seeing as I have the morning off from psycho day camp.” She turned to me. “Since it’s Christmas Eve, they only want to see me for the afternoon session. And, hang on…” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and came to stand beside me. “Smile.”

  I smiled. Sort of. And whether I was ready or not, Lark took a selfie of us. “What’s that for?”

  “Dr. Becky is a fan of yours,” she said, tucking the phone away. “I think she’s got a major crush, so I thought I’d show her your handsome face.”

  I laughed, in spite of all the tension I felt. “That’s…flattering.”

  Reaching into a cupboard for mugs, she patted my chest. “You should be flattered. She thinks very highly of you.”

  “Why?”

  Lark pulled a stainless steel carafe from its berth in a high-tech coffee machine. “Because you took such good care of me, and you never show any fear. Grab the milk?”

  “Fear of what?” The smell of the brew was comforting. I could almost handle the parents if it meant I got some of that. I looked around for the refrigerator, not finding it anywhere.

  “Most young men would run screaming from a girl with a raging case of PTSD. The fridge is right there.” She pointed at one of the paneled wooden cabinets, and I realized that her refrigerator had been camouflaged to look like a fine piece of furniture. Rich people were weird.

  I located the milk and turned around to find her father watching me over the edge of his newspaper. Yikes. I felt my neck start to heat, because whatever he was imagining I might have done with his daughter was all true and then some. Under his roof.

  He looked a little too tame to whip out a shotgun, though, so at least I had that going for me.

  “So,” her father said.

  Lark handed me a milky mug of coffee and I took a gulp. For fortitude.

  “If you go out for breakfast, who’s going to help me put this thing together for Jimmy?”

  Lark frowned. “Is it really all that tricky?”

  “There’s about a million parts.” He looked at his wife. “Next year I’ll choose the presents and you can put ’em together.”

  “I have an idea.” Lark put a hand on my arm. “Is there any way you’d take a look at this toy we bought my cousin’s son? And afterward I can take you out for waffles.”

  “Sure?” If it got me out from under her parents’ gazes, I was all for it.

  Her father came with us to the living room, though. There was a big, beautiful Christmas tree in there I hadn’t glimpsed last night. I’d only had eyes for Lark. And on the rug beside the tree were the parts for a shiny metal convertible. It was going to be a big car—like three feet long. I saw a seat and a pedal apparatus for a child to sit inside and drive.

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s so cool.”

  “I thought so, too,” her father admitted. “Until I saw the parts spread out everywhere. The instructions are only pictures, no words. I spent a half an hour and got three pieces attached. The fourth part won’t go on like I thought it should.”

  He handed me the schematic, and I took a quick glance at it. The chassis was to be built first, and then the body could just be pieced onto it. Then I looked at Mr. Wainright’s work, and saw that the axles were reversed. “All right. I assume there’s an allen wrench for this?”

  He handed it over, but then he groaned when I took his work apart and reversed the pieces. “Was that the problem? Shit.”

  Laughing, Lark sat down beside me and held my coffee mug. “Sorry, Daddy. Remember my potter’s wheel that never quite worked?”

  “That wasn’t my fault,” he grumbled, and she laughed.

  It took me about fifteen minutes to assemble the chassis, with Lark’s assistance. Next I added the wheels, the pedals and the steering column. “These pieces are really nicely tooled,” I said, running a hand over a body panel. “Like a German car.”

  Lark flipped over the schematic and squinted at it. “Huh. This company is in Munich. Good guess.” To her father she said, “Zach works on tractors for the Shipleys, as well as on cars.”

  “So you’re a mechanic?” Lark’s dad asked.

  “Not officially,” I muttered, taking care not to scratch the paint job on the world’s smallest functioning convertible.

  Lark’s mom stuck her head into the room. “Ten minutes until waffles. Can you take a break?”

  “You didn’t have to cook, Mom,” Lark said.

  “I know.” Her mother disappeared.

  Lark squeezed my knee. “Sorry. Can we stay in for breakfast?”

  “Of course,” I said even though I wanted her all to myself. But it was Christmas Eve, and she had a family who loved her.

  I finished building the car even before her mother called us to the table. When it was done, I tested the steering wheel, feeling the wheels rotate smoothly underneath. This toy was so exceptional I could hardly believe it. As a child, I would have died of joy for just five minutes with something so shiny and sleek.

  We ate breakfast around the kitchen table, which was a little crowded. But I guessed that was preferable to sitting in a dining room where her parents would have spent the meal wondering if we’d done it on the table.

  Gah.

  Lark parked her leg up against mine and squeezed my knee under the table.

  Her mother put a plate in front of me with a big waffle in the shape of a Christmas tree. Beside it lay three strips of bacon and a pile of fluffy scrambled eggs. “Wow,” I said, looking down at it. “Thanks.”

  “Eat up,” Lark’s dad said. “You just saved me three hours of cursing.”

  When everyone was seated, I waited for someone to say grace, but nobody did. Lark’s father reached for a slice of bacon and bit off the end.

  Thank you Lord for these gifts, I mentally rattled off. Especially the beautiful one sitting beside me. Then I dug my fork into the eggs and had a bite. The waffle was calling my name, but it was almost too artistic to eat. “You know, I never saw a waffle until I came to Vermont,” I said because I knew it would amuse Lark.

  “Really?”

  “Sure. We went to a diner in Montpelier right after I got there, and I thought, that’s a funny thing to do to a pancake. But I love them now.”

  Mrs. Wainright studied me. “Where did you grow up where there were no waffles?”

  “On a…ranch,” I said, choosing that word instead of cult. “Not the nicest place in the world.”

  “No—a perfectly dreadful place,” Lark argued. “They also didn’t have coffee. Or Harry Potter.”

  “Really?” Lark’s father asked.

  “Really.” I sighed.

  “Why?” he asked, and
it was a perfectly good question.

  “They had a lot of strange ideas. It’s a long story.” I drained my coffee cup, hoping for a change of topic.

  “Let me pour you some more,” Lark’s mother said. “And you take milk?”

  “I sure do. Thank you.”

  “How was the party?” Lark asked as we all ate.

  “Lovely, as usual. The Whites are always fun.” Her mother took a sip of coffee. “But Gilman was there with his little…” She made a noise of disgust. “I swear the girl was practically directing traffic in order to wave that ring on her finger around.”

  Lark laughed out loud.

  “And he looked like the cat who swallowed the canary. But I’m sure she’s a gold digger. I hope he got a prenup.”

  “Mom!” Lark gasped.

  Suddenly my plate became very interesting to me. If Lark’s parents thought I was hanging around their mansion for a shot at their fortune, I really didn’t want to know. I cut the pretty waffle and lifted a corner to my mouth.

  “Now hang on,” Lark argued. “I actually doubt that very much. My theory—since you brought it up—is that Gilman needs to marry someone seven years his junior because she’s too young to see that his success is a thin veneer which hides a whole lot of boring.” Lark put a hand on my arm. “And, I swear to God, my mother is not a snob.”

  I risked a glance at her warm eyes, and they put me at ease.

  “She’s just loyal. The moment Gilman admitted to cheating on me with his intern, the girl became the devil incarnate. She’s just protecting me.”

  Across the table, Lark’s mom sighed. “I’m sorry. That was a crass thing to say. You’re right, honey. I don’t know anything about that girl. And I still want to choke her.”

  Mr. Wainright laughed. “Choke Gilman instead, dear. But don’t get caught. He works for some great litigators.”

  “Who needs more syrup?” Lark’s mom asked. “It’s the real thing. From Vermont. I bought it that day we visited the farm.”