Darlene
“I hope we get the same waiter as our first non-date,” I told Sawyer. “He’d go crazy trying to figure out how we went from that to the Partridge Family.”
Sawyer smiled but his eyes were dark as they gazed down at me. He bent to kiss my cheek and whispered in my ear. “I need to be alone with you. Badly.”
A flush of heat swept through me, and I tightened my hold on his arm. “Me too,” I whispered back. “Do you think they’d notice if we ducked out?”
“Not me,” Sawyer said, “but you, mostly definitely.”
“That’s sweet but—”
Sawyer silenced me with a kiss that I felt down in the deepest part of me. I kissed him back as much as was appropriate in a restaurant, and then swatted his arm. “You can’t kiss me like that in public,” I teased. “I have to stay away from mind-altering substances, remember?”
He chuckled but over the course of the meal—as we sat beside each other at one long table—our eyes kept finding one another, and our hands were clasped under the table. Mostly to keep the other from exploring, as I longed to touch him and be touched.
I looked around at the table full of faces we loved and thought of what was to come after, and it was almost too much.
Oh my God, this is happening. All of this…
Jackson noticed me surreptitiously dabbing my eyes with a napkin, and leaned in. “The universe listened,” he said, “and then it answered.”
“Big time,” I said with a laugh. “Huge.”
“It listened to you, Dar,” he said. “What you did? With the Abbotts? You saved him.”
I shook my head. “Noooo…They were right there. They just needed a little push.”
“And you gave it to them,” he said. He inclined his head at Sawyer who was talking animatedly with Gerald about Gerald’s former profession as a broker for a large accounting firm. “We might be in a world of hurt had it not been for you.”
“That’s giving me too much credit,” I said. “But this, right now? This is a good feeling. The best.”
And I want it to last forever.
We ate and talked, and then said goodbye to everyone. Sawyer made plans with the Abbotts for them to come over tomorrow, Saturday, and play with Olivia at the park.
“It’s our Saturday ritual,” Sawyer said.
“We’ll be there,” Alice said, her smile beautiful. She pulled me in for a hug. “And will you be there, my dear?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
We said our goodbyes and headed back to the Victorian with Elena, her kids, and the Smiths. Everyone stayed and chatted and played with Olivia. Sawyer’s hungry expression when his eyes met mine never left, and he pulled me into the short hallway between the living area and bedrooms.
His kiss sent currents of electricity shooting through me, and I had to cling to his shirt to keep upright. My need to be with him was a physical ache in my body, but I caught my breath and pushed gently back.
“If Henrietta catches us now, we’ll be in big trouble,” I said.
“The second everyone leaves…” Sawyer said, pulling me close again. “You’re mine.”
“I want that,” I said. “So badly, but…I have to go out for awhile.”
Sawyer frowned. “Go? Where?”
I dropped my gaze to his shirt, smoothed out a wrinkle I’d made, clutching him during our kiss. “I have an NA meeting. I have one every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.”
It still felt a little bit strange to say it out loud, but then I mustered my courage and raised my eyes to meet his head-on. My breath caught to see Sawyer looking down at with me with such a potent mix of love and pride, it brought tears to my eyes.
Acceptance, I thought, is a kind of love too.
“Dammit, Sawyer, I’ve cried all my makeup away today because of you.”
He smiled and cupped my cheek in his hand. “Go to your meeting,” he said, his lips brushing mine. “I’ll be here for you when you get back.”
I pressed myself into his touch. “You might not believe this, but that’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
He chuckled and kissed me again. “I think I can do better…tonight.”
At my meeting, I told the group everything. I watched, with joy in my heart, as the faces of the attendees—who looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep and everything to do with internal battles that never ended—filled with hope.
Afterward, Angela, the program director, approached as I was making plans to have coffee with some of the group members sometime next week.
“Wonderful share tonight, Darlene,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. “It felt good. But I’m Max-less. Any word on a new sponsor for me?”
“I’ve been talking with Max by phone, as a matter of fact,” she said. “And we feel that, given your two years’ sobriety, and your amazing progress, that you would be an ideal candidate to sponsor someone yourself.”
I scrunched up my eyes. “Come again? You want me to sponsor someone?”
“You’d still be required to attend the meetings, but you’d be doing it in a more supportive capacity to one of our own.” She smiled a gentle smile. “Do you think you’d be up for that?”
I tried to envision it. Me, as a sponsor, helping someone else. The call-ee, not the call-er.
“Yes,” I said. “I’d love to help. Any way I can.”
The warm fuzzy feeling in my stomach was burnt away on the way back to the Victorian, as I thought about Sawyer, waiting for me.
I snuck past his place, and went up to mine to take a shower. It took me forever, since I had to move so slowly with my broken foot. The swelling had gone down and the bruising had faded from purple to ugly green, but it still didn’t look pretty.
“Suck it up, foot,” I murmured as I dressed in a thong, sleep shorts, and t-shirt; no bra. “If all goes as planned, it’s going to be a rough night for you,” I said and laughed nervously.
I’d never been nervous before. I’d never waited this long to consummate an attraction.
“I’m in love with him,” I told my reflection. “This is sort of a big deal.”
It was also sort of crazy to talk to an empty studio, but I was so nervous, words popped into my brain and out of my mouth before I could stop them.
I put the boot back on my foot.
“Oh yeah, that’s sexy,” I muttered. Then heaved a breath and headed down.
I knocked on the door softly, but I heard Olivia’s little voice crowing excitedly on the other side. Sawyer answered the door with a smirk on his face, looking sexy as hell in his pajama pants and V-neck undershirt.
“Parenthood,” he said. “Destroyer of evening plans.” His eyes softened as he looked down at me. “God, you’re beautiful.”
His hands slipped around my head, to bury themselves in my hair as he kissed me deeply, with intention. I melted into his kiss, until Olivia surrounded by blocks on the floor, saw me.
“Dareen!”
I smiled against Sawyer’s lips. “To be continued.”
We stacked blocks with her, Sawyer and I lying on our sides with Olivia in the middle. I watched him smile and laugh with her easily, none of the terrible tension weighing him down. She was his and the joy of it was practically radiating out of his skin.
When Olivia started to fuss, Sawyer took her into her room to read her a story and put her to bed. My nervousness had long vanished, leaving me with a pleasant, heady anticipation of what was to come.
Sawyer emerged from Olivia’s room and smiled at me from across the living area where I was sitting on the sofa with my foot propped, flipping through an issue of The Harvard Law Review I’d found on his desk.
“She’s asleep,” he said. “Finally.”
I shook the magazine at him. “Have you been rethinking actual causation in tort law? Because according to this article, you really need to.”
He grinned and sat with me on the couch. “I’ll keep that in mind. How was your meeting?”
“Fine,” I said. “Really fine, actually. They want to make me a sponsor for someone, but I’m not sure…”
“I’m sure,” he said. “You should. You’d be amazing at it.”
“You think?”
“You saved my life, Darlene,” he said. “In more ways than one.”
He leaned in and kissed me then. A sweet, deep kiss that asked for nothing in return. But it woke that hunger in me for him, and I kissed him back, with tingles of anticipation shooting down my spine.
“Sawyer,” I breathed.
He nodded and I saw that same need darkening his eyes. I kissed him again, hard, opening my mouth for him, my tongue sliding against his. We fell into each other on the couch, hands roaming, getting acquainted, until I moaned when his hand found my breast over my shirt.
“We should move this to the bedroom,” Sawyer said, breathing hard. “If she wakes up right now, I’m going to fucking die.”
Sawyer stood up and gently pulled me to my feet, then lifted me under my arms and knees. He maneuvered carefully down the hallway so as not to crash my boot into the wall.
“That’s some sexy footwear right there,” I said.
“I love your sexy boot,” he said. He set me down in front of his bed. “I love you, Darlene. All of you.”
“I love you too, Sawyer,” I said, kissing him between words. “And it feels so…real. So unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. And it’s making me crazy to have you right now.”
He nodded. “Me too.” He kissed me hard, his hands in my hair again, angling my mouth to take him deeper. “I want you so fucking bad,” he whispered. “But your foot… I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t or…God, I don’t even care. Touch me, Sawyer. Please…”
He didn’t need more than that. He kissed me again, his tongue sweeping into my mouth, his hands in my hair, gripping. I tasted him, felt the soft, warm wetness of his tongue, the sharp bite of his teeth, the sucking of his lips. And then the sweetness of his breath, like resuscitation, breathed into me and I came alive. More alive than I’d ever felt before. My arms came around his neck and I kissed him back, touched him and pulled him to me.
“Sawyer.” My hands clasped his face, then I snaked my fingers through his hair at the back of his head. “Is this happening?”
He nodded, breathing heavily, then kissed me again, kissed me like it hurt him to stop. “I need you,” he whispered against my lips, then plunged in again, talking and kissing between words. “Wanted you… for so long…”
“You have?”
He pulled back then to look at me, his dark eyes searching and full of want and gentle reverence. “Haven’t you?”
I nodded, pressed my cheek into his hand that touched my face. “No man’s ever looked at me the way you are right now.”
His brows came together for a moment and then he said fiercely, “Good.”
“Good?”
“Yeah, good. I’m the first to see you, Darlene,” he said, the intensity of his words, his look, making my heart pound. “I’m the first to have you like this. All of you. As you are, and you are…so fucking beautiful.”
His eyes glistened in the dimness and mine blurred and stung with tears.
“Sawyer…”
“I’m glad it was me, Darlene,” he said, his voice gruff. “Me. And no one else.”
I nodded, blinked hard. “No one else,” I whispered back. “I don’t want anyone else but you, Sawyer. Only you…”
His jaw clenched for a moment and he held my face in his hands, then kissed me with hard sweeps of his tongue. “You’re mine. Let me have you…”
God, the possessiveness in his voice and the hunger in his eyes. I’d never felt so wanted, in every way, in my life.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Sawyer….”
His mouth on mine was everything, an ecstasy of taste and sensation. But then his hands slipped from my face, needing my body. He stripped off my shirt, and my hair fell down around my shoulders, above my naked breasts.
“Beautiful,” he said, trailing kisses down my neck as he took one small breast in each hand. “So beautiful.”
I fit perfectly in his palms, and my eyes fell shut when his mouth went to one nipple, sucking and teasing. His hair on my bare skin sent shivers up my shoulders, and I raked my hand through his blond curls. His mouth worked over the other nipple. Electric currents fanned across my chest and down my back, over my spine.
I lifted his shirt off the moment he came up for air, and gaped at his body.
“Jesus, Sawyer,” I said, trailing my fingers across the smooth planes of his pecs, down to the hard lines of his abdomen. “Hastings has a gym, I see.”
I didn’t wait for an answer, but took my turn putting my mouth on one small nipple, biting and nipping, and reveling in the masculine sounds I elicited from him, while my hands slid up and down the hard muscles in his back.
My mouth trailed its way up his chest, his throat, to kiss him again.
“I’m obsessed with your mouth,” I told him, taking his lower lip in my teeth and grazing it softly.
“Darlene,” he said, his voice rough with need. “Turn around. Want to kiss you everywhere.”
I heard the restraint in his voice. If I weren’t hurt, he would have manhandled me into any position, and I would have let him; would have let his hands mold me however he wanted, because what he wanted was all of me.
I turned around, and he sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled me on to his lap, my back to his chest. I gasped at his first touch at the nape of my neck. His mouth was soft and wet, his breath hot, and I couldn’t contain the little moans that escaped me as he kissed and caressed me until I was writhing.
“Sawyer…” My head fell back. “What are you doing to me?”
“Exploring.”
“God…”
This wasn’t just sex or lust. It was him touching and tasting me, becoming acquainted with my body. Sawyer knew me—my heart that beat for him and my soul that understood him—and now he wanted to know my body. In the past, it had always been the sex I’d given first, never thinking a man would want me for much more, not right away, if ever. Sawyer took it last, and his every touch and kiss and desperate groan to have me was the completion of us, not the beginning.
“God, right here,” he whispered, his mouth trailing wetly between my shoulder blades while his hands came around my breasts, squeezing and pinching until I was half out of my mind. “I’ve had fantasies about kissing you here.”
“You have?” I breathed. My ass ground against his thighs, my body pressing itself into every place he touched me; a contortion of my dancer’s sinews and ligaments to be everywhere at once—on his lap, in his hands, against his mouth.
“Fuck, yes,” he groaned, and everything tightened; his hands squeezed, and his teeth grazed my flesh. “I have to have you. Now. Are you ready for me?”
I nodded mutely, and bit back a cry as his hand slipped down, below my navel, and then under the hem of my thong. His fingers found me, rubbing a slow circle. I gasped and arched into his hand, and he went inside, two fingers delving into me.
“God, Darlene,” he hissed, scraping his teeth along my back. My hips bucked into his hand again and again. “So wet. I want you to come...”
He withdrew his hand and I gave a little cry at the loss. He stood me up and stripped my panties off, careful around my injured foot. He gently laid me on the bed, and then wasn’t careful at all as he put his mouth between my thighs. Ravenous.
“Ah, God,” I cried, one hand snaking into his hair, the other up and onto the headboard, holding on as his tongue swirled and then plunged, his groans adding vibrations of sensation. My hips undulated; I made a fist in his soft curls and pressed him harder as my legs fell apart, wide and open.
“Yes, yes, yes…”
The word came out of me in hissing whispers, then moans, then screams I had to bite back, as Sawyer drew from deep inside me, a heavy ache of ecstasy so strong I became lost in my own body. I felt only that searing, beautiful agony and Sawyer’s mouth, his tongue and lips, and his hand on my thigh, squeezing and pressing me open to him, not stopping until my cries filled the room and then tapered to whimpers as the orgasm swept through me.
I sank back against the headboard, after the currents of that first orgasm streaked through me. My legs were boneless. My arms dropped to my sides, my head lolled.
Sawyer wiped his chin with the back of his hand and went crawling back up my body.
“Not done with you yet,” he growled in my ear, and then I gasped and sat up straight as his mouth on my neck sent reviving currents through me. The desire for him—to have all of him, naked and inside me—surged through every part of my body.
I reached to pull the drawstring on his pants as my mouth found his. I kissed him hard, with gnashing teeth and a tongue that explored every inch of his luscious mouth that had just unraveled me. My hand slipped inside his pants to find him huge and hard.
“Oh my God,” I hissed against his mouth, stroking him. “This. You…I need you.”
He nodded, and bent to reach for the nightstand drawer.
I scooted back against the headboard to watch Sawyer strip out of his pants, then his boxer briefs. Another flush of heat swept between my legs at the magnificent sight of his nakedness; defined arms, pecs, abs, under smooth, tanned skin, and then the V that led down to his pure masculine beauty. My hand went to my own wet desire, needing the touch until he finished rolling on a condom.
“Yes,” I whispered, as Sawyer knelt over me, kissed me, then lifted me so he could kneel under me, sitting on his heels. I rested on his thighs for a moment, my back against the headboard and Sawyer in front of me, his beautiful dark eyes full of hard want and reverence; gentle care and heated need all at once.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said again with a soft voice, even as his hands gripped my hips painfully. “But Darlene…”
“You won’t,” I said. “I don’t care if you do. I need you…God, Sawyer, please. Please…” I craned my mouth to him and his lips met mine just as he lifted me over him and slipped inside me as I sank down.
“Oh God,” I hissed, as the huge, heavy pressure of him filled me, stretched me.
“Jesus,” he groaned, his forehead on mine. “You feel…fuck, you feel so good…So…”
“Perfect,” I whispered, tears stinging my eyes and then burning away. “This is perfect.”
Sawyer lifted his head to look at me in the dimness, and I saw everything I’d ever wanted to see in a man staring back at me.
The moment of stillness caught and held, and then the need in our bodies became ravenous and couldn’t wait one second more. His hands on my hips gripped harder, lifting me and then bringing me down on him. I wrapped my arms and legs around him, kissing him at first as the heaviness of him pushed into me, touching deep, and I undulated my hips to bring him deeper, to take his every thrust harder.
Kissing became impossible, and Sawyer reached above me to grip the headboard with both hands, caging me in his arms. I reached up too, held on and lifted into his thrusts, to meet his every movement. My soft breasts brushed against the hard muscles of his chest, while the intense pressure of him inside me grew and tightened, coiled into something ready to explode. I couldn’t get enough of him. His warm scent, the taste of his kiss when our mouths clashed frantically, the feel of his powerful body pinning mine against the headboard.
“More,” I whispered. “Sawyer... I want more.” I could barely speak, barely comprehended the words that fell from my mouth. “Take me…”
Though it didn’t seem possible, Sawyer’s hips moved faster and harder at my words. He reached one hand down to hook my leg onto the crook of his elbow, to cradle my injured foot, while taking him somehow deeper into me with every thrust.
I could barely hold on as the tight coil he’d been brushing and coaxing and touching inside me came apart like an explosion. My entire body stiffened; I arched into him, opened my body to him, a scream wrenched out of me as the orgasm rocketed up from where we were joined.
“Yes,” he groaned, his thrusts slower now, hard and deep. “Come for me, Darlene. Just like that…Christ, you’re so beautiful.”
And in my ecstatic delirium, I realized I was going to be his first orgasm in almost a year.
He waited until me.
I held his face in my hands reverently, kissed his broad mouth deeply. “Now you,” I whispered against his lips. “Come for me, Sawyer. Come inside me.”
I felt his own body tense, every one of his taut muscles drawing tighter. His hipbones ground against mine, he was so deep in me. I pressed myself into his last thrusts, nails digging into his ass to hold him tight. He let go of my leg to brace himself on the bed, his other hand gripping my hip to push into me. His mouth found my neck, and he bit down, danced the line between pleasure and pain, and came against me, inside me, the masculine sounds of his release breathing hotly against my throat.
I wrapped my arms around him as he shuddered, wound my fingers in his hair, and held him as the tension in him ebbed and our chests met and retreated, over and over, like a tide, as we caught our breaths together.
“Holy hell,” Sawyer groaned into my neck.
“I know,” I said. My fingers curled in his hair. The aftershocks of the orgasm made me shudder against him. “Oh my God, feel that?”
He nodded against my shoulder. “Everywhere. I feel you everywhere.”
I held him tighter, his beautiful body that was warm, soft skin, over hard muscle and power he had unleashed against me so magnificently.
After a time, Sawyer lifted his head to look at me blearily, drunk with the pleasure and utterly spent. I was sure I looked the same—my hair a tangled mess with strands falling over my face and billowing with my breath. Sawyer’s eyes sharpened as his hand came up to brush them away.
“Darlene…”
He fought for more words but found none.
“Just kiss me,” I said, and he did.
And in that kiss, I felt his emotions he still hadn’t found the words for, but knew that he would. We had time now, and the freedom to be happy. His heart that he had kept locked away for so long was mine. He gave it to me in every soft look, and touch, and in the trust he placed in me to care for his little girl.
And in return, I gave him my entire self; I didn’t know how to give less. I loved him with all of me, even the tarnished parts that would always bear the bruises of my past.
“I love you, Sawyer.” I stroked his cheek. “Always. I won’t ever stop loving you.”
“I love you,” he whispered. “I love you, Darlene. God, I love you. I don’t want to stop saying it. I can’t say it enough.”
His eyes were dark and beautiful in the dimness, and I loved how I look reflected there. And it was real, his love; not something my lonely heart had manufactured to hold on to, and I knew I’d feel this way, like I did in that moment, forever.