BRITTANY
“You know her, don’t you?” I ask, as I can see the deer in the headlights look in Jason’s eyes as he tries to change the subject off the interior decorator.
“Um, yeah! Duh, she decorated this apartment, Sherlock.” He pulls me along behind him. “I have that minty toothpaste you used to like so much and I have that cinnamon one you liked too. Which one will it be tonight?”
“The minty one. So, I’m probably going to hate myself for asking this, but have you slept with Donna?” I watch his cheek quiver as he clenches his jaw. “Fuck! You have!”
He pulls me into the bathroom and opens a drawer with about ten brand-new toothbrushes and pulls out a red one for me. With a smile, he says, “Look, your favorite color.”
I look over the rest of them in the drawer. “Yeah, seeing as you have one of each color, how could you go wrong?”
“That’s a pretty negative way to look at it.” He pulls another drawer open and picks out a small tube of the minty toothpaste and opens everything up and puts some on the brush. “Here you go, sweetcakes. Brush ’em up.”
Watching him as he moves around in the bathroom, I can see he’s nervous. As well he should be. If he thinks I’m about to give him another chance to finish annihilating my heart, he has another think coming.
After I brush the puke away, I rinse my mouth and turn to find him coming back in the bathroom with a T-shirt. “Kick those heels off and get into my T-shirt, baby.”
I do as he’s said to and start to pull my dress off, then decide to really put the screws to him. I hold my arms up. “Baby, can you get this off for me?”
He stops and looks at me with a little fear in his eyes. “If I make love to you tonight then that’s all I get, isn’t it? One night?”
I nod and wiggle my body. He shakes his head and places the T-shirt on the counter and turns away from me and leaves the bathroom.
Well, damn!
I take off my bra and panties to so he can have quick access to my goods just in case I get him to take the one night offer I have on the table instead of the week he really wants. The T-shirt feels so soft on my body, I run my hands all over it as I walk into the bedroom, finding him in a T-shirt and PJ bottoms and climbing into the bed.
He pats the side next to him. “Come on, snuggle-monkey.”
I act as if I’m going to go around the bed to get in then I stop and climb right over him. With a stop mid-straddle, I look down at him and watch his jaw tighten. “You sure, no boom boom, baby?”
His hands move up my arms as he looks all over me. “No, I want more than just that.”
“Okay, then,” I say, then climb the rest of the way over and climb under the covers with him. “Then this is how it’s going to be. No sex until the end of the week.”
“Ha!” He turns on his side and runs his hand over my shoulder. “You’re really funny, Princess. Since when do you get to be in charge?”
I feel my eyebrows raise up high. “Since you fucked a bunch of women while you were supposed to be my boyfriend.”
“That shit aside,” he says, like it’s not a big deal that he did that, “I’m going to show you tonight that sex is not all I’m after with you. Now, tomorrow is a different story. The whole next week is a different story. You see, I plan to show you just how much I really do care about and love you. Making love is a must if I’m to show you what you mean to me, Pumpkin-nose.”
“Jason, what’s the real plan? I want to know your real intentions with me. There can be no other women if I’m going to give you another chance. How many women are in your little app as of right now?”
He goes a little pale and makes a whimpering sound. “A few.”
Running my hand through his dark locks, I say, “If you can’t be truthful then this is useless.”
He sits up and picks his phone up off the nightstand. “Look, let me show you how this works and what my personal page shows. And at the end of the week, if you agree to give me a long-term chance, I’ll end it with every one of these women.”
“You look a little green, Jason. You sure about this?”
“I am more positive than I’ve ever been about anything. You see, I’ve felt this odd sensation inside of me since my birthday. I turned thirty, you know.”
“Oh, yeah!” I smile at him. “So how is on the other side, old dude?”
With a smirk, he says, “I’m not old. I do have to confess an odd thing has kind of been plaguing me since that day, though. An uneasy feeling. One that had me kind of craving something. but no real idea of what it was.”
“Steak, probably.” I nod as I think about a nice juicy steak.
He laughs. “Not steak. Not any kind of food. Just an urgent thing that had me on edge with no idea how to fix it. I tried sex, but I’m sure you know that didn’t work. I tried adding in a new chick and that didn’t work. I still felt anxious. All the way until I saw your pretty face in that chair this evening. The feeling went away like magic as soon as I saw you, peanut butter cup.”
“Me?” I roll my eyes. “You expect me to believe that load of crap?”
“You know what, Britt? You roll the shit out of your eyes now. You never used to do that.”
“I used to believe the words that came out of people’s mouths. You taught me not to. So you can thank yourself for the eye rolling thing.” I blow him a kiss and send him a wink.
“Since I caused it, I will correct it.” He pulls me up and makes me sit up and look at him. “Rules for this coming week. Number one, no rolling of eyes. Number two, you have to believe what I say. Number three, you have to let me love you.”
“Number four,” I say. “You have to not boss me around like I’m a dumb teenager.”
He takes in a deep breath. “Number five, you have to stay here with me every night. Number six, you have to let me take you anywhere I want to.”
“Rule number seven,” I say as I hold up seven fingers. “You need to stop making rules. I’m losing count.”
He laughs. “One more rule. You have to let me kiss you whenever I want to.”
His kiss is a thing I miss and often dream about. Jason used to send me to another world with his kisses. I nod and smile at him. “Agreed.”
I guess he feels like he’s accomplished something and he takes me by the shoulders and pulls me down with him and holds me tight then moves me around to lie on his chest.
His heart makes little muffled beats under his shirt and muscles. His hand runs back and forth over my arm. “You feel like home to me, Britt.”
My eyes start to burn as I recall the last time he held me this way. It was the afternoon before I left for college. We were at his little apartment and we’d made love all morning long and finally fell asleep around noon.
He held me just like this. And eight hours later he was getting a blowjob three houses down from mine!
My body tenses up and he feels it. “What’s wrong?”
“I was just remembering the last time you held me like this.”
“That shouldn’t make you tense, apple fritter.” He laughs a little.
“The thought brought me all the way to when I caught you later with that girl’s head in your lap.”
He groans. “Fuck! One more rule. Leave the past where it belongs. Don’t bring it up anymore. I can’t change it. If I could, I would. I can only change the future. So no more talking about anything that has happened. No talk about the women I’ve been seeing either. The truth is I have been seeing Donna and a couple of other women from New York too.”
“I knew it!” I hiss.
He tightens his arm around me, holding me down as I squirm to get up and tell him off. “I’m not going to lie to you, Britt. I’m going to be truthful. And faithful for this week. And if I feel like I can’t be faithful to you, I’ll let you go at the end of the week. I’ll never hurt you again. That I swear to you.”
I lie still and think about what he’s really saying. He’s really offering me himself. “So, you’ll be faithful this entire week? And you swear if you feel like you can’t be faithful to me forever. you’ll let me go?”
“I promise.”
“Hmm. That’s kind of a great deal. But that has to go both ways, doesn’t it? If I feel like being with anyone else, then I need to not go past the week too.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to start up something and you start fucking around on me this time. We’re getting too old for that shit.”
“You are, anyway,” I say with a giggle. “I’m only twenty-five.”
He smacks my ass as he laughs. It makes it ache a bit for him to do it more and I have to bite my lip not to ask him to give me five more. I rake my nails over his T-shirt covered chest and wish like hell he’d take it off.
His lips touch the top of my head. “I didn’t realize it until I saw you, Britt. I love you. I always have and I think I always will.”
I hold my breath. It’s so hard to allow myself to believe him. How can you really love someone and continuously mess around on them?
“Do you think you have some kind of a sex addiction?” I ask him.
“I don’t. I have something, though. Women do come to me. I swear that’s true. I lack the thing that tells me to tell them the word ‘no’. I can’t explain it.”
“Do you think you can really learn how to?” I ask as I run my fingers over his abs that are hiding under the dark T-shirt.
I inch my fingers lower and lower until I manage to get them under the hem of the shirt and then I slip my hand under it and feel his warm skin under my palm.
The hills of his defined abs make me wet and I hold in a groan as he says, “With your help, baby, I think I can. I’m going to need your help, though. I know I can’t do it alone. Not that I’ve tried at all. But I want to now. I want something real and I want it with you.”
“Odd how you decided that so quickly, don’t you think?” I move my hand slowly, relishing the feel of his muscles.
“Odd? No, not really. Not when you take into account our three-year history. Not when you take in the fact I’ve never felt what I feel with you with any of the other women. And there have been more than plenty to compare that to.”
“Shut up,” I say as I grit my teeth. “No more talk about the other women and the sheer numbers of them. And as a token of respect for that, I won’t talk about all the dick I’ve had in the last six years either.”
“Fuck!” he says, and I feel his body quiver. “Deal. I never want to hear you say a thing again about how much dick you’ve had. I threw up a little when you said it. I do want to ask you this, though. And please tell me only the truth. Have you felt anything near with anyone else what you feel with me, Britt?”
“No, I haven’t. That’s the truth.”
“Good. Maybe you and I were meant to be.”
My brain screams at me to run. It tells me I’m in mortal danger with this man. He cannot be faithful. But I shut it off as my body heats with the touch of his fingers moving over my back.
His lips touch the top of my head again and I utter the words my body wants to tell him but my brain tells me not to, “I love you, Jason.”
The groan he makes vibrates my entire body.
Oh, yeah!