Chapter 22

Sawyer

I’m merciless. And she loves it.

I’m talking about the board game, folks—eyes up here.

I beat her ten victory points to eight. We’re so involved in wiping each other across the land of Catan that we forget to check on the boys, but when we finish playing and go downstairs, we discover them sound asleep on their side-by-side sleeping bags.

I bend down, smooth Jonah’s hair, and kiss the top of his head. Beside me, I feel Elle crouch, whispering I love you to Madden, kissing his cheek. When she stands, our eyes snag across the sea of nylon, artificial down, and small boy, and we share a smile. It is a smile that says this single-parenting thing is really hard and totally worth it.

I follow her upstairs. Really, it’s just another excuse to watch her muscles and the other awesomeness that is Elle move under that stretchy fabric. Apparently I am a weak man, because as she reaches the top step, I reach out and touch. Just a quick swipe of my hand over the sweet curve of her ass, but my badly behaved fingers squeeze.

We reach the top step just then; she steps into the kitchen and turns to face me, and my hand, which seems unwilling to let go of its handful of flesh, tugs her tight up against me.

She makes a sound, a gasp, a moan, I don’t know—I just know it goes straight to my dick, which is already ragingly hard at the feel of her through briefs and jeans and the absurdly thin fabric of those wretched pants. I yank her closer (as if there’s such a thing) and my mouth finds hers fiercely, aggressively—I would be worried I was hurting her except she’s whimpering and clutching at me and whispering my name.

She kicks the downstairs door closed and I push her up against it—vertical seems to be our jam—and we kiss and kiss, tongues grappling and teasing, hands roving.

I grab her tank top and pull it up because if I don’t get my mouth on her nipples in the next three seconds—

I don’t know. There is no end to that sentence. It’s an imperative.

She is wearing a white bra that barely covers her nipples and is trimmed with a thin rim of lace. I want to dive in, but I want to savor what I see more. The lush abundance—her breasts are gorgeously full for such a petite woman—the pale pink nipples, the dusky pink disks that frame them. I nuzzle a curve, lick her areola, circle in and find her nipple so tight against my tongue that both of us gasp. I tease her, matching my tongue on this side with my fingers on the other, and she arches her back and pushes into my face, all that smooth flesh right there for the tasting.

I slide my hand down the flat of her stomach to the waistband of her yoga pants, breach the elastic and linger there, teasing my fingertips across the soft flesh of her lower belly.

She tips her pelvis up toward my fingers, asking for more, which makes my dick surge forward in anticipation.

“Foreplay,” I remind her, but really I’m reminding myself. We’re not going to have sex tonight, no matter how much I want to.

That doesn’t mean we can’t do lots of other things.

Running the risk that interrupting the flow here means she’ll come to her senses and kick me out, I say, “Can we—should we? Go upstairs? Is there a lock on your door?”

She hesitates.

“No sex,” I say, as my body tries to argue exactly the opposite. But this is what separates men from beasts—we get to overrule our dicks. “Not till the wedding.”

She bursts out laughing, and it takes me a moment to hear what I’ve said.

“Trevor’s wedding,” I clarify, grinning. “No sex till then, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make you feel good. I want to make you feel real good.”

“I can get behind that,” she says with a groan, tugging her bra up and shirt down. “Jesus, Sawyer, I really thought you were going to get me off without even touching my clit.”

My turn to groan. “Can you say that whole sentence again?” I’m exceptionally glad to note that her propensity to say whatever comes into her head applies to sex, too. I may not talk much myself, but dirty-wise I am a guy who appreciates talk, the more the merrier.

Instead she grabs my hand and leads me up the stairs. I realize that her house’s layout is a mirror image of mine just as she turns into a bedroom and flips on a light.

The decor is dark—mostly forest green and cream, a green rug, thick drapes, and a quilt with overlapping fern patterns. I hate it immediately.

“It was Trevor’s taste.” She bites her lip and gives me a chagrined look, like the one I gave her after I inadvertently blurted out that I hadn’t played a board game since Lucy died. I think both of us would like to forget for a while about the other two people in the room and just enjoy each other. So I decide that’s what’s going to happen. I pick her up and, tickling her, deposit her on the bed and throw myself down next to her, and then, before either of us can think, I kiss her.

Kissing her lying down is a whole new level of insane. I climb over her and settle my weight on my elbows; she spreads her legs and invites me to tuck my hips—including my voracious denim-clad erection—between. God, it’s good, the pressure, the heat of her, the squeeze of her thighs around my legs, the sound she makes when I wiggle, barely enough to count as movement, against her.

“That feels so good,” she whispers, wiggling back.

I slow us down so we can both worship the way it feels to kiss like this—the nibble of her mouth at my lips, the stroke of her tongue against mine, the heat and wetness, the sucking and releasing and giving and taking, the sounds in my chest and in the back of her throat. I could do this all night, but I don’t think she’d let me. Because mixed into the sweetness and the softness, the tug and slip and slick, I feel her teeth and fingernails and another wiggle, this one clearly of frustration, against me.

I turn onto my side and slide my hand up her tank top. I spread my fingers across the expanse of soft skin, I tug at the half-cups of her bra, I tweak those nipples until she says, “Fuck you, Sawyer, you’re a pussy-tease.”

Yes. I knew she’d be like this the first night we fucked, even though I don’t think she said a word while I was inside her. Still, somehow I knew she would be rude and dirty and excellent in exactly this way.

So obligingly, I slide my hand into her pants, part her lips, with their soft curls, slick her wetness all over her, but especially around her clit, circling.

“You gotta tell me, baby,” I say. “I’ll give you choices, but you gotta tell me.”

She whimpers.

I make the smallest circles I can, teasing the innermost bud.

“Mmm-hmm,” she hums.

I widen the circle a little, letting the hood and inner lips cover her so it’s not so intense.

“Yes!” she cries.

My hand slides lower on a sweet slick of her wetness, my fingers finding her wet heat, probing, entering, thrusting.

“God, Sawyer, yes.”

“Which?”

“All—of—the—above—”

“I should have known.”

I stop for just long enough to push her shirt up and her bra down, giving me access to her breasts, to her beaded nipples; I take one in my mouth and send my hand back down her pants. I fuck her with my fingers until she’s fucking back, and then, with my thumb, I make big gentle circles, spiraling in tighter and tighter until all I have to do is tap her bare clit—

And then I get what I’ve been working for, a low, muddy murmur of: “Sawyer please, Sawyer, yes, please, oh my God, oh my God, just like that, Sawyer, Sawyer, Sawyer, Sawyer, SawYER!”