Chapter 15
I thought about what Roxie and Natalie had said all day. That it wasn’t perfect for them, that it was sticky and messy and crazy, but at a certain point they just gave up and gave in. There was a part of me that wanted to give in.
So give in.
Brunch just proved I couldn’t. Full of talk of family and tradition and shared memories and common ground. People take for granted the primer that runs like a baseline throughout much of your modern American family. Half the people at the table didn’t know one another a year ago, and yet they all had a similar background, a shorthand when thinking back on their collective childhood and how it just was. I didn’t have that. I didn’t have half of that.
So they were planning on brunch again together next year. Same time, same place. The idea of this, just the casualness of people making plans without a care in the world. If someone couldn’t make it, eh. No biggie. If Natalie and Oscar decided to spend their holiday in Manhattan with her family instead, no biggie. Plans change, one sweet family vignette can easily be swapped out with another because most people have Norman Fucking Rockwell on tap, ready to serve up at a moment’s notice.
Plans get changed. And sometimes people get left out and left behind and forgotten without a second thought. But if you didn’t make those plans, see, and you kept it all loose and free and no commitments, no ties, no binds . . . well then. You were the only person who had the power to break your heart.
I was the only one who could break my heart.
I sat on my balcony for hours, ignoring the texts I knew were pouring in from Roxie and Natalie, just rocking in my chair, watching the lake, relishing the outside. The air was cool, gentle, soft. Outside. I could hear owls calling to each other, the soft lap of the waves rocking the dock below, the wind in trees wearing their new spring green. Outside. The night sky was clear, a thousand stars twinkling down on this Easter Sunday. Outside.
It was easier on the outside.
I heard the knocking on my door, but I ignored it. It came once, twice, then three times, each time a little harder and more insistent. I ignored them all. Things were cracking open wide, and I needed the space outside to handle it.
But when I heard my front door open, and I heard footsteps walking across the floor inside, I knew who it was.
“Not a good time right now,” I said, my voice sounding gruff and scratchy even to me.
“You don’t have a headache, do you?” he asked. From inside.
“No,” I answered. From outside.
“I’d love to know what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours,” he said. Inside.
I let out a watery sigh, squeezing my eyelids shut tight. “No, you really don’t.” Outside. “How was the rest of the day?”
Footsteps across the floor. When he spoke, he was just inside the balcony door. “Fine. Good. Smooth. Terrible.”
“Terrible?”
“It wasn’t the same,” he said softly. “Without you.”
I wanted to be inside. Oh God, I wanted it more than anything. I wanted my own piece of it, my piece of this American pie that everyone else had. To be included, in step, in touch, cared for and caring, inside. But could I do it?
I heard him take one more step, his footsteps changing from soft muffled carpet to sharp scraping slate. He was outside now, with me.
I stood, turned, and saw him standing there. Tall and strong, freckled and bespectacled, his warm eyes connected with mine and there he was.
“Hi,” he said, his voice low and raspy. He’d worked hard all day, making this day special for everyone he encountered.
“Hi,” I said, my own voice sounding breathless. I hovered just out of reach, on the balls of my feet, teetering right on the edge. I wanted to turn around, to sink back into my rocking chair and tell him to go away, stay inside, stay safe. But then he smiled, you see. And I ran. What had been cracking open wide all day now completely disintegrated and I gave in and fucking ran. Toward him.
I threw myself into his arms, and he caught me, half inside, half outside. I was overwhelmed, but this time instead of panic, I felt butterflies and moonbeams and no small amount of straight-up lust.
I ran to him because I had to. Under a night sky literally on top of the world, where no one could see and no one could hear, and then my mouth was on his and it was everything.
I hit him with such force he groaned, but he groaned into my mouth, which was a little piece of sexy heaven. In an instant his arms went around me. In that same instant, I wrapped around him, my hands wild and my fingers searching, seeking, finding heat and warmth and smooth skin and a tie goes flying. And then his hands were all over me, pushing at my dress straps, his lips pulling at my skin there, on my shoulders and on my collarbone, finding willing and wanting and wanton flesh there, and my breath goes sighing. Walls are crumbling down and feet are stumbling around and the stars are above and my fingers are below and a belt goes zinging while my skin is singing.
His fingers plunged into my hair, anchoring me rough and tender as I sank to my knees, cracking my kneecap on the cold slate, but I didn’t even care because his breath is uneven and choppy and his back thuds up against the stacked chimney and tiny bits of sooty brick rain down on me and everything smells like forgotten bits of burn and char and what once was, but under that there is the hint, the promise of underground green growing things and renewal and spring.
New. Fresh. Clean. Untarnished. Simple.
And, oh my God, I need to have this man now.
“Clara. Clara.” He said my name with urgency, scraping the sky with heat and need. I scrambled at his zipper and he’s there, he is heat and need, and as I open my mouth and bring him inside, his entire body stiffens and his hands freeze in my hair and my name becomes the only word he knows because right now, under these stars, I’m the only woman he knows and needs and wants and . . .
He’s fucking incredible. And he’s fucking my mouth. This man with the pocket square is fucking my mouth. I chanced a look up and good lord he’s silhouetted against blazing stars, his head thrown back and the world is his jawline and it’s the single most erotic thing that I’ve ever experienced.
Guttural. Frenzied. I released him only to take him back into my mouth again, licking and thrusting with my tongue as he thrust against it, barely in control, and that was more than okay because I love when this man loses control and puts his hands on me.
And he did. Holy fuck, he did. His fingers dug deep into my hair, tugging and pulling, and why does that feel so empowering when it shouldn’t, but holy fuck, it did. His hands were large, his fingers long, wrapped around my head, lost, then found again as he moved me on him.
I grasped him firmly at the base, fingertips trailing up and down as I released him from my mouth slowly, only to take him in again once more, slow and sure.
“That’s. Incredible,” he murmured, and his fingertips moved, untwisting from my hair, sliding across my face, slow and sure. Sweetly, he traced down over my cheekbones, along my jaw, so gently. “Incredible.”
And then he moves, pulling me off him and kneeling in front of me, kissing me again, licking at my lips, and once more I opened for him, tasting salt and sweet and Archie everywhere.
“I need to see you,” he whispered, and both of us scrambled for the buttons on my dress. In a tumble of hands and fingers, my elbow goes one way and his face goes another and his glasses went flying off into the darkness.
“Sorry.” I chuckled, but marveled at how open he seemed like this, nothing between me and those beautiful indigo eyes.
He hung his head, laughing himself. “The terrible part is I can’t see a thing without those, everything is literally a blur.”
His hair tickled pleasantly at my collarbone. “That’s something a girl loves to hear.”
“Won’t be a moment,” he said, patting around on the balcony next to him. “Now, this is sexy, isn’t it?”
“Are you kidding?” I asked, leaning up on my elbows to watch him, trousers askew, tie hanging sideways, hair every which way. “It’s ridiculous how sexy you are.”
“Hmm,” he said, still looking for his glasses.
“Go right.” I guided him. “They’re right there by the—”
“Shit.”
I gulped. “—railing.”
They were long gone, pushed over the side by Archie’s roving hands. “Unbelievable,” he muttered. “Of course this would happen.”
I sat up, then crawled toward where he was. “Come on, you don’t need to see me,” I said, running one hand down his back. “To see me.” I picked up his left hand and brought it to my breast. His breath caught. “Tell me.”
“Tell you?” His voice was thick and strangled.
“What you feel. How I feel.” I brought his other hand to my face, turning into it and pressing a kiss in the center of his palm. “What you’re thinking.”
“Eventually, Clara, you’re going to have to tell me what you’re thinking.”
Oh. I nodded, unable to speak, unable to answer, but knowing if I was giving over to this, I was giving everything over. I nodded again into his hand, and that was what he needed.
The hand on my breast brushed lightly across, the cotton of my dress thin enough that I could feel his fingers curving as the heat of my skin guided him. I shivered, my skin reacting to his touch instantly. Reaching up, I thumbed one button open, then another, pulling at the bodice of my dress to grant him access. I wanted, no I needed, to feel his hands on my bare skin.
“Tell me,” I murmured again, needing his words as much as his touch.
“You’re . . . soft,” he said, a faint smile ghosting across his lips. “So soft.”
“Mm-hmm.” I sighed as his fingers found the opening of my dress and slipped inside.
“Lace?” he asked. His thumb brushed across my nipple and my back arched.
“Mm-hmm.” I sighed again.
“It’s rough, a little, I can feel the tiny threads catching against the grooves on my fingertips,” he said. “But then your skin, so smooth.”
I slipped down onto my elbows, my head dropping back as he moved over me. His mouth trailed kisses down the column of my neck, licking at the base of my throat, nipping at my collarbone. He held himself above me, his hand still exploring. He circled my nipple, feeling it rise under his touch.
He smiled. “You’re excited.”
I could feel him against my thigh, hard and thick. “You’re not?”
His response was to nip harder, his teeth nibbling along the top of my breast, which was now rising and falling with my every breath, growing faster and more heated with every kiss. He slipped my bra strap from my shoulder, dipped his head, and put his mouth on me.
Every nerve ending twisted, every neuron fired, and every toe pointed as his rough tongue dragged across my nipple.
“Mmm . . . Archie . . .” I sighed, my back arching off the ground as his lips surrounded me. But where I was a wriggly squiggly mess beneath him, he suddenly stilled. His back stiffened, his hands froze, his entire demeanor changed.
“Archie?” I asked, reaching up to smooth his hair back from his brow.
“I need to tell you something,” he whispered, still frozen.
“Okay . . .” I replied, wondering what in the world? The tension beneath us had changed, shifted somehow. He was worried, anxious, and still frozen. “You want to tell me, or my boob?”
He snorted, his breath warm on the very boob in question. But the tension broke once again, and I could see him relax, if only a little. I curled my arm beneath my head, propping myself up so I could see him. He leaned on one arm over me, his other hand reflexively pushing the missing eyeglasses up his nose.
He was still nervous.
“I’ve only slept with one woman my entire life.”
Oh. Oh . . .
“I’ve only ever had one first time. Ashley and I were sixteen, we’d snuck away to her parents’ beach house. We had candles, and wine, and soft music, and it was all very planned out, very perfect.”
I mentally flashed on the backseat of a 1972 Chevelle with Chuckie Sullivan, Nickelback on the CD player. I shuddered.
He took my shudder as laughter. “I know, it sounds silly, right?”
“Not silly, it actually sounds really nice,” I replied, smoothing his hair back again.
He leaned into it, closing his eyes, turning his head to kiss the center of my palm. “I was just thinking how funny it is, losing your virginity. It’s something that happens to everyone, but in such different ways.
“The point is, I was with Ashley, and only Ashley. I’ve never done this with anyone else. I wasn’t sure I’d even want to do this, after she was gone.”
“Listen, Archie, we don’t have to—”
“Until you, Clara,” he interrupted, his eyes flashing open and searing into mine. “I want you, I fucking want you more than I ever thought possible, but I’m . . . well . . . a little out of my depth here.”
“Archie?”
“Yes?”
I moved swiftly, rising up and rolling to the side, bringing him with me, rolling us both so that now I was on top, moving his hand down to my leg and hitching it around his hip. “Believe me when I say, you’ve so got this. But if you want to stop then you just say the word.”
His eyes, good lord those eyes. Deeply blue, deeply troubled, at war with his past and his present. They searched my own for answers. I couldn’t tell him what to do, but I could give him a hint, couldn’t I?
Breathless, I slid his hand farther along my thigh. Breathless, I hooked his thumb through the band of my panties. And then, still breathless, I placed both of my hands on his chest, waiting to see what he would do.
He did nothing. His chest rose and fell, and I rose and fell right along with him. My head was telling me to smile, to reassure him, to tell him it was okay and we could take this slow and at whatever pace he needed.
My heart was telling me to be patient, because any second now Archie’s internal war would be over and he’d be ready for fast filthy fucking, the kind without candles and soft music.
Any second now.
Any second now.
Any second n—
His thumb moved. The thumb, the thumb that controlled the fate of my panties. And of the world. It was one and the same as that perfect thumb dragged against my skin, hooked to the flimsiest scrap of silk you ever did see, even if Archie couldn’t without his glasses, and God bless America if he didn’t drag those panties right off.
And then I took over. Because I knew he needed me to. And because I wanted to. I rose up over him, my dress hiked up around my hips, and breasts spilling out of the top, and grasped him firmly, positioning him just so that when I slipped down down down he
Oh
He
Was
There
And
Oh
He
Was
So
Hard
and something very much like wonder crossed his face as I took him inside of me.
And then something exactly like lust crowded in as he crowded in, Christ he crowded in, filling me up and raising me up and he thrust into me from below.
Uncertainty was gone. Should haves and what ifs were gone. And in their place was pure carnal heat. Archie’s hands gripped my hips, pushing and pulling as he filled me up and I moved on him, rocking, feeling every ridiculous inch of him inside, he was inside while we were outside and it was frightening and maddening and Jesus was I coming and how could I be coming already and I shuddered and shook as all the colors ran and the world narrowed down before it exploded.
He sat up beneath me, lips on my breast and hands on my backside as I rode him hard, rode him to another orgasm and another, anchored by those searching eyes, swirling ink and beautiful as his own powerful orgasm shook through his body.
When his hips finally stilled, when his fingers released my skin, when the cords in his neck finally receded and the flush in his cheeks flooded in, we collapsed onto the balcony, his lips alternating between dropping tired kisses onto my neck and whispering my name.
Clara, he said, over and over again. God, I loved hearing this man say my name.