Mara trying to be sexy was an entirely different experience from Mara just being that way naturally. She stood on my doorstep in the same jeans she’d been wearing, but instead of a T-shirt, she wore a black tank top which hugged her curves with her leather jacket. She’d done something to her face, make up, but her eyes looked bigger, her lips fuller, and I stared for a full minute before I caught myself and let her in.

She stepped inside almost gingerly and looked around.

“Can I take your coat?” It sounded dumb even to me.

I helped her slip out of it and hung it in the coat closet and led her to the kitchen.

“Who’s at the bar?” she asked, hugging her arms around her body.

I couldn’t stop looking at her. Snap the hell out of it, Murphy. “Penny is there. She owed me a couple closes. You haven’t met her yet. A local girl working her way through her degree at the community college in the next town.”

She glanced around my living room. Scarcely finished with a gray microfiber couch, a beat up rug, a tv, coffee table. I didn’t spend much time at home, so I’d never really put effort into decorating. The same could be said about the bar too.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” she joked before sitting in the edge of the couch.

My fingers shook, and I tucked them behind my back. Dating wasn’t a new thing for me, and yet, I felt myself acting like an idiot kid with a school boy crush. “Do you want a drink?” Something safe, something I could handle without falling over myself.

She ran her fingers through her hair, curled in a mess of loose waves, before nodding. “A drink will make this easier.”

“Um…I’m not sure about that answer, but I’ll get you a beer?”

Another nod and I grabbed a couple beers out of the refrigerator before sitting next to her on the couch. “Did you want to come over for a particular reason?”

She situated on the couch and shifted one knee up so she could face me. I noted she wore the same scuffed up leather boots, and something in me relaxed. “I want to have sex.”

I spit beer in a spray across my lap. “Not what I was expecting you to say.”

While I mopped up what I could with my T-shirt, she continued. “I know why you’ve been hesitant to sleep with me. I get it, and I want to tell you why I’ve been pushing you so hard to do it.”

I sat the beer on the wood table and gave her my full attention.

“Being with you is the only time I feel normal. I can’t even articulate this right. I’m sorry, but when you and I are together, I feel valued and validated, and l like that what I want actually matters. And by pushing you, I was chasing after that feeling.”

Slightly confused, but also slowly merging onto her train of thought. “So you wanted to sleep with me because I care about how you feel?”

“Yes and no. It’s not just the care you take with me. It’s how I feel when I’m with you.”

She ran her knuckles down her sternum. “I can’t explain it right.” Her eyes crinkled, and I could see the distress of messing something up she’d probably planned out in her mind the entire ride over. I took the beer out of her hand, sat it by mine, and pulled her in.

“You don’t have to try and explain it to me. I told you once before, you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone.”

A tremor started in her hands, and she pulled them back into her lap. “I do have to explain it, so you can understand that wanting to be with you wasn’t just about finishing what started all those years ago, or me getting some sort of peace, although that part doesn’t hurt.”

“Can I ask what prompted you telling me all this right now?”

None of this came easily for her. And certainly not sharing things with me in such a frank discussion on my couch like normal people. She and I were not normal and never would be, but if having a talk on the couch like civilized people made her feel better, I’d play the part until I could show her what’s better, what’s more.

She twisted her hands together, seeking out the beer I moved away with her gaze, but she didn’t grab it. “I just want to be honest with you. Also, therapy opened my eyes a little today. Talking about feelings doesn’t have to involve screaming or tears. I can tell you how I feel, and your opinion and mine hold the same weight.”

“Did you think it didn’t?”

Whatever she’d gone through in these hospitals had changed something intrinsic in Mara. Where she’d been bold and unyielding before, now she remained hard as stone, because she feared letting any of what she locked inside out. Years of people telling her she didn’t know what she was talking about, or that her opinions didn’t matter, had led her to believe it to be true.

I gripped her still wringing hands between my palms. “Your opinion and your feelings will always matter to me.”

The look she gave me stripped everything I’d been using to hide behind my decision not to take her to bed. There was no more fight in me.

I stood and pulled her to standing. “Take off your boots.”

Her lips twisted softly into a smile before she toed off her boots and stepped around them toward me. I led her to my bedroom. As equally furnished as the living room in soft grays and maroons. A bed, a dresser, a nightstand, and a lamp took up very little space in a large bedroom.

“Well, at least your consistent with your decorating.” She chuckled, but I didn’t miss the way her voice shook.

I backed her slowly toward my bed until her knees hit. “You don’t have to be nervous.”

She tossed her chin up. “I’m not nervous,” she lied.

Oh, that wouldn’t do. I wanted to set her on a slow boil for me before we even started. “Of course you’re not.” Instead of arguing further, I dropped my mouth to the pulse point on her neck and wrapped my arms around her the same moment her knees buckled.

“Not nervous at all,” I said, lowering us both to sitting on the edge of the bed.

I pulled down one strap of her tank top, and no bra. My cock went rigid thinking of only the thin layer of fabric between her breasts and my mouth.

“What has you so nervous then?”

“The truth?”

I dropped a kiss to the sharp corner of her shoulder. “Of course.”

“I’m practically a virgin. I mean my body isn’t, but mentally, I haven’t been with anyone in a very long time.”

I worked my way across her clavicle to her other shoulder and pulled the other strap down her upper arm. Her skin glowed pale in the soft light of my bedside lamp. I dropped a kiss there to make sure we were even.

“Well, what if I promise to be gentle. Would that make you less nervous?” I asked, tracing the outline of a scar with my lips.

“I’d think you were lying. I read your emails, mister. I know what sordid details your mind can conjure when put to the task.”

Woman had me there. I could be creative when I wanted to get a woman’s undivided attention. And I had this one. Lucky me.

“Lay down.”

She braced her hands flat on the bed on either side of her hips. “What? Why?”

“Are you going to ask this many questions all night?”

She pushed an exhale out her nose, her anger starting to rise at my goading. Finally. “Can you even last all night?”

Challenge fucking accepted. I stood up and stripped my shirt over my head. Next, I lost the jeans and stood before her in my boxer briefs sporting a hard on I’d had for days.

She swallowed heavily, some of that bravado dwindling in the face of actual action. Instead of instructing her to do it, I reached out, unbuttoned her jeans, and slowly pushed her to lay back. Her hands grasped the covers, grabbing on like she was destined for a roller coaster she wasn’t fully committed to yet.

I pulled her jeans off and admired her black lace panties before curling my fingers around the elastic at her hips. “Can I take these off?”

She gave me a frantic nod, and I jerked them down her legs to join her pants.

Old emotions, new emotions, mindless arousal, all started to simmer in my chest. Focus man, make it good for her. My only goal for the night revolved around turning her into a puddle of jelly.

I sat on the bed next to her hip, my heart beating stupid fast, while I traced the curve of her hips bones, and down her upper thighs. Slowly, the shaking she’d begun when I stripped off her panties started to subside as she got to know my touch.

“If I do something you don’t like, just tell me, okay.” I had no doubt the Mara before wouldn’t hesitate in kneeing me in the balls, even naked, but this one, I wasn’t so sure.

I curled off the side of the bed and pulled her to the edge by the back of her knees. Taking the doctor’s approach and explaining everything seemed to be keeping her from shaking more. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

She didn’t need to repeat the aching please delivered on a groan. I licked my lips and pressed my mouth to her pussy slowly, then stared up the curves of her body while I parted her with my tongue. She tasted exactly as I imagined in all the years I’d been thinking about this exact moment.

I drew her knees over my shoulders and slid my hand up onto her belly. Without prompting, she anchored my hand and wrist with both of her hands and let me take control.

Oh fuck, she tastes like heaven. Like denying yourself ice cream during a long, hot summer only to finally get your own cone and lick the first drip off the edge. I couldn’t warn her, because I didn’t realize. I pulled her in tighter and licked her slit to clit in long, hard strokes with the flat of my tongue. The ferocity of it surprised even me, the man humping the edge of the goddamn bed right now. I didn’t think I could get more of my face in her pussy until she let out a groan tinged with a sigh, and it did me in.

I shifted my hands until I held both her hips hard in my grasp and fucked her with my tongue, my teeth, my nose, anything and everything to wring that sound from her again.

She shifted her fingers up into my hair, threading her nails along my scalp, and my own knees started to shake from the force of my arousal. My hard cock whacked against the bed as I shifted, climbed, maneuvered her whatever way I could get her to give me more.

More.

More.

More.

Her nails dug into my scalp and precum leaked out the head of my cock. I couldn’t resist any more. I shifted her back to the bed and dragged my thumb over her clit while I fucked her little hole with my tongue.

She came with a wracking pant, her whole body shaking against my lips. And fuck, I was proud.

Reducing a woman to a wet, shaking, satisfied mess. Hell yeah. I felt that pride in my toes.

I removed my hand and licked her slowly, bringing her down with me, despite my aching cock begging to be inside her.

I finally lifted my face and looked up at her. With her head tilted up so she could look at me, she gave me a slow and lazy smile.

“Your turn,” she added and dropped her head back to the bed.