CHAPTER FIVE
Dean
January 16
WELL, FUCK.
My ex-wife is standing in the kitchen. Liv is hovering beside me, gripping my sleeve. Her tense posture tells me she knows exactly who this other woman is.
“What are you doing here?” I ask Helen bluntly.
She blinks and sets down the dish sponge. “Hello to you too, Dean.” She faces us, folding her arms. “I was with Paige when your mother called. I told her I’d stop by and straighten up while they’re at the hospital. The cleaning lady isn’t coming until tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I’m here now, so you can go.”
Her eyes harden. “I’m here for Paige and your mother, Dean, not you. They’re still my good friends.”
Her tone implies that I am anything but. We haven’t seen each other for over fifteen years. The only contact we’ve had was one email a few months ago when she told me she’d submitted a proposal for the Words and Images conference I’m organizing.
Helen’s gaze flickers to Liv. “I’m Helen Morgan. Dean and I were once married.”
“I’m Olivia West,” Liv replies. “Dean and I are married.”
The possessive tone in her voice does me some good.
“Liv and I are going to the hospital after we get settled,” I tell Helen.
“Good. I have coffee made if you want some before you leave.” Helen taps her finger on the counter, her gaze faintly triumphant.
She’s staking a claim in the kitchen of my childhood. That’s fine, because I sure as hell don’t want it anymore.
I guide Liv upstairs to my former bedroom, which thankfully bears no trace of the teenager who once lived there. Liv rubs her hand across my lower back.
“Okay?” she asks.
“Yeah. Sorry. Had no idea she’d be here.” I turn to face her. She looks better than she did on the plane, but is still pale. “You should lie down.”
“I’ll take a nap when we get back from the hospital.”
“You’re not feeling well, Liv. You don’t need to see my parents right now.”
“I’m better, really. It was just the motion of the plane.” She gives me a stubborn look and turns to go into the bathroom. “I’m going to take a quick shower.”
I drag my hands over my face and tell myself she doesn’t need the extra stress of an argument. After we’ve both showered and changed, we go back downstairs. Helen gestures to a plate of muffins and hands me a cup of coffee.
“Still take it black?” she asks.
“Yeah, thanks.” I’m mildly surprised she remembers how I like my coffee.
“Don’t be surprised.” Her expression glimmers with amusement. “I had a fifty-fifty shot. Black or white.” She glances at Liv. “You?”
“No, thanks.”
I get a bottle of ginger ale from the refrigerator and hand it to Liv. Helen’s gaze follows Liv as she takes the bottle and sits at the table.
“Your flight was okay?” Helen asks, turning back to unload the dishwasher.
“Fine.”
“I offered to do some grocery shopping for your mother,” she says. “Stock up the fridge for the next few days.”
“That’s… uh, that’s nice of you,” I say.
“It’s no trouble.”
I watch her as she moves around the kitchen. She looks good—shorter hair, a little rounder, attractive. Beneath my surprise at seeing her again, there’s that old guilt.
Helen and I were supposed to be ideal. That was why I’d married her. A perfect match between a historian and an art historian. Prove to everyone, prove to myself, that my life was snapping together like a jigsaw puzzle, regardless of our family strife. Then the marriage ended up my biggest failure.
“So, Dean.” A bright note enters Helen’s voice as she sorts the clean silverware. “Medieval imagery. Great conference topic. My colleagues at Stanford have been talking about it. Have you seen my proposal?”
“Not yet. It’s gone to the other committee members first. I’m sure it’ll be accepted. They’ll love the interdisciplinary nature of it.”
“What about you?”
“It’s a great subject, sure.”
“I was thinking about icons in particular.” Helen glances at me. “The Pre-Raphaelite vision of the Middle Ages, especially through Keats. And Rossetti’s use of iconography from illuminated manuscripts.”
“You should look at the British Library’s Roman de la Rose manuscript,” I suggest. “I think you’d find a lot of stylistic connections to Defense of Guinevere.”
“I also want to talk about Ruskin’s ideas of vision and perception,” Helen says. “That all relates to the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic.”
“I imagine that would be influenced by Tennyson and his Arthurian poems,” Liv remarks. “And how perfectionism is disconnected from everyday life, like Guinevere says of Arthur. ‘He is all fault who has no faults at all.’”
Helen just looks at her. Liv shrugs.
“I was a literature major,” she explains.
“Oh.” Helen turns to close the dishwasher.
Liv winks at me. Warmth dissolves more of my unease.
“So should we go to the hospital now?” Liv asks, pushing away from the table.
“Sure.” I put my cup in the sink. “Thanks, Helen.”
“No problem.”
Liv and I get our stuff and go back out to the driveway. I open the car door for her, then settle into the driver’s seat.
“She seems… nice.” Liv sounds like she’s choosing her words with care.
“She’s not a bad person,” I say. “And she was dealt a shitty hand with the miscarriages. She and I were just totally wrong. And that’s one hell of an understatement.” I reach over to pat Liv’s thigh. “Whereas you and I were meant to be.”
That seems to ease any trepidation Liv might have. The last thing I want is for her to worry about Helen, though I know Liv can hold her own if she needs to.
After parking at the hospital, we go inside. White walls, antiseptic smells, an air of sickness. My head fills with memories of my grandfather, his body wasting to skin and bones, the rasping, phlegmy cough. The angry way he faced his impending death.
“Let’s get some flowers.”
Liv’s smooth voice washes away the ugly thoughts. Before I can respond, she turns toward the gift shop and chooses a display of yellow and pink flowers that I’m sure my father will hardly notice.
“Dean, finally.” When we enter the cardiac unit, my sister gets up from one of the vinyl chairs. Paige is a younger version of our mother, all understated polish in some sort of knit dress that probably cost a fortune.
After we exchange a brief hug of greeting, Paige gives Liv a narrow look. I step in front of Liv to deflect it.
“Hello, Olivia.”
“Nice to see you, Paige.”
“You didn’t tell me Helen was at the house,” I tell my sister.
A humorless smile tugs at Paige’s mouth. “Would you have come home if I did?”
Good question.
“How’s Dad?” I ask.
“Sleeping. Mom is in there with him right now.” Paige tilts her head toward the corridor leading to the private rooms. “Room three-eleven.”
Liv and I go to the room. I knock on the door before pushing it open. My mother is sitting in a chair by the window, staring at the opposite wall. She looks the same, dressed in one of her designer suits with elegant, tasteful jewelry, and her face made up flawlessly.
“Oh, Dean.” A look of relief crosses my mother’s face. She rises to give me an embrace that smells like perfume and hairspray. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
I look past her. My chest tightens when I see my father lying in the hospital bed. Though we’ve always had either a strained relationship or none at all, he has nevertheless been a big presence in my life—like my grandfather before the cancer diagnosis. Now my father looks pale, weak. Small.
Like my grandfather before he died.
I detach myself from my mother and put Liv’s flowers on the bedside table.
“How are you, Liv?” my mother says.
“Fine, thank you, Joanna. I’m sorry about Richard.”
“The doctor said he might need surgery, but we don’t know what kind yet.” My mother looks at my father. Her hand goes up to fiddle with her pearl necklace. “I’ve let his office know. He was supposed to go to Sacramento next week.”
“You said Archer is coming back?” I ask.
“He left a message. I haven’t been able to reach him. His number is by the phone in your father’s library. See if you can find out when he expects to arrive.”
“I’ll try.” Though not very hard.
“I hadn’t heard from him in a few months,” she continues. “The last time I did, he mentioned some woman he was thinking of marrying. God knows what a disaster that would be.”
Her eyes barely flick to Liv. I struggle to control a wave of resentment.
“At any rate, I would certainly expect Archer to be here within a day or so,” my mother says. “People have already been asking where he is.”
I feel Liv’s worried gaze on me. She doesn’t need to be dragged into any of this again. Neither do I, but I’m here and I can already feel myself surrendering to the inevitable.
“I’ll look into it, Mom.”
“Good.”
“Dean.” My father opens his eyes, his voice a raspy whisper. “When did you get here?”
“Few hours ago.” I move to his bedside. “How do you feel?”
“They tell me I’ll make it.”
“Do you need anything, Richard?” my mother asks. “Water?”
My father shakes his head. His gaze shifts to the flowers. “What’re those?”
“Flowers from Liv.” I step aside so he can see Liv standing by the door.
She gives him a wave. “Good to see you, Mr. West. I’m glad you’re okay.”
“How long are you both staying?”
“Until you’re released from the hospital,” I say.
Liv touches my arm and tells me she’s going to the restroom. As soon as she leaves, my parents and I fall silent. I can’t remember the last time I was alone with them. The silence almost vibrates, filled with unpleasant memories.
My mother smooths the blanket, picks up a few fallen flower petals, refills the water pitcher, straightens the stuff on the bedside table.
Then, for lack of anything else to do, she picks up her purse. “Well, I suppose the doctor will be in soon. Dean, Paige and I will go home, now that you’re here.”
She gives my father a perfunctory kiss. Her heels click on the floor as she leaves.
“She says Archer is coming back,” I tell my father.
He shrugs. He resigned himself years ago to the idea that this is how things have to be. Thirty-five years of pretending means nothing will ever change. My parents would have divorced if my father had retired from the bench and gone into private practice, but he’s been associate justice on the California Supreme Court for over twenty-two years, having been elected and retained by voters in three elections. For him, divorce fell off the radar long ago.
Despite staying married, for all practical purposes, he and my mother are separated. My father spends most of his time hearing cases in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Sacramento. He has an apartment in the city and, more than likely, several mistresses. My mother travels a lot on her own little vacations. They maintain the “perfect marriage” act when they’re both in town, and I suppose they’ve come to some sort of understanding about it.
But I know neither of them has ever been happy.
“So how’s work?” my father asks.
I tell him about the upcoming conference, the IHR grant, my classes and students. He tells me about recent court cases, policies of the California judicial council, what he thinks of the governor’s new appointments secretary.
After an hour, the doctor comes in for a consultation about the heart cath he’s planned to determine further treatment. My father waves me out of the room with instructions to come back tomorrow.
I find Liv in the waiting room, eating from a bag of vending-machine fruit snacks.
“When is the surgery?” she asks as we walk to the parking lot.
“Early next week, probably. They’ll schedule it tomorrow after they do some more tests.”
Before opening the car door for her, I put my arm around her waist. She turns to me, her body bowing against mine. Her lips are candy-sweet and warm. I rest my palm against her cheek and deepen the kiss.
Peaches and sugar. Everything good. The girl who has refused to prove herself to anyone except herself. The girl whose strength comes from inside.
“What?” Her whisper is soft against my mouth. She pulls back to look at me. “Are you still upset with me for wanting to come with you?”
“No.” I brush a few strands of hair off her forehead. I love all the locks of hair that are constantly escaping her ponytail or falling around her shoulders. Those stray tendrils have given me endless excuses to touch her.
“Then what?” Liv asks.
I shake my head. The questions jam into my throat.
Why was I suddenly not enough for you?
What if I fail you again?
A hard rush of love and pain fills me.
It’s an unrealistic urge, I know, this need to protect my wife from everything. But it will never go away. I felt it the minute I saw her, and now it’s part of my blood. I even hate that I wasn’t there for Liv all those years she was alone. When her godforsaken mother failed her, when bastards abused her, when—
“Dean?” Her voice slides through my bitter thoughts.
I take a breath. “I’m booking us into a hotel.”
“Why?”
“It’ll be easier on you. I don’t know how often Helen will be at the house, but there’s less chance of running into her if we’re not staying there. Not to mention my mother and sister.”
“No.” Liv shakes her head. “If we go to a hotel, your mother will be upset and… no.”
Irritation spreads through me. “I don’t want you under any stress.”
“Then don’t create any by trying to… to isolate me, Dean.” She gives me a mutinous look. “Who do you think your mother will blame if we leave the house? Me. And she’d be right, because we all know you wouldn’t stay in a hotel if you were here alone.”
Shit.
“Please, Dean.” Liv puts her hand on my chest. “Please don’t be upset. I need to do this. And you need to let me.”
“We’re only staying until my father is out of the hospital.”
“We’re staying as long as your parents need you.”
None of my family needs me anymore. That’s the reason I’ve distanced myself from them. The reason I chose Liv. If I had to do it all over again, I would. The exact same way.
I pull open the passenger side door, then go around to the driver’s seat. I still don’t know what I did to fuck things up so badly with Liv last year. It wasn’t just keeping my first marriage a secret, because things were bad before I told her the truth.
And the fact that I don’t know what went wrong makes me even more afraid that it could happen again. Like a punch you don’t see coming.
Helen is gone by the time we get back to my parents’ house. My mother and sister are out on the back terrace. I persuade Liv to go and rest for a while, then I head into the library.
My brother’s telephone number is scribbled on a pad beside the phone. An automated voicemail answers after I dial.
“Archer, it’s Dean. I’m at the house. Mom has been trying to reach you, so call as soon as you get this.”
I hang up and turn to the computer. An email from Nancy the real-estate agent appears in my inbox.
Crap. Almost forgot about the house for sale.
Dean, there have been a few more showings, so we’re expecting multiple offers. Do you have mortgage preapproval yet, if you’re applying? Must talk down payment. Call me soon.
I try not to dwell on Liv’s reluctance about buying a house. I get where it comes from. It’s the reason I agreed to stay in that apartment for so long. Because Liv wanted to, because she never learned how to feel secure living in one place, because she’s scared something will happen and we’ll have to leave.
But now everything has changed.
I dial Nancy’s number and explain that I’m in California for the next week or two.
“If you want to make an offer, we should do it today,” she tells me. “There were three showings this morning alone.”
“Email me the papers to sign. I’ll fax them back to you this afternoon.”
We discuss the offer, and she agrees to write it up. I hang up the phone and go back to the living room. My mother and sister are still sitting on the terrace, both of them holding take-out cups of coffee they must have picked up on the way home from the hospital.
I go upstairs to my wife. Liv is asleep by the window, her head resting on one of the wings of the chair. I slide one arm beneath her knees and the other around her back. She shifts, but doesn’t wake as I move her to the bed and pull a blanket over her.
I look at her for a minute—the pretty curve of her mouth, her eyelashes feathery against her cheeks, the strands of hair escaping her ponytail.
Before her, I had never known a woman who could make the noise of the world and everyone in it disappear. I’d never wanted to prove myself to anyone the way I did to her.
I liked her too much. Liked the way I didn’t feel cold inside when I was with her. The way I didn’t think about anything except her. I liked that she was a mystery, a maze with numerous winding pathways and secret corners.
And she was such a relief. Though we met in the fall, she was like spring to me, especially after the darkness of the previous year. Everything about her made me feel good.
“It’s beautiful.” One Friday afternoon a couple of months into our relationship, Liv leafed through the pages of the glossy hardcover book I’d written on medieval architecture. A box of the newly published books had arrived at my apartment that morning.
“How long did it take you to write it?” she asked.
“Two years. One year of research, then I did most of the writing when I was dealing with my grandfather before he died.”
I couldn’t bring myself to say taking care of my grandfather since I hadn’t wanted to be around him. The most I could do was deal with him.
Liv looked at me, cautious. “How did he die?”
“Lung cancer.”
What could I tell her? How Victor West was never a pleasant person and became miserable when he got sick? He hated being in the hospital, hated the treatments. He was demanding, mean. I lost track of the number of times the nurses called me to tell me he’d become belligerent and they needed my help.
“And you took care of him?” Liv asked.
I didn’t want her to think I’d been a martyr. I’d hated it almost as much as Victor had—the antiseptic smell of the hospital, the oxygen tanks, the sounds of the machines, the rasp of his voice.
“He was eighty-three,” I told Liv. “Had a contentious relationship with my parents. They’d stopped talking years ago. I was the only one he’d talk to.”
“Is that why you ended up taking care of him?” Liv asked.
“Yeah.” I rubbed the back of my neck. Tried to smother the shame and bitterness. “Because no one else would.”
“Where he did live?”
“Orange County. I went to stay at his house after he was diagnosed.”
“How long were you there?”
“Almost a year,” I said. “Worked on my book at night. Got him to his doctor’s appointments during the day and helped with stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Just cooking, cleaning. He had plenty of money to hire nurses to come to the house, but he didn’t like them much.”
“So he relied on you,” Liv guessed.
I nodded. For a year, my world had distilled to the two vocabularies of medieval architecture and cancer treatments that, at some point, became bizarrely indistinguishable.
Hemoptysis. Cruciform piers. Hypercalcemia. Plate tracery. TNM classification. Equilateral arch. Metastases. Geometrical manipulation.
I looked at Liv and realized this was the first time I’d ever talked about it. She was watching me with unnerving perception, as if she sensed all that I wasn’t saying. As if she knew that had been just one other situation I couldn’t fix.
“The book didn’t delay my career, at least,” I finally said. “I applied for the Wisconsin professorship last fall. My grandfather died in the spring, about a month before I heard I’d gotten the position.”
“So…” Liv tilted her head. She was still holding my book. She smoothed her hand over the cover before setting it on a table. “You told me you hadn’t been in a relationship all that time.”
“True.”
“When was the last time you were with a woman?”
“I’d just heard about my grandfather’s diagnosis,” I said. “I turned down an offer from the University of Toronto because I knew I’d have to help him. I had an affair with a woman who worked at a legal firm I’d contacted to deal with his estate.”
I was uncomfortably aware of Liv’s gaze. The affair had been brief and unsatisfying. I couldn’t remember the other woman’s name. Sandra? Sarah?
“It wasn’t good,” I admitted. “Not for either of us.”
Christ. Liv was going to turn and walk away from me.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“What?”
“Sorry you had to… go through that. The whole thing sounds rough.”
“Well, it’s over.”
That was a lie. It wasn’t over. My grandfather had managed to control things even in death, which was both frustrating and almost funny.
“Hey.” I grabbed Liv around the waist and hauled her close to me on the sofa. “Enough of that. What’d you do today?”
“Just classes. Thought about you when I was supposed to be thinking about database management.” She settled against me with one of her breathy little sighs that made me hard in half a second. She was all pillowy breasts, long hair, and soft skin. Her clean smell sweetened my thoughts.
“Yeah?” Whether or not that was true, I liked hearing it. “What were you thinking?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve been waiting to show you.”
Her mouth came down on mine. I loved it when she initiated a kiss. Warmth spread into my blood. Whatever her reasons for remaining a virgin, there was nothing frigid in the way she moved her mouth against mine, spread her hands over my chest, pressed herself against me. She’d gotten more comfortable with me over the past couple of weeks, but now it was as if knowing about my recent abstinence had emboldened her.
I grasped her ass and squeezed. Pulled her up so she was sprawled on top of me. She shifted. A silver chain laced around her neck, a pendant dangling between her breasts. I’d noticed it before, but never paid much attention to it. Now the pendant brushed against my chest.
I took it in my hand. Warm from resting against her skin, it was a plain, brass disk etched with the Latin phrase Fortune favors the brave.
“Is that your motto?” I asked.
“Sort of.” Something flickered in her brown eyes. She took the disk and held it in her palm.
“Where’d you get it?”
“An old friend made it for me.”
“What old friend?” I tried to keep the jealousy from my voice and failed.
Liv flashed me a smile. “You remember I told you about North?”
“Northern Star, you mean?” My trepidation eased a little. With Liv’s strange and nomadic life with her mother, it shouldn’t have surprised me that she had a friend named Northern Star. One who lived on a commune, no less.
“He made it for me,” Liv said. “Thought I should be brave.”
She dropped the pendant back around her neck and clambered off me. “I’m getting hungry. The cake should be ready soon.”
She went into the kitchen, where she’d made a coffee-cake from a boxed mix. I took a magazine from the table, but kept my gaze on Liv as she reached up to take a mug out of the cupboard. Our kiss and the feel of her on top of me had turned my thoughts lusty.
Liv’s voice was a pleasant hum as she started chattering about some tickets to something. Her white shirt molded to her body. Beneath the stretchy material, her breasts looked full and round.
“Want some?” Liv asked.
Yeah, I want some.
A blue, polka-dot skirt flowed over her hips and legs. I wanted to grab fistfuls of the skirt and hike it all the way up to her waist, spread her smooth thighs....
“Dean?”
“Sorry, what?” I pulled my gaze back to her face.
She held up a mug. “Hot chocolate. Want some?”
“Uh, no thanks.”
Her hair was tugged back into a ponytail. I wished she’d leave it loose, all tangled around her shoulders. I shifted, painfully aware of my growing erection.
“So they said they’d still have tickets available at the box office Saturday night.” She bent to take the cake out of the oven. I looked at the curve of her ass and imagined it bare. “We just need to get there a little early to pick them up.”
I couldn’t remember what performance we were seeing tomorrow night, but I made a noise of agreement. Then I went back to gazing at her breasts. I wondered what color her nipples were.
“Dean?”
“Huh?”
Liv turned and put her hands on her hips. Her eyes narrowed. “I said, do you want to get dinner before or after the show?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“What is your problem? Why are you not listening to anything I’m saying?”
Because all the blood in my brain has gone to my dick.
I tore my gaze away from her and looked back at the magazine. “I’m listening.”
“You are not.”
“Tickets at the box office, dinner before.”
She tapped her fingers on the counter. “What’s the performance?”
You and me getting naked.
“Uh…”
“Uh huh.” She arched an eyebrow, then picked up her mug and went to sit in a chair across from the sofa. “It’s an acrobatic dance troupe called Diabolo.”
Oh, good Lord.
“Sounds great,” I said.
She smirked. “Guess you should have been listening when I asked if you wanted to go.”
“Sorry.” I tossed the magazine onto the coffee table. “I was too busy staring at your breasts and imagining what they look like naked.”
A gasp caught in her throat. I winked at her. Her cheeks reddened with pleasure.
I loved getting her all flustered. And I loved that she loved it too.
She ducked her head to take a sip of cocoa. A strand of hair fell across her face. I watched her full lips close around the edge of the cup. My erection grew thicker. Over the past couple of months, Liv and I had fooled around with most of our clothes on, which was hot as hell, but I was impatient for more. I wanted her with a force that hurt.
And still I knew I couldn’t push her too fast. Not my pretty, virginal Liv with her shadowed eyes and untold secrets. She was letting me through her guarded defenses. I’d become a monk before I’d betray her trust.
“So what did you imagine?” she asked.
I swung my gaze back to her. Her cheeks were still flushed, her eyes on her mug.
“What did I imagine?” I repeated.
“About my breasts.” She glanced at me from beneath her lashes. “What do you think they look like naked?”
Oh, shit. My cock strained against my jeans. I had to take a breath before I could respond.
“I imagine they’re full and perfect with big, pink nipples that get hard the instant you take your bra off.”
A visible shudder ran through her. “God, Dean.”
“Am I right?”
She looked at me. Heat brewed in her brown eyes. Energy crackled in the air. Then she set her mug on the coffee table and grasped the hem of her shirt.
My heart pounded. I rubbed my cock through my jeans and shifted. She hesitated, then slowly pulled the shirt over her head and dropped it to the floor.
I stared at her. She was wearing a plain, beige cotton bra, and the brass pendant dangled against her pale skin. Her nipples strained against the front of her bra, which pressed her breasts together in a valley of cleavage that made my prick ache.
A swallow rippled Liv’s slender throat. Her hands trembled as she reached to unfasten the clasp and push her bra off her shoulders.
My breath escaped in a hiss.
I was right. Moving with the force of her breath, her breasts were perfect—round and luscious, not too big, with pink nipples and areolae the size of quarters. I already knew her breasts would fit in my hands, but I’d only touched them through her clothes. Now my fingers flexed with the urge to squeeze and rub her bare skin...
I gripped my erection, which pulsed uncomfortably against my crotch.
“Touch them.” My voice was hoarse.
“You want me to…”
“Touch them the way you do when you’re alone in bed.”
She shivered. Her blush deepened. “Oh.”
I waited, my heart thumping. She looked down, then cupped her breasts in both hands and pressed them together. After another quick glance at me, her stroking grew bolder. She squeezed her breasts, rubbed her fingers into the crevice beneath them, plucked at her nipples.
I almost came in my jeans. I unfastened the button-fly and reached into my boxers to take out my cock. Liv inhaled sharply when she glanced up and saw me pulling on the stiff length.
She paused, her gaze fixed on my erection as I stroked the shaft. Her tongue flicked out to lick her lips.
“Is that… is that the way you touch yourself when you’re alone in bed?” she whispered.
“When I’m thinking about you, yeah.” I tightened my fist, pressure collecting in my groin, my head flashing with raw images of all the things I wanted to do to her.
“Do you think about me a lot?” She twisted her nipples, still watching the movement of my hand.
“Every night. Can’t during the day or I’d be arrested for obscene behavior.”
She smiled. “You get turned on whenever you think of me?”
“Can’t help it.” I slid my hand up the shaft of my aching prick and rubbed my thumb over the head. “You make me hot.”
“You make me hot too.” She squeezed her breasts again, then squirmed a little and pressed her legs together.
“Are you wet?” I asked.
She exhaled a shaky breath. “Yes.”
“Come here.”
“What?”
“I need to touch you.” I needed her to touch me too.
She rose and approached me. She looked incredible, all flushed and aroused with her naked breasts swaying and her ponytail spilling over her shoulder. She gathered her skirt, pulling it up before she straddled my thighs and sat back on my knees. Her desire-filled eyes tracked down my torso to where my cock stood up rigidly between us.
I loosened my fingers from my shaft and reached out to touch her. She shuddered. My prick throbbed as I flicked my thumbs over her nipples, rubbing the soft underside of her breasts. I wanted to thrust my cock into her cleavage.
She clasped the material of her skirt. She wiggled her ass against my thighs. I could feel the heat burning through her panties. I eased my hands under her skirt, moving my palms slowly up the smooth length of her legs. She was looking at me, her breathing rapid.
“Okay?” I asked.
She nodded and put her hand on my chest, then leaned in to kiss me. Her soft mouth opened over mine. A moan spilled from her as I edged my finger under the elastic of her panties where it encircled her thigh. Lust fired my blood when I touched her cleft. Her kiss deepened. She slipped her tongue into my mouth before lifting herself up and brushing her fingers over my erection.
My teeth clenched. “Wait.”
“Sorry, did I—”
I grabbed her waist. “Come closer.”
She shifted closer and settled her hands on my shoulders. The sweet scent of her filled my head. I took one of her nipples between my teeth and tugged lightly. She gasped.
“Dean, I’m…”
I pushed her skirt up farther. No scrap of lace for her, but plain cotton panties that stretched down over her hips to cover her sex. I wanted to rip them away and sink deep inside her. Instead I took a hard breath and pulled her closer so my prick nudged between her legs. She trembled.
“Go ahead.” I stared at the apex of her thighs where my straining cock pushed against the damp cotton of her panties.
She flexed her fingers on my shoulders and gripped my shirt. Bracing her knees on either side of my hips, she shifted and rubbed herself against my erection.
“Dean… you’re so big… that feels…” She shifted again. Her breasts bounced.
Need pulsed through me. The friction of the cotton against the head of my cock increased the pressure. I slid my hands under her skirt to hold her ass and guide her down again. Her cleft rubbed against my shaft.
She twisted her hips. Sweat trickled into the hollow of her throat. I yanked her closer so her breasts crushed against my chest. I could feel her nipples through my shirt. She worked herself harder, rubbing her cloth-covered pussy against my erection. Little moans emerged from her parted lips.
“I need to touch you,” she gasped, reaching down to spread her hand over my shaft. “I need you… right here…”
She wiggled closer and positioned herself so the head of my cock pressed her clit. The sensation of her wet heat through the cotton almost sent me over the edge. Blood pumped through my cock. The tension grew.
I gripped her thighs. “Liv, I’m going to come.”
“Wait. Let me…” She stroked the head of my cock against her, her muscles straining. Most of her hair had escaped her ponytail. The long strands fell over her face and forehead in a mess of tangles. “Oh God. I’m… oh.”
She let out a cry as her body shook with tremors. Explosive pleasure boiled inside me. I grabbed my shaft. Liv kept writhing her clit against my prick. The sight of her all quivering and sweating was too much to take. Within seconds, I came with a groan, shooting all over her cotton panties.
Liv shuddered, her chest heaving as she lifted her skirt to look at the semen dripping down her thighs. She rubbed a hand over my damp prick and glanced up at me with those big, brown eyes that revealed everything and nothing.
“There is so much I want to do with you,” she whispered.
A groan caught in my throat. I speared my hand into her hair and pulled her toward me for a hard kiss that made my blood pulse all over again. She softened against me, her body pliant and yielding.
“You have no idea what I want to do with you,” I muttered.
“Well, then.” She shifted, her naked breasts rubbing against my shirt, her ass sliding over my prick. “You’ll just have to show me.”
Oh, I will. I breathed her in and sank my face against her shoulder.
It was good for my ego, showing her how hot things could be, watching her arousal, getting her off. It was good for me too, this blinding spell of release. Staggered my senses. Obliterated everything except us alone.
I tightened my hands on her hips. A sudden dizziness filled my head.
Us. Alone.
Exactly the way I wanted it then.
Exactly the way I want it now.