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“What if Susie …”
He ignores me. I think this might be what I love most about us. He knows me so well, he can tell when to listen and when to just keep on going. Like now, as he strips me methodically, slowly, almost brusquely. He pushes the cardigan off my shoulders and lets it bunch at my tied wrists. Reaches for the buttons at my throat and lets the backs of his hands scuff over my breasts.
I’m biting my lip again, trying not to moan. For some reason, it seems important to match Charlie’s wordless intensity. As though the only way I can apologize is with my silence, as though any more words would be too many.
He peels my shirt aside, bares my breasts and belly. He’s holding my shirttails in his fists and he tugs me from side to side a little as he leans in to kiss me, letting me know how he can move me, how he can turn me.
And then we’re kissing and it’s too late for explanations. I forget why I left the church, I forget where I am and what my name is. All I can think of is the heat of Charlie’s mouth, the scrape of his stubble and the hard pressure of his body against mine. The way he is kissing me recklessly, like a dare.
When he pulls away I’m breathing hard, as if we’ve been running.
“So I’m not enough for you,” he says, and his lip curls a little. His hand drops to my breast and tweaks hard. I open my mouth but no sound comes out.
“You want more.” His other hand, my other breast. I’m almost doubling over, and my nipples are burning beautifully as he pulls and pinches. When he lets go, I almost fall forward. In the sun-filled kitchen I’m gasping for breath—half-naked, disheveled and as ridiculous as the yellow garter.
Charlie knows how to tease, and today I’m wondering if he’s playing out some kind of revenge. If he’s going to teach me a lesson—how it feels to be left hanging.
“Please,” I say, even though I think I shouldn’t.
“You know what, Seb?”
He’s leaning back and looking at me thoughtfully, as if I were a painting he’s deciding whether or not he likes.
“I can understand you being chicken. I can even live with the thought of you fucking other people.” His eyes flash. I look at him and the blush storms through my cheeks. He nods. “Yes, I am aware that you like sex, Seb.”
He leans in close and whispers in my ear. “Dirty girl, aren’t you? You think I didn’t know that? You think I can’t tell how hungry you are every time you walk down the street, shaking that tight little ass of yours? You think I don’t notice how you stick your tits out when you’re talking to a nice-looking guy? How you give all my friends the once-over, like you’re just considering the possibility?”
I flinch. I really didn’t think he’d noticed.
Charlie pulls back and sighs. He reaches, almost idly, to my trousers and flicks at the buttons. As if he doesn’t care if they come loose or not. When he slides his hand into the front of my panties, he touches the tip of his tongue to his lip as if he’s doing something tricky.
“What breaks my heart, Seb, is that you think I’m so stupid.”
“I don’t!” If I weren’t tied up, I’d reach out for him. He curls his fingers inside my panties, cups my pussy in his hand and gives a little squeeze. It’s like he’s in control of my heartbeat now, as though each stinging pinch of my clit sends the blood running through my veins.
“You think I don’t know you.”
“That’s not true,” I say, although my voice is strained and cracking. “It’s not?”
I look up at him through the strands of hair that have fallen over my face. He meets my gaze, hard and direct.
“Seb, I know you. I know how you’re torn.”
While he talks, he keeps working at me, his fingers stroking my most intimate places, proving the truth of what he says.
“You think that getting married is a death sentence. That we’d be stuck fast together and we’d never be able to leave.”
I bite my lip. I can’t really deny this, not without lying. He strums at me, turning the dial up toward orgasm. He can make me come with a flick of his wrist. I rock on his hand, lean on his arm so that he’s virtually propping me up. I think of his cock, how long it is and how full it makes me.
“Charlie,” I say, losing the thread of our conversation. I know I have to concentrate, have to hold back. But when he tweaks at my aching nipple, I nearly give in.
“Nothing is forever,” he says, his voice so soft it breaks my heart. He tugs on my nipples, left and right, dosing me with little shocks of pain.
“You like this.” It’s not a question, but I respond anyway.
“Yes. God, yes.”
“And if you didn’t want it? If you stopped liking it?”
I won’t ever, I say in my mind. Please don’t stop. He’s alternating pinches of my clit and my nipples now, digging his fingers into me, burying them inside me.
“Seb. Answer me.”
I shake my head.
I whisper our pact, our long-ago agreement. What we discussed back when we were laying down the ground rules. When we were still falling in love.
“I say the word. And it’s over.”
“Yes. You say the word. It’s that simple.”
He holds on tight to my clit, rubbing it between his forefinger and thumb until it burns. “Or,” he says, “of course, I can also say the word.” His voice is low and creaky. Suddenly, I’m terrified.
I want to kiss him. I want to stop him from saying anything more. I moan and reach out for him, want his body slammed against mine, want him to rub against me, crush me, bore into me. Prove that he’s here, with me and not lost.
“Charlie,” I say, and there’s panic sliding in my voice. “Please.”
He cradles my head in the crook of his shoulder while he reaches to undo his jeans. At the same time he loosens the garter and throws it on the ground. Hands free, I grab for him.
We’re swaying now, falling against the kitchen table and bumping into the chairs. I push my clothes roughly down around my ankles, still leaning into Charlie, nuzzling at him. He smells of the soap he uses, maybe a little of last night’s whisky. I wonder what he did last night. Whether he slept. Whether he cried.
He turns me roughly and bends me over the kitchen table. Now I can’t see his face and I’m even more scared—is this his goodbye fuck? Is he going to say the word, cut me loose, banish me from his life?
His hands are on my hips, holding me steady and firm, and I butt back against him, wanting him to be inside me, yes, but also wanting to be inside him somehow. I spread my legs, feel the head of his cock slip between my thighs.
“Come into me, baby,” I say, tilting my ass up as though begging. His thighs are warm on the back of my legs. He pushes into me and I could weep again. My legs are shaking, about to start bucking and jerking against him, almost out of my control.
“Shhh,” he says, stroking from the base of my spine to between my shoulder blades, dragging his hand over my body to soothe me. And it does—I rock slowly, taking a little more of him at a time until he’s nestled deep in me and can’t go any farther.
“More,” I murmur, wiggling my hips from side to side. Charlie keeps caressing me, slow and steady. I hear him laugh.
“S’funny?” I ask, although I can’t stop swaying against him, working myself up and down on his shaft.
“I’ll give you as much as you want,” he says lightly, while he withdraws in a rush and plunges back into me, making me gasp. “Whenever you want, however you want.”
He punctuates his words with thrusts that get harder, more emphatic and blunter each time. His cock is thickening in me, corkscrewing deeper and deeper.
“And if you want me to stop …” He pulls out so that just the tip of him is in me, an unbearable loss. “You just say the word.”
“Charlie,” I say. He’s hovering on the brink, I know it. The orgasm gathers in my fingertips, in my toes, rushes back and forth over me, crisscrosses from my nipples to my pussy and back to my mouth, my eyes, my heart. Just as I come, holding tight to the edge of the kitchen table, I get it. I get what he means. We’ll be married if we want it, for as long as we want it, just how we want it.
Charlie slides forward, sinks into me, and gives me what I need. I rise up to meet him and we surge together, rocking, responding, fucking like we always do.
“This is how they fuck in heaven,” Charlie said back in the first flush of our relationship, after six weeks of springtime courting and delirious sleepless nights. It was one of those embarrassing thoughts that spill out after especially good sex, and the way he said it—like a teenage boy awestruck and mad horny, made me blush. I remember we both laughed at the time.
Years later, and only after I’d managed to wreck our picture-perfect day, I realized he was right. It’s why I wasn’t all that unhappy that we missed the flight to Saint Lucia. Charlie and I know exactly how to make heaven on earth. We made it that afternoon in Susie’s kitchen, with the yellow garter lying trashed on the floor and the sky outside turning a really pretty shade of pale blue, like shirts when they’re fresh out of the laundry.
It was a strange day. We should have been brokenhearted that we’d created such a public disaster of our marriage. We were shipwrecked and empty-handed, and we probably both looked like fools. But in the space left behind we were free to make our own promises, say them quietly, in our own time.
There were no flowers, no speeches, no guests and no garter. Just me, Charlie and the words between us—the only ones that really mattered.
Racing to the Altar
Sommer Marsden
I eyed the billboard as my foot mashed on the gas pedal. The thought cops hide behind big billboard signs like that flittered through my head, but I mashed it anyway. My speed crept from 68 to 74. I was late. I was so fucking late it wasn’t funny. I was racing to the altar. Hell-bent for matrimony.
Kelly and Tina and Tracy all awaited me at the church. No doubt pacing the small bridal room where they were to do my makeup and my hair. I could picture Kelly fretting as she ticked off the minutes in her head. How much time we had and what that would allow. Up-do with accent braids? Chignon? Traditional bun? She would kill me!
I shot past the sign advertising Rock Hard Gym and my stomach bottomed out when I saw the lights, my body tingling the way it does when I ride a roller coaster. The cherry lights atop the cruiser came on in a flash of crimson, and I gnawed my bottom lip.
Cop.
I pulled to the side of the road.
I didn’t have time for a ticket. There was hair to be done, makeup to be applied, panic to be embraced. I had to go over my vows and make sure the seating arrangements were perfect and check the church to ensure that Uncle Sal was not next to Great-aunt Dot (or they would kill each other). I had too much to do. And at the end of it all, hopefully I would be lawfully married and not insane. Then Jackson and I would run off to Nova Scotia, never to return!
Okay, so we were returning. The point was that we had to make it through this stressful, heart-pounding wedding and reception before we could escape. And all I really wanted was to be with him. Somewhere quiet. Just me and him and our lips pressed together, making out like horny teenagers the way we did when we weren’t tasting butter cream frosting or picking out dye to make shoes match dresses. I sighed, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. In my head, I was already pleading my case. Figuring out what I would say to Officer Friendly to get off with only a warning.
“Do you know how fast you were going, miss?” he asked into my semi-open window. My heart shot up into my throat and my stomach dropped to my feet. I opened my mouth, but he cut me off. “I asked you a question, miss. Do you know how fast you were going?”
“Too fast?” It was all could think to say.
The good officer laughed. “Obviously, or I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
His eyes studied me and I studied him. He’d pulled his aviator sunglasses down to peer at me, his mouth twisted in a wry grin. Bright blue eyes like an autumn sky, lush lips, peppering of dark stubble along his jaw. I thought it would be fairly easy to cut paper with his cheekbones, and I was struck, sitting out here in the bright October sunshine, by how utterly gorgeous he was. Nearly beautiful, to be honest.
“This section of road is zoned for 55 miles per hour, ma’am. You were going over 70. Were you aware?”
“No,” I lied. He put his hand on the door and I rolled my window all the way down. My eyes went to his thickly muscled forearms, and my head felt swimmy. I’m a sucker for thick forearms. But I had a wedding to get to.
“I think you knew, and you were speeding anyway.” He leaned into the window, crowding my space. He had a teardrop-shaped birthmark above his left thumb. I inhaled deeply and tried to think.
“I’m sorry?”
“Are you sure? You don’t sound sure.”
This officer, this man, this amazing specimen was nearly leaning headfirst into my window. So close to me and my jangling nerves I swore I could feel the invisible particles of his energy mixing with mine. It was downright dirty, was what it was, because my pussy was responding to the heady mixture of fear and excitement and attraction. “Yes, I am absolutely sure that I am sorry,” I said, and any idiot could tell I was lying.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. He put his pad in his pocket and ran his finger along the seam of rubber that protected my lowered window. I watched that finger trace, and fought the urge to cross my legs. This was crazy. This was silly. I should ask for my ticket and leave. I should make him let me go right this instant. My bridesmaids and others would be foaming at the mouth by now. I. Did. Not. Have. Time. I didn’t have time for this insanity!
“I assure you, sir.”
“You’re lying.”
I felt a blush heat my cheeks. I blew out a sigh, trying not to think about church parking, place settings, snippy caterers and my betrothed’s mother’s insistence that we had some ridiculous disgusting red velvet groom’s cake.
“I don’t lie,” I lied.
“Could you pull around next to my cruiser and step out of the car please, ma’am?”
Real fear sizzled through me then. My eyes found my watch and I almost cried. I was already a half an hour late to the church. In two and a half hours I was supposed to be saying, “I do.” And then a party to rival all parties and then blissful, perfect alone time. Away from all the lunacy of a big wedding.
“Ma’am.”
“Look, Officer, I don’t have time for this. I truly don’t.” I smiled. He had to understand. He had to! I would make it all up, but right now I had to bolt. Hell, I pretty much needed a police escort.
“I don’t recall giving you an option, ma’am.” He smiled. That smile slid down my throat, snaked between my breasts, tickled over my belly button and stroked my clit like some living mystical thing.
“Urn … please?”
“Please drive around and park next to my vehicle, ma’am. Then I would like you to exit your vehicle and wait.”
I blew my bangs out of my face. Resistance was futile, as the saying goes. But I could just floor it. Mash my foot on the gas and take off like some bandit out of a seventies moonshine movie. God knows I’d seen enough of them. Even Jackson made me watch them! With a dad, three brothers and a car-crazed fiancé, I was pretty much a pro at car chases from the law.
He read my mind. “And, ma’am, if you try to run, you’ll be sorry. Way sorrier than you’ll be for lying to me now.” He smiled again, all tan skin, white teeth and twisted humor.
I harrumphed, started the car and slowly drove to park beside the cruiser. To be honest, what I did was pretty much drift my big SUV next to it. The cherry lights were still looping but the siren was off.
I put the car in Park, eyed the time again. “Oh, I’m screwed. I am so, so screwed.” But I knew from the set of that man’s face I was not getting out of this.
I could hear his big boots crunching and popping over the dirt shoulder of the road. I shivered, rubbing my arms. I was crosswired. Unbelievably turned on when I should be begging and pleading.
“Step out, ma’am!” he barked, and I yelped. I opened the door and lowered myself from the SUV. Shit, shit, shit. I had worn my yoga pants and a tee to the church. Flip-flops to let my pedicure dry. I hoped my toenails didn’t get dusty.
“Stand by the car, ma’am.”
“I am by the car!” I worried my fingers together. I was so wet between my legs it was insane. I studied the fretting image of myself in his mirrored shades. I wished he’d lower them and gaze at me again so I could try and get a read on those eyes.
“My car, ma’am.” He smiled and my nipples betrayed me by poking incessantly at the thin fabric of my ancient tee.
“Oh.”
I walked to his cruiser as if I were going to the gallows. When I got there, I wanted to cry. Now what? Should I face the cruiser? Face him? I had no idea, so I stood in a stupid, cockeyed stance kitty-corner to him and the car.
“Face the cruiser, ma’am.”
Damn. His voice was like hot caramel, melting chocolate, warm coffee on a cold day. It skittered down my spine and curled at the base of me. A steady wet echo sounded in my pussy. I was getting married in like … two hours!
