“Do you think we’re having problems?” She sounded more scared of the answer than the question.
“What? No, baby, but I know that I want to know everything about you and you have made no secret of the fact that you want to know all there is about me, so we need to work on that. We need to go back to our little Q&A sessions and I can tell you that my previous marriages ended as soon as I stopped caring whether we talked or not.”
Tasha stared up at him and could feel tears pricking the back of her eyes. She’d heard him saying they were already in trouble and if they didn’t talk more their marriage was over before it began and there was a possibility that he was already beginning to care less about talking to her. Hadn’t said something similar to her about the beginning of the end of her own marriage to Jim had been the point where they’d stopped talking?
“Tasha, don’t look at me like that baby, as though I’ve just given away your favourite pet.” Jim bent down and gently moved the hair back off her face.
She opened her mouth and attempted to speak, to explain what she’d heard, but she just made a series of sounds before the tears began to roll down her face.
“Oh, baby, don’t cry,” he pleaded as he brushed the tears off her face before sweeping her feet beneath her and gently placed her on the grassy bank as he’d done the last time they’d been there.
“Do you want to cancel the wedding?” She felt unable to breathe as she waited for the answer while he joined her on the grass.
“What? No! Of course not. Tasha, what did you hear me say to you? I love you and I want to marry you.” He shook his head.
“You said that your previous marriages were over when you stopped caring about talking, but you’ve brought me here to say that we need to talk more so I thought you were saying that we, that you, were getting less bothered by us talking.” She looked up from beneath heavy, damp lashes.
“Jeez, we speak the same language, yet you managed to hear the complete opposite of what I was actually saying, honey. I’m not sure whether that’s an English/American thing or a male/female thing though. To clarify, I was saying about my previous marriages to compare them to us and that we should talk more, never stop talking, or listening because this is it for me, Tasha. I will never marry anyone else,” he said seriously.
“I bet you say that to all your fiancées.” She wore a half-smile, but meant it.
He shook his head at her. “No, never. I’ve told you before that I should only really have married Sara, but we were young, too young, and even then I could never see beyond where we were at for that moment in time, but you—” He sighed, lay back against the grass and looked up towards the sky before turning his head to look at her. “You are everything to me, Tasha, and I can’t see any future without you. I see us having a long and happy marriage, forever. I want to grow old with you. Obviously I’ll do that before you do, but I want to show you everything the world has to offer and to share it with you, but this is what happens when we don’t talk and it’s only been a couple of weeks that we haven’t made the time to talk properly.”
“I can’t imagine growing old without you.” She looked across at him then laughed. “Fucking me all over the house.”
Jim laughed loudly as he pulled her across him until she was straddling his hips.
“Poor Sandra looked very uncomfortable.” He smiled up at her.
“And Dylan,” she added.
“Yes, but I don’t know that he waspooranything. I really do not like him.” Jim pouted, making her laugh again.
“He’s only a kid. You remember what that was like, fifteen and horny? But unlike you he doesn’t have Sally and her mother,” Tasha pointed out to the man beneath her.
“No, he has Lizzie and you.” He arched a brow.
“Yes, but I am not Mrs Carter and Lizzie is not Sally,” she replied with an air of triumph.
“No, but Lizzie isthat slutty girlI seem to recall.” He gave her behind a firm spank.
“You are still pissed off about that, aren’t you?” She shook her head, knowing his annoyance was misplaced.
“You think?”
“I didn’t mean it like that. That she was. I meant that you wouldn’t like it if Dylan’s parents viewed Lizzie in equivalent terms as you view him and that’s what I came up with.”
“Just you saying it at all pissed me off and every time I think of it I have an overpowering urge to bend you over and spank you hard,” he told her honestly.
She could feel that although his urge stemmed from annoyance he was also sexually excited at the prospect of it. The sensation of his erection pressing against her pulsating groin confirmed that.
“Then maybe you should,” she said, breathing heavily.
“You keep saying it Tasha and I know it excites you, but it may not end with pleasure for you. It could just be the hard spanking you keep suggesting.”
His hand disappeared beneath the skirt of her dress that was now bunched around her thighs.
He squeezed her cheeks then allowed a finger to make its way beneath the lacy fabric of her moistened, black brief.
