With a scowl and a sniff, Clay stepped into the shower, wanting it cold but getting only lukewarm. The water ran over his skin, highlighting his faults rather than washing them away.
This is what I am now, he thought defiantly. Condemned. Past renovation. It worked—the water and the defiance—hardened his mind to the warmth of the woman who seemed to think he was worth saving.
There was a quick knock on the door, followed by her voice. “Found something.”
“Thanks,” he responded, knowing he wouldn’t use it, whatever it was. This had dragged on long enough. He’d kept letting her think he was salvageable, but he wasn’t, and spending time with her now was just giving her mixed messages. The wrong message. He had to go, had to—
With a metallic whistle, the shower curtain flew back, and she was there, completely naked, and, in one fell swoop, he lost his breath, his decisiveness, his fucking mind.
She stepped in, shrieked, and moved to turn the temperature dial. “You’re crazy! This is freezing!”
“I’d have told you if you’d given me some warning,” Clay said as his hands found the wet, goose-bumped indentation of her waist—all misgivings forgotten in the face of her nudity—and pulled her in, fitting their bodies neatly together. “It’s what you deserve, though, for busting in on me like this.”
She sighed when he kissed her—a soft touching of lips overlaid with warm, sluicing water—and Clay’s shoulders relaxed, doubts and worries flushed down the drain like the dirt from her garden.
It was fast and slow after that. Too slow for his taste, because what he wanted was to press her up against the wall and shove into her, but that wasn’t going to happen, or they’d fall in the slippery tub. Everything was quick too, though: the way their kiss heated him from the inside out, the way it burned him hard and violent, the way she ate him up. Pulling at his hair until he lowered his head, bit her nipple, and got harder at the low moan she let loose.
Another tug at his hair, and she muttered into his mouth, “I went and bought a box of condoms while you were out today. Just in case.” The words, so utilitarian, so practical, just like his little doctor, inflamed him, so he dropped thoughtlessly to his knees, wanting—no, needing—to taste her. His groan, when he hit the porcelain, wasn’t of enjoyment, and if she hadn’t been so open and pink and beautiful in front of him, he’d probably have rolled up into a little ball of pain.
“Me too,” he said with a chuckle, sucking in her smell, the trembling of her legs, the unfamiliar sight of a woman with hair on her. Weird, wasn’t it, how shaving had become the norm? Well, he liked this; it was a womanly sight, rather than an ambiguously girly one, and he appreciated that.
Unable to resist any longer, he leaned in and nuzzled her. Right there, where her hair curled up thick, soft, and wet, and she smelled like fucking heaven. Never one for useless teasing, he dove right in, tongue and teeth and his entire being focused on consuming this woman.
* * *
Despite loving Tom, George could finally admit that he’d never gotten her quite this carried away. She remembered one time when they’d had oral sex. They’d watched a movie—Secretary, maybe. The spanking scenes had gotten her totally riled, and they’d ended up, somehow, half-dressed on the sofa in a head-to-tail position. George had tried to enjoy it. She’d closed her eyes to the sight of her husband’s testicles in her face and licked him while he’d performed his hallmark, swirly tongue thing down below. She could remember, to this day, lying precariously side-by-side on the sofa, the smell of him in her nose, and the way he’d shoved his tongue deep inside her, neatly missing her clit with each rare pass to the north.
She’d loved Tom, she had, but she’d never until now known real hunger, never wanted with such desperation, never felt every breath a man expelled with an awareness like pain, a connection too kinetic to understand. This man didn’t need to touch her to make her feel. He just needed to breathe. And in this brief, wistful moment of comparison, she knew with certainty that she’d never feel this way with another person again. How could you when you’d gotten this far and there was one man—only one—who did this to you?
Stop it, her brain ordered. If this is your only chance, you’ve got to enjoy it, not regret it before it’s gone.
And so she did. With a long, low ooh, she let her head fall forward, squinting at his dark hair, sleek under the pelting water, and felt each pull of his lips, every scrape of his teeth and slick slide of his tongue.
It was when he looked up at her, his warm, brown eyes, blinking and lashes gathered into wet, little commas, that she came, hard and debilitating, in his mouth. Muscles like Jell-O, she sank to the bottom of the tub beside him and let his mouth take hers, explicit and musky, but gentle in a way he hadn’t been before. Sweet slide of nose to nose, scrape of cheek to cheek, his hands on her breasts. They were too sensitive for it now, but she let him anyway. He could do whatever he wanted after the orgasm he’d just given her—the pulse in her clit completely unfamiliar.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he said, gathering her to him. His voice was rough, raw, and she believed him. He was under her now, his legs straight and his hot, hard erection against her sex, her thighs around his waist. He took himself in hand, lifted her up a little, and angled himself down, giving her the brief notion that he’d penetrate her, just like this, but instead sliding beneath her, leaving her empty, with nothing but an illicit shiver of disappointment.
But the disappointment fled as he started to move, all business, his eyes locked on where their bodies came together. His shoulders flexed, and he moved her, forward and back, her wet heat lubricating him.
“This is good,” he breathed into her ear, and it was. It was perfect. Dirty and rough, but somehow sweet beneath it all. He looked so needy, the way his brows sank and those stark lines etched deeper into his skin, his scar taut and white. Scrawled across his lowered lid, in stark contrast to that sweet sweep of lashes, the scabbed-up ink tried hard to look like fighting words but came out empty and weak in comparison to the true beauty of the man.
A good man, she knew, could feel it in her bones, certain in a way that should have worried her, but instead only made her want to give him things: her body and food and love.
The water ran cold by the time he got close to finishing, pulling her quickly away to yank his erection up between them and give her a chance to help. She grasped him, hard, the press of his skin beneath hers igniting her as it had since the first time she’d grazed him wearing a thin Nitrile glove. Something snapped in her brain. Synapses connected; fuses blew.
He clasped a big hand over hers, tightening even more, and showing her the rhythm he needed, his eyes skipping over her body until, for one frantic moment, they landed hard on hers, vague and young-looking, before closing, and he spilled all over their joined fists—his come emerging in hot, short bursts, too quickly washed away by the water.
* * *
After drying off, Clay moved to put his nasty clothes back on, but George stopped him by throwing a worn, brown terry-cloth robe in his face and racing off with his dirty stuff, giggling.
He got her back in the kitchen a short while later when he snuck up on her doing dishes, pinching her under the ribs and sending her into a squealing, vertical leap. Her reaction was so adorable that he had to kiss her, right there against the sink, and before he knew it, her hands were on him, under the robe, and they would have gone at it again on the kitchen floor if some timer hadn’t gone off, sending them apart like guilty teenagers.
He liked her like this, flirty and light. He liked himself like this, which was rare enough to shock him into silence for the few minutes it took her to get their food plated. They wound up eating on the porch, with front-row seats to a fucking cicada symphony, and Clay was only minimally bothered by it. It was George, he figured, watching her eat out of the corner of his eye. Her presence muffled the buzzing, dulled the agony. It felt good not to hurt quite so much.
They talked about her plans for the garden. He asked what needed work in the house, and all of it was done with a blind eye to reality—to the weirdness of the two of them, such an ill-suited pair, discussing normal things. He couldn’t just hang out here with this woman for the rest of his life. He couldn’t, because he had a job to do—or he would eventually. He had a life to get back to. Duties. It was all he knew, and he couldn’t imagine doing anything else… Although, at this point, he couldn’t imagine going back, either.
So, maybe I can do this right now. He tried out the thought, and no bells went off in his brain. For once. Just for now.
