Especially when there’s no rubber involved. Nothing at all between me and this woman.
No reason to get out of bed, except when she’s hungry at one in the morning and we both need water following the third time I take her.
After that, she turns on her side and I wrap my arm around her and bury my face in the crook of her neck and fall asleep to the sound of her sighs.
When I wake up, it’s still dark and I’m still spooning her. One soft arm reaches back to wind around my neck, I lean in…stroke my lips to her cheek. She arches her ass toward me and, like we’ve done it this way a million times, I’m inside her. Eyes shut, arms full, cock exactly where it needs to be. After a couple slow, easy thrusts, we barely move. Just her doing something inside that I’ve never felt before. It’s a clenching and unclenching, her hips subtly grinding. Not even sure I’ll come like this, but for some reason, the orgasm doesn’t seem to matter.
I don’t reach around for her clit. I don’t pump my hips. I stay buried inside her, warm and safe as a hug, lips pressed right where she smells so entirely of her it’s pure heaven. It’s home. It’s exactly where I’m meant to be.
Half dreaming, I yawn into her shoulder and she stretches with a noise like a happy, sated cat and settles deeper into me and the next thing, I’m asleep.
When I wake up before dawn, she’s gone.
34
Kit
We get into a rhythm, Jake and I. Every day and evening, we work at the restaurant and every night, we go back to his place and we do it. In his bed.
It’s almost—almost—like a relationship.
Except for the kissing part.
And the part where this thing has a deadline.
I haven’t gotten my period yet.
Nor have I bought a pregnancy test.
Why bother until I’m sure, right?
That’s the practical part of me talking, because false negatives on those things are common, so it seems wasteful, really, to buy one and then have to get another in a week or two.
But really, if I let myself be brutally honest for a second, I have to admit that I don’t want to know. If I knew for sure that I was pregnant, then I’d have to put a stop to what we’re doing.
And I don’t want to.
Every night, Jake is harder to leave and every day, it gets harder to imagine life without him.
Which is why, when the first truly viable candidate to replace him comes in after sending me her resumé, I almost turn her away.The job’s not available, I want to tell her.It’s taken.
But I’m too much of a survivor to do that. Instead, I lie and tell her I was going to reply to her email. I tell her to come on back and meet Jake, our current chef, who’s on his way out in less than a week.
Less than a week.
The pain that slices through me when I think that would be debilitating if I didn’t clench my jaw and stiffen my spine and pretend that my rib cage wasn’t collapsing in on itself.
I even invite her to the staff cookout we’re having at my place in a couple days. Cora and Riley are getting married and we’re closing for a full day to celebrate.
I bought a bunch of drinks and stuff to grill and we’re doing it at my place.
Jake, being Jake, shows up an hour early, with a huge, three-tiered cake in hand.
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s lavender,” he tells me, like the cake’s for me, not for our guests of honor. “And lemon.” He sniffs, turning to one side maybe a little embarrassed to admit it, then back to face me with a look so intense it pummels me, straight in the heart. “Reminds me of you.”
The balm I gave him. The way sex smelled that day, the two of us, wrapped in beeswax and flowers and aloe in my bed.
