It was his fault that all the neck kissing inevitably led to Mae grabbing him, pushing him back, back, away from prying eyes, until they landed at her desk, until she was somehow in the same position she’d found herself in the first time they’d fucked, sitting on an inappropriate surface, Dell’s thick body between her knees.
And as he slowly slid to his own knees, as he stripped her and then kissed her—breasts, stomach, thighs, the center of her—a tiny part of her brain held up a red flag.
Not in your store, it said.Not here, not on this desk.
Because she had told Liv she would die here. And if something went wrong with this, if something broke between her and Dell?—
She wanted this store to behers.
But as Dell broke her apart with his tongue, as he pushed her down and produced another condom from his pocket, as he eased inside her once more, the red flag disintegrated, tore into tiny shreds.
Because ever since Dell had set up his power tools outside the back door, just yards away from where he was currently inside of her, ruthless and almost painful in the middle of the day, Bay Books had become a bit his, too. Maybe it had always been a bit his. Maybe Mae couldn’t fully imagine, now, not sharing every estimate and invoice with him. Not talking through every new idea and design with him. Not visiting the lumberyard together. Maybe, whenever she had a new idea, she thought,we could do this.And maybe at first, thatwehad meant Jesus. Because it had always been so easy to feel Jesus here, in this town, inside this old building. Maybe thewehad often meant Vik.
But maybe whenever she thoughtwenow, she actually meant Dell. Maybe she had meant Dell for a while.
“Shit,” Dell muttered, soft and shaky in her ear, and he gave a final thrust, accompanied by that low, guttural sound he made just before he came.
He stayed there after, forehead pressed against her neck, after she navigated a hand between their bellies and rubbed herself over the edge, his beard prickly against her collarbone, his breath gusting down her chest.
“Which is which,” he said while she was still shaking; eventually, she realized his hand was once more holding the pendants on her necklace. She brought her own sticky hand up to clumsily clasp around his.
“Flowering dogwood,” she said, eyes drooping closed. “North Carolina.”
Dell’s fingers twisted underneath hers, holding another tiny flower.
“Blue violet. Wisconsin.”
“Rose,” Dell murmured, and Mae smiled.
“Yeah, that’s the easy one. New York.”
“So this weird one must be?—”
“Oregon grape.”
Finally, Dell let the pendants drop. Focused on Mae’s fingers instead. Brought each one to his mouth, licked them clean.
* * *
On Thursday, Mae found her perfect centerpiece New Releases table at the flea in Florence with Olive. It was scratched, and a darker wood than her shelves, but it was the perfect size and had the perfect dramatic legs and she thought she might paint it, turquoise or pink or blue, something to match the rug and Gemma’s murals and the waves of the ocean.
Olive owned an even bigger truck than Dell, and she wrapped the table in a packing blanket and secured it to the bed. And even though it was dark by the time they got back to Greyfin Bay and they were both sore and tired and the table was heavy as an anvil, Olive helped Mae get it through the front door of 12 Main, until it stood on the rug in front of the window. Until it was home.
* * *
“Hey,” Mae said on Friday night, almost casually, as if she wasn’t currently riding his dick. “If I ever found someone I wanted to fuck on the side, or…have something else with, would you be cool with it?”
Dell’s brain, and his pelvis, stuttered to a stop. Mae grunted at the halt in rhythm.
“Sorry,” he said automatically.
“Nah, I brought that on myself,” Mae said, before readjusting her position over him and restarting her own rhythm. Her nipples tickled against his skin. This was Dell’s favorite position with Mae. Fucking her against countertops was hot, but it also hurt his back. He liked her like this: resplendent in her own power.
“Sorry,” Dell said again as he tried to bring his brain back online. He knew he should have had a better response to this question ready to go. He knew it was hypocritical if he didn’t—if he couldn’t?—
But the thought of Mae moving this way with someone else made him want to die.
“It’s okay, mon cherie,” Mae whispered after a minute, and his heart tripped over itself. “You don’t have to be okay with it. Or have an answer right now.”
