Page 99 of Flirting with Forever

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THERIDEBACKfrom Connecticut went by in a blur. Mary was quiet as she watched the darkened highway speed past her windows. John held her hand across the back seat, but he could apparently sense her need for quiet.

She didn’t speak at all until they were latched behind the door of their Airbnb bedroom, across the house from Ty and Fin and Kylie.

“Do you see why my age has been a sensitive subject for me?” she asked, finally breaking the quiet between them.

John let out a breath that sounded like a tire being popped. “Good God, yes. I totally understand. That was awful. She’s an undeniably hard person, Mare. I think it’s gonna take me a year to process everything that just happened.” He flopped backward onto the bed, his arms flung out above him. Rolling his head to eye her across the dim room, he squinted. “I think I need to apologize even more for saying—”

She laughed and held up a hand. “We’re past that, sweetheart. You’ve made it exceedingly clear how you actually feel about my age. How you feel about me.”

Mary bit her lip and turned away from John, taking out one earring and then the other, slicking her dress over her head and staring at herself in the dim light. She looked shadowed and mature and confident. She replayed certain parts of the evening in her head.

“Did you mean what you said tonight?” She turned to him in just her bra and underwear and watched his eyes get stuck on many interesting parts of her body.

“Yes,” he answered huskily. “I’m not sure which part you’re referring to, but I meant everything. Every word.”

She stalked toward him, threw a knee over his hips and pinned his hands next to his ears. His lips quirked and his eyes heated. “What about the part about having kids?” she asked, her heart tripping against her ribs. “Did you mean that too?”

John’s brow pulled down into a V, and she knew him well enough now to know that he was thinking, not judging. “Mare, what will be, will be. If kids are in the stars for us, I’m not worried about making a family with you. It’ll pan out somehow.”

“That’s how I feel.” She cocked her head to one side. “I’ve never been too worried about it. Which I think worries my mother most of all. As a woman, apparently it’s my God-given duty to worry myself into a raisin over my own fertility.”

“Don’t do that,” he said with a smile. “I’ll love you when you’re a raisin, but I don’t want you to worry yourself into one.”

Their eyes got stuck on each other as John’s words sank in. It was the first time either of them had said the wordloveto one another. But the moment wasn’t scary. The moment felt good. The moment felt warm. There was central air pumping through the room, but Mary felt the heat rise between them. She felt lit from within, churning with a glowing heat that she wanted nothing more than to share with him.

“I’ll love you when you’re a raisin too,” she said in a low voice. She still pinned his hands to the mattress, and she gave them a little extra push to let him know that she wanted him to keep them there as she unbuttoned his shirt.

He was breathing fast, flexing his hands, looking like he wanted to touch her every single place he could. But he didn’t lift his arms except to help her peel his shirt off. “Mary,” he whispered.

She slid down his body and worked him free of his pants next, roughly shoving his boxers away like they were a personal offense to her. John moved his hands but only to clutch at his own hair, the strands of black spiking up between his fingers.

Mary tossed her bra and underwear away, planted her knees on the bed and bent over him. She loved this man, and her body demanded that she show him. She took his hardness in one hand and swallowed him down in one big gulp, holding him against the back of her throat and drawing his eyes to hers.

He said something that she didn’t hear before she kept at him, working him in and out of her mouth, again and again. He spoke again and grunted. Suddenly, she set him free and let every inch of her skin slick across his as she crawled up his body.

“You have to be quiet,” she admonished him with a smile on her face as she pressed in for a kiss, giving him all her weight. “There’s other people in the house.”

“Quiet,” he agreed, almost nonsensically, his eyes on her mouth.

She slid against him again, opening her legs and pinning him with a hug, her mouth pressed to his. He made a small, almost restrained noise, and she reveled in the fact that she was definitely peeling him apart little by little.

The conversation with her parents tonight had been emotional and intense, but also freeing. She’d understood, for the first time ever, that there was no use changing herself for them. Either they were going to figure out how to love her or they weren’t. She couldn’t make them. And in the meantime, she had this big, broad-shouldered, mean-faced, sweet-hearted man who wanted to leave with her. Would go anywhere with her, she knew. This man who was clutching at every part of her he could, who was trying to get his bleary eyes to focus as he gasped for air.

Mary reared up and spread her legs over his hips, teasing him with her wetness. They’d decided to forego condoms just last week, and she couldn’t have been more grateful for the decision than she was at that very moment. When she sat herself down, took him in one inch at a time, the look on his face was worth it. It was worth every moment, every misunderstanding, every bit of doubt she’d had to wade through. Because here she was, right now, fully seated on a man who, she just knew, had decided she was everything he’d ever wanted.

She started to ride him, but he grunted and she fell forward, her palm over his lips and her mouth at his ear. “Quiet,” she demanded. She reveled in the role reversal. Usually she was the one screaming her head off during sex.

They rolled halfway, a tangle of limbs, no clear position, and the bed started to squeak. John stood, arms banded around her, keeping her linked to him, and cast around for a quiet place to keep this party going. Mary looked too. There was nothing. Not even a dresser. Just a director’s chair under the window that was not going to hold them.

“Bed,” she demanded. “We’ll be quiet.”

He fell back onto the bed, and she ground herself against him, attempting to fuse them. Her fingers and hands everywhere and the same with his. They twisted onto their sides, and then him on top. They got a little too vigorous, the bed squeaked and they brought it back to a frantic, grasping glide against one another. Somehow the lack of a thrusting plunge was even hotter than if they’d been able to have sex the way their bodies were screaming at them to do. Mary felt that every inch of her was consumed with him. His quiet, restrained breath, his teeth clamping onto her shoulder, his heavy fingers in her hair, clasping her hip.

She tightened her legs over his back and held him in place, working herself against him barely a half inch at a time, the pressure unbelievable, his flavor in her mouth, his whispered name on her lips as she catapulted herself over the edge.

She tightened hard onto him, against him, and moments later, he was rigid against her, pulsing within her, their bodies slick and aching from how tightly they’d gripped one another.

---