Page 111 of Here & There

I want to stay like that, to feel her heat wrapped around me. To savor another moment I was sure would only stay inmy fantasies. But she’s wriggling on me, her beautiful round ass jiggling as she rocks her hips against me. Fuck, I’ve always loved a girl with some meat on her bones. But I’d love Shelby no matter what she looked like. Her looking like this—feeling like this—it’s a cherry on top.

I give her ass a smack again and groan when she cries out “yes!”

I grasp her ponytail with my free hand and tug her head back. “You’re taking this cock so beautifully,” I say. “Such a good girl.”

I switch hands so I’m holding her ponytail with my left and grasp her hip with my right, kneading the softness I think was the reason I came earlier. I slam my cock into her, pausing only to slap her ass lightly, to watch its beautiful width vibrate under me.

“Again,” she cries.

I tug her hair, smacking her ass again, a little harder this time. She moans, and my cock aches inside her. I keep going like this, slowing down only to pull off the showerhead, adjust the settings, and aim it at her clit.

It’s only a moment like this, me thrusting fast and hard so our skin slaps together, before I feel her tightening around me and let go of her ponytail to put my hand on her mouth to stifle the scream as she comes.

I come too, stiffening so hard that, for a moment, I can’t breathe.

The next time is softer. Gentler. I take my time exploring every part of her body I’ve wanted to touch.

Later, as I lie on my back with Shelby’s head tucked into my shoulder, her fingers splayed on my chest, I look up into the rafters of this little shed.

“You okay, Alasdair?” Shelby asks. Her favorite refrain. Then I realize what she’s called me.

I chuckle. “I haven’t heard that since elementary school. Since my mom, actually. She used to refuse to call me Mac.”

Shit. I don’t talk about my mom. That just slipped off my tongue. Something about being with Shelby has cracked everything hard off me. I’m fucking exposed.

I stretch, as if that’s enough to change the subject. “I’ve never been better, Shelby.” That’s not the half of it. My brain hasn’t caught up to any of what’s happened tonight, but I kiss her forehead like I’m completely in control.

Shelby brushes my temple with her fingertips like she knows what I’m thinking. Even now, after she’s been touching me all night, an almost violent warmth spreads through me at the soft touch. I swallow hard, stroking her hair where it falls across my neck.

“Why do you keep looking up there?” she asks.

I drop my attention from the beams of wood crossing the open space above to meet her eyes. I didn’t realize I’d been staring. “I guess I like the idea of this room holding happy memories now.” At her continued gaze, the open book I’ve turned into tells her how I avoided coming out here for so long because of what this room represented.

“Annie?”

“My dad too. He helped me fix up this place when I bought it. He helped me build this for her. It was the last project we worked on together. He was always so sure she would come back.”

“Tell me about your family,” she says.

I hesitate. Can’t I just lie here inhaling her scent? Feeling her heart beat against my ribs, her breath against my chest?

But that’s not fair. And she really wants to know.

So I start with the easiest ones—Nate and Dad. I talk about how Dad was my hero growing up. How I loved visiting him at work. Then I talk about Nate and how scared I was when we first met. How hard it was to get him to say even a few words to me at first. But she knows all that. She’s the reason we’ve gotten to where we are now.

It’s my sister and mom I find the hardest to talk about. The ones she’s really asking about.

Fuck. “Sometimes even just thinking about them hurts,” I whisper finally.

Shelby’s fingers curl in the hair at my chest. “I know how that feels,” she says after a moment.

The fist that clamps over my heart when I think of my family loosens just a little. She really does know what it’s like. More than anyone.

“I’ll tell you about them if you tell me about your people.”

Her breath hitches. Then she says, “Okay.”

So that’s what we do. We talk, both of us, about the people we lost, both figuratively and literally. I tell her how Annie was so much younger than me she was almost more like a kid than a sister. She tells me about Jessica and how close they were. Then, with some prodding, she tells me about her mom.

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