22. Aurora
22
AURORA
A NEIGHBORLY HAND
“W ow,” my mom said as she looked at the house through the lens of my phone. “ It looks great.”
A little burst of pride filled my chest. We had connected this afternoon to check in about the renovation timeline and budget. She was just as antsy as I was to get the house sold before property taxes became her problem.
“It’s coming along,” I said humbly. “ I think we’re almost ready to paint everything. Taking down the wallpaper, patching the holes, and priming took forever.”
“We? Did you hire a painting company?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “ I looked into one, but it was super expensive. It’ll take longer, but we’ll save money this way.”
“I see. It just sounded like you had someone there helping you. Didn’t you say your friends came to visit? Did they help?”
I laughed. “ They helped with demolition. Three women armed with sledgehammers, crowbars, and tequila were a fabulous combination. It was probably a good thing they were only here for a couple of days.”
“Sad they couldn’t stay longer. I know you don’t get to see them much,” she said as I trudged up the stairs to show her the second floor.
“Whitney’s on a book tour right now. I might try to see her when she comes to North Carolina .” I stepped up onto the landing and moved my phone around so she could see the bedroom entrances and widow’s watch balcony. “ Floors and repairs are done up here. Jack finished putting in the new light fixtures yesterday. All that’s left is to paint.”
“Jack?”
“Uh . . .” I stammered and stuttered, trying to find an explanation that didn’t include the bungee-cord emotions we both had.
Neither Jack nor I had been able to sort out what we could handle, so we had settled on pretending like things weren’t becoming more and more complicated by the day.
He wanted more, but he had a hard time believing that he wouldn’t lose a love, and that they wouldn’t lose him.
I didn’t want more, but I couldn’t deny the invisible pull he had on me. I loved being around Jack . He was funny and easygoing. He had his own things going on—his own job, life, and responsibilities—which meant that he didn’t constantly criticize or obsess over how I spent my time the way my ex had.
I had always struggled with relationships, even when I was in a good one.
I was independent. I wanted a partner. A best friend. Someone who would share life with me. I couldn’t deal with another partner who would drag me around on an emotional leash or make me give them a piggyback ride through life.
I didn’t want someone in front of me or behind me. I wanted a partner in every sense of the word. I wanted someone beside me.
But this . . . this was temporary. I was here for the summer and nothing more.
Maybe the dead aunt cliché and the bad weather cliché weren’t only in the books, but falling in love after a few weeks of forced proximity definitely was.
It wasn’t love. I was under the spell of summer sun and seaside magic.
All I needed was the smell of highway diesel exhaust of a two-day, windows-down road trip, and the Colorado mountain air to clear my head.
“The next door neighbor has been really helpful,” I said by way of circumventing the emotional early mid-life crisis.
Mom’s face pinched in intense thought. “ It’s been decades since I visited Aunt Juniper . I think the last time was when you were five or six. I don’t remember the neighbors. I figured all the houses out there would be vacation rentals by now.”
“Most of them are. It’s just Aunt Juniper’s and Jack’s houses that are left.”
“That’s sad, but I guess it’s just the way life goes.” There was a twinkle in her eye. “ So , Jack . . . That’s the neighbor?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you and this neighbor have gotten to know each other?”
“What makes you think that?” I clipped defensively.
Her laugh startled me. “ Because as much as we’re different, you and I are a lot alike. Neither of us would let a man so much as carry a bag if we didn’t like or trust him.”
She had a point.
My stubbornness was due to the fact that I had been raised by a strong single mother who refused to settle, and taught me that very valuable lesson. Maybe that’s why we were both single.
“He’s a good guy.”
She wore a knowing smile, but didn’t press. “ Very well, then.” The screen glitched, and Mom frowned. “ I’m sorry, sweetie. This meeting wasn’t supposed to start for another fifteen minutes but I need to jump in now.”
It took me a minute to figure out what day it was. I had no structure to my weeks, and Jack worked weekdays and weekends alike. “ You have meetings on a Saturday ?”
She nodded. “ The world never stops spinning. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
As the call disconnected, I thought about my mom and her gray-toned suits, the constant barrage of spreadsheets, weekend meetings that weren’t really that pressing, and corporate drivel.
She loved the structure of office life. The predictability of it all. She thrived in it. But what she saw as safety and security, I saw as mind-numbing monotony.
Saturday . . .
I had buckled down this week to get the house in a good spot, and had gotten a little landscaping done this morning before it was atrociously hot. I could afford to take an afternoon off. Eventually , I’d have a regular job and the perk of making my own schedule that I was used to would disappear.
I thought about throwing my laptop in my bag and driving down the coast to that country bar Jack had taken me to the day we went to the library. Or maybe I’d go to Ernie’s and see if he had any doughnuts made. The beach was always an option, but I was a little sunburned after Jack and I had gone down to the water and talked. I didn’t want to make it worse.
Honestly, a soak in the clawfoot tub on the second floor would be heaven. I didn’t have wine, but I had Willow’s next book sitting on my eReader and cold pizza from dinner at Ernie’s two nights ago.
I skipped down the stairs to gather my reinforcements. The brown cardboard box in my bedroom made me pause when I was halfway out the door to head back up.
Hmm . . .
I pawed through it and found the vibrator the girls had tucked in there. It was waterproof, after all. And it would be a shame if it never got used.
The giant dildo, on the other hand—that was better left to being used for home defense.
I skipped up the stairs with a slice of cold pizza hanging from my mouth, and dipped into the bathroom.
It was a little strange that a bathroom was one of my favorite rooms in the house, but this one was magnificent.
Checkerboard floors that I had carefully cleaned led to a completely impractical clawfoot tub. I had scrubbed and reglazed it, thanks to a handy DIY tutorial and a trip to the hardware store that only set me back about fifty bucks.
The most obnoxiously wonderful thing about the bathroom was the skylight on the ceiling and the nearly floor-to-ceiling window that the tub sat in front of. I hadn’t bothered with using the tub yet, so the window was uncovered. But it was nearing dinner time and the beach goers that had been hanging out on my sand had disappeared.
I turned the water on and grabbed a chair from one of the bedrooms to serve as my tub-side table. With the pizza still in my mouth, I set my eReader and vibrator on the chair, quickly undressed, then sank into the deep tub before anyone walked by the giant window.
Bubbles bloomed in the water, quickly covering my legs. The tall walls of the tub hid the rest of my body from any prying eyes that might look up at the house. I pulled up a moody playlist on my phone and turned it up so I could hear it over the rush of the faucet.
The house was blazing hot, so I kept the water tepid. It soothed my sunburn and eased the ache in my muscles.
It felt like my own private oasis. I leaned back, resting my neck on the curved lip of the tub. If I had one of those boards that stretched across the sides and could hold a computer, I’d never leave. Every book would be written right here.
Or the widow’s watch.
Or the beach.
Maybe my aunt had been onto something with this old house. The rest of our family lived out west. I had never understood why my aunt packed up and moved across the country by herself.
But now I did.
She was chasing bliss. Seeking that spark that everyone needed in life. It was the magic that she sprinkled between the pages of her novels.
I finished my pizza, but instead of going for Willow’s book, I closed my eyes and daydreamed about the story I had been working on.
I was, what I would usually consider to be, halfway through the first draft. But instead of sticking to an outline and chasing a deadline, I was just following the characters around. It wasn’t my usual process, so I was completely convinced that the story was crap. But the characters stayed loud in my mind.
I mused on a scene I had playing in my head where he finally stops holding out and they’re intimate for the first time. Those strong hands separating her legs while she lies there, spread out for him. The quickening of her breath. The darkening of his eyes as his pupils dilate with arousal. The way her skin would dimple as his fingertips flexed, pressing into her thighs.
I sank farther into the slowly deepening water and let my hand slip between my legs.
As the scene played out in my mind, the leading man turned to face my mind’s eye.
Jack.
Why the hell was I picturing Jack ?
Jack was the cute, Southern , small-town firefighter. He wasn’t my morally gray billionaire with a Scottish accent. He did things like check the air pressure in my tires. He didn’t kill people for looking at me.
But Jack did seem like the kind of man who would count my eyelashes as he lay awake just to make sure I was sleeping. That was definitely book-boyfriend material.
Dammit, Aurora . Stop thinking about Jack .
My head got the message, but it was lost in translation to my heart. My lady temple didn’t get the memo at all.
All it took was one inkling floating through my mind about Jack , and I was wired.
I slid the pad of my fingertip around my clit, teasing it gently as I arched my back and let a whispered sigh slip. “ Jack .” The admission of his name was delightfully taboo.
“You really need to start locking your doors.”
I jumped, sending a tidal wave of water and bubbles splashing out of the tub.
Jack had his hands braced on the doorframe.
“What are you doing here?” I said through labored breaths as my heart ricocheted in my chest.
“Well, I was coming over to see if you needed a hand . . .” His eyes flicked to where my arm disappeared beneath the water. “ But I see you’re taking care of things just fine.”
I didn’t dare to move.
But Jack did. He slowly sauntered into the bathroom and knelt next to the tub. His eyes flicked to the window for a split second, then back to me.
“It’s pretty rude to walk into someone’s house unannounced,” I said through sharp, shoddy breaths.
“Yeah? Well , it’s pretty rude to moan someone’s name when they’re not around to help you make that pretty sound.” Darkness coated his eyes like an oil slick. “ Are you gonna make that sound again?”
I swallowed the wrecking ball in my throat. “ I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do, sweetheart.” He started to push the bubbles aside. “ You’re in here all alone, teasing that pretty pussy with your fingers and whispering my name because you’re too stubborn to come and ask me for an orgasm like a good girl.”
My nipples ached at the sound of his voice. “ Jack .” His name slipped out of my mouth without rhyme or reason. It was a prayer and a curse all in one.
“It’d be a damn shame to let your progress go to waste.”
I bolstered my courage, but didn’t move my fingers. “ I thought we agreed that we weren’t going to have sex again.”
“Does it look like we’re having sex right now?”
He had a point.
“I’m not going to touch you, Roar . Not like that, anyway. We had an agreement and I’m a man of my word.”
Dammit. I was stubborn and stupid.
Pinpricks of delight flashed like lightning as Jack threaded his hand up the back of my hair and gripped it at the roots.
My back arched immediately, bringing my breasts out of the water.
“Careful, baby. Get back in the water. You don’t want anyone seeing you like this, do you?”
Goosebumps raced across my shoulders and chest, dancing down to my fingertips. I eased back into the water, sliding my fingers back and forth over my clit.
“Atta girl,” he rasped. “ Get busy, Roar . I know what you sound like when you’re about to come, and you’re not close yet.”
“You could give me that hand you were talking about,” I sassed.
“Sorry, beautiful. You made your bed. Now you have to get yourself off in it. Alone .”
“But I? —”
He tightened his grip on my hair and tugged backward. I gasped when his mouth grazed the shell of my ear. “ Aurora , I’m not going to tell you again. You’re getting exactly what you wanted, so you’d better enjoy it. But I’ll give you a free pass. You can think about the way it felt to slide down my cock. You were so fucking wet. You can think about how good it felt when I took you to bed and pinned you down while I sucked on those pretty tits. Remember the sounds you made for me?”
Everything was electric; my breasts, my pussy, my fingers and toes. I needed him.
“Slide your fingers into your pussy, pretty girl. It won’t be as good as the real thing, but it’ll get you there,” he teased.
“Your fucking mouth is going to be the death of me,” I groused as I did exactly what he said.
“Back at you, Roar .” He kept a secure grip on my hair with one hand while he traced my lips with his fingers. “ First thing I did when I woke up this morning was fuck my hand while I pictured you on your knees with my cock between these pretty lips.” He pressed his thumb to my lower lip, then slowly fed it into my mouth.
Heat and excitement blazed in my core as I played with my clit. I sucked on his finger, swirling my tongue around it like it was his cock.
“Is that what you would do, baby?”
I nodded, opening my eyes just enough to see his cocky smirk.
“Damn shame it won’t happen,” he mused as he cupped my chin and stroked my cheek.
“You’re teasing me,” I whimpered. My fingers moved faster as I chased the elusive orgasm.
Everything happened in an instant. My back bowed. My toes curled. I squeezed my breast and thumbed my nipple as ecstasy crashed over me, drowning me and pulling me under. Jack pulled firm and hard on my hair, ratcheting up the intensity of it all.
And then he let go.
It was the same feeling of glittering warmth I had basked in when Jack and I had fucked at his house. But the water was twice as cold, and I felt twice as empty.
Slowly, he rose to his feet and backed toward the door. His eyes never left me. Not for a second.
Jack scrubbed his palm down the side of his day-off stubble. “ I’m not teasing you, Aurora . I’m just making sure you know what you’re missing.”