Maggie #2
Then he reached out and pulled me into his arms.
I didn’t know we got there…but somehow, I was in his lap now, setting the pace, his legs stretched out. My knees found the mattress and I sank down deeper. Nash moaned in my ear, his big hands on my back, keeping me safe.
“Come on,” he said. “Take what you want. You deserve it.”
I did.
Oh…I did.
I raised myself up…let myself drop, taking him fully. Did it again.
“Fuck, you feel good,” he groaned. “Can’t imagine someone letting you go.”
That did it.
Something cracked open in my chest — warm and aching and completely undone — and I stopped thinking about performing, stopped thinking about being good enough, stopped thinking about anything except the solid weight of him underneath me and his hands on my back and the way he was looking at me like I was something worth keeping.
I found my rhythm.
Slow at first, then deeper, chasing the feeling that had been building since the bar, since the barstool, since the moment he’d looked at me in the low light and said you look different than usual in that voice that meant something else entirely.
“There she is,” Nash breathed. His hands slid down to my hips. “That’s it, sunshine. Just like that.”
“Nash—”
“I know.” His forehead dropped to my shoulder. “Fuck, I know.”
I put my hands on his chest and pushed him back so he was lying on the bed.
Then I really, really took what I wanted.
I started riding him hard—one hand splayed out across his chest, the other in my hair, my head tilted back.
I didn’t even look at him, just felt—felt the way he leaned into my pace rather than trying to set his own, the way he held my hips.
His hands wandered up to tweak my breasts, hanging onto them when I squeezed tight around him.
“Fuck,” he cursed. “Your pussy is fuckin’ unreal, sunshine.”
Again with the praise. It worked like a charm. A+ student, yes sir, I’m so, so good for you.
“Taking me like you were made for it.” He thrust up into my rhythm, meeting me, and I cried out. “Fuck, your perfect tits bouncing like a fuckin’ dream, you’re perfect, Maggie.”
I’d never felt more beautiful, more wanted, more seen—
“Gonna fill you up,” he said, low and rough, almost to himself. “Gonna fill this pretty pussy up so good—”
“I’m close—”
“Fuck yeah,” he gritted out. “I want…trying to last for you, but—”
“Don’t try, come with me,” I begged. “Please Nash—”
“Okay, baby…okay…shit—”
We came apart at the same time.
His hands gripped my hips so hard I’d probably have marks tomorrow and I didn’t care, I didn’t care about anything, I just rode it out — every wave, every aftershock — his name on my lips and my name on his, rough and desperate, and for one suspended moment the whole world was just this room and this man and the way he was looking at me like he hadn’t expected this either.
Like I’d surprised him.
Good, I thought again, faintly. Good.
Then I collapsed.
Draped across his chest, completely boneless, his heart slamming under my ear. His arms came around me automatically, one hand finding my hair, stroking slow and absent like he didn’t even know he was doing it.
Neither of us said anything for a long moment.
The town was quiet outside. Somewhere down the street a car passed. The maple trees were probably still doing their whole aggressively pretty thing out there in the dark, completely unbothered.
“Still alive?” Nash asked finally. His voice was rough, wrecked in a way that sent a small, satisfied thrill through me.
I did that. I made him sound like that.
“Barely,” I said.
His chest moved in an almost-laugh, too exhausted to make it whole.
His hand kept moving through my hair. I needed to get up—needed to go home, shower, sleep in my own bed, walk into school tomorrow with my head held high and my professional boundaries fully intact.
This had been a mistake—albeit a very fun mistake.
There was this annoying sound going off somewhere close by, and it didn’t occur to me that it was a phone ringing for way too long.
Nash’s phone—still in his jeans, which were crumpled on the floor.
He moved just enough for me to realize he was trying to get up, then he stretched his arm out to find his jeans and grab his phone.
I was still on top of him, suddenly very, very self-conscious.
“Hey,” he said to whoever was on the other line. “Yeah, I’m here. I’m still awake.”
A pause. I could hear a tiny voice on the other end, too small to make out words.
“I know, baby.” He sat up slowly, careful not to dislodge me. “Did you have a bad dream?”
My god, he was still inside me, and I was pretty sure he was on the phone with his kid. I didn’t know if I was the bigger monster, or he was.
“Yeah.” He was already swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Yeah, of course. Come home. Tell Aunt Claire twenty minutes.”
He hung up.
I was already sitting up. Already looking for my shirt.
“You don’t have to—“ he started.
“No, I absolutely do.” I found Bryce’s t-shirt on the floor and pulled it over my head, which—I was burning this shirt the second I got home. “Go get your daughter. I’ll let myself out.”
“Maggie.”
I looked at him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, phone in hand, hair mussed, looking at me with those dark eyes in the low light. He looked like—he looked like something I was going to have to work very hard not to think about tomorrow morning at school dropoff.
…which was in approximately six hours.
“Take your time,” he said. “No rush.”
“I’m rushing,” I said. “I’m rushing extremely fast.”
I found my sweatpants. My shoes were downstairs. I had to walk through the living room with the train track and the Barbie and the dinosaurs and I had to do it right now before a five year old came home and found her kindergarten teacher doing a walk of shame through the living room.
He stood and started getting dressed too, but he didn’t seem even remotely concerned about all this.
That did a number on me—because I realized that while this was very, very strange for me, it was all ordinary for him.
He probably did this all the time. He’d had a condom in his pocket, like he’d planned for this situation.
Which maybe he had.
Which maybe I should have thought about before I spent three hours at his bar drinking orange juice and telling him my whole life story and letting him take me apart on a barstool.
The Nash Effect.
I’d walked right into it. Eyes open, full information, sound of mind, and I had walked directly in.
“Hey.”
I was pulling on my second shoe and I looked up at him. He was dressed now—jeans, a different henley, hair pushed back. He looked annoyingly good for two in the morning. He looked like a man who had done this many, many times and had a whole system for it.
I looked like a woman who had not.
“We good?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, trying not to cry like an idiot. “We’re so good. I just um…I need to get ready for school tomorrow—”
“Of course,” he said.
He walked me to the side door—not the bar door, the side door that let out onto the quiet street, away from Main, away from anyone who might be up at two in the morning and feel like reporting back to Principal Daniels.
Small mercies.
He opened it for me and I stepped out into the night air, cool and sharp and smelling like autumn, and I turned around to say something—something normal, something cool something professional, something that would restore approximately fifteen percent of my dignity—
Nash leaned down and kissed me.
And I was in the midst of the Nash Effect all over again.
I leaned into him just enough…rested my hands on his chest. He kissed me once, twice, and I could still taste myself on him.
He pulled back.
“‘Night, Miss Laine,” he said.
I blinked up at him. “Uh…bye.”
He just chuckled and went the other direction, to the truck parked in the alley.
And I stood there in the dark, in the middle of the night…
and I knew I’d made a massive mistake. Because he might have done casual, but I didn’t.
And he was much older than me—I didn’t know how much, but I knew it was enough that he could probably be my father.
And he was my student’s dad. And he was the sexiest man I’d ever laid eyes on, and all I wanted was to crawl back into his bed… and that made me pitiful.
I was screwed. Absolutely gone for him.
Another victim of the Nash Effect.