Chapter 20 #2
He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. “Was it bad?” he asked.
She was shaking and gasping against him, but he could swear that she was aroused. Her body just felt aroused as she squirmed against him.
Or maybe it was merely wishful thinking.
He tried not to let himself hope since she’d clearly just had a bad dream. But his body was hoping, was throbbing anyway.
“It was”—she began shakily—“it was intense .”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
It took Kelly a minute to get herself together enough to explain. “You know I’ve had issues with men in the past.”
Caleb tensed up involuntarily.
She went on, although she must have felt his response. “So sometimes what should just be a nice sexy dream turns into… something else.”
She sounded so small and broken that he dropped any hope of having sex right now. Instead, he rocked her against him. He felt too much to try to say anything since all this was so painfully new to him.
It seemed like he didn’t have to say anything. Kelly whispered, “Thanks, Caleb. I was so relieved to wake up and remember… where I am now.”
It soothed something in his chest, despite his damned aching cock. He kept holding her against him until her shuddering angst had eased up.
And then, before he knew to expect it, her hand started fumbling down between them. Slid under the waistband of his loose pajama pants and closed on his erection.
“Kelly,” he rasped as he felt her cool fingers against his hot flesh.
She pressed against him until his cock was trapped between the pressure of her hand and his lower belly. He sucked in a breath and tried not to buck his hips against her touch.
“I’m sorry I’m so fucked up, Caleb,” she whispered, her palm rubbing firmly up and down his length.
Caleb couldn’t restrain a guttural exclamation of pleasure as his breathing hitched and accelerated. “Kelly,” he forced out. “It’s fine. I’m fucked up enough myself. If you don’t want to—” He had to bite his lip hard as her fingers gently fondled the head of his shaft.
“See,” Kelly began hoarsely. “That’s the thing.”
She released his cock, which made Caleb grunt in disappointment. But then she found one of his hands and guided it down between her legs, after slipping it under the waistband of her underwear.
Caleb grunted again when he realized that she was hot and wet. Feeling a new urgency to the pressure of arousal inside him, he moved his fingers, sliding them against the slick warmth of her pussy.
Kelly sucked in her breath and squirmed insistently against his hand.
“Kelly?” he asked. He had no idea what was going on, and he was almost afraid to hope.
“I’m scared,” Kelly whispered.
Caleb’s hand grew still between her legs, but he couldn’t bring himself to move it away. “What are you scared of?”
He didn’t understand. If only he knew what was scaring her, he could start to make it better.
She reached up to hold on to his shoulders, as if she needed to cling to something. “It’s going to sound stupid.”
He stroked her again, before he could stop himself, making her gasp sharply in pleasure.
She was so wet for him—from her dream or from his touch now—that his fingers were coated with her moisture.
He didn’t slide a finger inside her, but he rubbed the length of his fingers between the folds of her flesh.
She winced in response, grinding her arousal against his hand in naked need.
It felt like ages since he’d pleased her this way.
“Tell me anyway,” he insisted huskily.
Her face twisted reluctantly as her frenzied motion against his hand grew still. She explained in a self-conscious mumble, “It was so intense last time. So real. I’m afraid it’s going to be just as real this time.”
Caleb inhaled at the sudden clench in his heart. He felt an intense surge of understanding, desire, tenderness, pride.
“It… it just scares me.”
He made a rough sound in his throat and pulled her against him with his free arm, his other hand still between her legs, touching her intimately. “Blossom, it was real. It will be real. But you don’t have to be scared. This is the only time it’s ever been real for me too.”
A little shudder ran through her, and she didn’t say anything.
“We can wait as long as you need,” he murmured, not sure of what else to say.
But she must have made her decision. “I don’t want to wait anymore.” Kelly rolled over onto her back, pulling him over her as she did.
Caleb situated himself between her legs. “You sure?”
Now that he was here, on top of her, gazing at her in a lush sprawl beneath him, he wasn’t sure he could hold back anymore.
She nodded. “I want to. I’m just scared.”
“Don’t be scared,” he murmured, kissing her, softly at first and then more deeply and passionately, as the tightly coiled need inside him finally found an outlet.
As they kissed, they started working on their clothing until Caleb’s pajamas and Kelly’s shirt were tossed over the side of the bed.
Caleb was still hard, and he was so achingly needy now that he wasn’t sure he could last very long. He felt between her legs again, sliding a finger inside her and pumping it to make sure she was still wet enough.
She let out a shaky sigh and gazed up at him, eyes wide and urgent, supple mouth full and deeply red.
“You ready?” he asked thickly.
She nodded, her fingers pressing into his skin as she gripped his shoulders.
Bracing himself on one arm, he lined himself up at her entrance. Pushed into her, grunting as he felt her tight, wet channel clinging to his hard flesh as he sank in deeper.
It was so good. His cock was already pulsing with intensifying pleasure. He froze, squeezing his eyes shut and jerking his head to the side as he fought to control the overwhelming pressure surging through him.
This was different. So different than it had ever been before.
And suddenly he realized one of the reasons why.
With a rough exclamation, he reared up urgently on straightened arms. “Fuck,” he rasped. “The condom.”
Kelly was shifting and shuddering beneath him, and he managed to open his eyes to look at her. She was biting her lip, and her cheeks were deeply flushed. “It’s all right,” she panted. “Birth control is covered. You’re healthy, aren’t you? And we’re not sleeping with anyone else. Right?”
He couldn’t help but release a lingering groan—at the knowledge that he was buried inside her, nothing between them at all. “Yes,” he huffed, tightening his body as he kept struggling for control. “God, Kelly, you feel so good.”
She was squirming now, her full breasts jiggling with her restless motion. “You too. Please move.”
Caleb clenched his jaw and held himself rigid on his arms. He managed to pull his pelvis back and rock into her, feeling a wave of uncontrolled pleasure as he did.
Kelly arched her back and reached beside her to fumble with the sheets. “Caleb, please,” she whimpered. “Need you. Need this. Need to come.”
Almost growling in response, he jerked his head. Thrust again, his eyes, his ears, his head, his heart, his cock starting to pulse with the cadence of his need. “Fuck, Kelly,” he gritted out, fucking her in urgent little thrusts. “So good. Can’t last long.”
It was almost humiliating to need her—to need anyone—this much.
But he did.
She must have been pretty far gone herself now since she was squirming her pelvis ceaselessly against his penetration. “It’s okay,” she gasped, arching her neck and twisting her features with effort. “Just… another minute.”
She reached down beneath his body, which he was holding off her as much as he could. Her knuckles brushing against the base of his cock in a way that made him shake, she rubbed her clit in fast, little circles, starting to huff out breathless grunts.
Her body started to tighten and her knees drew up beside his hips. He could feel her pussy pulsing around his throbbing cock as he thrust into her with short, clumsy pumps.
Kelly’s face was contorting in pleasure and concentration, and she kept grunting softly as her instinctive motion became more frantic.
Caleb was so close to losing it that his vision blurred over, and he had to stop his motion abruptly.
Kelly was whimpering loudly in shameless need, her hand working frenziedly on her clit. “Caleb!” she almost sobbed. “Caleb, please!”
He took a harsh, painful breath. Drove into her with six more fast, hard pushes.
She arched up, practically coming off the bed, her head tossing to the side and her whole body shuddering with her release, tears streaming from her eyes into her hair.
Caleb almost roared as he felt her hot, hot pussy clenching around him ruthlessly. And he froze as his climax took him, hard and overwhelming.
The spasms of pleasure drew up in his balls and throbbed through his cock. He felt the pulses of his release inside her. He experienced an uncontrollable swelling of primitive pride in claiming her this way.
His elbows buckled, and he collapsed on top of her, panting into her hair and shaking a little. She was holding on to him, her body soft, loving, and pliant beneath him. They didn’t talk for a long time, just clung to each other in needy silence.
Until finally Caleb’s reason and recognition returned. He rolled off her a little so she wouldn’t have to support his whole weight. His cock was soft and wet, and it slid out of her easily.
Stroking her warm face, he said dryly, “I think I might be out of practice.”
She smiled up at him and caressed his hair. “Well, then we better start practicing more.”
Caleb shook his head in amusement and readjusted until he was on his back, and she was curled up beside him. He didn’t say any more, feeling uncomfortable with anything too mushy.
But he was silently wondering if this was how it felt to be with someone for real.
The following evening, he was sitting at the desk in his home office, trying to get through some email before bed when his phone rang.
He stared for several seconds at the screen—the name of the caller—before he clicked over to answer it. “Hey, Vinnie. It’s been a long time.”
“It has,” Vinnie DiMauro, one of his many cousins, replied.
“What’s going on?” Since Vinnie had retired, they hadn’t talked much for social reasons, so Caleb knew there must be news he needed to hear.
“There may be a problem—with an old job. The one that gave you the most trouble. You know which one I’m talking about.”
Of course Caleb knew.
“What problem?”
“Someone has been looking into it. There have been inquiries. About me.”
Caleb felt a chill run down from the tension at the back of his neck. “What kind of inquiries?”
“I don’t know. I can’t find out the source of them or even who’s doing the asking, but there have been rumbles. We may need to do something.”
“Okay,” Caleb said, moving immediately into mental-crisis mode. “I’ll look into it. Keep me posted if you hear anything more.”
After he hung up, he sat for a long time, staring at his phone, thinking urgently, trying to come up with a plan to deal with this new problem.
Caleb had a lot of black marks on his soul. He would be the first to admit it. But nothing else in his history, his past, his career, made him feel so guilty.
He thought about Kelly, who was outside right now, happily throwing Ralph his favorite ball.
She could never know.
She might understand him. She might know the kind of man he was and want to be with him anyway. She might be able to brush off threatened scholarships or threatened Russian gangsters.
But there were limits to what she would be able to overlook, and losing her wasn’t an outcome he could allow.
He clicked through his documents until he got to the folder of the job in question. There was nothing here. Nothing that could put him or his career in danger. Just reports and budgets and correspondence.
But there were things that had happened that had never been written on paper.
Caleb wasn’t a good man, and he’d never pretended to be. But there were a few sins that even he wished could be erased from the record of his life.
He stared for a long time at the name of one of the accountants who’d worked that job.
Caleb would never be good. He didn’t even want to be good.
But he also didn’t want to be this .