6. Mara
6
MARA
B y the time I have Tillie settled, the bucket is half-full, and my neck is kinked. I sling my legs off a bed too small for two, stretch out, and then release a big breath. Signs of the fatigue headache that threatened to surface half the day are nowhere near as bad now. They’ve almost entirely vanished, which is surprising considering the unusual smell in the air.
My body is weird. It can handle inhaling chemically laced cleaning products all day, but something as simple as too much basil on a croissant instigates a migraine.
When I take a whiff of the peculiar scent, my brows stitch. It’s not a smell I’ve sampled before. It isn’t sweet like the slosh in the bottom of the bucket, more pungent like burning hair or… green beans?
My heart leaps when the fire alarm sounds half a second later.
Tillie is so heavily asleep that my launch off her bed doesn’t wake her. She snuggles deeper into her pillow as I race in the direction from which the rancid scent is coming.
I’m taken aback for the second time in under a minute when my entrance into the kitchen doesn’t bring me face-to-face with an unmanageable inferno.
A six-foot-three hunk with his sleeves rolled to his elbows and his brows furled, though—there’s one of them.
Ark’s eyes shoot to mine when my shadow falls over the saucepan blooming enough smoke to warrant multiple windows and a door being opened. Guilt is hardening his features. It’s barely seen through his embarrassment, though.
“I was trying to make Tillie some soup.” He grimaces while taking in the product, which is burned to the bottom of the pot. “It’s been a while since I’ve cooked. I only remembered that after I started cooking.”
I almost laugh at the sheer disgust on his face that he is incapable of heating a can of premade soup, but the tea towel he’s using to fan smoke out the open kitchen window catching fire stops me.
The setting of my ancient oven is too high.
Flames are licking the edges of the saucepan instead of heating its base.
Ark tugs the tea towel away from the stovetop when he notices the flames. “Shit. I swear I am trying to help.”
“In the sink,” I shout when his flap almost causes the curtains to set alight. “Put it in the sink.”
He hooks the tea towel into the sink like his business shirt is a pitcher’s jersey as I tug up the faucet. I blast the flames with bitterly cold water before shifting my focus to the cause of its incineration.
With the apron part of my uniform, I lift the saucepan from the stovetop and carefully edge it toward the sink. My penny-pinching heart feels sick when I water down the meal he was preparing, but no amount of wishful thinking will alter the facts. The soup isn’t salvageable.
When I say that to Ark, he looks at the charred remains of what he had hoped would be supper before returning his eyes to me. His expression is mortified. I’d feel bad if it matched his verbal response.
The laughter barreling out of him can only convey one thing.
Utter joy.
His chuckles are loud and wholeheartedly addictive. Before I can consider the lunacy of our exchange, similarly boisterous giggles bubble up my chest. They’re not as noisy as Ark’s or as thunderous, but the weight they lift off my shoulders can’t be denied.
The unease knotting my stomach loosens with every throaty gargle, and within minutes, it is replaced with lust.
I’m not the only one noticing the shift in temperament. Friction sizzles half a second before Ark shifts on his feet to face me.
Just like Friday night, every minute move he makes is amplified. The way his breath catches when he spots my happy tears, the bob of his Adam’s apple when his hooded gaze lowers to my chest, and the stiffness of my nipples when it dawns on them that they’ve secured his attention.
Every move is excruciatingly apparent, and the press of my thighs when he confesses, “You didn’t stutter,” worsens it. He isn’t seeking confirmation, more vocalizing his disbelief. “Not while speaking with Tillie or me.”
“Because…” I stop, genuinely lost for a reply.
I can’t recall the last time I’ve spoken a sentence with the opposite sex and not stuttered.
It’s been years, decades, even.
Untapped sexual chemistry prickles the back of my neck when pride stretches across Ark’s face. He tilts his head to the side and stares at me, a smile playing at one side of his kissable lips.
I squirm as we stand across from each other, staring but not speaking. I’ve never felt so many sparks. I thought it was something made up by romance novelists to explain extreme carnal desire. I was wrong. The attraction I feel for this man is visible in the air, and shockingly, the hisses and cracks aren’t solely coming from my half of the kitchen.
They’re just as searing from Ark’s half.
My heart drums my ribs when I decide to encourage an exchange I was once scared of instead of shying away.
I step closer to Ark, trembling all over.
“Mara...”
Just the gravelly deliverance of my name sets my skin on fire, and I can’t help but moan through the aftermath of its brilliance.
A low hum rumbles from Ark’s chest as he tilts toward me like he isn’t seeking excuses for us not to act on the tension hotter than the inferno that almost engulfed my kitchen. “This isn’t why I stayed. I needed to make sure?—”
Unlike Friday night, I lunge headfirst into the lust haze instead of repelling from it.
I kiss him.
I want to pretend I instigated our kiss because I am brave, but we both know that isn’t true. I simply can’t fight the tension for a second longer.
God himself wouldn’t be strong enough to win this battle.
Barely half a second passes before the threat of rejection ceases to exist.
“Fuck it,” Ark breathes against my lips before he snakes his hand up my back and sinks it into my knotted locks.
Our teeth clash when he slides his tongue deep inside my mouth. He duels it with mine, sampling and tasting me before he drags it along the roof of my mouth.
I’ve never been kissed in such a manner. I honestly don’t know what to do.
With Ark’s guidance, I match the strokes of his tongue and the movements of his lips until he’s panting and as breathless as me.
A kiss so violent shouldn’t feel so good. It is consuming and blistering, an embrace so all-encompassing that I don’t realize we’re moving until my back is splayed against the refrigerator and Ark’s body presses flush against mine.
He squashes into me so profoundly that the only part of my body capable of moving is my lips.
The inability to move doesn’t weaken the intensity of our kiss. We taste and tease each other for what feels like hours but is barely minutes.
My lips feel bruised when Ark pulls away to drag his nose down the throb in my throat. He draws in a long breath, and then an approving sound rumbles from his chest.
“You smell so good.”
He licks my neck, sending a shiver down my spine, while the hand not weaved through my hair slides down my back, both pulling me closer and de-suctioning me from the refrigerator.
A desperate gasp leaves me when he kneads my ass before he tilts my hips upward.
He’s hard, as lost to the tension as I am.
How can that be?
How can a man so deliriously handsome and wildly successful be attracted to me?
With a confidence I’ll never fully embrace, I curl my fingers around the chunky leather material of his belt and then tug him forward, needing firmer contact.
The hiss that strains through Ark’s teeth when the most intimate parts of our bodies clash causes an avalanche of kisses and moans.
While kissing me like he can’t breathe without his mouth on mine, he grips my ass and rocks his hips, grinding against me. I whimper shamelessly as he drives me to the brink of ecstasy without removing a single article of clothing.
The head of his cock rubs at my clit, sending shockwaves of pleasure spasming through me, while his mouth makes my lips tingle. I’m so mindless with need that my hands seek something to grip to ride through the waves seconds from pummeling into me.
“No touching,” Ark snaps out when my hands find solace with his shoulders, his voice pained even while brimming with lust.
With his rhythm unaffected, he gathers my wrists and pins them above my head before his spare hand slides under my skirt.
“P-please,” I beg when his fingertips stop just shy of my damp panties.
I should be ashamed he’s made me so desperate that I’m willing to beg, but the instant his hand slips between my thighs and his fingers flutter past the sensitive skin between my legs, all cognitive thoughts are lost.
“ Yesss. ”
My thighs shake with more than fear when he rubs the pad of his index finger against my clit. He rolls it ever so slowly, producing sparks strong enough to buckle my knees.
“Ark,” I squeak out breathlessly, scared of the sensation rolling through me. I’ve never experienced it before. It is overwhelming and scary but also blazingly hot at the same time. “P-please.”
With a smirk that will highlight my dreams for years to come, he watches me through hooded lids as I squirm and moan beneath him.
The pure thirst in his eyes alone could get me off.
I’m on the cusp of begging, when my imminent orgasm is ripped away from me by a scratchy, sick-filled voice. “Mommy…”
I freeze for half a second before the maternal instincts I should have never been without kick back in.
Almost cruelly, I free my hands from Ark’s grip and push him away.
My body hates losing his contact almost as much as my heart loathes his expression when I shout, “I’ll be there in a m-minute, sweetheart. Mommy was just…”—I scan the area, seeking an excuse for my erroneous mistake—“making you s-some soup.”
My throat works hard to swallow when Tillie replies, “Okay.” The unease of her one-worded reply makes sense when she murmurs, “But don’t you think it is a little early for dinner?”
Dinner? We’ve not yet had lunch, so why would I be prepping dinner?
As the patter of Tillie’s tiny feet returning to her room trickles into my ears, I stare at the inbuilt clock in the kitchen range, certain we must have had a power outage last week I failed to notice.
I collected Tillie from school a little before noon. It is now 2:55 p.m.
That can’t be right. I can’t lose almost two hours in the blink of an eye. I know we arrived home around noon because I heard the jingle of Mrs. Lichard’s favorite midday show throwing to a commercial through the front door of her apartment. The episodes only run for half an hour.
Ark’s kiss was mind-blowing, but there’s no way it lasted longer than ten to fifteen minutes. The wave in my stomach would have crested multiple times by now if it had been an hour-long exchange.
That can only mean one thing.
Sickness bombards me when I realize how careless I’ve been.
I let a stranger into my home while my daughter was here and then fell asleep.
If that isn’t bad enough, I kissed him when he made himself at home instead of kicking him out.
How could I have been so reckless?
Lust, instalove, or whatever the hell you want to call my bizarre kinship with Ark should have never overridden my moral obligation to ensure my daughter’s safety.
I’m disgusted with myself, but instead of taking it out on the person deserving of my wrath, I do what I do with every man I cross paths with.
I make out my neuroses are his fault.
“You sh-should go.”
Ark balks, shocked by the whiplash of my moods, before he smooths his ruffled expression with a frown. “Of course.”
Another wave of stupidity crashes into me when he gathers his suit jacket from a chair tucked under the kitchen table.
He wasn’t heating Tillie soup from a can. He was making it from scratch. Freshly diced chicken breast, carrots, celery, and beans are spread across the kitchen counter, and there’s enough bread to last us a week.
I’m torn on how to respond to his generosity.
How can I build trust and protect my daughter at the same time?
To Tillie, it is as simple as letting Ark in like she did when she invited him into our home.
During our conversation before she fell asleep, she said she likes Ark because our shared cab ride was the first time she’d seen me interact with a man and not physically shake.
Although I tried to push off her observation as me being too worried about her to remember the gender of the person we were sharing a cab with, she said I’ll never stop being frightened of the unknown if I don’t take the occasional leap of faith.
My online therapist has expressed similarly. She’s accused me multiple times of pushing the insecurities and distrust other men gave me onto undeserving victims, and that I’ll never be happy until I learn that not everyone is out to hurt me.
Her advice is easy to set aside. She doesn’t know what is best for my daughter and me. But Tillie’s advice is harder to ignore. She’s an old soul. She has been here before and has knowledge beyond her years, so maybe she’s right. Perhaps I should stop lumping the distrust a minority gave me onto every man I encounter.
My dive into the deep end minutes ago favored me in a way I could have never anticipated. I can only hope it serves me as well this time around.
“W-wait.”
Ark stops partway out my front door but doesn’t turn around. He keeps his eyes to the front and his hands balled at his sides, leaving the ball entirely in my court.
It should make what I’m about to say easier, but my voice still comes out rickety. “You can s-stay. If-if you want?”
His chest rises and falls three times before he mutters, “Don’t do that.” I stare at him like he can read minds when he adds, “Don’t ever feel like you need to compromise her safety to make an adult feel comfortable. She”—he cranks his head back to face me before he nudges it to Tillie’s room—“comes first. Always. ”
Since every word he speaks is gospel, I nod without thought.
His smile sets my pulse racing, but it does nothing to ease the tension since it sees him leaving without another word shared between us.