Chapter 26 Unicorn Central #2
“Yeah, yeah.”
“And I shall refrain from pointing out that you told Esme at Thanksgiving that you didn’t think of narratives visually.”
“I guess that is a contradiction.” He looked a little stricken. He didn’t like thinking of himself as inconsistent.
“I was just teasing. Can you have a writer friend help? Ashwin Bajwa?” she suggested, thinking back to that article in The New Yorker.
“No. I never show my works in progress to anyone.” He paused. “Except you, I guess, that one time.”
She was a bit taken aback. “You never show your stuff to other writers? Didn’t you do an MFA?”
“Yes, and I did enough of that for a lifetime during that degree. Any kind of situation where you sit in a circle and talk about your feelings and/or the feelings of people you made up is not for me.”
She cracked up, though of course he was serious. She was flattered anew that he’d shown her the first two chapters of his second novel. But she’d basically forced his hand there.
“I feel compelled to add that I’ve always had these images,” he said. “Since I was a kid. I used to make up stories in my head. As an adult I wonder if this is how kids end up with imaginary friends. In Time is just the first time I took one and stretched it out into a book.
“So having them dry up is disconcerting beyond the potential threat to my livelihood, is my point.”
He was fascinating. He fascinated her.
“But what is happening suddenly,” he went on, “is that I’m remembering all this stuff from childhood. Being at Allie’s cabin after so many years, and seeing her, unlocked it all.
“So the point of all this rambling—finally—is that I’m thinking maybe I ought to stay a few more days and see what surfaces.”
“Ah,” Blair said. “So what I hear you telling me is that indulging my desire to stick around for a while would actually be doing you a huge favor.”
He chuckled. “Yes.”
“Done.”
He nodded curtly, and it felt like he was redonning his usual circumspect persona, but he did pick up their plates and swap them so Blair could have the rest of the pan-fried walleye, and somehow it was the most romantic thing that had ever happened to her.
Blair had to revise that thought a few hours later when, on the drive back to the cabin, Jack rested his right hand on her thigh in between shifting his car—Mr. Manly Writer Man drove a manual transmission, of course.
She had no idea what had possessed him, or why he was so casual about it. She was not feeling casual whatsoever. Every time he took his hand off her to shift, she wanted to protest. Every time it came back, heavy and warm, it sent a ripple of pleasure through her.
He downshifted as they came to a stop sign. Experimentally, she inched herself a tiny bit toward him, so that the next time his hand came down, it was on her inner thigh.
He glanced over at her and quickly away. “Let’s light a fire when we get back. There’s a firepit on one corner of the property right next to the lake.”
“Um… OK?”
“Why do you sound amused?”
“I’m not amused; I’m incredulous. You don’t seem like the type to sit around a campfire.”
“We did it a lot when I was at that arts camp last summer. Well, everyone else did it a lot. I only went once.”
“You were still in your curmudgeon era back then.”
“Am I out of it now?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t think so. I think you just earned yourself an exemption.”
Back at Allie’s, Jack made quick work of the fire, and before Blair knew it, they were kissing under the stars.
It wasn’t the first time Blair had kissed under the stars. But it was the first time she’d done so next to a lake—next to the Green Light lake—and with a man who knew what that meant to her.
“Should we take this inside?” she mumbled against his lips as things started to heat up, and she laughed when he got up so fast he almost knocked her over.
“Sit tight for a second.” He came back with a bucket he filled with lake water and upended over the fire.
“Dousing the fire,” she said. “Speaking of heavy-handed metaphors, that’s a good one. Or maybe it’s a bad one.” She for one did not want the spark to die out.
“It’s not a metaphor,” he said tersely as he went back to refill the bucket.
“What is it, then?”
“It’s just a necessary task that must be performed before I can get you upstairs and get inside you.”
She sucked in a breath, and when he dumped the second bucket on the fire, a plume of steam rose.
“Good enough,” he muttered.
She was closer to the stairs that led back up to the house, and he pointed toward them, silently ordering her to ascend.
“Did you bring condoms?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Yes.”
There was something about that yes, a single, simple syllable, but one infused with a sense of urgency and inevitability.
Once inside, he passed her and headed into the bedroom, pulling his shirt off as he went.
“Wow,” she said, as by the time she rounded the corner, he was unbuttoning his jeans. “You don’t waste any time.”
He looked up. “Did you want me to romance you?” The question could have been asked with a dose of standard-issue Jack Branksome snark, but it wasn’t.
“No,” she said, and it was the truth. If she’d wanted romance—which she didn’t—kissing under the stars just now would have more than sufficed. “I guess I’m just nervous.” It felt like a lot, to confess that.
“Well, I would tell you to take off that dress, but”—he stepped toward her and sent his hands up under the skirt and made contact with her thighs—“I fucking love this dress.”
“You do?”
“It’s been driving me mad all evening.”
“Really?” Blair looked down at herself. It wasn’t that exciting a dress.
The cherry print was cute, but the cut was modest. It was your basic A-line, cap-sleeve, tea-length dress.
The white cotton had been a poor choice for lake life.
“It’s all dirty,” she said, turning her back to him to display the evidence—at the firepit, she had sat on a railroad tie.
He was behind her then, his front to her back, and she could feel his arousal against her bottom. He lowered his mouth to the side of her neck and kissed her before pulling back and saying, “I don’t know if I want to tear it off you or insist that you keep it on.”
“Oh my.” Either worked for her, all of a sudden. Moisture gathered between her legs, and a deep ache took root there. Emboldened by his obvious desire, and by his straightforward expression of it, she grabbed his hand and guided it between her legs.
His fingers slid into her panties, and they both groaned when he made contact with the hot flesh he found there.
“Oh my,” he said, echoing her words, but somehow from him the phrase seemed transgressive.
She wiggled against his hand until she had his fingers exactly where she wanted them. “Don’t move,” she whispered, though of course that wasn’t technically the correct instruction, because she did need him to move his fingers.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, and he knew, somehow, what she wanted, what she needed. He stayed broadly where he was, but his fingers rubbed small circles on her clit as his hips rocked against her bottom.
“That feels so good,” she whispered.
“Good?” he rasped. “You can do better than that.” To her astonishment, his fingers stopped.
She thrust against them, but he only chuckled. “You have to do better than good. I’m offended by a mere good.”
“You bastard.”
“Mm.”
“That feels amazing,” she tried.
Amazing earned a couple more strokes before he stopped and said, “Generic.”
“Sublime,” she snapped, both affronted and turned on by the deployment of the thesaurus game in this context.
“Too much. Let’s leave some words for the future. We are, after all, only finger fucking.”