Chapter 43
Claire
For my tenth birthday, I begged my parents to throw me a surprise party.
Specifically a sleepover. I saw one portrayed in a movie I loved and decided I wanted one too.
But requesting a surprise party takes all the fun out of it.
So my mother planned a tea party at the country club, and I stuffed my disappointment down a figurative disposal, hoping maybe it would happen next year.
The day before my party, my grandparents took me out on a little pre-birthday shopping spree.
When we returned around dinnertime, all the lights were shut off.
For a split second, I was afraid something awful had happened, but before panic sank in, the lights flipped on and ten girls yelled, “Surprise!”
Asher’s appearance brought back that similar unforgettable feeling of confusion, shock, and surprise.
I had every intention of driving out to Daisy Lake tomorrow to lay my heart out on the line. I’d even worked it out with Jack and Natalie to ensure Asher would be home. Now I wonder if they were in on this surprise all along.
While no one will be mattress-surfing down the stairs this evening, I suspect a certain mattress activity will be involved.
But there’s no rush for that.
Returning to the present moment, I let the first and only man I’ve ever loved cry in my embrace. He’s been through so much, and if I can offer him even a fraction of what he’s given to others, I’ll be satisfied.
“It’s okay, baby,” I reassure him. “I’ve got you.”
When his breath eventually evens out, I slide off his lap.
“Where are you going?” he asks, his voice uneasy.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. I’m just getting tissues.”
I return with a box, and he blows his nose and wipes his eyes, then tosses the crumpled tissues to the side.
“Come here,” he says, tugging me onto his lap again.
A stray tear trails down his cheek, but I stop it with my thumb. I bite down on that same thumb, a nervous habit of mine, and swallow the salty taste of his emotions.
His attention drops to my mouth, and all of a sudden, I’m acutely aware that we haven’t kissed yet. Haven’t kissed in weeks.
When I run my fingers along his lips, his mustache tickles my skin.
“I’ve missed you so much, my pretty boy.”
He kisses my fingertips in return. “I almost shaved it, you know.”
I gasp. “Thank the facial hair gods you didn’t. What stopped you?”
“Ezra.”
I giggle. “Remind me to send him a fruit basket.”
He huffs, feigning offense. “Are you saying you wouldn’t love me without my mustache?”
“Well…” I tease.
He cuts me off by gripping me by the thighs and standing up.
I squeal, locking my legs around his hips. “What are you doing?”
He pins me against the wall, his breath hot against my ear. “What I’ve been thinking about every day since you walked out my door.”
“Fuck, Ash,” I whisper. “Kiss me already.”
He captures my bottom lip with his teeth and tugs, then quickly releases it.
I squirm and groan against him in protest. I need more. So much more. “Please, Ash.”
“My needy baby.” His lips brush against my neck, his smile growing.
“You’re damn right I’m needy.” I whine.
The wonderful man I’ve been thinking about nonstop carries me into my bedroom and sets me down on the edge of my bed. And I thank Yesterday Claire for finally washing her sheets.
“Mmm… I’ve missed your bed.”
“I’ve missed your—”
He removes his shirt with one hand, the sexy as hell move causing me to snap my mouth shut. And when I home in on his chest, all the air is sucked from my lungs. Inked above his left pec are two daisies and two bumblebees.
I rise up onto my knees for a closer look. “Are these…”
“Yes. They’re the drawings you and Bea made at the beginning of the summer.”
Gently, I trace the yellow, black, white, and green ink with my fingertip. “When did you do this?”
“Yesterday. It’s still swollen.”
He tattooed my paintings of a daisy and a bumblebee alongside the ones his daughter drew. He even included the tiny heart I added to the picture on the refrigerator the day I left the cabin.
“Wow. I can’t believe you did this.”
“Do you like it?” he asks, uncertainty swimming in his eyes.
I cup his jaw and hold his gaze intently. “It’s perfect. I love it. I love you.”
“I love you too.” He pushes me back onto the bed, his eyes hooded with determination.
I prop myself up on my elbows and study his every move as he hooks his fingers under the elastic of both my pants and underwear and tugs them down. I tear my shirt off next, the action removing the built-in bra too.
Asher’s eyes darken when he finds himself face to face with my bare breasts. He reaches out to touch them, but I swat his hand away.
“Pants,” I command.
He smirks. “Where are your manners, Doc?”
“Disrespectfully, Greer, lose the fucking pants. Now.”
Laughing, he does as he’s told.
“That’s my good pretty boy.”
With his focus fixed on me, he strokes himself, his cock growing harder before my eyes.
My heart thunders as I drink him in. I’ll never tire of my front-row seat to this private erotic show.
I slip my fingers to my clit, but then Asher is dropping to his knees and batting them away, tucking his head between my legs.
“What are you doing?” I breathe. “I told you I wanted you to kiss me.”
“You didn’t say where.” He dips his chin and kisses my clit tenderly, making my entire body tremble.
“I meant on my lips.”
He quirks a brow. “And what do you think I’m doing?” He plants a kiss on one side of my labia, then the other. Then he spreads them open for his own satisfaction.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Ridiculously in love with this pussy.”
“Oh my god,” I cackle. “Enough, you dork. Get up here and fucking kiss the lips on my face right now.”
He obliges, finally, and the salacious taste of me on his tongue has me grinding against his hardness. I search for his cock, sliding and shifting, until his crown nudges my opening and slips inside.
“Wait,” I gasp, gripping his biceps.
He stills, searching my expression, taking inventory. “What’s wrong?”
A breath shudders out of me. “I think I need a minute. It’s been a while and it hurts a little. Can we go slower?”
Asher rolls off me and onto his side. “Of course, baby. C’mere.”
I snuggle into his chest, careful of his fresh tattoo, and he wraps an arm around me.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
He kisses the top of my head. “Baby, don’t ever apologize for listening to your body. Tell me what you need. How can I make you feel good?”
This man.
I don’t know what I did to deserve him, but I’m never letting him go.
Sitting up, I reach into my nightstand for lube. But I set it to the side for now. Then I clasp his wrist and suck his long middle finger into my mouth.
His breath hitches, but he never breaks eye contact as I guide his hand down my body and between my legs, where I push his finger inside me. Tentatively, he slides in and out several times. “This okay?”
I nod, heat growing low in my belly.
“I need to hear you.”
“Yes,” I breathe. “Keep going. Add another finger. Stretch me out.”
He removes his hand and smudges my arousal against my lower lip like lipstick. Then he sucks his middle and ring fingers into his mouth, coating them with saliva, and rests them at my entrance.
I cling to his forearm and tilt my hips, inviting him in.
“Does this feel good?” he asks as he slips two fingers inside me.
A pleasurable groan escapes me. Still clutching his forearm, I roll my hips, grinding against his hand. He rolls his thumb along my clit at the same time he curls his fingers, hitting the spot that makes my stomach contract with satisfaction every time.
Before long, I’m soaked and so, so needy. “I’m ready now,” I say.
“Come for me,” he growls.
“No.” I gasp, my eyes rolling back. “I mean, I’m ready for your cock.”
Stilling his movements, he groans loudly into my neck and bites down above my collarbone.
Oh, how I wish I could record and replay that sound every day for the rest of my life.
Lying back, he draws me over his body so I’m straddling him. Then he picks up the lube and coats his thick length, even applying a coat to me too.
Gripping his shaft, he lines himself up for entry, his other hand clutching my thigh. “Take me. Use me. Control me.”
I appreciate the position, knowing he chose it so I can control the speed and how deeply I take him. With my hands on his chest for support, I slowly sink down, taking in just the tip at first, then a little more once my body feels relaxed.
“You okay?” He wipes the lube on his stomach and grasps my hip.
“Perfect.”
When I’m confident I can take it, I descend until he’s fully seated. I’ve never felt more intensely intertwined with another human.
“Baby,” he moans. “Fuck, Claire. Look how pretty your pussy is when it chokes my cock.”
It’s torture, but I tear my focus away from his exquisite eyes to admire the site where we’re connected most intimately.
“Fucking gorgeous,” he declares.
I peer up, finding that he’s looking at my face.
I gradually rock against him, allowing my body time to adjust. His patience is one of the things I love best about him.
His ability to lie back, selfless yet intentional.
His proficiency at never making me feel like an inconvenience.
I lower myself, tilting off to the side a bit so I’m not aggravating his tattoo, and revel in the friction of my bare skin dragging across his.
He secures his arms around my waist, like an anchor to the ocean floor, and we move together in a cyclical motion, our breaths rising and falling in unison with the vitality of our love.
“What else do you want, baby?”
“Play with my ass,” I say.
“You don’t have to tell me twice.”
With zero hesitation, he sucks his fingers into his mouth, then wraps his arm around to my backside. He presses down, and the erogenous pleasure short-circuits my brain. Moans and incoherent words spew from my lips at rocket speed.
“Feel good?”
“Mm-hmm,” I groan into his neck, my breath trapped between us.
“Do you need more?”
“Please.”
He wets his finger again, and this time, he slips it inside my ass at the same time he thrusts into me.
“Fuck,” we both shout.
His finger and cock working in tandem deliver a pleasure so maddening I think I may pass out, but I can’t stop rocking my hips, voracious for more.
“You doing okay?”
“Amazing. Don’t stop,” I beg, the heat inside me blazing now.
The suctioning sound of our skin, slick with sweat, fills the air. Asher’s breathing adds to the chorus, becoming more uneven by the second.
“You gotta tell me now if you’re close,” he says. “I can’t hang on much longer. You feel so fucking good.”
“A little deeper. I’m right there.”
He presses that digit in farther as I grind my clit against his lower abdomen.
“That’s it, Ash. Yes, yes. More.”
With his free hand, he spanks me. Once, twice. “C’mon, baby. Come with me. Right. Fucking. Now.”
That does it. The reverberations set off my release. I buck against him, dislodging his finger, my quads stiffening and my toes curling.
He swells inside me, turning the pleasure up a notch, and latches his lips to mine, his moans muffled as he fills me up.
I fall to his chest, spent, while he holds me in place, still pulsing and draining his pleasure deep inside me. When his breathing begins to even out, I lift my torso.
Sweat covers Asher’s chest.
Adjusting my hips, I allow him to slip out of me, and as our mixed pleasure drains from my pussy, I suck in a breath. He’s still half hard beneath me, our cum running along his length and onto his groin. I rock my hips, using our release to slip and slide over the ridges of his shaft.
In one fell swoop, he flips us so that I’m on my back and he’s straddling me. Before I can ask what he’s doing, he inches up my body and grabs the headboard. Then he rests his dick, saturated with our release, against my lips.
“Drink,” he commands. “Taste us on my cock.”
I open for him eagerly, and when he feeds me his cock, I welcome him in.
“Thatta girl. Don’t you dare leave a drop behind.”
The more I suction, the firmer he becomes. Is he seriously getting hard again? When he’s decided I’ve sucked him dry and swallowed every last drop, he pulls back and drops onto the mattress beside me.
Rolling into him, I wrap my hand around his length. “Don’t tell me you can go again already,” I groan.
He huffs a laugh. “I don’t know, baby. But for you, I’ll try.”
Later, after we’ve showered, then migrated to the living room and stuffed our faces with French fries and chicken tenders, and have rehydrated, I examine his tattoo more thoroughly. It really is exquisite.
“What made you decide to get it done?”
He lightly rubs the swollen ink on his bare chest. “This summer changed me for the better, and I wanted something to remember it by. Now I have a piece of all my girls with me, always.”
His girls. Bea, Daisy, and me. Warmth unfurls in my chest, emotion rising up in me as it sinks in that he’s included me in that group.
I imagine that, here and there, people will ask if I feel threatened by his past relationship or if I worry that I’m not his number one priority.
The truth is, there’s enough room for us all.
I’m secure in our unique dynamic, and that’s all that matters.
And if we need to go to couples counseling or family therapy, then we will. There’s no shame in that.
With my head on Asher’s chest and his heartbeat thrumming against my ear, I silently vow to show up again and again. To be there for him when his grief feels too heavy. Because it will. There will be days or seasons when his grief is too great for him to hold on his own, but I’ll be there.
“What if I’d turned you away at my door? My art is tattooed on your body permanently now.
“Then it’s a good thing I love you permanently.”
I kiss his chest. “Seriously, though. How’d you know we’d end up here?”
“I didn’t,” he muses, stroking my hair. “But there’s beauty in not knowing. Just look at you. You’re beautiful, and I didn’t know we’d turn into something more than… What was it you called us? Friends-with-bennies?”
“Roomies-with-bennies.” I bury my face in my hands and laugh. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
He chuckles. “Sure did.”
As our laughter dies down, I peer up at him. “It takes courage to live in the unknown.”
“That it does.”
“Good thing you’re pretty courageous.”
He smiles, his dimples prominent. “I am when you’re by my side.”