Chapter 33 Carson
CARSON
Once again, I have a forty-five minute drive back to Cardinal Springs, trailing Dan’s taillights while I relive every moment of pleasure at his hands.
It is both incredible and torturous.
But when I tumble out of my car in the driveway, Dan is already striding up the walkway toward me, and I know the tension was worth it. I leap into his arms, his hands cradling my ass as he holds me, then turns and marches straight for the door.
“I believe last time we were here, I made some plans that were rudely interrupted,” he growls into my ear.
“Up against the door?” I ask.
“At some point we’ll make it to a bed,” he says, pulling my keys from my hand, transferring my weight to one arm. His strength is effortless and impressive and makes me all the more excited to get inside this house. I think I might like being thrown around by this man.
“Sleep in mine tonight?” I ask.
He shoulders the door open and pauses, setting me down on the carpet. “What about your mom?”
“I don’t care. I’m an adult, and this is my house. And I want to wake up in your arms tomorrow,” I tell him.
He grins. “I want you to wake up in your arms too, but can we do my bed? I don’t know if we’ll both fit in a twin.”
I laugh. “Deal. And as soon as my mother is gone, I’m redoing the primary bedroom and moving in. It’s time I get a bed big enough for you to do all the things to me that I’ve been dreaming of.”
“Ms. Webber, I look forward to hearing that filthy laundry list,” he growls into my ear. “Because I’ve been making a list of my own.”
“Let’s start with your plan,” I say, stealing a kiss. “Then we’ll get to mine.”
Waking up naked in Dan’s arms is as good as I imagined.
As promised, we had sex against the front door, then brushed our teeth side by side and tumbled into his bed, where he brought me to orgasm again with his tongue.
We fell asleep just as I heard my mother creeping back into the house, only to wake again in the early morning hours for a stolen quiet tryst. By the time I wake up to the sun streaming through the blinds of my mother’s old craft room, Dan cradling me from behind, his arms around my waist pulling my ass against his lap, my body is deliciously achy.
“Good morning,” he groans into my ear, his hands wandering my skin.
“Same to you.” I roll over, and he pulls me in for a kiss that nearly becomes something more, until we hear my mother’s door click open, her footsteps in the hallway.
“Think you can sneak out without her noticing?” Dan asks.
I shrug. “Remember how I said I don’t care? I meant it.”
“You go, girl.”
I roll my eyes. “Hilarious. Now, let go of me, I have to brush my teeth.”
I slide on the pajama shorts and T-shirt I brought into Dan’s room even though I had no intention of wearing them. Before I turn the knob, I brace myself.
Because sure enough, as soon as I step out into the hall, there she is.
“Oh! Carson, there you are.” She has a hand to her chest like I’ve surprised her, even though the door to my bedroom has been open all night, revealing my obviously empty bed.
“Good morning,” I say with a bright smile.
I know I look freshly fucked, what with the mussed hair, swollen lips, and what I suspect—but haven’t yet had a chance to confirm—is a rather large hickey at the juncture of my neck and shoulder.
Dan gave that spot quite a bit of attention while he fucked me against my front door.
He liked the way it made me scream his name.
“Were you, uh—” She peers over my shoulder, where Dan is stretching, shirtless, in a pair of gray sweatpants.
Her eyes go wide when she realizes that what she’s seeing isn’t a T-shirt but a large collection of tattoos on the man whose bed I obviously just vacated.
“Oh my. Carson, are you…well, I mean, I thought, uh— I thought he was just staying here because of a burst pipe.”
It takes everything in my power not to grin and reply, That’s what she said.
“He is. But we’re also sort of seeing each other?” I hate the question mark, but while we said a great many things to each other yesterday, the defining-the-relationship conversation hasn’t happened just yet.
“We’re seeing each other,” Dan confirms, his voice firm and sure. Well, I guess that solves that. My heart trips over itself as he bends down and kisses me gently on the cheek, then looks up at my mother. “Good morning, Mrs. Webber.”
“Oh my…” is all she can say, her cheeks crimson, her brow furrowed, but when her eyes land on my forearm, they go wide with shock. “Carson Jane, is that a tattoo?”
I nearly forgot about the lemon, though now that she’s pointed it out, there’s a dull ache beneath the ink.
It doesn’t look great, since the protective wrap Dan applied collected all the ink and plasma that bled out overnight.
He told me he’d change it for me today and it’ll look much better.
Right now it sort of looks like a soy sauce packet.
“I got it yesterday,” I say, leaving out the part about how the shirtless man behind me is the one who gave it to me. Though I probably should tell her. She must be imagining all manner of horrific back-alley ways this art could’ve landed on me.
She tuts loudly, in a state of peak Midwestern discomfort. “I can’t believe this, Carson. This isn’t like you at all.”
I tilt my head. “What do you mean?”
“Well, this kind of behavior.” She gestures to Dan and me, then at Dan’s rumpled bed.
This is as close as my mother has ever gotten to acknowledging the existence of sex to me, and there are basically no words involved.
Just a very concerned, Midwestern game of charades.
“I thought you were more proper than this.”
Dan gives the smallest, quietest snort that almost makes me burst into a wicked case of church giggles. I imagine he’s thinking about the way I sat on his face last night and how after he made me come, in my post-orgasm haze, I thanked him. I’m very proper indeed, Mother.
“Mom, I say this with all the love in the world, but this is my house, and what I do in it is my business,” I say, making sure my voice stays gentle.
While she’s more than a little out of line, I’ve never actually drawn any boundaries like this with her.
This is the first time she’s hearing it, so I owe it to her to be reasonable and kind.
What happens from here is entirely up to her.
“I’m happy to have you stay, though I hope you’ll give me a little more notice in the future so I can prepare.
But it’s important to me that you understand that I’m an adult. I make my own choices.”
She opens and closes her mouth like a largemouth bass as she grapples with what I’ve just said. “I just don’t know what to say, Carson. We raised you better than this!”
“You raised her to be kind, thoughtful, generous, and hardworking. She’s fierce and tough and an incredible friend,” Dan says, and I don’t know if my mother can hear the tiniest sliver of menace in his voice, but I can.
He threads his fingers through mine and gives my hand a squeeze. “You should be proud.”
My mother looks like she’s not sure how to respond. Her good manners require her to graciously accept the compliment while her Midwestern roots require her to eschew the flattery. In the end, she just nods and huffs out a flustered, “Well, okay, then.”
“What time are you headed out?” I ask.
“My Uber is on the way, actually,” she says, pulling out her phone and tapping the app.
“Well, I’m sorry we didn’t get to spend more time visiting,” I say, a polite Midwestern lie.
I love my mother, but I’m learning that her visits are like fresh fish—after two days, they start to go bad.
I hold my arms out for a hug, and I’m not sure if it’s because she’s still flustered or because she’s decided to take my newly announced adulthood to heart, but she steps into them and embraces me. “Have a safe trip.”
“I will, honey,” she says, and when I start to pull back, she tugs me in tighter. “I’m sorry, Carson. This is…well, it’s a lot. I need to adjust, I think.”
She releases me as her phone dings, signaling the arrival of her driver. “It was good seeing you, Daniel,” she says, giving him a nod but refusing to meet his eyes.
“You as well, Mrs. Webber.”
She waves him off. “Oh, call me Donna,” she says, blushing again. “Well, I better scoot. I stripped the bed and put the sheets and towels in the washer. Don’t forget to move them to the dryer so they don’t mildew. I’ll talk to you soon, Carson, dear.”
And then she’s gone.
“Holy shit, my mother knows I had sex,” I mutter. The adrenaline drains away and I lean back against Dan’s chest, my heart pounding. I feel good about what just happened, though there is still enough of a church kid in me that there’s a little bit of guilt floating around in there.
“She took it well,” he says, wrapping his arms around my waist and burying his face in my hair. “Are you okay?”
I nod, then look up at him over my shoulder. “You stood up for me.”
He shrugs. “You stood up for yourself.”
“It was easy to do with you at my back.”
“I’ll always have your back, Carson,” he says, his lips going to that spot on my neck. “But you did the hard parts yourself.”
I want to see myself the way Dan sees me, and I like that in the moments when I don’t, he reminds me what I’m capable of.
“Take me back to bed?” I ask.
He groans. “I told Drake I’d open the shop this morning.”
“Make sure you clean that chair real good before anyone else sits in it,” I giggle.
“You sure you don’t want to come in for another?” he asks, nuzzling my neck with his nose. “I could give you a really sexy tramp stamp.”
“Yes, please, a butterfly right above my ass,” I laugh.
“Whatever you want,” he says. “But unfortunately, our extracurriculars will have to wait. The walls of those booths are pretty thin, so eating your pussy in the shop while it’s open is probably a bad idea.”
“Well, then, we should use whatever time you have before you head in wisely,” I say, dragging him back to his bedroom.