11. Jo
— ? —
Jo
The couch gives under my back, and Nick settles over me, all heat and held-back hunger.
His weight pins me into the cushions, certain and grounding, and his mouth drags down my throat slow enough that I feel the press of every separate kiss.
His hips fit against mine. The sound I make is one I haven’t made in seven years, low and graceless, and his answering groan tells me he felt it everywhere.
“We should talk about this,” I gasp.
“Later.”
“There’s so much we haven’t discussed...”
“Later.” He says it against my collarbone, teeth grazing, and the word loses every bit of its argument.
His hands find the hem of my shirt and push it up, palms spreading warm over my ribs. I have forgotten what this feels like. The specific weight of a man who wants me. The attention of someone in no hurry. My skin wakes up under him an inch at a time.
“Tell me to stop.” His mouth is at the swell of my breast now, breath hot through cotton. “Say it and I stop.”
“Don’t you dare.”
He laughs low, and the vibration of it travels straight through me. My shirt goes over my head and lands somewhere I’ll never find it. He looks at me then, and there’s nothing polite in it. His eyes move over me slow and greedy, and the heat of being looked at like that makes my face burn.
“Seven years,” I hear myself say, half apology. “I have stretch marks. I’m not...”
“You’re the best thing I have ever put my hands on.” He says it flat, a fact he’s daring me to argue. His thumb traces one silver line low on my stomach, unhurried. “Every part of you. Don’t apologize for a single inch.”
My eyes sting. I drag his mouth back to mine before he can see it.
The bra goes. His mouth closes over me and my back leaves the cushions, and I press the back of my hand to my own mouth to stay quiet. He pulls it away.
“No,” he says against my skin. “I want to hear it.”
His hand slides down, fingers hooking the waistband of my pants, dragging them off in one motion. He settles between my thighs, and when his breath hits the soaked cotton between my legs he makes a sound that’s almost pained.
“You’re already ruined for me,” he murmurs. “And we have barely started.”
“Nick. Please.”
He pulls the cotton aside. The first stroke of his tongue is a shock that arches my whole spine off the couch.
He works me with the same patience he brings to everything, learning the sounds I make, doubling down on whatever pulls them out of me, two fingers sliding deep while his mouth never lets up.
The pressure climbs tight and bright and merciless, narrowing the whole of me to the single point where his mouth meets my body.
I shatter with his name in my throat and my fingers fisted in his hair, shaking, undone, far louder than I have any right to be. He gentles me down slow, mouth softening, drawing out the last of it until I’m boneless under him.
When he lifts his head his mouth is wet and his eyes have gone black, and he looks at me with the certainty of a man who has just decided something.
“That,” he says, voice wrecked, “was only to take the edge off.”
He sits back and reaches for his belt. I prop myself up on my elbows to watch him, greedy now, no shame left in me at all, the buckle giving under his hands and the anticipation winding tighter and tighter low in my belly.
The phone rings.
The sound cuts through the haze, familiar, insistent, wrong. We both freeze, Nick’s hands still on his belt, my body still trembling from the aftershocks.
The school’s ringtone.
“Ignore it,” Nick says, his voice rough with need.
“It’s Rory’s school.” The words come out breathless, but already the pleasure is fading, replaced by something cold and sharp. Already reaching for the phone on the coffee table, already sitting up, already leaving the warmth of him behind.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Holland?” The voice has the careful, rehearsed calm of someone who has made this exact call before. “There’s been an accident. Your son fell on the playground. We’ve called an ambulance...”
The world stops.
“I’m on my way.” Already moving, already grabbing for my shirt, already shoving my legs back into my pants. “Where are they taking him?”
“St. Mary’s Hospital. Ms. Holland, he’s conscious, he’s asking for you...”
The call ends before the sentence finishes. Nick is already pulling his shirt back on, already has his keys in hand, already moving toward the door.
“I’ll drive.”
I run without thinking, out the door, down the stairs, into his car. The engine roars to life and then the streets are blurring past, traffic parting like water, yellow lights that are definitely red disappearing in the rearview mirror.
The shaking starts somewhere around the third intersection. Violent tremors that make buckling the seatbelt nearly impossible, that make holding onto anything feel like grasping at smoke.
Nick’s hand finds mine, warm and steady, anchoring.
“He’s going to be okay.” His voice is calm, certain, the voice of someone who refuses to consider any alternative. “He’s conscious. He’s asking for you. That’s good. That’s really good.”
“He’s my baby.” The words are barely audible over the pounding of my heart. “He’s my whole world.”
“I know.” His hand squeezes tighter. “I know, Jo. We’re almost there.”
The hospital appears on the horizon, and everything else fades, the pleasure of moments ago, the problems waiting at home, the chaos of the last week. Nothing matters except getting to Rory.
Nothing matters except my son.