23. Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Three
A nother training session hit the books. I schooled my eager student on a crowd-pleasing introduction to some brutal climbs. Beau took notes dutifully, hanging on my every suggestion.
I slung my gym bag over my shoulder. “See you at home?” I bit my tongue and grinned. The unholy things I had planned for Beau and me once we had a shower and a bed.
He quirked his eyebrows. Oh shit. I said home as if I implied that my condo was our home. With my last relationship being a marriage, I couldn’t help but drag him into my old habit.
I murmured, “As in my condo and not Les and Carol’s humble abode.”
He patted the sweat off his body with the white hand towel, but his gaze lingered on me. “Why can’t I see you here?”
The way he said see . See meant tearing at my bicycle shorts, driving deep into me. See meant licking along my neck and moaning good girl in my ear.
I shifted my focus to my hands—the uneven nails and a splash of ink that couldn’t quite wash away. “I thought you said we had to be on our best behavior.”
“During open hours.” He stepped close while teasing the hem of my T-shirt, the one with the cockatiel. He reached under the hem and grazed his touch along my ribs; his thumb toyed along the sturdy elastic of my sports bra. “I checked the locker room, put the towels in the dryer.” He kissed me. The gentle hands under my shirt pulling at the cotton-poly blend became needier and rougher. “I locked the doors.”
“Okay, see me then.” My voice came out like a croak.
Our kiss deepened. I disappeared in the fierceness of our tongues, the taste of sweat on our lips.
I staggered back. Something poked me! I jumped, clinging to Beau’s tank top. “What the—” A bike, he had backed me into a bike.
He slid my shorts down my hips to my ankles and buried his nose in my mons. I whipped my T-shirt off as I watched him sink to his knees and nuzzle my clit that had already been shot to attention from merely kissing him.
And he inhaled. Inhaled all of me. I leaned back on the bicycle seat and moaned. My stance widened to blossom for him. Nuzzle and sniff, that was what he did along my wet folds. Then his lips locked onto me. His tongue and mainly his mouth worked my clit as he tugged my sports bra below my nipples. My boobs were trussed up by the tight elastic support. I closed my eyes to melt into the pleasure and moved my hips toward his mouth the best I could with a stationary bike as my support. Slap!
Beau had smacked a boob freed from my sports bra. My entire body curled around him for balance, for relief .
“Whoa, I need a moment.” I shook off the bubbles popping in my brain.
He backed away and kneeled on his haunches. “What’s up?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t do a scene tonight. I can barely drive home if you get me all spacey.”
“I’ll keep you safe, Sir.” He grazed his index finger along the back of my ankle. “Don’t you know I will always look out for you?”
The honey usually laced with his commands when we commenced a scene had disappeared. This was the Beau offering me not only the rubs, glass of water, and kind words of a dom to a sub in the afterglow. But he himself was giving me safety and kindness beyond the dynamic. The kind of love Chris had revoked.
I peered down at him, his puppy eyes above the tilt of my mons. I nodded. Bring the heights of this scene. Give more than I can take.
He slapped my other boob. It prickled alive and turned pink. “Use your words.”
“Yes, Daddy?” I looked to him for approval. His nose wrinkled. Beau wasn’t a daddy . “Yes, sir?” Well, that would get confusing. Finally, the perfect pet name for my young sweet dom popped into my head. “I won’t disappoint you, Coach. ”
He rolled one of my nipples gently between his thumb and index finger. “Good girl.”
The sensation beelined from my nipple to my pulsing wet channel. How I needed his fingers, dick, nose, tongue—anything to fuck this ache away. “Give me everything.” I tilted my head back, ready to let him feast on me until oblivion.
Another slap across my breast. “No,” he rasped, “watch yourself in the mirror.”
I set my sights on my reflection, standing yet spread and sloppily naked for him.
“No, you don’t see what I need you to see.” He kicked a row of bikes down. They toppled like loud dominos. He jerked me to fully standing and moved the bike so it faced parallel to the mirror. The violence of the falling bikes, the fact that he only cared about how much I needed to see what he did to me set me in a spin. And spun me higher and higher.
He pushed me back, my ass leaning onto the seat. I braced against the handles and the dainty basket for weights. He spread my folds, pink and glistening. Such details I could not miss even from the distance from the mirror. “Do you see how you get for me?” he asked as he moved his fingers over my labia.
“I only get this way for you,” I replied with a sigh .
At those words, he attacked me with his mouth, the bike tipping back with his force. But if I dissolved too much into the pleasure and squeezed my eyes shut? Slap!
He lowered his shorts under the tip of his cock and fisted the dusky shaft as he kneeled before me. “Do you see how much I need you?”
I ran my tongue over my bottom lip, relishing the goddess in the mirror being serviced by her lover. I watched him work the skin up and down over his head, the way his arousal pearled there. “Yes,” I said as I smiled wickedly.
“What do you like about yourself, looking in that mirror?”
My gaze moved to him, in a frenzy on the floor. “My eyes.”
His hand slapped my inner thigh, a pain stinging evermore because of my sweaty skin. “Look in the mirror,” he ordered
“My smile when I’m being a good girl, the bite of my lip when I’m a bad one. How beautiful, raw, and red my nipples get under your touch.” From his place on the mat, he met my breasts with kisses and bites. As one nipple pinched between his teeth, my eyes drifted shut. My head tilted back, baring my throat. A twin slap met my other thigh. The pain and pleasure twisted inside me, and I let out a throaty laugh. I stared at myself in the mirror, sweaty and eyes heavy-lidded. “I love these arms that brace me.”
“Yes,” he hissed before he kissed me on the top of my hand. He resumed stroking himself, his dark eyes watching me in the mirror.
I studied the curve of my belly, the fullness of my hips. Usually, I hated them. They were where life went to die. And they were dimpled, stretch-marked, and sagged. Most days, I wanted to fix them, but as I watched Beau look at them reverently in the mirror, I realized they were gorgeous because this is the part of me that worked him when we fucked. “My belly. My hips. The way I can pulse with you inside. The way I can move my hips to bring you to the brink.” He met my words with caresses and kisses. More things I loved about my body tumbled out. “My thighs, my muscular calves because they can hug you close to me.” More kisses greeted me in these places. It was as if the more I loved myself, the more love he offered me.
I laughed now, intoxicated by the power I held over him and me. “My feet for balancing me against this damn thing.” With one foot at a time, he removed a sneaker and a sweaty sock, kissing the newly exposed, soft, and damp skin .
He slipped his muscle shirt off and tossed it carelessly. “Tell me more about your body.”
One hand pinched a nipple; the other spread myself out for him, the way he had before as he licked and lapped at me. “This pussy is going to take you so good, you’ll be coming back for more later tonight.”
He sprang to his feet and moved his way behind me so our eyes locked as we faced the mirror. We were separated by the bike’s crossbar. “Put your left foot on the seat,” he ordered.
For once, I trusted my muscles and balance, as if all the work we had done together these last two months built up my strength to handle now, this moment. I lifted my leg, propped my foot on the seat, and hooked my left arm around his neck, becoming his cycling ballerina.
His eyes didn’t move from mine as he presented the foil of the condom and ripped it open with his teeth. My gaze latched on the reflection. He had only inched his shorts below his shaft. I memorized the way his abs twitched as he eased the latex over him, the way his mouth slacked a bit in what had to be anticipation.
He smoothed his hand over my extended leg. The angled crossbar of the bike was not much of a barrier as the head of his cock breached my entrance. “Are you ready?” he asked my reflection.
“Always.”
He thrust deeper inside. I fought the need to retreat into myself and breathe, feeling the delightful pinch of him stretching and filling me. I kept my eyes wide open, and I watched. Watched as his thick shaft slipped into me. Watched as his hips met my ass.
“More,” I breathed. My grip tightened around the handlebars as he thrust into me. His brows furrowed. His mouth tightened. He muttered curses to himself. “I said more,” I purred.
He fisted the hair at the nape of my neck and pulled hard . I gasped as I presented my throat to him. To be slayed. To be devoured. However he saw fit. He tugged my hair harder, sending little bursts of joy down my body. The force compounded as he drove into me. Swift. Deep. Devastating. The only way he knew how.
My left leg shook. My gaze moved from the mirror to his. My wide eyes pleaded. I couldn’t hold on like this. Thankfully, he let go of my hair. His arm braced me around the waist; the other bolstered my left knee as the force of his thrusts caused the entire bike to teeter. My support leg gave out. But I didn’t fall. He held me in place, driving into me harder. I had become his doll.
Everything around me clouded and vibrated as my eyes rolled to the back of my head. I didn’t have it in me to brace my weight any longer. I didn’t have it in me to focus on the two of us in the mirror. Any moment now, a slap would surely come to ground me but nothing. He was as lost in the scene as I was.
“Beau, I love—” My entire body tensed and pulsed.
“Yes.” He pumped into me grunting.
“I love what you do to me.” Everything that had twisted, tensed, and shook finally released. His grip tightened at my hip as he came.
I dropped my leg, and my overworked hamstring throbbed. Heaving inhales and exhales overtook my body. He rested his forehead against my temple. “I’ve never done anything like that before,” he managed to say between panting.
I sank to my hands and knees. He joined me on the ground, kissing my shoulder.
“I guess I bring that out of you.” I curled more of my body into him, accepting the whisper of his caresses on my skin.
“You do. Only you do.” He enveloped me in his arms .
“But we really should do this with the other leg. Balance and all,” I said sleepily. His hug drew me in tighter as he laughed. I begged for my senses not to come to me. I wanted to live in this high forever—to pretend this was love.
We stayed on the mat like that long enough for the auto lights to shut off. In the dark, he crooned, “You’re amazing” in my ear. I don’t remember when we moved off the floor.
Beau soaked in my bathtub that I loaded with Epsom salt to help ease his muscles. I wiped his eyeliner off using mineral oil, and he finally let out a sigh. “You should join me.”
“And get you worked up? You need to relax. I bet you barely have the hip strength right now to thrust.”
“I’d lie there and let you do all the work.” He looped his wet arm around my legging clad thigh. The water on his hair bled through the fabric on my leg as he nuzzled me. “You’ve been doing so well with training. I could probably get a second wind if you were up for—” He gave my butt a healthy squeeze .
“Is sex the only thing you have on your mind?”
“It is when I’m around you.”
“An answer for everything.” I finger combed his coif, his puppy-dog eyes looked up at me. I kissed the top of his head.
“After the audition, we should go somewhere for a weekend. Something along the Pacific Coast Highway or Tahoe.”
“That seems…” Fantastic. Great. Perfect. Yes, yes, yes. But feelings and their need to be bubble-wrapped. “Awfully couple-y, isn’t it?” I stepped out of his arm loop and patted the wet spot on my leggings with a towel. It was as if his grip had feeling-cooties, and I needed them off me.
“Yeah, but aren’t we? The sex, the chores, the helping me with the audition.”
“I can care about you without having to make it a whole thing. When you go through a divorce—”
“Sir, you’re always thinking five steps ahead. I’m asking for a weekend getaway because we’re friends slash lovers and that’s what friends-lovers do.” He stood up in the bath, the water sluicing over his chiseled body. I made a note of how it flowed out of his belly button to his dick, which was at half-mast. “What I was going to say was you’re handling our training so well, I thought you might like to make something special out of—”
“Using my ass?” The way I said it made the act seem crude, the way Chris saw it. As something to be gross and demeaning, not the way things had been when they had been heating up with Beau and not the way he felt so careful and good. The sharp tone of my voice deflated his face and his member.
“I thought you liked it when we—”
“I do. But what happens when the novelty wears off?”
The sexy moments between us were amazing, don’t get me wrong, but I longed for those quieter moments of tracing scars on his legs with my fingertips or holding him in my arms after a day of doing chores for his parents. I could be a girlfriend, though the term girlfriend belonged to someone younger, bubblier, and armed with a better reproductive system.
“You’re more than an amusement to me,” he said.
I threw the towel at him. I wanted to tell him that time made us all liars, and I had a proven stanky return on investment in relationships. My ring finger was still pale from years of wearing a wedding ring. I had a past that said feelings got trod upon until I made funny anecdotes about them. I had to be practical about Beau. Beau wasn’t going to be a forever person. He was a right-here, right-now one. And as much as he was a fixer, he couldn’t fix this one thing about me. “I have to remember why my marriage went to shit.”
He stepped out of my tub, laughing and drying himself off. “I’m not your ex.”
“I have a bicornuate uterus.”
After he wrapped the towel around his waist, he leaned back against my sink and narrowed his eyes, probably trying to figure out what language I spoke.
“I have a heart-shaped uterus. You know, the shape that you dot your i’s with? It means pregnancies are riskier, and we tried a lot . And I went to therapy and learned it wasn’t my fault that I was born with something, but when Chris and I went through… one after another…”
He leaped from the counter and held me so close in a ridiculous, damp hug. I could hear his voice through his chest, the comforting low rumble. “I don’t dot my i’s with hearts.”
I chuckled.
“I dot them with your uterus. Saoirse dotted with your uterus, outlined in your uterus in my notebook.”
Only Beau could make something so dark so sweet. It was the type of information that a woman could misinterpret for love. “Making a joke out of my pain, are you? ”
His chin rested on the top of my head. “Do you want kids?”
He cut right to it, didn’t he? “I think life gave me the answer. There are times I’m grateful I didn’t. It made the divorce easier. I look at what Chris’s wife had to go through, negotiating custody and whatnot… not envious of that. Living alone with my silly job, making my silly doodles, I’m just one big kid. Big kids with my big kid problems don’t really have business adding another one to the world.”
“Sometimes big kids make the best moms.”
I squeezed my mouth shut to hold back from letting the pain out—the pain of wanting to be a mom in my other life, a whole other Saoirse ago. Finally, the ache of that came out with a deep breath of the life I had been handed. “What about you?”
He gazed down at me and flickered his adorably crooked smile. “I have a lot of shit to get together before I do any of that. But yes, deep down I’d like to be a dad.”
I could already picture it: Him being one of those hot dads at the park who chased his kids, and when he caught them, he zerberted on their tummies as they squealed with laughter. I couldn’t take that from him. It didn’t matter how many perfect answers he had or how good his embrace felt. His answer put an expiration date on whatever we had going on.
I extricated myself from his grip and swallowed back the years of disappointment I had stowed away. “We shouldn’t do a weekend getaway. The traffic is atrocious on weekends. And your dad still needs you around as his arm heals.”
“Right.” His focus went to my ceiling, as if bathroom vents were an actual point of interest. “I should get going. My parents.”
He prepared to leave. And as we air kissed each other’s cheeks in the threshold of my doorway, I had a feeling that I’d fucked up.