Chapter 16 Maurice
He did know, and that was the problem.
He wanted to close the distance between them.
He wanted to kiss her like they’d kissed in the sea, but more.
He wanted to see the blue bra that teased him under her loosely tied robe, to touch it.
He wanted to touch her, everywhere. He wanted to reclaim the peace he’d already experienced in her arms. But wanting wasn’t safe.
“Mo?” Her soft voice drew him from his head. “Where’d you go?”
“I’m here.”
“You’re not.” She scooted closer to where he sat in the chair, their knees touching. “Stop assessing scenarios and ways to screw up.”
He smiled, almost. “How can you tell? We barely know each other.”
“I like you, Maurice. I think you’re interesting, and I pay attention to what interests me.” She squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to be so controlled, not with me.”
“I don’t know how to be any other way.”
She stood, stepping between his knees.
His hands went to her hips without a command from his brain. Her robe was soft and warm under his palms. This was real.
“I have another confession,” she said, looking down at him.
This time, a smile formed without him planning for it. “Another one?”
She nodded, trapping her bottom lip in her teeth. “Yeah.”
He reached up and rubbed his thumb along her full, moist mouth.
“Tell me…” His voice was so breathy that he didn’t recognize it.
“I like you, Maurice, a lot. You make me want things that I thought weren’t possible anymore, things that I gave up wanting.”
When his fingertips grazed her skin, they burned. An anguished sort of sound seeped from her mouth.
“Tell me what you want,” he said, voice rough, tone firm.
Her eyelids fluttered closed, hiding her dark, reflective eyes from him, and a tear slid down her cheek. “I want someone who’ll hold me just because. Someone who’ll answer every time I call. Someone who sees me in all my mess and never thinks I’m too much. I want…”
His arms went around her waist, drawing her to him, and he pressed his face against the satiny brown skin of her stomach. Her hands went to his hair and stroked, fingers bumping over his waves.
“Me too,” he confessed against her skin, “I want to be all that for you.”
She made a sound that was part laugh, part sob. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough.” He pulled back and looked up at her. “I know you’re strong when you don’t feel like you are. I know you’re kind, even when you’re being a smart-ass.”
“Ooh, you cussed,” she said through a watery laugh.
He reached up and wiped her tears, loving how soft her cheeks were against his rough hands. He stood, and she leaned into his touch. “When I’m with you, the noise—all the rules I put in place to keep me on this side—turn all the way down.”
She cupped his face in her hands, pulling him close.
Their kiss was soft at first. Slow. Like they had nothing but time, even though they both were hyperaware that time wasn’t a friend to them.
As if reading each other’s minds, the kiss changed. His hands moved up her sides. She didn’t stop him. The robe slipped off one shoulder, then the other, before it fell to the floor.
She stood there in her blue bra and panties.
“You’re staring,” she said.
“I can’t help it.”
She moved to cover herself, but he caught her hands. “Don’t. Please.”
“Maurice—”
“You’re beautiful. Every part of you.”
Pink flooded her deep brown cheeks.
Maurice yanked her closer, pulling her to him before gripping the back of her neck and crashing his mouth to hers.
“Holy fuck.” Monique writhed against him like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to push him away or get closer.
His mouth was hungry. Sloppy. Clumsy. He didn’t care.
She clawed at his linen shirt. The rake of her short nails through the fabric shot sparks through his body, and he questioned the stability of the earth beneath them. What was this power she had over him?
Their chests heaved as their kisses grew more controlled, as if Maurice were a kid at Halloween and wanted to savor the last bit of his candy. His hands, though, were greedy at first, one holding her head where he could get at her mouth, and the other firm against the small of her back. Then lower.
He palmed her left cheek like his hand was made for that expanse of her flesh. Then his fingers grazed the edge of her panties.
His knees buckled.
Maurice’s mind wasn’t blank. It was filled with Monique and only her. The feel of her, the taste of her. Her scent. Nothing in his life had ever felt like this.
In a flash of lucidity, he realized he was lying across the bed, and Monique was on top of him.
God. He was on fire. Melting from the inside out.
As if she’d sensed it, Monique began unbuttoning his shirt.
Her short nails grazed the flesh over his heart.
A deep tremor wracked his body. His hands moved to grip her meaty thigh and bring it over his hip.
She was straddling him now. Her heat pressed so heavy against his erection.
He would surely combust, leaving only an indentation of ash where he lay.
But he couldn’t find it in him to worry. He wanted more of this feeling. Of her body on his in this way. His hands on her skin somehow urged her to consume him more.
Maurice lost his breath, not from the intensity of their kisses, but from Monique rocking her hips against his. He pulled his mouth from hers and gripped her waist, pressing her down to hold her still.
“Hold on,” he said, chest heaving.
Her mouth was slack and her eyes glassy, as if she were in a trance as her hips continued to move over him despite his hold.
The knot in his lower belly twisted tighter and tighter. He worried that something inside of him would snap from the tension. Would he recover? This sensation—terrifying. But witnessing her like this? Exhilarating.
She continued to move. More insistent. Her heat thunk-thunking against his to a beat that only Monique heard.
A strap of her pretty blue bra slipped from her shoulder, causing the material that covered her breast to go slack. Each stroke revealed more of her dark nipple. His mouth watered.
On instinct, he leaned forward and took her nipple, fabric and all, into his suddenly hungry mouth.
“Oh God. Right there,” she said in a way that sounded as if she’d been lost and suddenly discovered the way.
He clamped down harder, and the pace and rhythm of her hips grinding against his sped into a frenzy.
She screamed his name.
Surprised, he released her breast and her hips. He watched her skin prickle and her head fall back. He watched how her back arched, presenting her full breasts to him. He reached up and brushed his thumb over her damp nipple, and she cried out.
The knot in his belly snapped, spilling more heat between them.
Monique moaned and slowed her movements. She leaned forward, rubbing her nose against his neck as he shuddered, and his heart rate slowed from a gallop to a gentle trot, and the pounding behind his zipper eased.
“Fuck…” Monique said, rolling off him.
He lay there boneless, eyes never leaving her as she sat up and turned her back to him. Slowly, she pulled the fallen bra strap up her arm and curled in on herself. He knew that posture and hated it.
She was still beautiful, though.
He pulled himself to sit up, his lap rapidly cooling to an uncomfortable awareness of what just happened. Tentatively, his finger stretched toward her spine. She froze at the contact, still not looking at him. He whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Sorry for not being more of a gentleman. Sorry for letting lust get the better of him. Sorry for not being smoother. Sorry for being unaware and inexperienced. Sorry for the mixed signals. Sorry for touching her without permission. But he wasn’t sorry for wanting her like he did
Now that he could admit his desire to himself, he’d never apologize for wanting her.
“I should be the one apologizing to you…” She still wouldn’t look at him. “I don’t know what came over me.” She stood up, and Maurice felt that stirring in his belly upon seeing the blue fabric against the expansive, creamy brown skin of her backside. That knot found a way to retie itself.
“We’re adults—” he started, shakily, but Monique let out an incredulous laugh that silenced whatever excuse he was trying to come up with.
“Adults grinding like a couple of teenagers who just figured out what a clit can do.” She turned to him then, eyes roaming his body, from his flayed shirt to his cream-colored linen pants that were probably showing the proof of what currently had his underwear glued to his skin.
A smirk pulled at her lips, and a warmth spread through his chest.
He looked her over too. The blue of her underwear looked magical against her deep brown skin. Where he had sucked her breast, the color was more navy than royal blue. His eyes rested on her breasts again.
He had never been one to look at dirty magazines or even ogle video vixens and whatnot.
Sure, there had been access to those materials in prison, but Maurice charged his longstanding disinterest in being the latest of bloomers.
Now that he met Monique, he had nothing but interest. She fascinated him.
The way she held her chin with unfaltering confidence, like she knew where she stood was sacred, simply because she had chosen to stand there.
How her skin sparkling against the soft lamplight made her seem otherworldly. She was just different.
Not that Maurice had many references, but he thought Monique was perfect. His hand ached to hold her again, to confirm his hypothesis.
“Just so you know,” she said, leveling him with a look that meant business.
He sat up and gave Monique his undivided attention. At least he tried. There was so much skin. So much of her was within his view—within his reach. Focusing on her face was a good choice, but her eyes made him forget what her lips tasted like. And her lips beckoned him to be reminded.
“I don’t make a habit of opening doors in my draws and humping dudes I barely know.”
He couldn’t pretend like he was following her.
Although her eyes were serious, playfulness danced there too.
Maurice stood and approached with a surety that he’d try to understand and access later.
“Then, I am honored.” He took her hands in his, kissed them, and held her gaze.
“Meeting you has changed my life.” He kissed her hands again. “I am forever grateful.”
Monique tried to pull her hands from his grip, but he held on, pulling her closer. “Are you usually this dramatic?”
Dramatic. Him? Maurice shrugged. “I’ve never been in this situation before, so if I’m being dramatic, I ask your forgiveness.” He pressed his mouth to hers again; this time, he felt the smile that played on her lips.
He let her slide her hands from his, and she brought them up to wrap her arms around his neck. Monique brought her hips against his, only to jerk back and pass him a questioning look.
She nodded, glancing down and then raising an eyebrow.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had been aroused before meeting Monique, but since meeting her, he’d been nothing but aroused. He’d busted in his pants for probably the first time in his life, but he couldn’t find it in him to be concerned. He’d do it again if given the chance.
His erection had returned, cold, sticky shorts be damned. “I should probably”—he gestured vaguely toward the door—“clean up.”
“Later.” She yawned. “Just stay here with me for a minute.”
He stayed. He let himself feel her warmth against him. He let himself feel her heartbeat under his palm—the rise and fall of her breathing.
“Maurice?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For being here. For staying when I asked you to.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She lifted her head and looked at him with something like hope in her eyes. “Promise?”
He wanted to. Wanted to promise he’d stay, he’d figure this out, he’d be what she needed. But the rules were already creeping back in. The voice in his head that never stopped. You stepped too far out of line. This will end badly. You’ll destroy her. You don’t deserve this…
“I promise I’ll try,” he said. It was the most honest thing he could offer.
She laid her head back down. “That’s enough. For now.”
They lay there. Not sleeping, just being.
His eyes started to get heavy. The week had caught up to him and settled on his bones.
“Don’t leave,” she said softly.
“I won’t.”
“Meet me for coffee and pastelillitos in the morning before the day gets crazy?”
He chuckled softly. She was offering him a do-over of their first meeting. “I will.”
They lay there tangled together. Her breathing evened out fast, and she fell asleep. Peaceful, trusting. Her face was soft in the dim light, no guard up, no worry lines. Maurice watched her. Counted her breaths, because he was always counting, as her chest rose and fell against his arm.
He should be sleeping too. Exhausted from the day, from the week, from thirty-five years of carrying weight he might finally be able to set down. But his eyes wouldn’t close. His mind wouldn’t quiet.
This isn’t right. Not wrong in the way Rob had been wrong, or the way violence was wrong. But wrong like deviation. Like stepping outside the lines he’d drawn to keep himself safe.
Three hours. That was about the most he could sleep in one stretch. For thirty-five years, it was the same: lights out at nine, eyes wide open at midnight, struggle back to sleep at two, and up at five. That was the rhythm. That was his rule.
It was 3:47 a.m., and he was wide awake in a woman’s bed, and his body still hummed from what they’d done. Her scent was all over him, blending so nicely with his.
Every alarm in his head screamed. You’ve gone too far.
Get back in line. Restore order. He wanted to ignore them.
God, he tried to ignore it. Tried to focus on her warmth, the softness of her breathing, the way she’d looked at him like he was allowed to want this.
But the voice grew louder. You don’t get to have this.
You don’t deserve this. Something terrible will happen.
Monique shifted in her sleep and made a soft sound. Her hand flexed on his chest. Maurice carefully extracted himself from under her. She stirred, brow furrowing.
“I’m just going to the bathroom,” he whispered.
She settled. Her breathing deepened again.
He stood there beside the bed, watching her sleep. So peaceful. So trusting. And he was about to— No, just the bathroom. Come right back. You promised.
But his feet carried him to the door. His hand found the handle. The voice in his head was chanting now, the way it had for decades: Back in line. Restore order. Get control. It beat at the base of his skull.
He slipped out into the hallway.
Maurice stood there for a long moment, hand still on the handle. He could go back. He could slide into bed beside her. Could choose to stay.
Instead, he let her door lock behind him. Then he entered his own room and secured the bolt.