Chapter 18
Molly followed Karl to his white-painted split-level—clearly built at least half a century ago, but maintained well—in her
rental car. They met at the sidewalk, and he grabbed for her hand and kept hold of it all the way up the three steps to the
front porch, as if worried she might flee if given the opportunity, then immediately reclaimed his grip once he’d dealt with
the door and locked it behind them again.
He should know better. The foundations of this house could crumble, and she’d simply plant herself on his cock in the dusty
rubble. If aliens invaded? They’d get a live-action demonstration of human anatomy, because her eagerness had turned into
outright impatience sometime over the past few days. She was done waiting.
Even apart from her uncharacteristic, lust-honed edginess, she felt . . . odd. Giddy, almost. Disoriented by a sudden, unexpected
sense of . . .
She wasn’t certain.
How did a circuit feel after years of failed attempts at connection, at spanning an unbridgeable gap, when the final, necessary
wire slotted into place? When electricity hummed at last, powering movement and light?
And if some sort of internal circuit had been completed, she knew precisely why and how: Their intimate conversation on the quilt beneath the willow had shifted the necessary components.
Her charged lust for Karl hadn’t changed, but .
. . something inside her had settled into place with each revelation he’d offered.
Her resistance had softened with each supportive response to her own confessions, each sign that he’d wanted and cared about her much longer and much more intensely than she’d ever realized.
Bravo to Corporations Monthly. The same magazine that helped business leaders avoid fair taxation and exert undue influence on the political system could
also, apparently, help two childhood never-quite-sweethearts reach an understanding, at long freaking last.
Inside the small foyer of Karl’s childhood home, she dropped her bag beside the door, and the rickety console table shuddered
as he flung his phone, wallet, and keys into the clay bowl on top. He tugged her deeper into the house, and the faint buzz
of a refrigerator accompanied them up a short set of carpeted steps. His bedroom apparently lay at the end of the postage-stamp
hall, whose walls were entirely lined with framed family photos. As he ushered her through the bedroom doorway, rosy late-afternoon
light streamed through the lone, half-open window and turned his ruddy hair to flame.
Neither of them had spoken a word since leaving their cars.
Still holding his hand, still silent, she looked around herself. The king-size bed, topped by rumpled gray sheets and another
faded quilt, dominated the room. Apart from a battered dresser and a matching nightstand, there was no other furniture. No
room for other furniture either.
Then she couldn’t see anything but Karl, because his fingers were delving into her hair, his other hand was cupping her jaw with tense care, and his mouth covered hers in a fierce, hard kiss.
Too needy to tease, she returned it without hesitation.
Her tongue met his in a twisting, playful battle for dominance that made her blood feel carbonated, fizzy and tickling as it effervesced through her veins.
When she sucked on the tip of his agile tongue, he lurched even closer. Backed her up against the side of the bed, one big,
warm hand sliding down to cup her ass. He squeezed. Molded her. Kneaded her giving flesh and hauled her tighter against him.
Dizzy with excitement, she shifted her thighs for friction and rubbed against him without a single iota of shame, and his
erection grew with her every movement, pressing almost painfully hard into her thigh.
He was throwing off heat like one of his ovens, melting every too-stiff bone in her body. When his teeth scored her lower
lip, her knees went wobbly, and she sank down onto the soft, cool sheets, then down onto her back. He immediately stepped
between her dangling legs and bent at the waist, forearm braced on the mattress as he cradled her nape and kept kissing her.
She explored him with eager hands, stroking down his taut, flushed neck, over his bunched shoulders, along the thick muscles
bracketing the groove of his spine.
After one last squeeze of her ass, his own hand slipped from beneath her, skimmed over her hip and the side of her belly,
up to her breast, and paused. His knuckles lightly skimmed over her nipple, back and forth, for a freaking eternity. Then
his loose fist uncurled, his thumb rubbed slow circles around her areola, and her breath hitched and caught.
His palm weighed her breast, and his mouth ripped free from hers. Moved lower.
“So goddamn soft,” he muttered. “Knew you would be, but shit.”
He nudged the hard tip of her nipple with his nose.
His hot breath seeped through the thin cotton of her shirt, warming her.
Then he licked her, his tongue flicking and rubbing through the barrier of fabric.
And maybe the sensation wasn’t as sharp as skin-on-skin contact, but she was buzzing with pleasure anyway.
Arching her back. Pushing herself closer in a demand for more.
He stilled, panting, and he smelled like sunshine and grass. She turned her head to nuzzle his inner forearm and opened her
mouth for a taste. Salt, atop tough muscle from backbreaking work. Velvety skin.
His flesh prickled when she followed a raised vein with the tip of her tongue.
When he spoke again, his voice was shredded. “Okay if I undress you?”
“Yes.” She dropped her arms and spread them in open invitation. “Please.”
As he undid her shirt buttons, his fingers fumbling in an impatient rush, she sighed in relief. She just . . . needed them
unclothed. No barriers. Only the two of them, open and honest and bare.
Her shirt landed behind the dresser, and he moved down her body, unbuttoning her jeans with a quick flick of his finger and
thumb. Her zipper lowered with a hasty vrrrrip, and he hauled the fabric toward her feet, muttering a hoarse thank fuck at the garment’s ease of removal. As he flung the denim and her socks over his shoulder, she squirmed out of her sports bra
and let it land wherever it fell on the sheets.
Cool air washed over her nipples, battling the heat of his gaze as he went motionless. He stared down at her bare breasts,
ruddy hair rumpled, face flushed, attention transfixed.
She was nearly naked now. Only wearing her panties.
His rapt expression told her he loved what he saw.
Her nipples hardened to an ache, and she stopped bracketing his thighs so tightly with hers. Instead, she splayed her legs
wider on the bed, her tender skin rubbing against the sheet. Another invitation.
He accepted without hesitation. Slid his hard palms slowly up her thighs and over the swell of her belly, until his fingers
hooked into the waist of her soft cotton boy shorts. Instead of lowering them, though, he lightly tugged them upward. Hitched
them infinitesimally tighter against her pussy. Stroked her swelling clit with subtle twitches of the fabric, side to side.
Her head fell back on the bed, and her exhalation shook.
“Yeah?” he rasped. “That good?”
“Yes.” It was a hiss, as he slowly used the cotton to rub her into near delirium.
“Want these off?”
“Yes.”
He tugged off her panties while backing out from between her legs, and she levered herself up to sitting, then standing, following
him as he retreated, because no way she was letting him get away from her this time. But when his palm raised in a silent
request for her to stop, she stilled at the side of the bed.
“Want to do this right.” He cautiously edged around her, like a man skirting a live bomb, and looked everywhere but at her
naked body. “Let me . . .”
After shoving the quilt entirely off the bed, he straightened the sheets with a few hasty adjustments.
Ran his palms over the cotton, smoothing away wrinkles.
Then he took her hand and guided her back onto the mattress, nudging her to crawl toward the spindled headboard.
His steady hands stacked two of the fluffy pillows and helped her prop herself semi-upright against them, then dropped away.
When she reached out to haul him on top of her again, he edged back a step.
His eyes met hers. “Just want to look at you for a while. Okay?”
Molly was private, not shy. Nakedness with a lover had never fazed her, even in the unforgiving light of day, and Karl clearly
enjoyed the sight of her body. That said . . .
“I’m not eighteen anymore,” she told him. “Please remember that.”
The breeze through the cracked window raised goosebumps now, as she lay there alone on the bed, bare. Arms outstretched, legs
slightly parted, braced for his appraisal whenever he chose to glance downward.
He lifted a shoulder, eyes still pinned to hers. “Neither of us is.”
“Whatever body you might have pictured over the past two decades? It’s long gone. I hope . . .” Her fingertips twitched against
the sheets, but she kept her expression neutral. “I hope that’s not a problem.”
He laughed then, a loud snort of mirth. Plucking her hand from the mattress, he pressed it against the fly of his jeans. “You
tell me.”
Even through the denim, the heat of him seared her palm. His cock was a heavy, solid bar straining against his zipper.
“Already got a good look at you wearing nothing but panties. Most beautiful thing I’ve ever fucking seen.” He hitched his
hips, grinding against her touch with a strangled groan before letting her hand drop. “This is the damn result.”
Her body sank deeper into the mattress as she relaxed. And without further ado, she raised her knees and spread them wide enough to feel the stretch. “Then look all you want, Karl. Just be warned: If you don’t make me come in the near future, I’ll do it myself.”