Chapter 5
Rory
December
Rory
Happy holidays
Garrett
Hey stranger
I still have that shirt of yours
I should get that from you…are you heading home for Christmas?
Are you?
Don’t sound so surprised
Were you thinking of something sooner?
Tonight, maybe?
Did I lose you
No
Yeah, maybe tonight
I’m going to need you to use your words
I was hoping you might be free tonight, yes
For sex
Is that enough words?
I’ll be there in fifteen
Wear the shirt
“Bossy,” I mutter.
But I wear the shirt.
It’s warm and cozy in the condo, but cold outside. The first blast of winter hit Quebec and eastern Ontario today, and when Garrett arrives, he’s wearing a heavy parka over jeans and boots.
Snow dusts the tips of his golden brown hair, and his cheeks are pink slashes above a close-cropped beard that’s new.
He always felt too big for this small condo, especially in those last few months as our relationship fell apart.
The little break again since the end of the summer has only exacerbated the effect.
Now his larger-than-life presence—big, broad, and painfully tense—fills the air around me, making it hard to breathe.
“You rang for service?”
“Don’t say it like that.”
He tugs off his gloves and goes to put them on the side table that used to be beside the door, but I sold it last week.
After staring at the empty spot for a second, Garrett lets the gloves fall to the floor with a wet thunk.
Then he unzips his jacket.
Tonight he’s wearing a dark grey ribbed Henley that clings to his broad chest.
I want to cling to his chest, too.
He hangs up his coat (on the hooks he installed when we moved into this place four-and-a-half years ago) and then gestures at his feet. The unspoken question is, do you even want me to take off my boots?
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I burst out. I don’t need this performance. If he’s changed his mind, he can just go. We’re already broken up, he can just jog back down to his truck and head on out of my life, never for our paths to cross again.
I go to open the door, to shove him out to the hallway, but as soon as I’m within arm’s reach, he scoops me up. All the air whooshes out of my lungs and I make a little sound, unfff, that barely escapes before his thumb brushes across my lips.
As if to remind me we get along better when we don’t talk.
Because when we talk, we fight. But we don’t fight when he closes the gap between us and drags his nose along my jaw, then the tip of his tongue along the outside curve of my ear.
No, we’ve never had a problem with instant chemistry.
My arms go around his neck, my fingers pushing up into his hair—it’s getting longer each month, like he hasn’t bothered to cut it even once since we broke up—and under his shirt, needing to touch his back.
His lips are cold but the rest of him is hot. Hot muscles flexing beneath my fingertips. Hot mouth sucking on that spot halfway down my neck that makes my knees weak.
It isn’t fair, how well he knows my body. How easily he gets my blood pumping.
“Stop fucking thinking,” he growls.
If only. That’s why he’s here, though. He knows how to push me into that blissfully quiet space.
“What do you need?”
That’s a more Garrett thing to ask. Less sharp than you rang for service?
But both are on point. I need him, because his mouth chases my worries away, if only for an hour.
One of his hands curves down to the hem of his shirt and then his fingers are gripping my bare ass, shoving under the elastic of my panties. Electricity streaks across my skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake.
We really shouldn’t be doing this, and that makes this even hotter.
You are a doctor, Rory Minelli. This is shameful behaviour.
But I don’t care. I tried to make our relationship work, and when it ended, I tried to move on. Doing the right thing in both spaces had failed miserably.
Maybe once I finish my residency, I can spend some time figuring out why only Garrett works me up like this. For now, in the few spare hours I have, I don’t want—
“Jesus Christ,” he growls. “You’re fucking soaked for me.”
His fingers have unerringly found the seam of my sex and now he’s stroking my pussy lips, making my slickness spill free.
I moan.
“Call me up so I can come over and be witness to how messy you are on the inside.” His voice sounds like it is underneath my skin now, rough and raw. “When did you start to ache today, Rory? Was it all day?”
I shake my head. Not quite all day. But by lunch, my thoughts were on him. On his voice and his hands and his cock.
And I can’t deny it, because he made me use my words when I texted him.
An advantage of fucking your ex is that there is no confusion about what one wants. I wouldn’t text him if I weren’t horny. He wouldn’t have messaged back if he didn’t feel the same way.
We don’t need to pretend that we aren’t desperate for this.
That he doesn’t want to get his fingers inside my pussy. That I’m not aching to unzip his fly and get my hands on—
As if he can read my mind, he grabs my wrist and pulls my hand up over my head.
His mouth drags along my jaw, and my heart freezes for a second, wondering if he’ll kiss me this time.
We haven’t yet.
Not since two days before we broke up in April.
I’ve gone nine months without kissing him.
Now I’m thinking about his mouth, how good his tongue would feel against mine, and that’s the opposite of where my head should be at. We should be de-escalating this.
And yet I yearn for his mouth.
“Garrett,” I whine, twisting my face, seeking him out.
He releases my pinned wrist and pushes those fingers over my tongue instead.
I wrap my arm around his neck and give in, letting him fuck my pussy and my mouth with his hands.
Letting him invade my body and chase away my thoughts about how to tell our parents we aren’t together anymore. Christmas is right around the corner.
“Jesus, your mouth is so fucking hungry, isn’t it?” He pulls his hands off me long enough to suck his fingers, then he’s unbuckling his belt. “Get on your knees.”
He yanks off his shirt and leans his bare back against the door.
“You’ve been working out,” I say.
“Rugby.”
“Rugby?”
He fists his cock and taps it against my mouth. “This isn’t going to suck itself.”
Rugby?
Garrett has always been fit. He works with his hands all day as a mechanic and has to maintain a certain standard for his military reserve responsibilities. But he’s never been athletic, per se.
This new rugby-built body is impressive. He looked jacked in the summer, and now he’s…solid. Super solid.
I feast my eyes on his firm muscles and the fine line of blond hair running down his belly, to the golden brown curls at the base of his cock. And then to the silver balls peeking out between his curved fingers.
“Sorry,” I whisper against the head of his cock, my lips brushing his exposed crown as he slides the foreskin back. “I was distracted by how obnoxiously good you look.”
He grunts and presses my bottom lip down, making me show him my tongue.
It’s all so rough and vaguely degrading and completely perfect.
When he pushes in, it’s easy, because my mouth is watering for the thick stretch. Those piercings still feel wild against my tongue, a few months haven’t softened the reaction there. And the power I have, even on my knees, to make him come apart so quickly, is amazing.
It makes me feel like I could fly, like I could do anything I want. So strange. So fun.
I swallow him right to the root, until it’s hard to breathe and think and do anything but find a rhythm that allows me to do that again and again.
He swells against my tongue, his skin stretching taught, his seed pulsing onto the roof of my mouth and down my throat. His scent gets into my brain and makes me moan as I suck him faster and faster.
“You’re gonna make me come. Stop. God, that’s too good. That’s so…” He grips my hair and tugs me off, glaring down at me in a way that makes me laugh.
“Don’t you want to?” I lick my lips. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about all day.”
His chest heaves. “Not this fast. You come first.” He hauls me to my feet. “Preferably twice.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s not necessary.”
This time, he’s brought the condom.
He rolls it on as I hop out of my panties.
Then he picks me up and turns, pressing my back to the door as I wrap my legs around his torso. Yes, he’s definitely put on muscle weight since the summer. My thighs have a lot more to squeeze against now.
“Then you’re damn well going to come first,” he growls as he works his cock against my pussy. I’m so wet, the head of his cock slips right in, and then the weight of my body bearing down pulls the rest of him into me.
The stretch is incredible. Like I wasn’t ready, except I was, I am, I love how he displaces that ache I’ve felt all day with a perfect feeling of being stuffed.
“Your fucking pussy,” he growls, which I take as a compliment. “Touch your clit. Show me how you get yourself off when you’re lonely for this dick.”
“I don’t,” I lie.
He squeezes my hips tight, holding himself inside me, and he pulls me off the door.
Shrieking, I hold on tighter to his shoulders as he turns us again, so he’s leaning back against the door and I’m dangerously, precariously bouncing on his cock.
He pumps his hips, thrusting into me, and giving me his thighs to rest on at the same time. “You just forget about sex in between our hookups?”
“Not entirely.”
“But mostly.”
“Just fuck me, Garrett,” I pant.
“Your pussy is clenching me. Try not to come before I get the truth out of you.”
“What truth?”
“How many times have you come for me since the last time I had my fingers on your clit?”
“A few.” And even admitting that makes me coil tight, like it’s too much to reveal, but I can’t resist his rough demands.
“This week?”
I flush with reckless heat. “Last weekend. Woke up horny.”
“Should’ve called me.”
I shake my head.
“Had to wait until your pussy was this fucking needy?” He strokes into me again, the head of his cock pressing in exactly the right spot. Over and over again.
I guess I did have to wait, because the price of getting fucked this good is having all my secrets laid bare.
I whisper his name, desperate now. My thighs clench against his sides, my toes finding purchase against the door as he arches his back, sliding down a few inches until I’m almost on top of him, both of us desperately working hard to make the other person come.
He wins.
I go first, slamming myself down on his cock and shouting his name. Then he follows, and that feels like I win, too.
We both win…until he’s walking himself back to be upright, until I’m hanging in his arms, and it’s all too close and intimate and messy.
“Hang on,” he sighs as I try to vault my way out of his arms and almost trip. He catches me by the waist, steadying me. “Let me deal with the condom.”
At least this time, I’m still wearing his flannel shirt, so covering up is easy.
God, it’s annoying how good he makes me feel on a cellular level.
He goes to the bathroom, still shirtless.
I find his Henley and pick it up for him, holding it out so he can grab it when he comes back.
“I know when I’m being dismissed,” he says dryly. “You working tomorrow?”
“Yep. Second last shift before—” I cut myself off.
Three days from now, I’m heading home. We’re heading home, I guess, but separately. I wasn’t expecting that for him, because he always spends the holidays with my family, and obviously, he’s not invited to that this year.
“Are you driving?”
I swallow hard. “Yeah.”
He searches my face, his gaze dark and stormy. “You don’t need to pay for the extra insurance on a rental, remember. That fancy black credit card of yours—“
“I know,” I say thickly.
I’m not going to tell him I’m not renting a car, because I’ve finally bought wheels of my own—that would open a whole different can of worms.
And none of it is his business.
I’m not his to worry about anymore.
“All right.” He cups my face in his hand. It smells like me. He smells like me, and my heart twists hard. “If you need to get away from the Minelli madness, hit me up. I’ll be around.”
I don’t lean into his touch.
But I don’t pull away, either. “Who are you staying with?”
“I’ll probably couch surf.”
He has five cousins in Pine Harbour. They’re all older than us, and married, but Kincaids tend to have open door policies because they had to raise each other. Not having any living parents involved changes how they celebrate the holidays.
My family makes a Big Fucking Deal about Christmas.
The Kincaids—all of them first responders—often volunteer to work over the holidays so other families can be together.
“Then we probably wouldn’t be able to meet up in secret, so…”
“We did all right in my truck in September.” He drops his hand but doesn’t step away. His eyes are full of questions.
“Yeah, that was hot.”
“We didn’t even have time to fight.” He clears his throat. “I’ve got a theory that we do best in ninety-minute chunks of time.”
I laugh weakly. “Oh, yeah?”
He shrugs. “Although I’d convinced myself you decided zero minutes was even better than an hour and a half.”
Because I managed not to text him in November. “Ah. Well… I don’t always make good choices. Not that this wasn’t a good choice. It was… festive.”
“Festive.” He says it flat.
“Very festive.”
He pokes his tongue in his cheek. “Mm.”
“Anyway…” That’s enough talking probably.
Garrett clearly doesn’t agree. “Why’d you go radio silent?”
I make a face. How do I explain that there’s a fine line between having a bad day and wanting a distraction—his dick—and…whatever permanent version of Stressville I’m finding myself in this fall?
But I don’t need to, because he guesses.
He frowns. “How often are you sleeping at the hospital?”
And right on cue, my pager goes off.
Seeing Garrett’s face shut down because I’m pulled into work is all the reminder I need that I’m not right for him, so it doesn’t matter how much I miss him in my bed—we are only good together for ninety-minute increments.
And that’s no way to try to maintain a relationship, let alone build a marriage.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
“Don’t be.” He sighs. “I know the drill. Go do your thing. And I’ll see you soon. Or not.”
“Maybe in the new year,” I manage to say before quickly glancing at my pager.
By the time I look up, the door is swinging shut, and Garrett is gone.