Pepper
~
Now, while we normally didn’t work Saturdays, I’d had a bunch of flowers delivered yesterday for an inventory season change, and I usually worked during the weekend when this happened.
While my attire and life might be a chaotic mess, I ran my store like a tight ship, and I didn’t fuck around when it came to my inventory.
I also had a seasonal poster hung up at the shop to give people an idea of what we had in stock and the possible price for anything that wasn’t in season.
Granted, bridezillas were the only ones that I ever had trouble with, but still.
At any rate, when I had mentioned working today, Josiah had easily volunteered to help, so that everyone else could enjoy their weekends, knowing that they all relied on having Saturday and Sunday off, something that I understood as Leah was only able to visit during the weekend while in college.
Now, having gone to bed with my hair wet, I’d taken another quick shower this morning, and after brushing my teeth, then throwing on my robe, I headed downstairs to put the coffee on, and I couldn’t lie and say that I wasn’t surprised to hear the downstairs shower going.
I’d given Josiah a key to the backdoor weeks ago to grant him access to the bathroom, and now he used it for his online counseling sessions, too.
Nevertheless, I was still surprised that he’d chosen to show up.
With my nerves threatening to make an appearance, I did my best to ignore Josiah showering in my bathroom, then went to make the coffee.
While I didn’t care for the stuff too much, I’d learn that Josiah was a coffee drinker, and so I always made sure to have a fresh pot ready for him each morning.
I couldn’t imagine that he got any kind of decent sleep outside in the shed, no matter how many blankets I’d given him to make a bed.
When I heard the shower stop, I forced myself to pretend like everything was okay, getting Josiah’s mug from the cupboard, acting like my stomach wasn’t fluttering with anxiousness.
As soon as I heard the bathroom door open, I said, “Coffee’s on, and I was thinking maybe breakfast burritos on the way.” Keeping my back to him, I added, “If I stuff myself this morning, then I’ll be useless at the shop, so I figured I’d let someone else decide my meal portions this morning.”
My entire body froze when the scent of Josiah’s aftershave hit my nose, both of his hands latching onto the counter on either side of me. If I moved even an inch, I’d be touching him, and after last night, that wouldn’t be a good idea.
I felt his warm breath on my ear as he said, “After tossing and turning all night, I woke up wanting something more than just breakfast, Pepper.”
Oh, Sweet Baby Jesus.
“Instead of eggs and bacon, I woke up wondering what it’d feel like to eat your pussy for breakfast,” he went on, his voice a dark rasp of need, and when he pressed himself against me, I felt just how much he wasn’t lying.
I stood there, wanting so badly to demand promises from him, but I knew that I couldn’t do that to him.
Roxanne had said to let him come to me, and even I could recognize how big of a step this was for him.
Last night could have ended everything, but instead, Josiah had chosen to try, and that had to be enough right now.
Hoping that I wasn’t making the biggest mistake of my life, I turned around, then looked up into Josiah Austin’s gorgeous face. “If I let you do that, then we’ll never make it to the shop.”
“You have no idea how okay I am with that, baby,” he said, stepping back a bit.
Instead of letting him distract me, I said, “I have a better idea.”
“There are no better ideas,” he insisted, his damp hair dripping little drops of water onto his broad shoulders. “There is no better idea than having you spread out for me.”
“I disagree,” I said as my right hand reached through his towel, the man letting out a low hiss as I wrapped my fingers around his hard length. “I can think of a way better way to start the morning.”
“Pepper, I won’t last two seconds if you do what I think you’re thinking of doing,” he confessed, and his vulnerability warmed everything inside me. “I haven’t been with a woman in years, and it’s going to show...glaringly.”
“So, are you saying that you don’t want me on my knees in front of you?” I taunted as I began running my hand up and down what was a rather big freakin’ dick.
“Christ,” he groaned. “I’d have to be stupid to say that.”
Knowing that I had to play hardball with a man like Josiah, I said, “You’re not the only one who’s been thinking about a taste.”
“Baby-”
Refusing to let this opportunity slip past me, I yanked his towel off with my other hand, then dropped to my knees before the man could stop me.
Wasting no time at all, I took him into my mouth, and he smell and tasted of fresh water and soap, and I couldn’t help but wonder what he really tasted like.
“Oh, fucking Christ,” he hissed as his hands slapped back down on the counter, holding on. “Pepper...fuck, baby.”
Even though he’d been honest about his recent lack of experience, I still wanted to make this good for him. I wanted him to remember what it felt like to be a man, and while that might be arrogant of me, it was something that I wanted to do for him.
“Pepper...Christ, I’m...I’m going to cum already,” he warned after only a few minutes, and it was crazy how much I wanted to be that for him. No matter what happened between me and Josiah, I wanted him to be able to look back on this time in his life and think of me fondly.
“Ba...baby,” he choked out as he finally came down my throat, and I swallowed him like I was auditioning for a bored-housewife-package-delivery role. I licked and slurped him up like a melting popsicle on a hot August afternoon.
When he finally began to soften in my mouth, I looked up at him, and I couldn’t remember if a man had ever looked at me like Josiah was looking at me now. It brought an immediate sting of emotion to my eyes, and while a wiser woman wouldn’t hope so much, I couldn’t stop myself.
“You okay?”
Josiah reached down, grabbed my shoulders, then hauling me to my feet, said, “I think that it’ll be okay if we show up late this morning.”
I let out a laugh as my chest relaxed with happiness. “While I’d normally agree, I don’t have any condoms here, and I’m guessing that you probably don’t have any on you, either.”
He let out the saddest sigh ever. “You’d be right.”
~
Josiah~
After Pepper had left me to re-evaluate every decision that I’d ever made in my life, I hadn’t been able to sleep for shit.
I couldn’t stop thinking about all the mistakes that I’d made in the past, and by the time that the sun had come up, I’d known deep inside that I hadn’t wanted Pepper to be one of those mistakes.
I hadn’t wanted to add her to the long list of regrets that were going to haunt me for the rest of my life, and so I’d made the decision to quit being a coward and try for something better.
However, what I hadn’t expected was for her to just keep giving like an endless supply of hope. The plan had been to show her just how much I wanted her, but in true Pepper fashion, she had turned the tables on me, giving more of herself to a man that she barely knew but trusted unconditionally.
Then, after she’d made me see stars, she’d gone back upstairs, had gotten ready for the day, then had begun preparing breakfast like normal, acting as if she hadn’t just blown my mind with the best blowjob that I could ever remember having.
Granted, I should feel embarrassed that I hadn’t lasted more than five minutes, but Pepper had a way of making it okay to be vulnerable, and maybe that was the scariest thing about all this.
With Pepper, I couldn’t hide, and I wasn’t used to that.
I’d been so used to being invisible and lying to my parents that I didn’t know how to be more, but I was willing to try.
I was willing to try anything for her.
I’d also been unreasonably happy when she had announced that she hadn’t had any condoms, and even though I’d been doing my best to save every cent that I earned, I’d gone out to buy some condoms during lunch because there was no way that I wasn’t going to put my hands on this woman tonight.
Plus, even though it sounded stupid, I wanted to pay Pepper back for everything in any way that I could, and that included pleasuring her until she begged me to never leave her.
Walking into the back room, I dropped a bag of sweets on the table, and Pepper immediately smiled up at me. “I know that you ate lunch already, but I thought some dessert might be fun.”
“What’d you get?” she asked, already reaching for the bag. “For future reference, I’d sell both of my kidneys for chocolate éclairs if I had to.”
I laughed. “Duly noted. However, not knowing that you’re in a support group for chocolate éclair eaters, I just picked up a few snickerdoodles.”
“Sure,” she said, peeking into the bag. “I have enough willpower to eat one now and save the others for after dinner. Yeah...no problem.”
As she fought with her weakness for sugar, I said, “I also bought a box of condoms.”
Pepper froze for a second, and when she finally looked up at me, she looked beautiful and conflicted, something that I hadn’t been expecting.
Forgetting about the snickerdoodles, she said, “Okay...before we...we get to the condoms, I have to...I have to ask you something, Josiah.”
“I haven’t had sex in years, Pepper,” I told her honestly. “My exit health exam from the military also came back-”
She waved my explanations away, which really had me wondering what was going on in that crazy mind of hers. “Not that.”
My brows shot upward. “Then what?”
I watched Pepper walk over towards me before she propped herself up to sit on the sorting table. “Why aren’t you married, Josiah?” she asked. “And do you have any kids?”
Pepper wanted to know how I felt about relationships, and that was fair when you considered what was happening between us. “I was married,” I informed her. “For ten years. She worked as a billing clerk as she stood by me during all my deployments.”
“What happened?” she asked quietly.
“We got pregnant, and when Bethany miscarried in her fourth month, she blamed me for not being there,” I told her, the weight of the story still a heavy one.
“The years of loneliness had finally gotten to her, and she filed for divorce a month after miscarrying. As much as I’d wanted to work things out, I couldn’t let her continue to be miserable because of her marriage to me.
So, I let her divorce me, and that’s when I signed up for my last tour, and you already know how that turned out. ”
“Do you still love her?” she asked, and talk about vulnerability. Pepper was still very close to her ex-husband, but she was worried that I was still carrying a torch for Bethany.
“No,” I answered honestly. “Had we spent more time together during those ten years, I might have fought harder for our marriage, but regret was what I’d felt most at her filing for divorce, and I know myself well enough to know that had she not always come second to my career, I never would have let her leave me. ”
“I’m sorry,” she replied sincerely. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to experience a miscarriage.”
“It’s one of the worst things that a person can go through,” I admitted. “In fact, I used to think that accidentally killing all those innocent people had been my punishment for letting Bethany down. It’d taken a lot of counseling sessions to help me work through that one.”
Pepper’s blue eyes glossed over with genuine emotion, and I’d never met a person that was so beautiful inside and out. “I’m sorry if I pushed-”
I place my finger on her lips to shut her up. “Don’t, Pepper,” I told her. “Do not ever apologize to me for being you. I was scared of the hope that you brought with you, and it’s as simple as that, baby.”
“And you’re not scared anymore?” she asked after I removed my finger.
“I’m fucking terrified,” I chuckled. “I can’t ever recall being this scared, and I spent twenty years in the damn military.
” I removed the scrunchie that was falling out of her hair anyway.
“But I also can’t remember ever feeling this alive, and it’s because of you.
I only feel like this when I’m next to you, Pepper. ”
“Well, just so you know, I come with an ex-husband that I’m still very close to, a daughter in a demanding college, and a best friend that shares her family with me,” she said, making me smile.
“And you’ll also have to learn ASL if we’re going to do this.
I won’t ever have Roxanne left out of a conversation, no matter what it’s about. ”
I stared at this amazing woman, and it was easy to see that I was going to be in love with her in no time. “I can do that.”
“You’re also going to have to trust me,” she said.
“I know that you’re worried about what might happened when and if you do have an episode, but I need you to trust me when I tell you that you’ll be the first to know if I feel like it’s becoming too much.
I promise to always be transparent with you, and I want the same in return. ”
I stepped to her, and she opened her legs to accommodate me. Placing my hands on her hips, I said, “I have no idea what I did to deserve you, but I’m going to trust that God knows what He’s doing.”
“Good,” she replied, grinning. “Remember, we only have this one life, Josiah.”
“No, baby,” I told her. “I refuse to believe that we only get this one now that I have you.”
I wanted to live a thousand lifetimes with her.