Chapter 14
fourteen
. . .
Armin
I pulled up to the cabin quieter than when I’d left. These new hybrid SUVs were so silent it spooked me a little. I reached into the backseat and snagged the giant red bow.
I wanted to do this right. I stepped out of the car, the last rays of light filtering through the trees. At least the cold snap had passed.
The big bow flopped this way and that, and after an embarrassing amount of wrestling with it I managed to loop it around the hood. I fluffed it up.
Ginny over at the firehouse got a gift card to the diner out of me in the Secret Santa for last year’s First Responders Holiday Bash. Since my recent lottery success I could afford to do better in my gift giving.
Not that the diner wasn’t top-notch. I should have picked Mia up a diner gift card, too, while I was out. I still harbored a hope she would accompany me there for some pie and coffee once she was up and around on the regular.
I shook my head. I had to stop all this fantasizing about having a future with her. Or it was going to break my heart when she inevitably left me and went back to her normal life.
I steeled my nerves and opened the front door. “Mia?”
I listened. Nothing. Maybe she was asleep.
A bottle of Bordeaux sat out on the kitchen counter.
2022. I had a 2018 somewhere, and it was supposed to be better, according to Chuck down at Greenwich Wines.
I thought to run and look for it, but I was too excited to show her the new SUV.
This bottle would do, and anyway, she’d picked it.
It had been our little ritual since she’d started feeling better.
She’d leave a bottle of wine out while I ran errands, I’d come home and uncork it, and we’d have a glass and rate it.
Pretend to be fancy folks, even though neither of us knew a dang thing about wines.
“Did you see the wine?” She called from the bedroom.
A little thrill leapt through my body. The sound of her voice never failed to get me going.
I uncorked it, grabbed a couple of glasses, and headed in to see her.
Mia lay in the center of the bed, face down. She’d wrapped the blanket around her midsection, but her back was exposed. I winced at the sight of those awful bruises from the accident.
I set our glasses on the wooden chair next to the bed and poured us each a half glass.
“How were the errands?” She pushed up to her elbows and took the glass from my hand.
I kept my eyes on hers, but I couldn’t keep my face from flushing.
I’d brought her a pajama set that I’d picked up in town, but she hadn’t taken to wearing them much yet.
She was still partial to my flannel shirts. Or nothing.
I’d seen every part of Mia there was by now, and the sight of her bare skin still sped up my heart.
“Oh, pretty good. You’ll have to come see what I brought.”
“Cheers,” she said, holding up the glass. I lifted mine off the chair to clink hers, and then I took a seat.
“Cheers.” I had a swallow and flinched. “I’ve been forcing myself to drink wines for months now, and they all taste like sour grapes to me.”
She swirled hers around in the glass. “This one has great legs,” she said.
“You’ve got great legs,” I said, and she smiled.
“I’m baring myself to you in the hopes that you’ll put the cream on me again?” She kicked her legs free of the blanket.
Even this movement was progress. She’d gone from barely being able to stand to winning back a good amount of motion in a week.
I took a deep breath and picked up the arnica lotion.
It helped a lot with her pain. Putting it on her?
That caused me pain. Bad. Yesterday it didn’t take more than a few moments of rubbing it on Mia’s beautiful body before my cock had swelled.
She pretended not to notice. I fled the room as soon as I could.
It was embarrassing. I felt like an adolescent boy who’d never touched a woman before.
She threw off the blankets. I blew the air out of my lungs quick, like it’d gone bad.
“Sorry,” she said. “You’re not too tired, are you?”
“No ma’am,” I said, my eyes on the ceiling. I’d been sleeping out on the couch and leaving the bed to Mia. I hadn’t slept more than four hours at a time since the army, but with Mia around I was waking up every fifteen minutes, especially after the night the fever started.
And still, even with the sleep deprivation, I was excited every day she was near. She was like a great cup of coffee, energizing, invigorating. And, exactly like a great cup of coffee, from the second sip on I was dreading the loss of her.
I unscrewed the cap and scooped out a good-sized handful of the lotion, and I rubbed it between my hands to warm it up. I put one knee on the bed to steady myself, and then smoothed it on her back, working it in delicately where the bruises were.
“They look like they’re getting better,” I said. “Your bruises.”
“Mmmm. That feels good,” she said, and there I went, stirring to attention for her. “Could you go lower?”
I pulled another scoop of the cream out, warmed it up again, and rubbed it into her lower back, dragging some of it up to the ribs we’d had to pop back into place. “How’re those ribs?”
“They’re okay,” she said. “Hurt a little when I cough, that’s all.”
“Yeah. It’s a good idea to take it easy. For a month, maybe longer. I still want to take you to a doctor, if you’ll let me.”
“Could you go lower?”
“Here?” I massaged my thumbs into her lower back, rubbing up against the vertebrae in small circles. The rounded swell of her behind made me weak. I avoided looking at it directly, but it was no use. A small sigh escaped me.
“That feels so good, Armin.” Did she know the effect she had on me? “Can you go lower?”
“Here?” I kneaded her ass, circling my thumb gently around her banged-up hip on the one side.
God, how I wanted this ass, to caress it and smack it and hold those cheeks in both my hands, her legs wrapped around me, her mouth locked on mine the way she’d reached for me in the grip of her fever dream, and—
“Ooh,” she said.
I’d been so lost in my fantasy that I’d kneaded lower still, and my thumb slipped inside her soft pubic curls, landing inside her.
She was so wet.
I jerked back and knocked the cream off the bed. It rolled away from me and hit the wall. “I-I’m sorry,” I said, aghast. “I wasn’t paying attention, and I—”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said, her voice even. “Don’t stop.”
“What?”
“Keep going. As you were.”
She lifted herself up on her elbows and looked back at me over her shoulder. The look in her eyes said she was telling, not asking.
Now I was fighting my shame and I was fighting not to tear off my clothes and take her there on the bed.
How did you know where to find me?
How do the worker bees know where to find their queen?
But that’s not what she’d asked. Told me to do.
I sucked on my thumb and slid it inside the wettest and warmest part of her, and I sought out her clit. She arched her back when I found it, thrusting that juicy ass up in the air.
My mouth watered.
I thumbed her clit in small circles, slow at first, and then speeding up. Mia’s hips tilted, a slight but perceptible gyration, and I mirrored her, imagining my cock inside her, thrusting gently, rubbing myself against the fabric of my boxers—a wetness spread there, too, at the tip of my shaft.
“Ohhhh,” she shuddered, her legs quivering, her pelvis rocking back and forth on its axis.
She grabbed onto the pillow, clutching it tight in both hands. I slid two fingers into her, arching them down towards the mattress, seeking the curvature that would make her cry out.
“Faster,” she said.
I increased the vibrato of my thumb and hovered it over the part of her clit that made her squirm the most. “Oh,” she said. “Oh God, Armin, please…there, right there, yes—”
She panted, and I matched her unconsciously, breathing hard, the juices slicking down my hand, the smell of sex all around us.
Her body grew still, her movements focused, her energy coiling up inside itself: nearly there. I pulled out all the way and then slid my two fingers home, as far as they would go, over and over again, to push her over the edge.
She clenched around me and screamed and writhed on the bed, the orgasm taking her hard.
I committed her motions to memory. If she never let me touch her again in this life, I’d at least have that image to carry with me for the rest of my days.
I pulled my hands out of her and smelled them, and licked my fingers clean. She tasted delicious. I wished I’d taken her with my tongue.
Next time. If she’d allow me a next time.
She pumped her hips, slowing, working her way down from the high.
I reached out and caressed her ass, so luscious I couldn’t help myself.
I bent over her and rubbed the stubble of my beard across the soft skin of her plump cheek, nuzzling it, and gave it a kiss, dragging my lips across it to prolong the contact.
Her breaths slowed, and she rolled onto her side.
She lifted the corner of the blanket, affording me a view of her breasts.
“Come here,” she said.
“Oh,” I said. “Mia, no. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t,” she said. “You’ll be gentle with me. You always have been.”