32. Jack
Chapter 32
Jack
M aking Morgan Matthews come was my new life’s purpose.
I’d never been a particularly horny boyfriend with Aria. We’d been teenagers when we’d got together, so of course we’d had sex a lot, but it was always quick and singularly focused. Even as we got older and I had to work harder to make things good for her, it was always about a release of tension.
But with Morgan, even after four years of not being with anyone, I could have spent all my time with my tongue between her legs and never got bored. I’d done it enough over the last month that I knew exactly what to do to bring her to the edge, but that was only half the fun. The other half was just exploring her, and that exploration inevitably brought the first half with it, too.
For example, if I hadn’t taken the time to explore, I wouldn’t have been feeling her squirm around me as I rotated my fingers inside her and stroked her from a new angle, the rhythm of my tongue steady the whole time. Well, almost steady – it broke slightly as I couldn’t help but grin.
“Fuck, Jack,” she said, her legs pressing against the sides of my head as she tensed.
“That’s the idea,” I said, and she moaned as I stopped to speak.
I pressed my tongue flat to her clit and closed my mouth around it, creating suction and friction at once, and she writhed for me again, squeezing her legs harder this time, sitting up off the bed to run her fingers through my hair. Fuck, I loved how she tugged at it. But I used my free hand to press her firmly back down, and she let out a groan as she hit the mattress.
“Please, Jack,” she said, then gasped as I changed the angle of my fingers again to stroke where I knew, from careful study of course, her G spot was. Her panting grew harder, as did I.
“Please,” she moaned again.
“Hmmm?” I asked, not daring to actually speak and break the suction I’d created over her, instead looking up her body to meet her hungry, desperate gaze. Not that she was making it easy, her hips starting to buck slightly as she sought more.
So I gave her more. I pressed up slightly so I could increase the pace of my fingers inside her – not too fast, but upping the friction just enough.
“F-fuck!” she yelled, and I could tell she was close again; I supposed it was time for me to let her come. So I used the tip of my tongue to flick at her clit, almost directly this time, keeping my rhythm steady. She sat up slightly as she arrived at the edge, then collapsed backwards as I felt her tighten again and again around my fingers.
I kept stroking her for a moment, and then, even once I’d removed my fingers, I kissed gently at her swollen vulva, bringing her down from her climax gently.
“Was that good?” I asked, crawling to the top of the bed whilst she lay there, breathing hard. I scooped her up against me, resting her head on my chest, smelling her citrusy shampoo as I kissed her curls.
She batted at me weakly. “Shut up. I think we both know it was. You don’t need a gold star from me.”
I laughed. Post-orgasm Morgan could be feisty, but I loved it.
In fact, I was beginning to think I loved her . It was still way too early to say it, but I’d been feeling it more and more.
As she slunk off to my bathroom and I heard the shower start, I lay back and immediately came down from the high. I had a long workday ahead of me – Dad had been making me do all the paperwork for a new job so I could learn the admin ropes, and I hated it with every fibre of my being – but being with Morgan made everything better. Genuinely. Even the idea of taking over the family business was less of a drag when I realised it would be a solid foundation on which we could build a life together.
I’d even been thinking we could build a literal house together at some point. Whether it was how much time she spent drawing or talking about design, or the fact that she just brought out that side of me, I’d been spending more time than ever on my own sketches. Lately I’d been drawing the same thing in different iterations: a family home, with a sun-filled art studio for Morgan, and plenty of space for a dog. We could find a south-facing hill, and maybe build a home into the side of it. There were plenty of farmers looking to sell up these days; hell, Uncle John was probably only a few years off it himself.
I pulled out the notebook I kept in my bedside table and opened to the next blank page, sketching roughly the same home as I had yesterday, but this time on a specific hill on the other side of Uncle John’s land. I knew the contours like the back of my hand from having grown up on them, and it was amazing how just a slight curve this way or that way completely changed the optimal layout of the house. And if we incorporated some local birch into the materials, maybe the flooring, it would feel like we were sat outside when the sun filtered through the windows…
The shower turned off, and I stashed the journal away. I wasn’t embarrassed of the sketches, but it felt a bit intense to tell her I’d been drawing our future home, and I knew she would have loads of questions. She was always so curious; I loved that about her.
I knew I’d show them to her someday. I just wanted to double- and triple-check that we were on the same page before I did.
* * *
Morgan and I hadn’t yet “burst the bubble”, as we’d been saying. In other words, our friends still didn’t know we were dating. Phil obviously knew we’d hooked up, but given that Morgan had snuck back to her own room in the early hours of the morning at Chloe’s party, we were pretty sure Phil was the only one who suspected anything. This meant all the hand-holding, the calling each other “babe”, and the copious snogging was just between the two of us. When we were at game night, or out with our friends, we acted as we always had.
Unless we could get a moment alone, that was. And on Monday, as Fatima gave us a five-minute warning before starting, Morgan and I stole away, each purportedly needing bathroom breaks, so we could conduct a re-enactment of our make-out session in the guest bedroom. When Fatima called for the two of us a few minutes later, just as I was beginning to think we’d be re-enacting more than just a make-out, we had to strategically time our egress so we wouldn’t raise suspicions.
When I came down the stairs a minute or so after Morgan, Fatima was waiting for me at the bottom, her arms crossed and her foot tapping. My face flushed red, as if she’d actually walked in on us, and I wondered if this was how her students felt all the time.
“You wanted to talk?” she asked, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I’d almost forgotten that I’d asked her to pull me aside for a character chat. I’d been thinking about what she’d offered us on our weekend away at the start of the summer, and about what Chloe had said about me being a permanent support character. And I’d been thinking about making a change.
Once I’d told her what I was thinking, Fatima closed her eyes for a moment, moving her finger around, as if she were rearranging things in her mind.
“Do you want to make a big deal of it?” she asked. “Like, close the door for good? Or just quietly change over?”
“Let’s go big,” I said, and she smiled; that was a good sign. She had an idea.
“I mean, I could do it next week,” she said. “It would fit well with what I think will happen, assuming you all don’t go completely off-piste.”
“So in other words,” I said, “it could be months from now.”
“Absolutely,” she agreed with a laugh. “But I’ll try to make it happen sooner. Does anyone else know?”
I shook my head. “Nope, I thought it could be a surprise.”
“Well yeah,” she said, “we haven’t had this happen yet in this campaign. Morgan will be shocked, I’m sure.”
It took me a moment to realise that she meant because it was Morgan’s first campaign, not because I should have told her. And I had considered it; I knew she would be surprised. But it was just a game … right?
* * *
Morgan’s lunch breaks had been slowly disappearing as the gala drew nearer, so I’d been taking her to see Pablo every weekend. Going on walks together, we felt like a little family, and it broke my heart that Morgan couldn’t take him home permanently. I’d thought more than once about adopting him myself, but the house wasn’t super dog friendly, what with the wildlife pond and the farm machinery. So instead I’d just been planning to make a large donation (large for me, anyway) to the rescue in hopes that it would help.
This weekend, we’d got special permission to borrow Pablo for longer than his usual half-hour walk.
“Thanks again for this,” I said to Lauren.
“Of course,” she said, smiling warmly and running her fingers through her short hair. I could totally see how she was Chloe’s type. “Just please have him back by three. I need to close up a bit early today.”
I narrowed my eyes. Chloe had said she had plans tonight, too. But it was probably a coincidence, and even if it wasn’t, it certainly wasn’t my place to say anything.
“Will do,” Morgan said, oblivious, walking back out into the lobby with Pablo. I hooked his lead to the back of his harness as Morgan put him down. He stood next to me, looking up at me expectantly as if to ask, where are we going, Dad?
The weather felt properly autumnal for the first time all year. Some of the maples were even starting to change colour, which was rare for mid-September, so we walked hand-in-hand up the riverside path through a patchwork of colours, Pablo trotting just ahead of us at the end of his lead. There were fewer kayakers and paddle boarders on the river than there had been when we’d gone out on it, and we even saw people in hats and scarves. It was probably a Fool’s Autumn, and we’d have another heatwave soon enough, but I for one was appreciating it whilst we had it.
As we walked, we talked about the Ren Faire. I wanted to keep Morgan’s mind off the gala, at least for the weekend, and we were getting tantalisingly close to the trip. Phil had finished her chain mail for her second outfit, and she’d even bought a few foam swords to choose from that we could share between us, her for her Morgana outfit and me for my generic outfit. We talked about other places we may want to visit, and things we might want to experience together. It was the first time I’d really thought about travelling since Aria, but with Morgan it didn’t scare me like I would have thought. We talked about other Ren Faires we might want to visit, and seeing Hobbiton in New Zealand, and even taking a trip up to the Isle of Skye next summer. I tried not to let myself get carried away with excitement at hearing her talk about next summer as if it were a given.
We took a break on a bench under the trees at the top of the path and chanced letting Pablo off lead to play with a terrier that kept coming up to him. He was beautifully behaved, and he came back every time we called.
I was finally getting to experience all the small, intimate joys I’d been yearning for whilst I’d been alone, and they were made all the better by the fact that it was Morgan I was sharing them with. Sitting next to her on the bench, watching the dog that felt like ours play in the grass, I almost blurted out to her that I loved her right then and there. She looked up at me, the human equivalent of the heart-eyes emoji, and I knew we were on the same page. I knew we had only been together for a few weeks, which was really no time at all in the grand scheme of things, and a drop in the ocean of what I hoped we’d have together. But the more time I spent with her, the more I felt certain that I was in love with her. And I suspected, or at least hoped, that she felt the same about me. That she saw a future with me like I saw a future with her. We looked out at the water, both of us, I hoped, imagining all the adventures we could have together.
I was also admiring the foliage in a nearby grove of neatly spaced beech trees, which had already started to turn for the autumn, the golden leaves on the outside blending perfectly to the verdant green at the heart. I mentally started sketching a low-lying house in the middle, no taller than the shortest of the trees, made of hard-wearing maple to match the less durable beech trees, picture windows reflecting the grove so it appeared unbroken from the river.
“Hey, question for you,” I asked Morgan. She looked up from Pablo and over at me, expectant. “What drawing programme do you use on your tablet?”
She squinted her eyes at me and then smiled; I wondered if she knew why I was asking.
She pulled her tablet out of her tote and walked me through what she was using. It seemed easy enough, and she could even download special “brushes” to create different effects and graphics. My mind ran wild with the possibilities.
Once she’d finished showing me, and I’d promised to let her give me a proper tutorial, we stood up, said goodbye to the terrier, and headed back to the rescue. The way she said goodbye to Pablo, telling him that she loved him and that she hoped he got to go home soon, made my heart break all over again that I couldn’t make him hers.
* * *
After we left, I dropped Morgan at home so she could do some freelance work, and so I could have dinner with my parents and Amy.
“Hello my love,” Mum said as I walked through the front door. She pressed a kiss to my cheek. “I saw a new outcrop of anemone by the supermarket earlier and thought of you.”
“Oh amazing,” I said, “the one in town?”
“No, is there some there, too?”
Mum and I discussed autumn wildflowers for a few minutes whilst we waited for Dad and Amy, who came in together from outside. I’d thought I’d heard tinkering around in the workshop, but I was surprised to see Amy had been part of it.
Dinner was Mum’s classic lasagna, which, from the smell of garlic and red wine wafting through the house, I could tell she’d been working on all day. I knew from experience being the designated stirrer that the ragu alone took a solid four hours to cook. Phil tried to recreate it sometimes, but he was almost never patient enough to let it cook that long, and I could always tell.
“So darling,” Mum said as we tucked in, “when are you going to let us meet your girlfriend?”
I immediately turned to glare at Amy next to me, but she just shrugged. “Wasn’t me.”
“Aha!” Mum said, jabbing her fork in my direction. “I knew it.”
I sighed. “It’s still really new, Mum. I don’t know if we’re there yet.”
Mum frowned. “Have you not been hanging out with this girl since summer started?”
I dropped my cutlery noisily on my plate and turned to Amy again. She did the same and threw up her hands.
“Still not me!”
“Oh please,” Mum said, “do you really think I don’t know when you’re seeing someone?”
“Honestly?” I asked. “No, I don’t. It’s never happened since I’ve lived at home, anyway.”
“Exactly,” she said. “You’ve been holed up in that house by yourself for the last four years. Of course I was going to notice the head of brown curls always in your passenger seat.”
I rolled my eyes. Mum could be so nosy . So deep in other people’s business. But I guess that was her job, after all. At least she was here, noticing things, instead of halfway around the world like Morgan’s mum.
“It’s like you forget we share a driveway,” she said, resuming her dinner. “Anyway, you’ll bring her round next week.”
I looked around, as if searching for the version of me that had agreed to this. “Will I?”
“You will,” Mum said, locking eyes with me and nodding so aggressively that I couldn’t help but nod along. Satisfied, she took a massive bite of lasagna, humming happily as she chewed.