I push my clothes roughly down around my ankles, still leaning into Charlie, nuzzling at him. He smells of the soap he uses, maybe a little of last night’s whisky. I wonder what he did last night. Whether he slept. Whether he cried.
He turns me roughly and bends me over the kitchen table. Now I can’t see his face and I’m even more scared—is this his goodbye fuck? Is he going to say the word, cut me loose, banish me from his life?
His hands are on my hips, holding me steady and firm, and I butt back against him, wanting him to be inside me, yes, but also wanting to be inside him somehow. I spread my legs, feel the head of his cock slip between my thighs.
“Come into me, baby,” I say, tilting my ass up as though begging. His thighs are warm on the back of my legs. He pushes into me and I could weep again. My legs are shaking, about to start bucking and jerking against him, almost out of my control.
“Shhh,” he says, stroking from the base of my spine to between my shoulder blades, dragging his hand over my body to soothe me. And it does—I rock slowly, taking a little more of him at a time until he’s nestled deep in me and can’t go any farther.
“More,” I murmur, wiggling my hips from side to side. Charlie keeps caressing me, slow and steady. I hear him laugh.
“S’funny?” I ask, although I can’t stop swaying against him, working myself up and down on his shaft.
“I’ll give you as much as you want,” he says lightly, while he withdraws in a rush and plunges back into me, making me gasp. “Whenever you want, however you want.”
He punctuates his words with thrusts that get harder, more emphatic and blunter each time. His cock is thickening in me, corkscrewing deeper and deeper.
“And if you want me to stop …” He pulls out so that just the tip of him is in me, an unbearable loss. “You just say the word.”
“Charlie,” I say. He’s hovering on the brink, I know it. The orgasm gathers in my fingertips, in my toes, rushes back and forth over me, crisscrosses from my nipples to my pussy and back to my mouth, my eyes, my heart. Just as I come, holding tight to the edge of the kitchen table, I get it. I get what he means. We’ll be married if we want it, for as long as we want it, just how we want it.
Charlie slides forward, sinks into me, and gives me what I need. I rise up to meet him and we surge together, rocking, responding, fucking like we always do.
“This is how they fuck in heaven,” Charlie said back in the first flush of our relationship, after six weeks of springtime courting and delirious sleepless nights. It was one of those embarrassing thoughts that spill out after especially good sex, and the way he said it—like a teenage boy awestruck and mad horny, made me blush. I remember we both laughed at the time.
Years later, and only after I’d managed to wreck our picture-perfect day, I realized he was right. It’s why I wasn’t all that unhappy that we missed the flight to Saint Lucia. Charlie and I know exactly how to make heaven on earth. We made it that afternoon in Susie’s kitchen, with the yellow garter lying trashed on the floor and the sky outside turning a really pretty shade of pale blue, like shirts when they’re fresh out of the laundry.
It was a strange day. We should have been brokenhearted that we’d created such a public disaster of our marriage. We were shipwrecked and empty-handed, and we probably both looked like fools. But in the space left behind we were free to make our own promises, say them quietly, in our own time.
There were no flowers, no speeches, no guests and no garter. Just me, Charlie and the words between us—the only ones that really mattered.
Racing to the Altar
Sommer Marsden
I eyed the billboard as my foot mashed on the gas pedal. The thought cops hide behind big billboard signs like that flittered through my head, but I mashed it anyway. My speed crept from 68 to 74. I was late. I was so fucking late it wasn’t funny. I was racing to the altar. Hell-bent for matrimony.
Kelly and Tina and Tracy all awaited me at the church. No doubt pacing the small bridal room where they were to do my makeup and my hair. I could picture Kelly fretting as she ticked off the minutes in her head. How much time we had and what that would allow. Up-do with accent braids? Chignon? Traditional bun? She would kill me!
I shot past the sign advertising Rock Hard Gym and my stomach bottomed out when I saw the lights, my body tingling the way it does when I ride a roller coaster. The cherry lights atop the cruiser came on in a flash of crimson, and I gnawed my bottom lip.
Cop.
I pulled to the side of the road.
I didn’t have time for a ticket. There was hair to be done, makeup to be applied, panic to be embraced. I had to go over my vows and make sure the seating arrangements were perfect and check the church to ensure that Uncle Sal was not next to Great-aunt Dot (or they would kill each other). I had too much to do. And at the end of it all, hopefully I would be lawfully married and not insane. Then Jackson and I would run off to Nova Scotia, never to return!
Okay, so we were returning. The point was that we had to make it through this stressful, heart-pounding wedding and reception before we could escape. And all I really wanted was to be with him. Somewhere quiet. Just me and him and our lips pressed together, making out like horny teenagers the way we did when we weren’t tasting butter cream frosting or picking out dye to make shoes match dresses. I sighed, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. In my head, I was already pleading my case. Figuring out what I would say to Officer Friendly to get off with only a warning.
“Do you know how fast you were going, miss?” he asked into my semi-open window. My heart shot up into my throat and my stomach dropped to my feet. I opened my mouth, but he cut me off. “I asked you a question, miss. Do you know how fast you were going?”
“Too fast?” It was all could think to say.
The good officer laughed. “Obviously, or I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
His eyes studied me and I studied him. He’d pulled his aviator sunglasses down to peer at me, his mouth twisted in a wry grin. Bright blue eyes like an autumn sky, lush lips, peppering of dark stubble along his jaw. I thought it would be fairly easy to cut paper with his cheekbones, and I was struck, sitting out here in the bright October sunshine, by how utterly gorgeous he was. Nearly beautiful, to be honest.
“This section of road is zoned for 55 miles per hour, ma’am. You were going over 70. Were you aware?”
“No,” I lied. He put his hand on the door and I rolled my window all the way down. My eyes went to his thickly muscled forearms, and my head felt swimmy. I’m a sucker for thick forearms. But I had a wedding to get to.
“I think you knew, and you were speeding anyway.” He leaned into the window, crowding my space. He had a teardrop-shaped birthmark above his left thumb. I inhaled deeply and tried to think.
“I’m sorry?”
“Are you sure? You don’t sound sure.”
This officer, this man, this amazing specimen was nearly leaning headfirst into my window. So close to me and my jangling nerves I swore I could feel the invisible particles of his energy mixing with mine. It was downright dirty, was what it was, because my pussy was responding
