Now, an hour later, they were right outside his suburban house and Jim was about to manage the Herculean feat of walking up his own driveway all by himself. He gave his brother a thumbs-up. “Yuppers, duuuude.” Then he pulled out his house keys and jingled them. “I’m set. Thanks.” He stepped out of the car, feeling better as the cool night air hit him in the face.
“So she didn’t remember you,” his brother said from inside the car. “That doesn’t mean you can’t get to know her again. It’s not a big deal. You weren’t that memorable back in high school.”
“Thanks a lot,” Jim muttered as he found his physical balance. His mental balance was still way off. The reality that he wasn’t even a blip on Nicky’s memory radar still had him reeling. Enough so that rather than pursue the woman, he’d dived face-first into a bottle of vodka.
Rick flashed him a smirk. “Plenty of fish in the sea, Jimmy. Don’t forget that. Plenty of fish …” His voice faded out as he pulled away from the curb.
“In the sea,” Jim returned, his buzz fading. He didn’t want a fish, he wanted Nicky. Nicky who was all woman. Who had long legs beneath her boring gray skirt. Who had once put strawberry gloss on her lips right before he kissed her. Nearly ten years later, he could still taste that gloss. And she didn’t even remember him.
“Don’t want a fish,” he muttered as he turned toward his house. It was almost too dark to see. He should have remembered to leave on the outside light. Fortunately, there was enough moonlight to see around the short, blocky hedges that edged his walkway. He’d only gone two steps when he stopped. He saw something there. A dark figure on his front steps. White flesh, dark clothing and a face tilted down into shadows. He rubbed his eyes. What he was seeing couldn’t possibly be there. But when he pulled his hands away from his eyes, there she was.
He shuffled forward to see better. And miracle of miracles, she lifted her head.
“Nicky?” he rasped. It couldn’t be.
She smiled at him. God, she was beautiful. “I looked you up in the yellow pages,” she said. “Magic Man.”
“That’s me,” he returned, then winced at the really lame banter. He wanted to be witty, to impress Nicky, but then he’d never managed suave around her. The best he could manage right then was to walk up to the front step.
She slowly stood to meet him, her legs slipping beneath her, her black pumps making a soft click on the stone. And as she rose, he could see something else, something that made his eyes bulge.
Her blouse was undone. Her white silk blouse was open all the way down. It simply lay against her breasts, flapping loosely. He could even see the lace cups of her bra.
“You said you wanted to make my fantasies come true,” she said. “I have a fantasy.” She put her hands to the bra’s front clasp and popped it open. “I’ve dreamed of a man spending forever kissing my nipples until I come just from his mouth alone.”
Then right there—outside on his front steps—she pulled her bra apart. Her breasts fell forward, milky white in the moonlight except for the dark points of her nipples. They were full and heavy right there in front of him. Perfectly shaped—a bit more than a handful—and puckered such that he thought they were pointing to him.
“I’ve dreamed of it forever,” she said. “And you’re my island god. You can—”
“I can do that,” he rasped, unable to lift his eyes from her breasts.
“Would you?” she asked, and then she shrugged out of her blouse as if she meant him to do it right there on his porch!
“Inside!” he said. He grabbed her arm and managed to pull her up to his door. There was more fumbling as he tried to fit the key into his lock. And why the hell had he decided to get drunk tonight of all nights?
He shoved open the door and pulled her inside, kicking her purse in with one foot. She had stripped out of her blouse and dropped it on the railing outside. He stared at it with a frown. Something was definitely not right here. But when he turned around, he saw her pull off her bra and drop it on the floor. White lace lying on dark brown carpet.
“Nicky …” he began, doing his best to make his brain work. “Is this really your fantasy?”
“Oh, yes,” she answered as she lifted her breasts in her own hands. “Your mouth on my nipples.” Then she flicked herself with her thumbs, her eyes drifting shut in delight.
He couldn’t have stopped if his life depended on it. He had to touch her breasts. She was offering them to him, holding them out. He had to touch. But before he could connect with her flesh, his mind made one last valiant attempt at reason. He jerked his eyes up to her face, searching her eyes for the truth.
“Do you remember me, Nicky?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Of course I do.”
“Have you wanted this as long as I have?”
She smiled and arched her back, simultaneously lifting her chest closer to him. “Forever.”
It was all his brain needed to surrender. Nicky, his high school dream girl, was finally here offering him her breasts. No way in hell was he going to say no to that! His gaze was back on her chest, but her hands were in the way.
“Let go,” he instructed. He didn’t want anything between himself and those luscious mounds.
She let her arms drop to her sides.
He reached out, his tan fingers a dark contrast to her nearly luminescent flesh. He paused. “Do you want to go to my bedroom?”
She arched her back, lifting her hands above her head. “In my fantasy, I am stretched tall.”
“Standing?”
“Yes.”
Good thing he had a two-story. He walked her backward to the side of his staircase. Then he took her hands and wrapped her fingers around the posts. She obeyed without resistance, and her soft pants told him she was as excited as he.
“Don’t let go,” he said as his gaze slid down her long arms, past her wet lips, down to the lifted expanse of her breasts. At last! He took her breasts in his hands and began to play.
NICKY CLOSED HER EYES and smiled into the darkness. At last she would feel his hands like hot oil on her skin. Finally, she would know his mouth on her breasts. She remembered intensity, she recalled gentle, tentative caresses, but she had no idea from where that memory came. She only knew it was true. It was him. And now she could feel more.
Somewhere off in the distance, she felt a nagging shock, an overwhelming pressure just waiting to crush her. But she didn’t have to be crushed if she didn’t want to be. She could stay right here on her island of pleasure. She was safe here because her island god decreed it so, and the ugly weight would never strike.
Besides, he was here with her now. And he was tonguing her breasts just as she’d fantasized so long ago. She didn’t need to remember when. She just needed to be here, now, with him.
He began as men always do—too fast and too hard. Odd, but she found she liked it. He lifted her breasts in both hands, squeezing them just short of pain before rolling his
