That was all the invitation I needed. I wrapped my arms around his waist and kissed him again for all I was worth. And the memory I’d been savoring of our first kiss did not do him justice. Michael’s kiss now was warm and tender, demanding and hot, and had my body shaking with want and my knees close to buckling beneath me.
After several very intense minutes, his hands went to my waist and he lifted me up until I was sitting on the gleaming dining room table Filene Easter had left us.
I wrapped my legs around him, pulling him closer, and then let my hands drift to the flannel shirt. It was soft and worn, and smelled like Michael, but it had to go. I pulled it from him as his mouth found my neck, and I dropped my head back, gasping.
Michael’s hips were hard between my legs, but I wanted to feel more of him, all of him. I wanted to touch that thick length I’d felt between his legs the last time we’d kissed, and my hands began pulling clothes from his body in a frenzy.
We undressed each other clumsily, our mouths seeking constant connection as our hands unfastened and pulled and tugged. Finally, I sat atop the dining room table in my bra and panties, and Michael stood before me, shirtless, his jeans unfastened, but sadly, still on. He took a step back, his chest heaving.
“I’m worried we’re making the same mistake.”
“I don’t care,” I said, reaching for him.
“But don’t you . . .”
I wrapped a hand over his waistband and tugged so hard he nearly crashed into me, stopping himself with a hand on the edge of the table.
“Take those off,” I demanded, pointing at his pants.
He complied, and when he stood before me in his boxer briefs, the very tip of an impressively sized cock pushing out the waistband, I nearly exploded with need. I reached for him, and he moved closer, his mouth finding mine again.
Sensation took over then, words and thoughts giving way to the slide of tongues, the gasp of breath, the slip of hands over flesh. As he leaned into me, kissing me hard, one of Michael’s hands dipped from my waist down to caress the top of my thigh, stroking and teasing the skin just along the edges of my panties. I writhed, trying to maneuver myself so that his hand would fall where I wanted it, where I needed it.
And when he finally let his fingers slide over the silk of my panties, gliding over the spot where I ached and yearned to be touched, I let out a very unladylike moan. But Michael must not have been one for ladylike noises, because in the next instant, he was pulling my panties from my body and his fingers were sliding through my slick folds, teasing and circling and finally, pressing right where I wanted them.
“Oh God,” I heard myself moan, and my own hands landed at that instant on the hard length of him, causing him to bite out a rasping, “fuuuck.”
I’m not sure how we decided that doing exactly that atop Filene Easter’s gleaming dining room table next to assorted boxes of Pad Thai and curry was a good idea, but I suppose neither of us was really thinking at that point. And soon, Michael was sheathing himself with a condom I dug out of my purse and kneeling over me, his knees braced on the shining wood of the table.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked, notching himself at my entrance as I writhed beneath him in anticipation.
I answered by pulling him down to my mouth and arching myself up so that my hips met his, opening me to him. And as he slid in, inch by agonizing inch, I felt myself falling apart and becoming some version of myself I’d never imagined. A woman who has sex with hot younger men atop dining tables.
“Oh God,” I seemed to keep repeating as I felt myself stretching to accommodate him.
“You feel so good,” he whispered, his breath sweet against my neck as he began to slide in and out.
“This. Feels. So. Good,” I agreed, sensations spilling through me that I wasn’t sure I’d ever experienced quite as fully before.
I forgot the hard surface of the wood behind me, the smell of curry wafting around us. All I felt was Michael, warm and thick and hard. And all I heard was him, telling me how perfect I was, how lucky he felt, how good this was between us.
I arched and pressed and urged him on, both of us straining for a release that if I was honest, had been building for the past seven weeks between us. And when it came, amid Michael’s hard thrusts and my moans and cries as I tried to take more and more of him, it probably scared the ghosts.
My body shot off like a rocket, and the aftereffects went on for what felt like hours, laying there on the dining room table with Michael’s hard body over mine, both of us gasping for breath.
“Holy fuck,” he breathed, rolling to brace his head on one hand, his elbow on the table.
“Mrs. Easter probably never imagined that going on in her dining room,” I said, giggling.
Michael frowned then, and his brow wrinkled as he said, “or you know, maybe she did.”
“What?” I suddenly wondered if he thought Mrs. Easter had used this table the same way.
“All that stuff she said. About the feud ending, about finding the past and the future in the house. Don’t you think she was playing matchmaker?”
“She wanted us to have sex in her house?”
He shrugged, a sleepy smile covering his face. “No, probably not.” He didn’t say anything else, but the thought did echo through my mind. Mrs. Easter been playing matchmaker? Was that what this was really all about?
Eventually, the table began to feel hard and cold beneath me, and we slid from the surface to clean up and pull our clothes back on. When we’d cleaned up the food and the table without speaking, I stopped Michael in the kitchen and pulled him to face me.
“That,” I told him, “was amazing. And you are the sexiest and most impressive man I’ve ever met. So I have no idea what exactly is going to happen here, but don’t let me ever hear you questioning that truth again.”
“If I do though, will you have to teach me another lesson, maybe?” He smiled a wicked smile, and I laughed as we went together upstairs. We brushed our teeth side by side in the bathroom mirror and without a word, we both headed to the master bedroom, where we undressed across from one another and then slid into the soft sheets atop the new mattress and into each other’s arms.
“I might need a lesson or two now, actually,” Michael said, his breath hot in my ear.
And for the rest of the night, I showed him over and over exactly how sexy and competent he was.
25
Babysitter Fantasies
Michael
I could say I’d never imagined I would find myself in bed with Addison Tanner. Only that would be a complete lie. I had imagined it plenty of times, right before telling myself what a ridiculous fantasy it was and how a woman like that would never find herself in that situation with a guy like me.
But here we were.
And it wasn’t just the physical truth of the two of us, waking in the gauzy morning light, pressed against each other’s bodies and exchanging sleepy kisses and whispers. The physical was easy enough to write off—it happened. People made mistakes. Hell, I’d been walking proof of that for more than a decade.
It was the words she’d said the night before. The ones she’d worked so hard to make me hear, to make me believe. That maybe I wasn’t the guy I’d been telling myself I was this whole time. That maybe I did deserve a chance to find happiness for myself. That maybe successfully raising my son wasn’t an all or nothing proposition. There might be room in ensuring his happiness to look after my own. Maybe.