Authors: Connie Falconeri
When Hank knew he had her, in his lair as it were, he went into damnable slow motion.
The hand that had been holding her like a vise for the past fifteen minutes began
to loosen, and then the pads of his fingertips were touching the lengths of her fingers.
So lightly, with such gentle intent.
Maddie’s breath was faltering.
He brought his other hand around to her back, slipped it under her T-shirt, and then
his hand somehow snaked up to her nape. With one firm press of his thick forearm against
her back and the tightening grip of the hand at her neck, Maddie was his.
Hank’s lips came down onto hers, and there was none of the light teasing that she
remembered from some of his other kisses. He was taking her hard and fast this time.
And she wanted to give and give. She whimpered at the promise of all that power and
strength. She tried to pull her hips away slightly, but his left arm was so relentless
at her back. His strength was completely immovable.
“Tell me,” he breathed, kissing his way down her neck, nuzzling behind her ear.
Her lips were slightly open, her head leaning back into his strong palm. “Tell you
what?”
“Tell me you want this.” His voice was deep and far away, muffled by her skin and
his desire.
A strained little moan escaped her.
“Tell me!” he demanded, pressing harder into her, crushing her against him.
“Yes. You know I do.” The words were stilted and sounded unfamiliar on her lips. They
sounded like passion. Not the kind of passion that she’d experienced while rolling
around in a tent or making out with Zander after too many beers. This felt like something
unavoidable was bearing down on her, pulling her under, pushing her higher.
She felt the floor slip away, not even caring that she’d completely lost control of
her own body. Hank was carrying her into his bedroom, and she leaned her face into
his tensed chest muscles. Maddie wanted to inhale him, not just the scent of him,
but the actual essence of his humanity. She wanted to take and take and take.
She smiled at the irony. There would never be a more generous taking. Maddie was going
to make sure that Hank felt the gift of all her taking, of how much she needed and
wanted to feel him and appreciate him and know him and love—okay, so yeah, there it
was, moving on—
love him
. The perfect giving and taking. And, Maddie hoped, giving and taking and giving and
taking, until neither of them could distinguish one from the other. Just as it was
in those perfect moments when she was rowing, lost in the natural rhythm, the catch
and the extraction of the oars becoming seamless. When the parts became the whole.
Hank was afraid of how badly he wanted her. He needed to slow it down and breathe.
She would drown him without even trying. The way she was looking at him just then,
when he’d tossed her roughly on the bed and she had laughed her exhale, then lifted
herself up on her elbows, her hips tilting right and left, unable to stay still. Her
lips were . . . sin.
He stood at the side of the bed, staring down at her, stretching his jaw and placing
the flats of his palms against his cheeks, then covering his mouth.
“What am I going to do with you, Madison Post?”
Her face bloomed. Her eyes sparkled with desire and mischief and something much darker.
Something that pulled him so far down, way too deep. “I have no idea, but I can’t
wait to find out.”
He looked up at the ceiling to collect himself, then he stared down at her.
“May I take your shorts off?” she asked.
He was confused by her tenderness. It wasn’t a sexy submissive thing, either. She
was trying to take care, to be mindful. Hank smiled at the realization. “Look who’s
all relaxed and mellow all of a sudden?”
She bit the inside of her lower lip and looked up at him. “You make me kind of warm
and gooey inside. It’s like I’m in slow motion when you look at me like that.” She
was on her knees on his bed, fingering the top button of his fly, reminding him that
she was waiting for his answer.
He knew what she was really asking. Was he ready? Was he ready to bare himself to
her, to let her really see him and really be with him? He was tempted to push her
hand away and shuck off his own clothes in a careless rush, to remove any romantic
byplay from the equation.
But.
It was going to feel so good to have her hands on him. To feel the slight quiver of
her fingers as she messed around with the buttons and pulled at the elastic of his
underwear and touched him. To feel her excitement and have that energy around him
and against his skin. To feel her feeling him.
He could deal with the fallout later, but for now he wanted to feel all of that. He
wanted to feel, full stop.
“Yes,” he answered. His voice was certain, but it was deeper than it usually was and
she looked up at him.
“You’re sure?”
“Are you trying to protect my virtue or something? Take off my shorts!”
They both laughed, and she began undoing the buttons. Her hands were doing that fluttery
thing he had relived again and again since the canoe trip. The way she would become
kind of overset with desire or sensation or whatever you wanted to call it, and her
fingertips would sort of lose their dexterity, and she would take those little breaths
that meant she’d discovered something she liked, and her fingertips would hover and
barely touch him.
He reached for her. “Just tell me to stop if I’m too rough or anything—”
“Stop trying to go easy on me, Hank.”
“Okay, but just . . .” He was peeling off her tight T-shirt and paused to stare at
her purple lace bra. “You wear stuff like this . . . just during the day . . . around
. . .”
Maddie was busy leaning in to kiss his neck, and he kept pushing her away to get a
better look at her chest.
“Yes, why?” She leaned in again and then stood up on the bed so he could take off
her shorts.
“No reason . . .” Her shorts were just below Hank’s eye level. He kissed her navel
then undid her shorts and pulled them down the length of her smooth, tanned legs.
He left on the matching purple lace underpants.
“Honestly, Maddie. You are amazing . . .”
She had draped herself over his shoulder and was kissing his spine and shoulder blades.
“So are you,” she whispered, moving her kisses up to his neck and around his ears.
“Be careful . . .” he whispered.
“I know,” she said. “I’ll be gentle with you.” He knew she was referring to his ears
and how tender they were from all the years of diving, but he felt like she might
not rip his heart out either. That she would be good to him.
For now, he amended. She would be good for now. No pressure.
He must have stiffened at the thought of some kind of long-term provision. She stood
up, flipping her hair down her back and enjoying the stretch.
“It’s kind of fun being up here, six inches taller than you are.”
He looked up into her eyes as he began to work his hands up her legs, massaging deep
strokes and rising higher each time. “It is, huh? You like to be above me?”
“I like to be anywhere near you . . .” She pulled him toward her and bent forward
so she could fit her mouth into the crook of his neck.
He adored her in that moment. Way more than he ever thought he could adore another
human being. Way more than he would ever allow himself to feel after the hours or
days they spent in this room. Because they both knew he wouldn’t be able to sustain
anything like this level of intimacy.
“It’s just for now. Okay?” Hank blurted.
She smiled at him, and he thought he saw a sheen of emotion across her eyes. Maddie
looked to the ceiling for relief from the pressure of Hank’s eyes, then took a deep
breath and stared him down. Down deep. “Whatever you can spare, handsome.”
He crawled onto the bed and put one leg over her hips. She wriggled under him like
she had in the tent, enjoying the confinement of his arms and his body. “Don’t say
it like that, Maddie. I don’t mean it in a scrimping way. I just mean . . .”
She was touching him again, and the words started to evaporate. “I just mean . . .”
Her hands were everywhere. “It’s all good,” she whispered.
“I just can’t give you anything more than this . . .”
She stopped kissing and touching and moving all over and against him and grabbed his
head in her hands. “I want whatever you can give. Nothing more.” Maddie pulled his
face to hers and kissed him with everything she had, she wanted to give him everything.
He could go on telling himself it was just for now, just for today, just for this
week, just of this summer, but Maddie knew in her guts, in all of her tingling nerve
endings, that—for her—this experience would never be limited by time or distance.
She would never look back and think that Hank had given her anything less than . . .
everything.
Maddie’s possessive hold on his skull loosened and her hands fell away, resting easily
on the pillow by her face. She bit her own knuckle and tried to get some of her hair
to cover her face. She felt scared all of a sudden. Not of him or what was to come,
but of revealing herself, of the vulnerability of it all. She was trying so hard to
relax, but it was all becoming real.
Hank’s face shifted slowly into one of his movie-star smiles. “Are you getting nervous
all of a sudden?”
She froze under him, trying to let the pain abate. It was nothing really. It was fading
already. Maddie was already beginning to feel the spread of warmth that meant she
would be feeling the bliss and abandon of release—
“Maddie?” Hank’s voice was stern, like it had been that first night she’d ever met
him. “Open your eyes and look at me.”
She opened her eyes.
“Are you a virgin?”
“No . . .” The unspoken “
not anymore
” hung in the small space between them.
He ground his teeth but didn’t move. Maddie put her hands on his hips to hold him
in place, just in case he got any crazy ideas to get all dramatic and not finish what
they’d started . . . just barely scratched the surface.
“Maddie?”
“What?” she whispered. He stayed silent. She persisted. “Please don’t make it a thing,
okay?” It was a legitimate question. She was asking him politely. Please. Please don’t
turn it into something that it’s not. She had agreed to do the same for him, hadn’t
she? In that weird way, they were both asking one another to move forward without
any judgment—about the past (in her case) or the future (in his).
He huffed a small breath and began to move. It felt so amazing, so complete and whole.
He made her feel intensely
right
in the world . . . on the planet. Like a natural creature. No getting or spending.
Just being.
He began to move, but slowly. Probably way more slowly than he was planning on way-back-when,
ten minutes ago, with all his promising talk of stop-me-if-I’m-too-rough and all that.
Holding her eyes—then losing his focus when his care of her began to increase his
own pleasure—he began to bring her back to him.
“You’re coming with me,” he ground out.
“I don’t know if I can . . .” She felt so out of control. All of the other non-sex
sex she’d had in her life had been more manageable, somehow. This just felt completely
out of her jurisdiction.
“Stay with me . . .” Hank took one finger and pushed her chin so she was forced to
face him. He kept up the slow, relentless rhythm. “Stay with me, Maddie.”
She knew what he meant, to keep her focus on him, to look at him in that moment of
joint ecstasy, as both of them rose and shared the intensity of it all. But the possibility—however
remote—that he might one day say that and mean it literally, that he wanted her to
stay with him for the rest of their lives,
that
made Maddie realize she might have stepped into an abyss.
Maddie saw in that moment that he was the most beautiful creature she had ever happened
upon. Together they were beautiful. Complete.
Then she began to shake.
Not just a slight trembling, but an all-over-body, uncontrollable shaking. Hank pulled
her into his arms. She was beginning to curl into herself, and he pulled the sheets
and the light cotton blanket over them both and just held her like that until her
shuddering body recovered from the shock.
It took a while.
She finally fell asleep about an hour later and Hank slipped out of the bed once he
was sure she was totally out. Even through her sleep, she made a sad little dreamy
sound when his body broke contact with hers. He tucked the light bedding over her
and went out to his living room.
This wasn’t a disaster, he reminded himself. He had experienced and survived legitimate
disasters. This was more of a Terribly Complicated Situation. He opened the refrigerator
and pulled out a cold beer. He flipped off the top and threw it into the bin, then
reached for the drawer to put the opener away. But he didn’t open the drawer. He stood
there for a few seconds, then left the opener on the counter. He stared at it. “Why
put it back if you’re just going to use it again right away?” The memory of Maddie’s
voice echoed in his mind.
Why put Maddie back? She was a grown woman—they’d both just proven that with flying
colors—she wasn’t trying to lure him into anything against his will. If anything,
she’d been even more cautious about his feelings than he’d been with her body. They
could have a few months of bone-cracking pleasure. Even he could see he’d be a fool
to pass up the opportunity. And obviously Maddie could handle it; she’d practically
orchestrated this whole damn thing. He finished the first beer and cracked open two
more to bring into the bedroom.
Stopping to look at his cell phone on his desk, Hank put the beers down and picked
up the device. His mother had sent a brief text asking to confirm that Maddie was
all right. Hank texted her back that Maddie was fine. Five seconds later, there was
a text letting Hank know Janet was going to dinner with Phil. His thumbs hovered over
the phone . . . did he need to reply to that? He finally managed to tap,
Have fun
.