Chapter 15

For my sister from another mister, get better will you!

Ah the ides of March. The Blues were in town but that was not what had me pacing my apartment like a caged tiger. Nor did the fact that Chris and I had not gotten around to finishing what we’d started in Phoenix.

The sound of a soft knock at the door made me jump. I raked my fingers through my hair and ran my thumb along my bottom lip to be sure my lipstick wasn’t smudged...yet. 

“Hi,” I said softly as I opened the door and stepped aside to let the twins in. Danny leaned in and pressed an affectionate kiss to my cheek. Hank did one better, cupping my cheek and kissing me long and soft, like he hadn’t seen me in a week. It felt like it. 

“Penny, this is a friend of ours,” he added as the third member of their party stood awkwardly just on the other side of the threshold like a vampire that had to be invited in. He smiled shyly at me and offered his hand. 

“Sami,” I said quietly, putting my hand in his. This felt like we’d been set up on a blind date that neither of us was really prepared for. 

“Penny,” he said my name quietly, that soft lisp that reminded me immediately of Eddie. 

“We know you’ll make him feel welcome,” Hank said in a tone that sounded like an order. While it was given softly it still sounded firm and there was something in the Captain’s blue eyes as he pressed a soft kiss to my forehead that made it crystal clear that there was no question about what was being asked of me.

“Would you like something to drink?” I offered, trying not to jump out of my skin when I heard the door to the apartment close. It sounded like the bars on a jail cell, final and intimidating. 

“Yes, I think I would,” the Swedish forward followed me into the living room. I had already poured myself a rum and coke but hadn’t touched it yet. I took a large gulp now, the ice in the glass clinking as my hand shook. I had first date nerves. 

“What’s your poison?” I asked, reaching for the brännvin the twins favoured and held up the bottle. He nodded and I poured some of the strong, clear liquid into a small glass. “With or without tonic?” 

“Straight up,” he smiled shyly and reached out for the glass. Our fingers brushed and both of us blushed. Jesus, we really were like a couple of kids set up on a blind date. 

“So, are you staying with Danny or Hank or at the Sheraton?” I asked, to make conversation, to be polite and mostly to fill the awkward silence as we sipped at our drinks and stared at one another. By now, with the rest of the guys on the team, I knew how it would go when they came over. I knew the ones that liked to get down to brass tax and the ones that liked to snuggle and watch a movie first. The newest member of our team was an unknown entity to me and neither Hank nor Danny had given me the slightest inkling what their new Swedish teammate’s proclivities might be. If they’d given me some hint I’d know how to proceed. As it was, I had to wait for him to make the first move. 

“Danny’s, for now,” he replied softly, eyeing me like I was a piece of candy he wanted but didn’t think he could have. It was kind of flattering really. “My uh...my wife has to pack everything...and with this being the last year of my contract....” He shrugged and his voice fell away. He looked like a sad puppy and I had the same response that I would have had someone put a sleepy little puppy in my arms. 

I walked forward and took his now empty glass from his hand and put it and mine on the nearest flat surface. He watched me with an interested but wary gaze and then, as I held my hand out towards him, he withdrew, the way a dog who has been hit will. 

 

“I don’t bite,” I promised with a smile that I knew said I would if that was what he wanted. A slow, shy smile appeared on his face as he placed his hand in mine and he followed me silently to the bedroom. 

I led him to the edge of the bed and then, putting one hand in the middle of his chest, pressed him gently down until he was sitting on the bed. Keeping my gaze locked with his I reached back and unzipped my dress, shrugging it from my shoulders and letting it slip down to my hips. Then slowly, watching his eyes get wider as I did, I shimmied out of it and then tossed it towards the end of the bed. 

“So...I hear they call you the Bull,” I purred, kneeling on the edge of the bed, astride his lap as I ran my fingers through his short, blonde hair. 

“I guess you’re about to find out,” he whispered offering his lips up to mine. I giggled and then lowered my mouth over his.

 _________________________________________________________________________

“Did you see this?” Eddie asked, handing me a rolled up copy of the Province. I turned sideways to let him past and followed him into the kitchen. He pulled out one of the chairs at the kitchen table and sat sullenly staring at his hands as he waited for me to sit down and turn to the sports section at the back of the paper.

“You shouldn’t read this stuff,” I pointed out and he raised his grey blue eyes to meet mine and I pressed my lips together as I slid into a chair opposite him, a mug of coffee in one hand as I opened the paper and quickly scan the offending article. 

Eddie had been one of the heroes of our ill fated run to the cup last year and started out this season as one of the media darlings of the team. That love affair was obviously over. Or at least cooling, if this article and, I knew, the sports radio guys were concerned. 

“I know there’s some valid points in there,” he grumbled, clasping and unclasping his hands on the table, “but, I’m not that bad...am I?”  This was one of the hardest parts of my job. Eddie was here asking me because he trusted my opinion and knew that, unlike his girlfriend, I would be honest with him. That didn’t necessarily make it easy for me to say what needed saying. 

“Everyone has good days and bad days.” He raised one of his eyebrows at me and as I watched, the storm clouds slowly gathered in his blue eyes. I was dancing around the truth and we both knew it. “Okay then, yes, you could be better,” I told him honestly. He heaved a sigh, his mile wide shoulders rising and falling slowly. He put his head in his hands and I heard him mutter something in Swedish that sounded a lot like curse words and then, after another sigh, he raised his gaze to meet mine again. 

“Am I that bad?” He looked wounded, like a puppy that had just been smacked in the nose with a rolled up newspaper and I immediately felt guilty. I pushed my chair back, almost ran around the table and crawled into his lap, wrapped my arms around his neck and held him like I was afraid he was going to come apart.

“You’re just a little off your game. It’s one of those things. You’ll get through it,” I promised, though I wasn’t sure if it was actually the case. This ‘spell’ of bad play had lasted a while now and I know that as frustrated as some of the arm chair quarterbacks were with him, Eddie was probably his own worst critic...except maybe for Bones. 

“They’re saying they should have traded me,” he whispered into my hair. 

“I wouldn’t let them,” I whispered back, closing my eyes as his mouth found my pulse beating rapidly in my neck. 

“I’m so pissed,” he growled, the vibration of his voice against my skin making me shiver. “I wanna pound someone.” I thought about the punishing hits his big body could deliver on the ice and moaned. 

“Take it out on me Eddie,” I sighed, digging my fingers into his hair as he dragged his teeth along my jaw.

“Nooo,” he moaned but his body disagreed. I could feel how much he wanted to take it on me pressed against my bottom. “It’s not your fault,” he added as one of his hands with the long, elegant pianist’s fingers skimmed over my breast. 

“Don’t care,” I mumbled back. The flames of desire were licking at the inside of my skin already. If he didn’t take it on me he’d have to leave so I could abuse the shit out of myself with the shower wand. “Fuck me Eddie,” I whispered as his hand slid up my thigh beneath the satin of my robe, “fuck me hard.” 

That wasn’t normally his “thing”. Eddie wasn’t a hard and fast kind of guy but I’d fantasized about it, about his big, lanky body punishing me, his long powerful thighs pressing me down into the mattress as he screwed his equally long and powerful dick into me. Tender, sweet Eddie was good, but mad Eddie...angry Eddie had the capacity to be even better. 

I moaned as his fingers parted my nether lips and found me slick and wet, ready for him. He groaned into my throat and pressed his erection up against my ass. He swore in Swedish and then, all of a sudden, the chair beneath him went flying backwards and I was in the air as he carried me to the bedroom. 

“Robe,” he said simply as he put me down on the bed with a little less care than he usually would have. I complied, pulling the knot from the sash and opening the robe while I watched him drag his light blue sweatshirt over his head and throw it aside. He was moonlight pale and chiseled as if he’d been cut from marble. I licked my lips as he unzipped his fly and freed his long, hard cock. I watched it bounce free, its natural upswing making it press close to his flat stomach. 

I slid to the edge of the bed and put both hands on it, wrapping my fingers around its considerable width and pulling it down so I could slide the tip into my mouth. He groaned and stilled with his jeans around his knees as I slid as much of his length over my tongue as I could manage. Everything about Eddie was long and impossibly hard. There was not a single ounce of softness on him anywhere, except in his eyes now as I rolled mine up to look at his precious face. 

“Penny,” he sighed and gently laid the palm of his hand against my cheek. “Du är sa vacker.” If I hadn’t already fallen for Chris, I could have fallen for this man, I knew as his thumb gently stroked my cheek. If it hadn’t been for that anvil faced socialite.... “You know I love your mouth,” he said gently, that sweet smile of his like looking up at the sun on a bright summer morning, “but I want to be buried deep inside of you.” 

When he said it like that, how could I refuse? I slowly slid his cock back over my tongue, giving the head one last, hard suck before I let it pop out of my mouth and then I lay back on the bed and watched him step out of and kick his jeans aside. 

“On your stomach,” he directed me, reaching past me for one of the pillows. I moaned. I knew what he wanted and just the thought of it made my ovaries break out the castanets. Rolling over, I slid the pillow beneath my hips and felt Eddie settle between my thighs. 

We both groaned, long and low, as he slowly screwed himself into me. With Eddie it was always a tight squeeze but from this angle it was almost painful – almost. It felt like he was going to come out the other side and when he made his first hard, shallow thrust all I could do was gasp. 

I bet she didn’t let him do this and I wondered, as I felt his massive thighs press against the back of mine, if he would even want to. I had something that most of the WAGs didn’t and that was an ass. I understood, with their being in the public eye or at least thinking that they were how they would feel the pressure to diet so that they could fit into two hundred dollar size zero designer jeans. The guys praised my curves, prized them and this was one of the reasons why. 

“Damn detta känns så bra, har du ingen aning,” he grunted and I grinned. Being around him and the twins, I’d started to understand some of the things they said, especially these kind of sweet nothings whispered in my ear as his hands practically circled my waist. 

“Yeah, you like that?” I grinned to myself, pushed up on my elbows to raise my hips up off the pillow as I spread my legs further apart. He gasped as his cock slid to a deeper angle. “How about that?”

“Yesss, like that,” he groaned as his hips slammed into my ass, pressing me back down against the bed. I gasped, my eyes squeezed shut. The sensation was almost overwhelming. I could have snaked my arm between my body and the bed, touched myself, but I would have gone over the edge too fast. Besides, as it was, with each quick, hard stroke he was brushing over that spot that alternatively had me gasping for breath and calling out his name in a high pitched voice that didn’t even sound like mine. “Cum for me Penny,” he grunted as his long fingers dug into my hips, as he plumbed the deepest parts of me, “I want to feel you.”

As if I had a choice to do anything else. Two more harder, deeper thrusts and I came apart beneath him as if a thousand fireworks had all gone off all at once inside of my body and forced his name from my throat like it was being dragged out with red hot pincers. Two more shallow, even harder thrusts that pressed my entire body into the mattress and I felt him go, felt him draining into me, each spasm of his cock filling me with hot, thick liquid. 

“Jesus, that was better than porn.” The golf clap barely got my attention but the sarcastic comment managed, just, to drag my attention to where Kess was standing in the doorway to my bedroom with a bag of those chilli lime pop chips under one arm. 

“Fuck off you perv,” I groaned, unable to even lift my middle finger at him. 

“I forgot he was living here,” Eddie groaned and rolled off of me and onto his back, pulling one of the pillows from the head of the bed and tossing it towards his teammate. “Fuck off. This is my time.” There was no acrimony in his tone and Kess let the pillow hit him and bounce off with a grin. 

“Well it beats the hell out of beating off alone,” he smirked, tossed a chip into the air and caught it effortlessly on his tongue; his long, talented tongue. I lay there, prone on the bed, unable to move and grinned at him. My silly boy, it was good to see him smile.

“Come join us?” I asked, wondering if I could take it if he did, if gave my now aching pussy a hard fucking the way he liked to do. If he did, even if it hurt I knew that I’d take it. 

“Maybe later,” he grinned and tossed another chip into his mouth and then turned and walked away. I listened to him humming to himself as he strode down the hall. 

“I don’t like to share you,” Eddie whispered, pulling me into his body, parting my slick, pussy lips with his fingers, probing them gently, making me sigh out loud. I closed my eyes and snuggled closer to him. It took a good deal of effort but I managed to lift one leg over his so he could slide his fingers up deeper into me. I moaned and pressed my cheek against his shoulder. 

“Then don’t,” I whispered against his moon pale skin. “Make him listen to me scream your name Eddie.”

“Gladly,” he whispered against my cheek and then slid the pad of his thumb over my clit and I nearly came again, even at his softest touch. 

“Oh Eddie,” I whispered, offering him my mouth, which he took softly, his tongue stroking over mine as his fingers played me like a flute, bringing music from my mouth which he muffled with his own.  

 _______________________________________________________________________

“You know that’s not fair.” I snickered as Kess took the shampoo bottle out of my hands and pressed the width of his chest against my back. I closed my eyes and leaned back against him. 

“Awww, poor you, sloppy seconds,” I purred, which earned me a swift and stinging slap on the ass. That sting was quickly forgotten as he handed me back the bottle and dug his thick fingers into my scalp, working the shampoo in and dragging it, gently, out towards the ends. 

“How is our young Eagle?” he asked and I knew he was genuinely concerned for his teammate. We all were.

“Mmmm.” How could I say that socialite bitch he was dating was bleeding him dry and sucking the life out of him, leaving nothing left for him to put out on the ice? I wasn’t supposed to talk about the WAGs that way. It was bad enough that I was harboring a fugitive in my condo. 

“That bad huh?” Kess manoeuvred me under the spray and tenderly dragged his fingers through my hair until all of the shampoo was out and then reached around me for the bottle of conditioner. I had him well trained by now. I didn’t need to tell him to put more than a quarter sized dollop in his hand. 

“I’m trying to think of something I can do that won’t result in my pulling out every last strand of her hair in public,” I admitted. Kess’s chest vibrated and his fingers paused mid-massage. 

“Well...we could always wave one of the newbies in front of her, like that big dumb....” I coughed and turned to glare up at him. Ryan rolled his eyes. “Okay, it’s not my fault he hasn’t got two brain cells to rub together.” I shook my head but went back to enjoying his ministrations. “Okay, not one of our guys, maybe one of the guys from another team? Maybe you could tell her you heard from their Specialist that he’s got the hots for her.”

“Implausible. I don’t know what he sees in her,” I muttered, mostly under my breath. 

“She can suck a golf ball through a whole mess of garden hose,” Kess replied without a single moment’s hesitation. I snickered. What is it about men and blow jobs? 

“Well there has to be another woman in this city with an equally talented mouth,” I sighed. There was that girl at the cafe that some of the guys, including Eddie, had talked about more than once. I made a mental note to check her hands for rings the next time we stopped for a bite. 

“There is one I can think of,” Kess said huskily, dropping a soft but heated kiss to my shoulder. I grinned.

“Oh, is that right?” I teased, pressing the curve of my ass back against him as his cock stirred to life. 

“Mmm well I could be remembering it wrong...maybe I have to be reminded,” he suggested with a smirk as I turned around to face him. 

“Reminded huh?” I whispered as I lifted my mouth and offered it to him. He took it as reverently as he ever did and kissed me softly. 

“Maybe,” he replied, wiggling his eyebrows hopefully. I smiled, licked my lips and began to slide down to my knees. “Ohhh...uhhhh...hell yessss,” he moaned, digging his fingers into my wet hair as I licked my way up the underside of his dick.

“As good as, would you say?” I asked, giving the quickly swelling helmet a lick. “Or would you say better?” I asked, cupping his balls in one hand and getting a firm grasp on the base of his dick with the other hand.

“Betttttter,” he sighed as I slid his full length over my tongue. “Definitely bettttttttterrrrrr.” 

“ThatwhatIthought,” I mumbled, my mouth full and earned myself a wide, happy grin. 

___________________________________________________________________________

“You don’t mind do you?” I asked as I unwound myself from around his neck, my lips still tingling from his greeting kiss.

“I’m the one who called last minute,” Chris smiled down at me, his blue eyes twinkling with mirth. “What movie are we watching,” he added a bit more loudly to include Ryan who was curled at one end of the couch, remote in one hand, a bowl of popcorn balanced on his knee and a rum and coke in his other hand.

“Drive,” he called out as I led Chris towards the living room, our fingers laced. I considered the couch, trying to decide if he would feel more comfortable between me and Ryan or if it would be okay for me to cuddle with both of them. Chris decided for me, settling himself at the other end of the couch and laying one arm along the back of the couch as an invitation. 

“So we’re gonna have to listen to her make sex noises about Ryan Gosling?” Chris made a face but winked at me as I settled into the circle created by his arm, the couch and his massive chest. I dug my feet under Ryan’s thigh and grinned contentedly. I had my best bud, my man, a bowl of peanut butter m&m’s and Ryan Gosling. What more could a girl ask for?

“You shoulda heard the sounds she was makin'....ow!” Ryan rubbed at the spot on his thigh I’d just kicked with the heel of my foot and I scowled at him. “Well you did,” he muttered and pressed a button to make the movie start. 

Chris reached for my hand where it was lying on my stomach and laced his fingers with mine. I looked down at it, at his thumb gently stroking along the side of my hand and smiled to myself. Little things like that made me so happy these days. 

I could feel his breath across the crown of my head which was full of the warm clean scent of him, the musk of his skin, ivory soap, Downy fabric softener and just that hint of funky hockey equipment. I could feel him breathing, his massive chest rising and falling against my back. I was so...aware of him that I didn’t notice time passing. I’d hardly paid the slightest attention to the movie, or to the fact that Kess had moved, had pulled my feet onto his lap and was rubbing them. 

Hockey players have strong hands and I’d told Kess before if he ever had to stop playing he should become a masseuse full time. I edged further down the couch so he could get a hold of my whole foot and I closed my eyes to better savour the sensation of him digging his knuckles into my instep. 

“You’re going to miss your favourite part,” he admonished me. I sighed and opened my eyes. Ah yes, the elevator scene. I wiggled my toes to encourage him to continue his massage as I watched Ryan Gosling push Carey Mulligan protectively behind him. I could imagine any one of my guys doing that but I reached up with my free hand and ran it along Chris’s muscular arm. He captured my hand and pressed his lips to the inside of my wrist. 

The kiss...ah the kiss, probably one of the best cinematic kisses, so much heat in such a short time, so many levels of meaning in such a simple action. I licked my lips. Part of me wanted to banish Ryan from the room so I could ignore the violent aftermath that would shortly follow and distract myself with Chris’s mouth, his hands, his body but I was enjoying the foot massage that had now actually made its way up my calf.

“Mmmm magic hands,” I whispered, closing my eyes again. I didn’t really want to watch Ryan Gosling’s character kick that hit-man’s head to a jelly like pulp anyway, and my Ryan, Kess’s hands were turning my legs into another kind of jelly. 

“I know the ticklish spots to avoid,” Kess said quietly, to me, maybe, to Chris. I groaned as he pressed both of his thumbs into the meat of my calf. I waited for Chris to answer, to say that he knew those spots too but then I thought no, he didn’t. Not really. He’d really only been working on the spots that made me make noises like I did right then as those thumbs dug into the ball of my right foot. 

“Want me to do your shoulders?” I nodded before I even thought to ask Chris if he minded. I gave him a sheepish, almost apologetic look as sat up and swivelled on the couch to give Kess my back. I tensed, expecting Chris to object, but he just took my feet in his big hands and held them almost like he would my hand, his thumb gently stroking the bottom of my foot while a Mona Lisa smile played at the corners of his lips. 

I felt one of those frown lines forming between my eyes but I didn’t have time to think about that. Kess’s thumbs had dug deep into my shoulder blades and all I could do was moan. He knew exactly the spots where I carried my tension and began to scoop it out like melting ice cream. 

“I’m telling you, you could charge for this,” I groaned as he used his weight and his considerable muscle mass to press his fingers deep into my muscles. 

“I have waaaays of making you pay,” he cackled into my ear and then nipped my earlobe. I froze, staring at Chris, waiting for him to leap over me, to strangle Ryan to death but he didn’t so much as flinch. He just kept watching us with that same almost smile on his face while he kept stroking the arch of my foot. 

I kept watching him as Ryan nibbled and kissed his way down my shoulder but Chris didn’t move, not one millimetre. He barely batted an eyelash when Ryan tugged my well worn sweatshirt over my shoulder and ran his hand over the exposed skin, down, just past my collarbone where his hand sort of...hovered. It was then, as I watched, Chris’s gaze shift ever so slightly that he nodded, just once before his gaze returned to hold mine. 

Holy mother fucking Christ on a pogo stick! My boyfriend had just given my roommate permission to touch me in front of him! I was so shocked I didn’t even raise a hand to stop Ryan’s as he slid his hand down over the slope of my breast. He liked when I didn’t wear a bra around the apartment; it was easier access and just less work that way as far as he was concerned. 

I could feel Kess getting caught up in this playing around. I heard his breathing get low and raspy, not to mention I could feel him getting hard against the small of my back. What I was feeling; however, was the exact opposite of turned on. What I felt was a full blown panic attack coming on. My heart was racing and my tongue suddenly felt too big for my mouth. It was one thing Chris knowing that I fucked his teammates. It was something else entirely for him to witness it. Plus I knew damn well that once Ryan got started, short of shooting him with a tranquilizer dart, there was nothing that was going to stop him from finishing what he’d started. 

Whether he sensed my panic, or it was plain on my face and I wasn’t nearly as cool as I thought I was, Chris smiled at me in that way he did when he was happy to see me and reached for my hand. 

“It’s okay baby,” he whispered and then bent over my hand and kissed first the backs of each and then turned them over and pressed his lips gently to the centre of each palm. 

“O...okay?” I stuttered, looking at him like I’d never seen him before because, after all, this was the same man who’d called me a slut not that long ago, who had sworn in no uncertain terms that he did not share.

“He said it’s okay,” Kess whispered, pulling me back against him, one hand sliding down over my breast until he had the weight of it in his hand, the other sliding down the front of my pyjama bottoms. I gasped, neither touch expected. My eyes rolled back in my head as his expert fingers slid over my clit but I squirmed to get free all the same. “Shh Penny, honey, he’s given his permission. He wants this.” 

My eyes sprang open and I gaped at Chris. Who the flaming fuck was giving permission around here? This was my body and....

“Wanna taste?” Kess slid his fingers out from between my thighs and offered them, gleaming with my juices, towards Chris. He eyed his teammate’s fingers hungrily for a long moment and whetted his lips as if he was actually considering licking them clean but then he shook his head and smiled shyly. 

“Not this time,” he said quietly. Kess shrugged, I could feel the movement of his massive shoulders behind me before he slid his hand back between my thighs. I gasped again and then whimpered, wriggling to get free. My libido liked Ryan, a lot, but my heart was not enjoying being put on display like this. 

Chris slowly got to his feet, covered the foot that it took for him to bend and press an affectionate kiss to my lips. He cupped my face and looked at me like I was everything. It made my heart soar and then Kess pinched my nipple and that made me cry out. 

“I’ll call you later, I promise,” he whispered and then kissed me, softly but thoroughly so that my entire body went up in flames. Kess chuckled behind me and I knew he could feel the rush of liquid that oozed from my pussy at being kissed by the man I loved. He knew he was going to get the benefit of my body’s confusion.

“Sure you don’t wanna stay and play?” Ryan asked as Chris stood there, still looking down at me like I was something good and not something nasty that he’d just peeled from the bottom of his shoe which is exactly what my brain was telling me I was right at that moment. 

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said quietly and then, pressing one more kiss to the frown line between my eyes, he turned to leave. I wanted to call out to him, to bring him back but at the same time my body wanted no more distractions, no more hesitations. I watched him reach for the door and his name was on the tip of my tongue but when he turned to look back at me, at us, I didn’t call out to stop him because he smiled and the expression on his face made it crystal clear that he actually wanted to stay. “Not like this,” he said quietly and then blew me a kiss and went out the door before I could call him back. 

“I think someone’s going home with a major case of blue balls,” Kess chuckled into my ear. I whimpered but didn’t disagree. That seemed like all we’d been doing lately, leaving one another with an unquenched fire but then I always had someone ready and willing to put mine out. Chris, on the other hand....

“Why, why’d you do that?” I asked, scrambling free of him and his hands that knew just what to do to stop me from thinking straight, or at all. 

“Because,” he grinned, grabbing my ankles and pulling me back towards him, under him, “we’re all beginning to think if we don’t get you two in a three way, you’re never gonna actually do the deed, make the beast with two backs, dance the horizontal mambo,” he informed me as he easily pinned both of my hands over my head. 

“We will, in our own time,” I snarled back at him but he just smiled down at me. He was used to my empty threats. 

“And, until then, I get to do whatever I want to you,” he grinned and then quickly, before I had a chance to object, nipped at my bottom lip. 

“I should go after him,” I whined. 

“And catch him polishing the pope in the car. I don’t think he’d thank you for that,” Ryan smirked as he slowly and seemingly effortlessly lowered his weight over me. “Just think, all summer he’s going to have to feed your beast,” he whispered against the curve of my neck, “and that is one insatiable beast you have Miss Penny.” 

I couldn’t help it. I gave in. I gave in to the feel of his lips pressed against the pulse point in my neck, the brush of his palm over my breasts and the insistent probe of his fingers inside my panties. Ryan was right. Chris could have stayed. It had been his choice to go. He had promised to call me later. I would hold him to that and I decided right then and there that we would talk about this. No more dancing around the subject. I wanted him and now I was sure he wanted me, so what in the hell was the hold up?

___________________________________________________________________________

“Hey,” I answered quietly, dipping a teabag into a cup as I sat on a stool in the kitchen. Ryan was snoring on the sofa in front of the evening news, clutching the empty popcorn bowl like a child would a much loved teddy bear. 

“Hey yourself,” he replied quietly. I wasn’t certain but I thought that I detected a note of trepidation in his voice and here I’d been pacing the room, climbing the walls thinking that he was thinking that I was putting my libido in front of my relationship. “Are you...were you mad when I left?” I thought about my answer carefully as I continued to dunk the tea bag in the scalding hot water. 

“Mad, no...but I was confused,” I admitted. There was silence on the other end of the line but I knew him well enough that I could picture him smiling in that way that always made me think he had a secret that I wanted to tickle out of him. 

“Me too,” he replied very softly and those two words made all of those muscles south of my belly button clench in that special way they did when he said my name or looked at me that way he had earlier, like I was everything. I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut and kept swirling my teabag, watching the water darken. “You know all this stuff...the sharing you stuff hasn’t been easy for me,” he began and that deliciously pleasant feeling I had stirring in the pit of my stomach immediately turned into a lead weight and lay there like something inert and dead. 

“Chris if you’re...,” I began, tears immediately beginning to well in my eyes at the thought of the ‘it’s not you it’s me’ that I was sure was coming next. 

“No, babe, it’s not...,” he paused and I held my breath but there was a smile in his voice, I was almost sure of it. “I just never expected to be so...so turned on by the idea.” I rolled the words around in my mind and restrained myself from doing the happy dance right there in the middle of my kitchen. 

“You were?” I asked quietly, feeling my cheeks heat up. I turned my back on the snoring Kess just in case he woke up. This seemed infinitely personal and I didn’t want to share this moment with anyone else. 

“Yeah,” he sighed and I could picture him sitting back in the chair relaxing all of his glorious muscles now that he’d gotten it off his chest. “Just so you know...I didn’t want to go.”

“Then why did you?” I asked immediately. I wandered further into the kitchen and began to rearrange the magnets on my fridge door. 

“Because,” he began and there it was for certain this time, the wide Higgy grin that made his big blue eyes crinkle at the corner. “Because our first time shouldn’t be shared with someone else,” he added softly, his voice like a gentle caress, his fingers brushing lightly over my skin. I shivered. “I didn’t want you to think I didn’t want you Pen,” he added and I knew that he was serious. I could hear his smile fading at the corners.

“Welllll, don’t you think we should do something about that?” I asked a little hesitantly, squeezing my eyes shut and praying he wouldn’t come up with yet another excuse as to why we shouldn’t finally sleep together.

“Yeah,” he replied softly and this time the touch felt lower, lighter, like he’d opened a few buttons and was gently brushing his fingertips over my belly button, just teasing like that. “But uh...I had this idea and you can totally tell me now if you want, okay?” I frowned and the sensation of his butterfly light caress evaporated.

“Ooookaaaaay,” I began, going back to rearranging the magnets. 

“I think I want to watch you with one of the other guys...like, maybe, Kev.” I stared at the stainless steel door on the fridge and poetry magnets and felt my pulse quicken. 

“You want to watch...me...with Kev?” I asked, pitching my voice low even though I could still hear Kess snoring in the living room and there was no one else to hear me. No one else except the man on the other end of the line who had just asked me to fuck another man in front of him. At least that was what I thought that he’d just asked. 

“I know...it must seem...I mean after all the things I said but...I never expected to feel like that, but babe you have to believe me...it was such a turn on to watch you...to see your face...to know that you like what he was doing to you.” I did my best to digest what he was saying but suddenly all I could do was squirm.

“I’m not sure how I feel about that,” I admitted. The idea of being with Chris had been just about the only thing on my mind for quite a while now. The idea of still not having been with him but having him watch me with someone else? I shuddered. 

“Like I said babe, it’s totally up to you but...I just sort of think...I mean besides it be exciting, that if I could watch you then I’d be sure that when we do...when I’m with you....”

“That it would be different,” I finished his thought with a sigh. So it still came down to that.

“But mostly because it would be hot,” he added with a hint of that Higgy grin that turned my girl parts to liquid. I sighed again. 

“Let me think about it.”