Faithful (29 page)

“Baby, you need to take off your clothes, and then I’ll help you relax.”

Taking a deep breath, I decide, if he can hypnotize me with that voice and that body, he can certainly coax a snake out of our bed. Then I undress so fast I cause the rubber mattress to bounce like a waterbed and crash into Cooper. My clumsiness doesn’t obstruct his careful choreography as he settles himself between my thighs and hooks my legs over his shoulder.

For a fleeting moment, I realize I am naked in the scary dark woods, but then I’m riveted on Cooper’s expression. He meets my eyes with a mixture of fierce desire and adoring tenderness, the effect heady. I give myself over completely, relinquishing every muscle and limb for Cooper to do as he wishes.

“I missed you,” he says seductively to my vagina, not me. He’s studying it appreciatively, as though he’s contemplating what he’ll do next. It could be embarrassing, but my vagina is open for business and ready to dance on the tables to get this sailor to go to town on her.

“She missed you, too. Now get busy!” I whisper. “And don’t talk to my genitals like you’re a pubescent boy.”

“I was talking to you, Imogene.” He rises on his knees, hoisting my legs and hips with him.

“Oh.” Now I feel embarrassed. What woman goes off on a guy she’s excited to see just because she’s horny as hell? Me, that’s who.

“Christ, I’m going to take care of you. Don’t you know I’ve been going out of my fucking mind waiting to be with you again?” He licks my clit and looks down at me.

“Yes, you missed me. Yes, keeping touching me like that,” I say with a tremble.

Cooper trails soft kisses along the insides of my thighs, sending arousing heat directly to the center of my physical being. At this moment, it’s a slow odyssey to the palace of everything holy and gratifying.

While my hips naturally undulate, seeking more from him, he takes his time with teasing caresses, his lips and fingers pleasuring me until my thoughts are a frenzied blur. Then I begin reaching for the crescendo, and my thighs tense and tighten around Cooper’s head. I don’t care if I’m strangling him as long as I get my first class ride to Wonderland. However, his strong hands keep my legs up and apart so he can finish the task at hand, and boy, he doesn’t miss a step, even with my wild, bucking hips.

“Yez, yes, yez,” I mumble frantically.

I feel his hot breath against my thighs, and then he goes in for the finale, sucking so hard my arms flail around, pounding the mattress. He successfully hits the trip wire and the rocket launches, my whole body thrumming with pure ecstasy. I scream his name as I fall into oblivion.

It takes me a moment to come out of it and gather some semblance of composure. My legs are still hooked over Cooper’s shoulders as he kneels, looking down at me with a bemused expression.

“You screamed,” he says with a smile. “You screamed my name. Very. Loudly.”

“Oh,” I exhale. “It was worth it.”

I don’t know when or how he put the condom on; I must have been paralyzed in that splendid rapture for longer than I thought.

“My turn.” He slides partially into me, holding my legs up and angling himself into position.

His cock stretches me and stops midway.

“I think you’ve grown since I last saw you,” I say, amazed that he can feel too large.

“Mmm, it’ll fit.” He thrusts his hips hard, his cock filling me. We both moan, and then he pulls out slowly before pushing back in slowly and methodically.

I watch him, fascinated with his graceful hip thrusts and swivels as he moves in and out of me with incredible control and restraint. What this man can do on the dance floor is nothing compared to the erotic, graceful slides and glides he does with his hips and cock. He keeps it up for a while, filling me completely as my core grows wetter, begging him for more.

“You’re so beautiful.” He looks at me then his eyes close and his head rolls back, enjoying the friction between our bodies. I wonder how long he can hold out and keep his climax at bay.

Not long.

It’s like someone flipped a switch; Cooper begins pounding into me with savage desire. He watches where our bodies connect, his expression turning feral as he goes on a raging crusade to fill me, striking the sensitive target. I appreciate his precision, and in a matter of seconds, I’m falling through another rabbit hole, a mindless mess as he hammers into me.

His climax is explosive. He inhales and exhales loudly with intermittent grunts and then loses his grip on my legs. He drops to his hands and finishes coming with a few short jerks.

“Damn.” He’s breathing hard, his eyes consuming me like they own me. For this moment, I feel like I own him. I know lust when I see it, and this feels like love.

If I ever thought I could fully love a man, I hope that man is Cooper. I hope this eventually leads to more.

Twenty-Three

“Rise and shine!” Lauren sings outside our tent as the morning light barely breaks.

“No,” I mumble.

“Is she always this peppy in the morning?” Cooper asks, half-asleep.

“Yes. It’s the only reason I ever made it to classes or work on time.”

Lauren begins another round of our old Rise and Shine camp song with the addition of banging pots.

“Shut up!” Jess’s voice shouts angrily at Lauren from another tent.

“We have to get up.” Cooper kisses my cheek and does a push up to spring to his feet. I find myself staring at his nakedness longingly. “I promised Leo we’d hit the fishing early this morning.”

“So why do I have to get up early?”

“To entertain Lauren. It’s her day, too.”

“I suppose, as maid of honor, I should be grateful that I got off easy with no bachelorette party. I think we’re walking down to the lake for swimming and sunbathing.”

“I hope we make it back in time to witness that. I’d like to see you in a bikini.”

I search for a pair of shorts and a shirt. “I think you want to find another place to have sex with me,” I say as we both get dressed.

“Damn, you’re on to me.”

Everyone except for Lauren and Leo looks exhausted and disheveled. Jess appears in pajamas and fluffy slippers, getting a chuckle out of Dylan who is already cooking up breakfast. Jess shuffles over to Carson and sits on his lap, looking as if she’s falling back asleep.

I sip the strong, bitter coffee Leo hands me and perch myself next to Cooper on the same log from the night before, leaning sleepily into him. Dylan and Emma hand out plates of eggs and bacon, and then Dylan settles himself next to me with a little too much energy.

“For a moment last night, I was worried you were being attacked by a bear,” Dylan says to me, trying not to smile. “But then I assumed Cooper came to your rescue. Yes, I’m quite positive that’s what I heard.”

“Never talk to me before six in the morning. I’m tempted to cause you physical pain.”

Cooper smiles and kisses my temple. “You tell him.”

“When did you know it was the real thing with Carson?” I ask Jess. I’m flat on my back, basking in the morning sun as Jess applies a heavy layer of sunblock to her fair skin.

After the men left with all their fishing gear, we spent another hour sitting around the campsite, drinking coffee. Then I led the lazy charge down to the lake with our lounge chairs and beach towels.

Jess props up the wide, flimsy brim of her sun hat and looks at me, stunned. “You’re asking me for relationship advice?”

“It’s hard to believe, I know, especially since I recall lecturing you about Carson two years ago. Times have changed, and you appear to be the epitome of a happy marriage, so I’m curious as to how you knew he was the one.”

“Oh.” Jess puts down the sunblock and looks out at the quiet lake. “For me, it was after a few arguments with Carson that left me feeling kind of sick. We could say something and unintentionally hurt one another. I didn’t want to hurt him; I wanted to love him. I wanted to fix everything I felt I did wrong. One day, I stopped being afraid to let myself fall in love with him. The minute I did that, it felt right, and I was so much happier.”

“Is it easy, or do you still have big fights?”

“Sure, we argue. A while ago, we had a ridiculous argument over mustard.”

“You argued over what kind of mustard to buy?” I ask testily. I should know better than to ask Jess about her marriage. She’s off the charts when it comes to everything atypical.

“No, we argued about where to put the mustard. Carson is a foot taller than me, and I tend to put everything at my eye level in the fridge. Then he can’t find things. The mustard fight was really about other stress in our life, but that didn’t come out until we said a lot of stupid things about mustard and condiments in general.”

“What are you two stressed out about?”

“Carson wants me to quit my job with 5 Alpha and take a license deal on a software package I wrote the code for to sell it myself.”

“That doesn’t sound like Carson, asking you to quit working.”

“He didn’t. He wants me to spend more time on my painting and make it a full-time career, even if the work doesn’t always sell.”

“So how did you two make up after that fight?”

“Carson said something brilliant. He told me to stop chasing money out of fear and start believing in my passion because he’s there to catch me if I fall.”

“That’s sweet.”

“And he’s right. He said marriage isn’t one-sided; we’re both in it and need to help each other through anything and everything. It’s easy to laugh about the mustard fight now, especially since being married means you’re going to have a lot of issues like that.”

“You already work from home, so what happens when you don’t have any contact with all those tech people you work with? Won’t you get lonely?”

“I have freelance work with Carson’s company and other businesses, but he’s cutting back, too. That’s why he turned over a lot of his responsibilities to Cooper. Carson plans to get his work schedule down to four days a week, no more working six or seven days. Then he can be home at least three full days and I can do the other four.”

“What are you talking about? What is Carson going to be home for?” Emma asks from her lounge chair she has sitting several feet away in the water.

“We want to start a family in a couple of years, so we’re trying to put together a work schedule where one of us is always home with the baby.”

“What baby?” Lauren wakes from dozing.

“There’s no baby. I’m not pregnant,” Jess confirms. “We’re just planning as much as we can. We only have control over our work, so that’s what we’re discussing at this point.”

I study Jess for a moment, envious of what she has and how much she has changed in the last two years since I met her. She has always been wicked smart and made great career choices, but she’s had no confidence when it comes to men.

She moved to Hera and had a short fling with Dylan before realizing how ill-matched they were. After that little tryst, it took her a few months to discover that the man she was in love with had been standing silently by all that time. Carson and his stupid, stoic silence. What a messy drama they all created back then. I was with Jeremy at the time, feeling pretty secure about how nice and easy it was working for us. My smugness certainly backfired on me.

“What about you and Dylan?” I ask Emma, who is now fully interested in our conversation. “You fit perfectly together, too. Did you feel that when you met him?”

“Not at all,” Emma replies with a laugh. “We didn’t have a choice, though; we had to work together. The first week was uncomfortable, and I thought Dylan was a jackass. A cute one, but still, I thought he wanted Carson to fire me. You’ve all seen how emotional and uncensored he is.”

Lauren laughs. “Understatement.”

Emma kicks her feet in the lake and sends a sprinkle of water our way, the cold water feeling wonderful on my hot skin.

“We had an instant attraction,” Emma continues, “but we were surrounded by my family problems, and Dylan was still in the beginning stages of his therapy after rehab. Emotionally, we were both a mess, but after a month of being with him, I didn’t want to keep fighting about our problems; I wanted us to fix them together. And, like Jess said, that’s when you know you love the person and want to keep loving them.”

“You make it sound easy. Actually, all three of you do.”

Emma scoffs. “Yes, it’s easy for me to love Dylan. But, no, living with someone and merging your lives isn’t easy. We all have those moments when we get angry and say dumb things. When I asked to go to one of his therapy sessions, Dylan and I had a huge fight because he said it would make him feel like a loser to do his weekly confessional in front of his shrink with me there. We were engaged, and I thought I should be a part of his therapy, at least see what goes on and get to know his doctor.”

“Yeah, too bad you couldn’t just fight about ketchup,” I add with a laugh.

“Mustard,” Jess clarifies.

“Whatever,” I reply. “Props to Emma. Any battle of egos with the Tasmanian Devil over his therapy has got to be right up there with teaching a hippo to do cartwheels.”

“Don’t let Dylan hear you say that,” Lauren laughs.

“Oh, he’s heard Imogene say worse,” Emma retorts. “And going with him to the doctor was not what I expected. Dylan managed to talk about me as if I wasn’t even sitting next to him, and we exchanged some colorful tidbits of criticism about one another, which then escalated into a bigger argument. The doctor ended up refereeing as if he was our marriage counselor. But, hey, we got Dylan’s fears out in that first session, and after that, whenever he leaves for his appointment, he always asks me if I want to go with him. I rarely do, but it’s nice we got over that scary hurdle.”

“I’ll say. And you certainly didn’t lollygag about like Lauren and Leo. It took months for one of them to make a move.”

“Look who’s talking? You and Cooper took a year!” Lauren touches her flat stomach, checking to see if she is showing signs of a pregnant belly yet. I catch her doing this throughout the day, every day. I don’t think she’s aware how often she rubs her belly like it’s a magic genie lamp.