Speak Low (19 page)

“Scat, girls,” I told them. “Go finish the dishes.”

“Oh, just a minute,” Molly scoffed, stepping toward Joey and offering a hug. “We heard the news, Joey, and we’re really happy. Congratulations.”

Joey hugged her, giving me a surprised look over her shoulder. Mary Grace, not to be outdone, threw her arms around Joey and Molly’s waists.

“Well, thank you.” Joey laughed as he embraced both girls. “Just what I always wanted—more sisters.”

“OK, you said your congratulations, now away with you. Finish the dishes.” I pointed a finger toward the kitchen.

“Sure will be nice not to hear that anymore, won’t it?” Molly said to Mary Grace as they headed down the hall.

Rolling my eyes, I turned back to Joey. The way he looked at me—like he was barely able to keep his hands to himself—sent my heart pounding. Before supper I’d changed into a peasant blouse and an old blue skirt, but he looked at me as if I wore diamonds and silk.
Or maybe nothing at all.
Simultaneously, we glanced to our left, where my father sat reading the paper only ten feet away.

Then we grinned at each other. “Can you come for a ride?” he whispered.

“Maybe.” I raised my voice and called to Daddy. “Is it OK if I go for a ride with Joey?” Daddy nodded without lifting his eyes from the paper, and my excitement ratcheted up ten notches. “Thanks.”

I grabbed my purse off the hall table and followed Joey to his car. It wasn’t quite full dark yet, and the warm air was filled with all the sounds of a summer night. Soft breeze, noisy cicadas, tinny music from a phonograph drifting through an open window. Joey opened and closed the door for me before getting in on the driver’s side. The moment his door was shut he grabbed my face and pressed his lips to mine, his tongue sliding into my mouth in a way that told me exactly what he was thinking. Blood rushed to my center.

“God, I’ve been thinking about you all day,” he whispered, putting our foreheads together. “And I can’t go another hour without your body next to mine.”

I put my hands to the back of his head and pulled him to me, my pulse racing faster and faster as the kiss grew more frenzied. I lavished the attention on his lips and tongue I wanted to lavish on other parts of his body.

After a moment, he groaned. “We can’t do this here.”

“Let’s go to your house,” I said breathlessly.

He grimaced. “Can’t go there either. My Ma and Marie are there packing up come things she forgot in the attic. She keeps coming back,” he whined.

I thought fast. Where could we be alone? “The boat house. You still have a key?”

Without a word, he started the motor and tore down the street. My head was thrown back against the seat and the wind rushed to meet me, and I laughed, the air around me crackling with energy.

On the short drive to the boathouse, I didn’t bother to keep my hands off him. Unbuttoning his pants, I freed his hot, hard erection and tantalized him with my fingers and palms, the backs of my hands and the inside of my wrists.

“Jesus, Tiny. I can barely drive.” Joey gripped the steering wheel hard.

With a wicked grin, I lowered my head and licked him like a lollipop.

“Oh, fuck, now I really can’t drive. Oh my God. Oh Christ. Where the fuck is that boathouse, I can’t even remember the way right now.”

I laughed with him inside my mouth, the hum from my lips making him even harder. Tasting the salty sweetness of his imminent release, I took him deeper, relishing the feel of him at the back of my throat.

He must have remembered where the driveway was, because my head thumped the steering wheel as the Ford traversed the pocked dirt road that led down to the dock. Giggling again, I sat up. “Ouch. Guess I better stop for a minute.”

He parked under the willow tree and grabbed my hand, hauling me out of the driver’s side and racing for the boathouse without even shutting the car door. At the boathouse entrance, he fumbled with the key.

“Hurry,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around his torso and kissing his back.

Finally the lock gave. The moment we were inside we tore frantically at each other’s clothing, our lips and tongues and teeth colliding hungrily. The short amount of time that had elapsed since we’d last had our hands and mouths on each other was completely out of proportion with the appetites we’d built up. With impatient fingers I pushed the braces from Joey’s shoulders and shoved the buttons of his shirt through their holes. He managed to get my skirt off before shrugging off his shirt and pulling his undershirt over his head. Giving up on the tiny buttons on my blouse, he bent and yanked my underwear to my ankles. I kicked it off and jumped up, twining my stocking-clad legs around his waist.

When he licked his fingers and reached low, I opened my mouth to tell him he needn’t bother, I was already wet, but then his fingers were rubbing me, inside and out, and all I could do was sigh with pleasure.

Satisfied he wouldn’t hurt me, he moved toward the door. I cried out as he shoved his cock inside me, slamming my body against the wood. My eyes rolled back in my head and I dug my nails into his skin. But he didn’t stop. Again and again, he drove me into the wall with powerful, deep thrusts, shocking me with his violent need to fill me so completely.

When I regained the capacity to respond, I covered his face with feverish kisses. Between gasps, I breathed his name, pulled his hair, licked and sucked his neck, his mouth, his tongue. And when he put his hands on my ass and altered his angle just enough so that I rode him tighter to his body, the rock hard base of his cock rubbed me just the right way. I clutched him hard with arms and legs. “Right there,” I whispered against his lips. “Fuck me right there. Yes, yes, yes.” Something deep inside me was tightening and coiling in a way I’d never experienced. It wasn’t only just the delicious friction between our bodies; it was some hidden place in my body he was able to reach this way, and I had no words, no thoughts, no voice for what he was doing to me.

Higher and higher I climbed as he moved with utter abandon, until my muscles clenched and pulsed around him. Starbursts of color exploded in front of my eyes and I moaned his name over and over through the shimmering waves of bliss.

“Fuck, I can feel you,” he whispered. “Oh my God, I’m gonna come so hard.”

“Do it,” I panted. “Now, Joey. I want to feel it,
now
.”

Slamming me back into the door again, he groaned long and hard as he poured into me. I felt his shuddering release as deeply as I’d felt my own and exploded once more, the delicious rippling at my center lingering even longer than before.

Joey dropped his forehead to my shoulder. I hadn’t even realized my eyes were closed until I opened them and the colors disappeared. One by one, my senses returned. Beyond Joey’s dark hair, I saw the glow of the moon through the high windows. I felt the damp heat of his shoulders under my hands. I heard our heavy breathing as our lungs recovered and smelled the musty wood of the boathouse walls. Lowering my lips to his neck, I slipped my tongue through them and tasted the salty warmth of his skin.

“You keep doing that, I’m gonna have to pound you into the wall again.” Joey’s voice was muffled in my shoulder.

“Promise?”

He turned his face into my neck and inhaled deeply. “Mmmmm. Yes.”

“Good, because I liked it.”

Joey chuckled before picking up his head. “I used to wonder what you’d be like. I had a feeling you’d be a firecracker.”

“And? Am I a firecracker?”

“Doll, TNT’s got nothing on you.”

I laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should.”

“I used to wonder what you’d be like too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And I used to touch myself all over, imagining my hands were yours,” I whispered.

I thought his eyes would pop from their sockets. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Maybe you’ll show me sometime.”

“I’ll show you right now.”

Joey staggered backward as if he’d been shot. “Oh my God, Tiny. You’re killing me.” Keeping me hoisted around his waist, he dropped to his knees on the cement floor, and then onto his bottom. My knees came to rest beside his hips and he leaned back on his elbows. “Show me,” he said.

I bit my lip. Was he serious? Down on the floor, the shadows were thick, and I could barely make out his expression.

But then I felt him stir inside me. “Show me,” he said again.

Oh, what the hell.

Slowly I unbuttoned my blouse while he watched. When it was undone completely, I did the same with the tiny row of buttons down the front of my chemise. With each new inch of my skin exposed, he grew harder. I let the blouse slip from my shoulders, but kept the chemise on, open at the chest. My thighs were pale above the tops of my black stockings. When I looked down, I saw the place where our bodies were joined, and a rush of arousal swept over me. My skin tingled. Involuntarily, I clenched around him.

He grew harder.

I brought my hands to my breasts, kneading them as I began to rock my hips a little. “First I’d do this,” I whispered, keeping my eyes on his. “And I’d pretend it was your hands on me.”

Joey’s mouth fell open and he made no effort to close it.

My breasts were small but responsive, and as I played with my nipples they tightened and peaked. I brushed my fingers over the taut pink skin, pinching and pulling them. His cock continued to swell, and I closed my eyes as I circled my hips.

“Oh my God,” Joey moaned.

“And then,” I said, sliding one hand down my body, “I’d do this.” When my fingers reached the warm, slick spot just above where our bodies were connected, I rubbed myself slowly.

By now Joey was fully hard and I could feel him moving his hips, trying to push up inside me. “Christ, you are so beautiful,” he said. “I’m dying to touch you but I don’t want you to stop.”

I laughed, luxuriating in not only the compliment, but the intimacy of the moment and the erotic pleasure of the act. “Remember the night you slept on the couch at my house?” I asked. “I could barely sleep that night, knowing you were downstairs.” Taking my other hand from my chest, I leaned back slightly, placing it on his leg behind me. The new angle increased the pressure to that place inside me that made me gasp and arch.

Joey groaned as if in agony. “Me either. God, I wanted you so badly that night.”

“And then the next morning, you stayed to cook breakfast and I went upstairs to take a bath.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, and this is what I did while I thought about you. Your hands on me, your mouth on me, your cock inside me.”

“Oh my God.” Joey sat up fast and took a nipple between his teeth. Crying out at his bite and the uncontrollable urge raging through my body, I held on to his thick, muscular shoulders and rocked against him. Nothing had ever felt so good in my entire life, and as the frenzy inside me hit the tipping point, I flung myself forward, knocking Joey onto his back and pinning my hands on his chest. Bucking wildly on top of him, I thrilled at the sound of his rasps and strangled grunts and the sight of his gorgeous jaw dropping open as another climax hit him. He gripped my hips hard as we came together, our bodies pulsing in perfect sync.

When I could move again, I brushed the hair from his forehead. “You know, that was actually even better than it was in my fantasy.”

“Mine too,” he whispered, eyes closed.

“Now you’ll have to show me how you touched yourself when you thought about me. It’s only fair.”

He opened one eye and looked at me. “You’re killing me.”

“Not
right
now, silly. Maybe next time.”

“Deal.” He shut his eyes again and sighed. “God, I love you. And I don’t want to go, but I promised to meet Angelo at ten. I should get you home.”

I couldn’t bring myself to release him yet. “How much will you owe him?”

He grimaced. “Probably about ten grand. I’ll have to run booze from Chicago to keep Sam’s nose out of it. Or maybe New York. But don’t worry about it.”

“Ha.”

He squeezed my hips once more. “Come on, let’s go. Better pull yourself together, though. I don’t need your dad after me at this point.”

Reluctantly I got to my feet, my knees aching a bit from the cement. “At this point, what would it matter?” I checked for holes in my stockings. “We’re getting married, aren’t we?”

Still on his back, he lifted his hips and pulled his pants up, a masculine maneuver that somehow made my belly tighten even after I’d already come three times in the last half hour. “Yeah, the sooner the better. Because I want to do this all the time now.”

Smiling, I buttoned my blouse and pulled on my skirt. “Me too. Any idea where my underwear went?”

Joey squinted into the shadows. “I think I see something white over there.” He walked over and picked them up. “These belong to you?” he asked, swinging them around on one finger.

When I grabbed for them, he held them out of my reach. “Now, hold on just a second. I once made some pretty good dough charging the boys to peek at your knickers. I might be able to afford a ring if you let me keep these.”

“Joey Lupo! You give me back my underwear this instant!” I jumped for them.

“Last time you threatened to tell my mother.” He held them way over my head.

“Don’t think I won’t, mister. Or better yet, I’ll punish you myself.”

He stopped moving and considered that before handing them to me.

“That’s what I thought.”

On the way back to my house, I asked Joey if he’d told his family about us planning to marry.

“Not yet. I thought we could do it together.” He took my hand and squeezed it. “Maybe dinner one night this week over at my apartment?”

His
apartment? “So you’re going to keep it?”

“For now.” He glanced at me. “We can live there after we’re married. But I’d like a house eventually. Once I save up the money.”

“I’d love that. All of it.”

“Good.” He kissed my hand. “When do you want to get married?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Me too. Let’s go see the priest tomorrow, OK?”

“OK.” God, there was so much to do—I hadn’t even told Evelyn yet! “Where will we do it?”