Starlight (Peaches Monroe) (Volume 2) Paperback – September 2, 2013 (18 page)

“That feels so good,” I said.

He quirked his eyebrow sexily, then grabbed my other leg and propped both feet on his broad, muscular chest.

“Why’d you go to therapy?” he asked more insistently.

I floated back on the water, closing my eyes. “Have you ever been in a sensory deprivation tank? They’re full of saltwater, so you float more easily. Sounds kind of fun, but also terrifying.”

He rubbed his hands slowly all the way up and down my legs, making them feel about a mile long, and really sexy.

“You’re avoiding my question,” he said, his voice low and husky.

“I kinda freaked out over some stuff at college and had to drop out. My parents thought I was fine, but my family doctor referred me to a therapist.”

He squeezed my calves and then the backs of my thighs, making me shiver, even though I wasn’t cold.

“I used to get really worked up,” I said. “I’d get so worried about things that didn’t matter, and I’d be paralyzed with fear. I’d miss exams and deadlines for papers. My marks were bad, and that only made it worse.”

“Then you turned to drugs.”

“No, I did not.” I laughed at the idea. “Who knows. Maybe the right drugs would have helped, and I’d have a degree right about now.”

“Trust me on this one, drugs would not have helped.”

I opened my eyes and tilted my head to look at him. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry, Keith. I totally forgot, and I’m being so insensitive.”

“Cocaine is great for dieting. But you didn’t hear it from me. Expensive, though. I mean, you think Jenny Craig is pricey, with having to buy all the special meals from them. Coke is way more expensive.”

“Jenny Craig destroys lives, though.”

He laughed at my joke, then pulled my feet away from each other and pulled me against him. I wrapped my legs around his waist.

“Tell me more about your struggles with Jenny Craig addiction,” he said. “Is there a support group? Do you meet in a church basement three nights a week to talk about your struggles with Jenny Craig and drink bad coffee?”

“Not anymore. I’ve been three years clean.”

He grinned and ran his palms up and down my back as he stared into my eyes. The sky was darker than the pool now, which was lit by recessed lights a foot under the water line. The pool around our bodies was dark blue and green, with tiny highlights of yellow tiles glinting like precious metals.

Keith asked, “Do you believe in free will?”

“I dropped out of college before getting heavy into philosophy.”

“You don’t need a degree to have thoughts.”

“I’ve read about these identical twin studies, and I think a lot of our fate is predetermined, just by how we are.”

“Me, too.”

“And here we are. So it must be fate.”

“Everything in our lives has led us here,” Keith said. “Bad habits, bad decisions, bad temper.”

“I don’t have a bad temper.”

“Excuse me, Peaches Monroe, have you
met
yourself? Yesterday I flushed the toilet while you were in the shower, turning your water cold, and you whipped your face around the shower curtain like you were going to take my toothbrush, turn it into a prison shiv, and stab me repeatedly. And that was just for a small water temperature infraction.”

“A small temperature infraction? Are you kidding me? Your shower barely spits out water, then suddenly there’s a fire hose pinning me to the tiles. I only looked around the shower curtain to get some warning about what plague was coming next.”

“I have a soup pot full of snakes, but I’m saving those for Sunday brunch.”

“What makes you think I’ll still be here Sunday? Maybe I’ll—”

The water churned around us, and then he had his hands on my ass, squeezing my buns and pulling me close as he shushed me by kissing me.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and rocked my hips, eliciting a reaction within his swimming shorts. In seconds, he was hard and pressing back against me, grinding me in a way that was not unpleasant at all.

Around his lips, I said, “Maybe I’ll stay.”

He pulled back from the kiss and gazed into my eyes. The blue lights under the water line made his face look upside-down, all the shadows pointing in the opposite direction as normal. His eyebrows had triangular shadows above them, like the eyebrows of jack-o-lanterns.

“I had fun with you today,” he whispered. “I’m glad I’m not some asshole with a nice house in the Hollywood Hills, but nobody to cuddle tonight.”

I reached down between us and grabbed his hardness. “I’m going to cuddle you so hard.”

“Reverse Cowgirl,” he said. “You promised.”

Before I could try to wiggle out of the promise, he grabbed my hand and hauled me out of the pool. We raced back to his place and barely toweled off before we were in bed.

My skin was cool from the swim, so I insisted we climb under the covers for a cuddle and warm-up before the main event. We kissed for an eternity, all warm and cozy together in the dark, our bodies entwining. Whenever his cock nudged between my legs, I had to hold myself back from pushing down onto it, bare.

Finally, I grabbed a condom and rolled it on before it was too late.

“Cowgirl time,” he said, pushing me into position.

“Close your eyes. Don’t look at my butt!”

“That’s the best part.”

Since he wasn’t going to close his eyes, I closed mine. With my weight on my lower legs, my back to Keith’s upper body, I straddled his cock. The head slipped in easily, but instead of taking him all the way in, I arched my back and slowly leaned back, until I was lying on his chest. I craned my neck to kiss him.

“This is amazing,” he said, reaching both hands up to cup my breasts. “I can touch you everywhere.” One hand moved down between my legs, making me gasp as he grazed my swollen clit.

He groaned as he rotated his hips and dipped further into my pussy. I shifted down a few degrees, taking him deeper, then deeper still. He kept stroking my clit and thrusting in and out at the same time, while his other hand squeezed one breast, then the other. The stimulation was so intense—almost as if there were more than the two of us, yet we were aligned, with his arms moving in the same range as my arms would, so we also felt like one person. One very sexy person.

He got me close to coming a few times, and I was in no hurry at all, until I was. And then I desperately needed to come.

Ignoring all the worries about him seeing the view of my ass, I sat up, ready to ride like a cowgirl in reverse. His cock was firm and full, limiting my angle at first, but after some assurances from him that his flagpole really did bend that way (and felt good), I leaned forward even more, grabbing onto his muscular upper thighs for purchase.

“Ride ‘em cowgirl,” he moaned.

I rocked back and forth, enjoying the angle of penetration. With my eyes clenched shut, I heard the sound of his breathing become more ragged as he got closer to coming. The sound of his raspy breaths were the sexiest things I’d ever heard. When he started to moan, I began to quiver, my inner walls clenching him tightly. He was hard like a fist, and as his breathing changed again, relaxing, I started to come.

And for a moment, I felt like I really was riding a bucking bull. I threw one hand up over my head. “Yeehaw!”

He grabbed me by the hips and thrust into me, raising his hips all the way off the bed and me along with them.

I grabbed onto his knees and held on for dear life as I shook with a rapid succession of orgasms that made me see flashing lights.

Everything was still again. I caught my breath, then sighed. I looked down to find my right leg was straight out in front, alongside Keith’s legs, and my left leg was folded, my foot under my buttock.

Interesting. I could work with that. I rolled to my right, and soon I was lying on the bed, both of us in spooning position.

“Hmm,” Keith said, tickling me as he reached between us to hold the condom tight as he withdrew. “Um.”

“What?”

“Just a little wetter than I expected. Hang on.” He rolled away from me and flicked on the side table lamp.

“Bright liiiight!” I whined.

“Phew,” he said. “The rubber’s not broken, so I guess it was just water from the pool.”

“Oh, damn.” I reached my hand down between my legs. Yup, there was a puddle.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I didn’t answer, but I heard him sniff as he leaned back toward me.

“Keith, I didn’t pee the bed.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

“Uh, you just smelled me. I heard you sniff.”

“I’m just breathing normally, I swear.”

We were quiet for a moment, Keith being careful to breath so quietly I couldn’t hear him at all.

Finally, I said, “Fine. You got me. I’m a squirter. Not every time, but I guess certain angles trigger this totally natural function that’s totally not pee. It’s a real medical thing. You can Google it if you don’t believe me.”

He grabbed some tissues from the bedside table and handed them to me. “Two for you, and two for me. There’s a little garbage bin right over there. You can go have a shower if you want, but I’d like to get tidied up and have that nice cuddle you promised.”

I used the provided tissues, and then a few more. Even dried off, I still felt a negative emotion. Not shame, because I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I was embarrassed. I think any girl would be.

Keith was back under the covers. “C’mere,” he said, patting the bed.

I thought through all the excuses I could give to run out of that room.

“C’mere,” he said again, softer this time.

He patted the bed. Pat, pat.

Sometimes, after a long, weird day, all you really want is for a guy to pat the bed next to him. If he happens to be a good listener with a kind heart, take him up on the offer. You’ll be glad you did.

We had a great cuddle that led to comfortable pillow talk. I told Keith about my birthday ritual of going to DeNirro’s* with my family and taking pictures of us all around the red-checked tablecloths.

*No relation or connection to the actor Robert DeNiro, one R.

Keith told me there were plenty of red-checked tablecloths in Italy, and then I tickled him until I found his ticklish spots, under his armpits and along his sides.

I switched the birthday topic back to him, since his refusal to have birthdays was so fascinating. What is it about people who refuse to partake in things everyone else loves? Like people who’ve never watched
Titanic
, for example? My cousin Marita, who used to babysit me, has never seen the movie, and I swear it’s become a part of her identity. When she met her much-younger husband James at a bar, they got into an argument over a trivia game—specifically, a
Titanic
question. He mocked her, asking if she could call herself a girl if she didn’t know what Rose did with the diamond. Marita claimed she didn’t even know who Rose was, much less anything about a diamond, and James bugged her about it all night, because it was a rather tall tale. (I mean, please. I love Marita, but the girl knows damn well who Rose is.) James ended up taking Marita back to his house that night to “watch the movie,” and you can guess what happened next. To this day, Marita still hasn’t seen
Titanic
.

I wondered if Keith had stopped celebrating birthdays to make himself seem more interesting as an adult.

We cuddled and I pressed him for more details.

He admitted the decision was partly because he liked the beefy look of the number ten much more than eleven, with its two boring, thin lines, but mainly he refused birthdays to aggravate his twin sister. Katy was competitive, always pointing out that her birthday present box was bigger, or heavier, or that she had more girls attending the party than he had boys. Katy was the queen bee at her school, both popular and controlling, so there was no way he could compete. He first mentioned the idea of abstaining from birthdays as a joke, and it infuriated her so much, that… well… how could a brother
not
commit to doing something that bugged her so much?

I rolled over in the dark to face Keith, my hand against his warm chest.

“You seem to put a lot of energy into annoying your sister,” I said. “I have to admire your commitment and dedication.”

He reached over and played with my hair, pulling it across my cheek, and then tucking it behind my ear.

“When I make up my mind, it stays made up,” he said.

“I wish I was more like you. I’m a softie, in body and spirit. Remember how easy it was for you to talk me into spending the first night here?”

“You were so beautiful in the dark, like you were this divine statue carved from alabaster. I swear you were glowing from the inside, full of stars and lightning bugs, and all I could think about was kissing you. I’m glad you kissed me back, or I might have tossed myself down the canyon.”

“I’m always shocked when guys try to kiss me. I think half the time they do it just to shut me up.”

His eyes went wide, mocking me. “No!”

I nodded. “It’s true. When I was a kid, my mother used to carry these ultra-sticky caramels in her purse. I thought they were her favorite candy, but it turned out she can’t eat them because of her dental work. I had no idea. She brought them everywhere because they totally filled my mouth and shut me up. She didn’t like me telling people at the post office that we had Pop Tarts for dinner when my father was out of town on business.”