What the Heart Desires (Contemporary Erotic Romance) (19 page)

“Okay,” Kimberly said somewhat reluctantly.  “But don’t lock the door just in case.  I’ll be right down the hall, so call me if you need me!”

True to her word, Kimberly didn’t stray far.  In fact, she sat perched at the foot of the bed in the master with one ear tipped toward the door, anxiously listening for even the faintest sign of distress. 

Just as he’d promised,
Garrett managed just fine.  He emerged from the bathroom a short time later with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Oh, you’re in here,” he said, surprised but unbothered. 
Garrett Strong wasn’t one to flinch at being caught in the near-nude.

“Sorry,” Kimberly apologized, averting her eyes.  “I’ll go.”

“Your call,” Garrett teased with his signature sly wink.  “Doc says I can start getting back to normal now…you know what that means!  I mean, you might have to be on top, but…”

Kimberly rolled her eyes.  She knew
Garrett wasn’t actually coming onto her.  He was merely playing around, trying to get a rise out of her.  She wasn’t in the mood for it.  “No thanks,” she replied as she made her way out of the room.

~~~

“What are you doing?”

It was
a sunny Tuesday morning.  Garrett stood in the doorway of the guest bedroom Kimberly had been using.  He was still wearing his boxers and his hair was tousled – with him, it was hard to say if messy hair meant he’d just awoken or if he simply didn’t care enough to comb it. 

“I’m packing,” Kimberly replied
matter-of-factly as she folded a shirt and placed it atop the stack piled in her suitcase. 

“Well I can see
that
,” Garrett said, “but why?” His disappointment was evident.

“Look at you,” Kimberly said, pausing briefly to flash a quick smile at the unshaven, ruggedly handsome millionaire.  “You’re doing fantastically.  You’re off painkillers, up and walking around…you can even manage stairs now.  You don’t need me here anymore.”

“Yes I do.” 

She raised an eyebrow.  “
Garrett, for the past week or so, I’ve barely even lifted a finger.  You’ve been paying me to…drink coffee with you on the terrace and read magazines by the pool.  Yesterday you even brought
me
breakfast in bed!  It’s a pretty sweet ‘job’ but you’re my frien – but I can’t take advantage.  It isn’t right.  Clearly it’s time for me to go.”

Garrett
wasn’t about to give up that easily.  “So I’ll stop paying you,” he said.  “You’re fired, Kimmy.  There.  Done!  But don’t go.  I do need you.  I…I like having you around.  Why don’t you stay?”

Kimberly laughed.  “What, stay indefinitely?” she joked
, looking up at him.

Garrett
didn’t even crack a smile.  “Yes,” he said.  “If you want to, then yes.”

With a sigh, Kimberly sat down on the bed beside her
half-packed suitcase.  Shoulders slumped forward in defeat, she wearily asked, “How can you ask me to stay when we’re so…so…undefined?  I mean, a minute ago I hesitated to even call you a friend because I’m just not sure where we stand anymore after everything that’s happened.  What
are
we, Garrett?”

Garrett crossed the room.  He picked up Kimberly’s heavy suitcase with ease – yet another sign that his strength was returning.  He set it on a nearby chair and then sat on the edge of the bed beside her. 

“Why do we have to be ‘defined’ anyway?” he asked.  “I don’t get it.  We’re raised to have this obsession with putting everything into neat, tidy little boxes.  Why?  What does it matter?”

“It matters,” Kimberly said, “because I want to know where I stand.”

Garrett turned to look at her.  His face was only inches away from hers.  She was acutely aware that he was wearing only boxers and nothing more.  When he next spoke, his voice had that occasional tender, affectionate quality that Kimberly so loved.  “Don’t you know, Kimmy?” he asked, his eyes brimming with unspoken emotion. 

“Sometimes I think I do,” she murmured, “but then other times I’m not so sure.”

Garrett sighed.  “It’s my fault,” he said.  “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you I’m not the most expressive guy.  Romance and intimacy and
talking
and all that stuff is hard for me – I mean look at me, I’m
sweating
right now!” he joked, swiping at his brow. 

“It’s okay,” Kimberly relented.  “I know now that you’ve had a hard time of things.  I shouldn’t force you to do or say things that make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s
not
okay,” Garrett said sharply, with more anger and force in his voice than she’d ever heard before.  “Fuck my childhood.  Fuck me being some stupid little damaged kid who grew up to be an idiot pseudo-adult.  What about you?  I’ve been so fucking selfish.”

Kimberly was stunned by his outburst.  She sat quietly, sensing that he wasn’t yet finished.  And he wasn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I’m sorry for making you doubt me and for making you doubt yourself.  I’ve been infatuated with you for ages.  And somewhere along the way, as I got to know you better, that infatuation turned into love.”  Garrett cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable, but then pressed on.  “I love you, Kimmy.  I’m in love with you.  I have been for a long time.”

The words brought tears to Kimberly’s eyes.  She’d been longing for some sort of affirmation from Garrett for ages, but what he’d just said went above and beyond what she’d expected. 

She knew how hard it was for him to say ‘I love you’ – for three tiny words, they held a lot of weight.  The fact that’d he said them anyway meant everything to her.

“I love you too,” she whispered, leaning her head against his shoulder.  It felt right.

Kimberly didn’t officially move in with Garrett right away.  She certainly wanted to, but at the same time, she felt like they should move slowly.  After all, she wanted a stable relationship with a solid foundation, not a fling.

She kept her apartment but spent most of her time with Garrett.  They started wining and dining at quirky hole-in-the-wall restaurants and pubs.  Kimberly accompanied Garrett to clubs, enjoying the shows and people watching while he worked. They also did the spontaneous, unexpected things that had attracted Kimberly to Garrett so much in the first place. 

One Saturday afternoon they went to a football game.  Neither one of them followed sports or even particularly understood the rules, but they nonetheless spectated with enthusiasm. 

Kimberly arbitrarily picked a team to cheer for.  Garrett, of course, cheered for the other team just to make things interesting.  By the end, they’d established a good-natured rivalry, and the sexual tension was almost unbearable.

Garrett insisted they had to have the true football game experience, so near the end when it was clear his team was
defeated, he slipped away to buy giant hotdogs and flimsy paper cups of beer.

He leaned over to Kimberly with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.  “You look sexy eating that hot dog,” he whispered, causing her to immediately blush, duck her head and worriedly peer around to see if anyone had overheard.  Of course, the other spectators were all too busy watching the game to pay any attention to Kimberly and Garrett.

“You’re terrible!” she hissed, immediately self-conscious about eating the phallic shaped food.  She lightly swatted Garrett’s arm to make her point but he merely laughed.  As usual, he loved embarrassing her.

She didn’t completely hate it, either.

“What do you say we get out of here?” Garrett asked, swinging an arm around Kimberly’s shoulders as she finished her beer.

They were able to get a cab with relative ease as they were two of the first out of the stadium.  In the back of the cab, Garrett sat as close to Kimberly as the seatbelt would allow.  His thigh pressed against hers.  She still felt the electricity between them.

“Should we go to my place or do you want to get a hotel room for old times’ sake?”

Kimberly didn’t immediately answer.
  Since officially becoming a couple, she and Garrett hadn’t had sex.  They’d flirted, sure, and things had even escalated a couple of times…but Kimberly always made sure to put a stop to it.

She didn’t know why, exactly.

She still wanted Garrett.  In fact, now that he’d finally bared his soul to her, she wanted him even more than before.

She just wanted it to be right.

“You’re hesitating,” Garrett said, interrupting her thoughts.  “Why?”

“I’m not,” Kimberly fibbed, deciding it was time to take their relationship to the next level.  It felt silly to think of it that way considering they’d had sex – and kinky sex, at that – many times in the past.  “Let’s go back to your place.”

~~~

Garrett pounced on Kimberly as soon as they walked into the master bedroom. 

She still fantasized about being taken; dominated; ravaged.  She loved the way his hands roamed all over her body as though he owned it.  His lips pressed hard against hers and his tongue forced its way into her mouth. 

She loved feeling small and vulnerable and safe and sexy.  But she wanted more than to be pinned down and fucked.  That’s why, when Garrett began to tear at her clothes, she stopped him.

“What is it?” he asked, not used to being told no.  The confusion on his face was evident.  “I thought you wanted…?”

“I do,” Kimberly assured him.  “More than anything, I do.”

“Then what’s the problem?” he questioned.  “I don’t understand.”

Kimberly struggled to find the words to explain it.  “I want you,” she assured him.  “But I don’t want the handcuffs or spanking or dirty talk.  Not this time…  I just want you.”

“I thought you love that stuff.”

“I do!” she admitted.  “I fantasize about it all the time.  But Garrett, do you realize we’ve never actually had, well, ‘normal’ sex?”

He tilted his head as he thought.  “I guess you’re right,” he said.  “So what, you want lights off, missionary position, vanilla sex?  Because that’s perfectly fine with me,” he added quickly, “I’ll take any sex with you I can get,” he chuckled.  “But am I following?”

“Yeah,” Kimberly nodded.  “I think you are.  But,” she added with a bashful smile, “You can leave the lights on.”

~~~

The sex was completely different from anything Kimberly had experienced before.  In the past, she and Garrett had
fucked
.  This was slow, gentle, passionate lovemaking.  It ignited something deep within Kimberly that she didn’t even know existed and couldn’t describe.  To be so intimate and so tender with someone she had such amazing chemistry with was incredible.

She gazed into his eyes as he mounted her and she parted her thighs to allow him full access to her sex.  The anticipation had Kimberly ready and dizzy with desire; foreplay was short-lived at her request.  She just wanted Garrett inside her.

The moment Garrett’s thick member penetrated her tight, wet orifice Kimberly felt a deep sense of satisfaction.  She wrapped her arms around him and thrust her hips up and down in time with his.  Their movements were rhythmic and in sync as though their body was one. 

Kimberly had never felt so close to anyone in her life.

It was clear that Garrett was experiencing similar emotions.

At first Kimberly thought he had something in his eye.  It took her a moment to realize he was simply overcome with emotion. 
It was undoubtedly the first time in his adult life that he’d ever allowed himself to be emotionally vulnerable.

She smiled reassuringly up at him and then kissed the few tears that had run down his face tears away.

BDSM was a fun, naughty, delicious way to experience sex.  Kimberly couldn’t wait to delve deeper into that world with Garrett in the future.  But today, in this moment, she savored the sweet simplicity of the ‘vanilla’ sex.

The lovemaking was sensuous and leisurely.  They took their time.  It made Kimberly aware of every inch of her body.  Her lips tingled from where Garrett had kissed her and she could still taste him on her tongue.  Her nipples were erect and pressing against Garrett’s bare chest.  She loved the feel of his body pressed against hers and the way one of his hands was wrapped in her long dark hair. 

She inhaled deeply.  If she closed her eyes and let her mind take her away, it was almost as though they were still at the stadium watching the football game.  Garrett smelled of fresh air and beer.

His groans of pleasure further excited Kimberly.  She could tell he was getting close.  She loved knowing how much she turned him on and she lived for making him feel good.  She ran
her fingertips lightly along Garrett’s muscular back and ground her hips against his with slow, controlled movements.

He felt so good inside her.  When he gasped and ejaculated deep inside her she cooed with pleasure and kissed him deeply.  The pirate fantasies were sexy as hell, but so was this.

“I love you,” she moaned as she felt her tight hole begin to contract on his still rock hard erection.  The orgasm was the best she’d ever had.

“I love you too.”