Rafe (Arizona Vengeance 6.5)

Still, he puts on a brave face, and there’s a lot of laughter around the table as the rest of us scrape our plates clean.

It’s been three days since Calliope and I reconnected at Podden’s pond, and I’m not ashamed to say that she and I have been doing a whole lot more connecting since. The Cold Fury has been on break until the second round of the playoffs start tomorrow, and we take on the Boston Eagles, and I’ve been splitting my hours between spending time with my dad and hanging with Calliope. While she works at the hospital during the day, I attend team practices and meetings or sit by my dad’s hospital bed as we play cards or watch TV. In the evenings after I eat dinner with my parents, I head over to Calliope’s apartment.

She greets me with open arms, sometimes wearing nothing but some skimpy underwear which I definitely approve of. This is the new Calliope, a woman I’m getting to know all over again. Lingerie wasn’t part of our teenage relationship. That was more about stolen moments when we could get them. But, fuck, I hate thinking about how she learned the art of seducing a man while wearing silk and lace.

I put that out of my mind, which is actually easy because when I’m near her, I’m consumed. To say that sex is different with her is an understatement. Again, it chafes at me hard to know that the things she now knows how to do with her mouth and her body she learned somewhere other than with me. And while Calliope was always forward and adventurous during our young, immature sex life, now she’s openly wanton, and it turns me on more than anything ever has in my life.

Just last night, there was a note on her apartment door when I arrived that said simply: I’m in the bedroom.

What I found in there about had me exploding in my pants.

Let’s just say that Calliope, naked in the middle of her bed, pleasuring herself with a vibrator had me seeing stars. I just stood there, transfixed as she brought herself closer and closer to orgasm. While her eyes were closed as she rolled and gyrated on the bed, that little pink toy between her legs, she knew I was there the entire time. She put on a show for me that drove me fucking nuts, and before I knew it, I was on her.

The toy was flung aside, and my mouth was pressed to her pussy, lapping and sucking at her until she exploded against me with her hands fisted tightly in my hair so she could grind against my face. It was fucking erotic as hell, and when she came down from her high, she looked at me with amazement. “You’ve learned a few things too over the years.”

Fuck if that didn’t rub me raw, too. The fact that we didn’t learn the pleasures of oral sex together.

“So, Rafe,” Mateo says as he picks up his glass of wine and takes a sip. “How does it feel to be playing for the Cold Fury now?”

“Honestly,” I tell him with an easy smile, “it wasn’t a hard adjustment. All the guys on the team are great, and it’s been a seamless transition.”

“You played well in your first games,” he compliments me.

“He should be on the first line,” my dad grumbles, and even though that’s not exactly true, it fills me with a rush of love that my dad has become my most fervent fan. I know he feels like he’s making up for lost time, and I need to let him know how much his words mean to me. But that’s a conversation for later while in private.

Mateo and my dad start talking about the playoffs, while Danielle and my mom discuss planting their spring flowers. They’re both passionate about gardening.

Picking up my wineglass, I sneak a glance across the table at Calliope, who sits directly opposite me beside my mom. Her return look is transparent and makes my blood heat. She’s counting down the minutes until dinner is over, and she and I can be alone together.

“Are you and Calliope back together again?” Mateo asks me, and I’m so startled by the question that I choke on the wine I just took a sip of.

My eyes slam into Mateo’s, and I see the overprotective father I’d been wondering about. I know just how easy he was taking it on me.

His expression is clear, filled with both wonder and suspicion. Will I hurt his little girl again?

I risk a glance at Calliope, and she stares back at me like a deer caught in headlights. We’ve not said a thing to our parents about our sexual affair, although my mom knows full well that I’ve been going to Calliope’s in the evenings. I mean, I couldn’t lie to her when she asked where I was going that first night after Podden’s pond, but she thinks it’s just a newly forming friendship.