“You don’t need your parents to tell you they’re proud of you. You know why?”
“Because you’re proud of me?”
“Because you’re proud of yourself. Aren’t you?”
“Well...”
“Aren’t you, Clover? I would be. I’d have already called every person in my phone to crow about it. You are allowed to be proud of yourself.”
“I am proud of myself.”
“Hell, yes, you are.”
He held out his hand for her to slap it in a high five, and she saw he hadn’t been kidding about his bleeding palms. He had a blister on his hand that had broken open.
“Oh, my God, Erick. You really are horny.”
“It’s fine. One blister. Put a little alcohol on it and a Band-Aid and I’ll be good to go.”
“How’s your other hand?”
“Don’t look. Please. I’m trying to get laid here.”
“You’re still going to get laid. The thing you suggested we do last night doesn’t require hands. Well, it doesn’t require your hands. Your hands are supposed to be tied up to the bedpost.”
“Row faster, Clover. Row like the wind.”
Clover had never rowed faster in her life.
11
ERICK WOKE UP on Wednesday morning to the prettiest sight he’d ever seen in his life. The first hints of dawn had started peeking over the trees and spreading sunlight across the lake. And there was Clover, her pale hair down and around her shoulders, kneeling on the edge of the bed with a white sheet wrapped around her, watching the sunrise through the wall of windows in front of their bed. As she watched the sunrise, he watched her.
A long slant of light slid across the dock and slipped into the bottom set of windows. The white sheets turned gold, and like a cat, Clover stretched out into the light, lying on her side and facing the lake. Erick crawled over to her and without a word spooned up behind her, kissing her naked neck and shoulders. They were leaving the cabin in a couple hours so they should make the most of the bed and the view and each other while they could.
“You’re in the manly way again,” Clover said.
“Am I? Sorry. It’s all the cedar,” he said, and she chuckled.
She started to roll over to face him and he stopped her with a hand on her hip.
“Stay where you are,” he said. “Don’t miss the sunrise. First good one we’ve had all week.”
Clover stayed on her side facing the windows and Erick kept kissing her back and running his fingers through her hair. No doubt about it, he was hopelessly addicted to this woman. He’d been relieved to an embarrassing degree yesterday when Clover said she wanted to keep seeing him after this week. He congratulated himself on playing it cool, but he’d been dancing with happiness on the inside. As long as he could get through Thanksgiving without doing something spectacularly stupid like calling all her immediate family assholes to their faces, they could maybe, just maybe, have something very special here.
Erick ran his hand over Clover’s soft stomach and her hips and thighs. She breathed softly and with pleasure at his touch. He’d done everything he could to help her make up for lost time this week. There wasn’t an inch of her body he hadn’t touched or kissed, a sexual position they hadn’t at least attempted or a fantasy they hadn’t talked about. He couldn’t believe she’d actually tied his hands to the bed yesterday after they got back from rowing. Most women he’d dated had been uncomfortable with that sort of thing, which he told Clover. She’d replied, saying, “How will I know if I like it or not unless I try it at least once?” And sin
ce he didn’t have a good answer to that question, they’d blissfully decided to try it all.
But this morning all he wanted to do was make love to her while the sun rose and the lake woke up all around them. He lifted Clover’s leg and draped it back over his thigh. With his fingers he tested her wetness, making sure she was ready for him. They’d had sex late last night and she still felt damp and open. She took his fingers inside her easily and with a soft moan of pleasure. He rubbed the head of his cock against her outer lips as he teased her clitoris with his fingers. Just as the sun flooded the room with light, he entered her deeply and with a long slow thrust.
He groaned as he went into her. Her heat was pure bliss wrapped around his cock. In this position he couldn’t thrust hard or fast, which was fine by him. He thrust gently and leisurely instead, taking all the time in the world because he could do this the rest of his life as long as it was with Clover.
“You’re so hot inside,” he whispered into her ear between sucks and nibbles on her earlobe. “I love your pussy.”
“It loves you,” she said.
He slid his other arm under and around her and took both of her breasts in his hands and squeezed them as he pumped his hips into her. Clover moaned, arching her back to take more of him. Erick loved how much she loved his cock and wasn’t afraid to show it and say it and enjoy every inch of it. As the sun showed its full face over the top of the tree line and the glorious peak of Mount Hood glowed in the distance, Erick rolled onto his back, dragging Clover with him and on top of him. He licked his two fingers and rubbed her where they joined. She was so wet, wet and swollen, swollen and throbbing. With his other hand he pinched her nipples lightly, caressed them, pulled them, anything to keep Clover breathing like that, like she was on the edge of coming and wanted to live on that edge. They both were at the edge of something terrifying and beautiful like that ancient active volcanic peak rising up over the lake. Erick rolled his pelvis to deepen the penetration and Clover gasped, a sound of unbridled ecstasy. He felt her orgasm on his fingertips as a thousand nerve endings exploded all at once. Hearing it and feeling it was too much. His head came off the bed and his stomach tightened to the point of pain. He lost all control and released inside her, flooding her until his own semen dripped out of her and back onto him. It was dirty and sexy all at once and he doubted Clover had any idea how much it meant to him that she let him come inside her body, how much it meant that she didn’t simply let him, that she wanted him to, that she liked it no matter how messy it was. Life was messy and he wanted life with this woman, a long and messy and happy one.