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“Whatchoo shoutin’ fooah?”

Fuck me, I loved that accent.

“You have comp’ny. For mercy’s sake, Johnny, put a shirt on!” The woman sighed and put her hands on her hips, shaking her head.

Not on my account,
I thought, trying hard not to stare and not sure exactly where to look if it wasn’t at those delicious nipples. Fuck, his abs were hard, too. He might not be young, but he was still superfit and in better shape than some of the younger dudes I’d been with.

“Hi,” I said, relieved my voice didn’t shake or catch. I couldn’t do anything about the blush, but hoped my cheeks simply looked rosy from the cold and not from embarrassment.

Johnny stared at me. The woman looked from him to me, then back, and sighed. She took the plate of cookies from my hands and held it up to him.

“She brought you cookies,
dummkopf.
You,” she said to me, “take off your coat and sit yourself.”

Her tone showed she was used to being obeyed, but I waited until he stepped off the stairs and all the way into the kitchen before I sat. I didn’t take off my coat, though. Johnny, casting a glance over his shoulder at me, crossed to another door that did prove to be a closet, where he hooked a hooded sweatshirt off the back and put it on. I mourned a little but was relieved at the same time. I was less distracted that way.

“Now, I’m off, finally. Your dinner’s still in the oven and your groceries are all put away. I left your bills on the desk and your other mail in the basket,” the woman said.

“Thank you, Mrs. Espenshade.”

She flapped her hands again. “It’s what you pay me for, ain’t? Now I’m leaving and I’ll be back on Friday to take care of the cleaning. Don’t forget now.”

“I’ll be here,” Johnny said, looking at me.

“I don’t care if you’re here or not. Maybe you should be away, then I could get more done.” She chortled at that and shook her head again. She patted my shoulder as she passed me. “Don’t let him eat them all by himself.”

“Good night, Mrs. Espenshade,” Johnny called after her, but her only reply was the slamming of the front door.

“Hi,” I said again into the painful silence that followed. “I brought cookies. Chocolate chip. They’re homemade.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re better.” I smiled.

He didn’t. He didn’t open them, either. Nor did he sit. Johnny stood against the counter, arms crossed over his chest.

I was too warm in the kitchen with my coat on, my scarf tucked tight around my throat. I didn’t dare unwind it, though. Mrs. Espenshade might’ve welcomed me in, but Johnny definitely wasn’t.

“I mean, why’d you bring me cookies?”

“To say thank you for helping me out the other day. For the tea. Because you had crappy prepackaged cookies and I knew I could give you better.” My voice rose a little with each sentence, and I had to bite off my words to keep from sounding too strident.

Something flickered in his gaze, some indiscernible emotion passed over his mostly impassive face. “Okay. I’ll eat them later.”

He was dismissing me yet again. This time felt even worse, because I’d come bearing gifts. Because I’d thought, somehow, it would make a difference. I got up from the table.

“I live right down the street,” I said, too loud. Too bold.

Again, Johnny’s gaze flickered. “Yeah? It’s a nice street. Lots of people live on it.”

My mouth thinned. “I guess they do.”

Silence stretched between us, but it wasn’t quiet. It was full of the beat of my heart, the hitch and shift of my breath. It was strung tight with tension, thrumming like a plucked guitar string. I moved out from behind the table.

“
My
kitchen has an island,” I said with a lift of my chin that meant nothing to him and everything to me. “I’ll show myself out.”

“I’ll walk you.”

“You really don’t have to. I can find my way.” I spun on my heel and stalked down the hall toward the front door.

Johnny padded after me on bare feet and got there just about the same time I did. It could’ve been because his legs were longer, but I think it was because, despite my insult, I was hanging back in hopes he’d show me some tiny measure of interest. Even a scrap. And realizing this made me so angry I grabbed at the doorknob and yanked, not knowing it was locked. Foiled in my grand exit, I let out a low, angry noise. I turned on him.

“I said I could find my way out.”

Johnny, looking into my eyes, reached around me to unlock the door. My eyes fluttered at his closeness. The brush of his breath on my hair, the heat of his body. I wasn’t too angry to get a little thrill, even though I hated myself for it. I hated more that he could see it on my face, that lust. It didn’t matter if he was used to it. I wasn’t used to it.

“Here,” he said. The lock clicked. He didn’t move away for one interminable second. Then he stepped back, freeing me to move.

“They’re good cookies,” I said flatly. “For whatever that’s worth, which apparently is nothing.”

My voice was hard, and he blinked. “I’m sure they’re great.”

“You’re welcome.” I opened the door.

Cold air rushed in, frigid enough to force the breath from my lungs in a small gasp and bring tears to my eyes. Or maybe it wasn’t the cold air. I drew myself up and forced myself to walk, head high, down his front steps and onto the sidewalk that he’d made sure was heavily salted and ice-free.

When the door didn’t shut behind me, I turned to look back. Johnny stood silhouetted in the doorway, golden in the light spilling out around him. He’d put one hand up high on the door frame, the other on his cocked hip. He had to be cold, what with his feet bare and nothing on beneath his sweatshirt, still mostly unzipped. But he didn’t go inside.

“You know, I thought maybe you didn’t talk to anyone because you were a little shy. Or maybe because you were cautious.”

His head cocked to match his hip. “Oh, yeah?”

I put my hands on my hips. “Yeah. I mean, I know it must be a pain in the ass to have people bugging you when you’re just trying to have a cup of coffee and a muffin.”

“Yeah. That can be a real pain in the ass,” Johnny said slowly.

I narrowed my eyes, wishing I could read his expression. “But you know what?”

“What,” Johnny said, and damned if he didn’t sound amused.

“I don’t think it’s because you’re shy or because too many people bug you, because let’s face it, most people don’t even know who you are anymore. Or they don’t give a damn.”

His shoulders lifted and fell at that—a laugh or a shrug, with his face in shadow I couldn’t tell. “What about you?”

“I know who you are,” I told him.

“Yeah,” Johnny said. “But do you give a damn?”

I turned at that, my fists clenched. Then I turned back and forced myself to say, “Yes. I do.”

“Why?”

I didn’t know why. It was more than the ass, the face, the long-past fame. It wasn’t his art. It wasn’t his house, his money. It wasn’t even his coat or that long scarf I loved.

It was the heat of summer, and it was the taste of him I knew I couldn’t know. It was the feel of his hair in my fingers and his cock up deep inside me, and it was the sound of his voice saying my name when he came.

It was the smell of oranges.

Chapter 09

I
made it home before it took me. To my front porch, anyway, my fingers fumbling with the key in the lock. I wasn’t much for praying, but I did mutter under my breath to whatever entity would listen to at least let me get inside before I went dark.

I opened the door.

I went anything but dark.

Brilliant sunlight blinded me. I threw a hand up over my eyes and stumbled on a floor slick with wax, not ice. I breathed in heat, and a cacophony of sounds and smells assaulted me.

The tang of pot and sting of cigarette smoke pushed aside the smell of oranges. I heard laughter and music and the cry of a child. I blinked, rubbing at my eyes.

I’d gone through the looking glass again, this time right into Johnny’s house. The door hung open behind me. Had I even knocked? Nobody had answered. Nobody seemed to even notice I was there.

I closed my eyes to orient myself, but only for a second. Then I shrugged out of my coat as fast as I could, hung it on a coatrack along with my scarf. I fluffed my hair. I checked my clothes—a pair of boot-cut jeans and a button-up blouse. It wouldn’t pass for seventies summer fashion. I had a cami on underneath, though. The voices in the kitchen rose and fell as I stripped out of it quickly, then with a second thought took off my bra and tucked them both into the sleeve of my coat.

It felt strange, going without a bra. My nipples poked at the soft fabric of my camisole. I felt free but self-conscious.

A baby wearing only a saggy diaper and a white onesie came crawling down the hall as fast as he…or she—I couldn’t tell the gender—could and was followed by a laughing woman with long, dark hair that fell to her waist. She wore a one-piece shorts jumper made of terry cloth in bright yellow. My eyes hurt just looking at it. She scooped up the baby and flubbered its belly until the baby screamed with laughter, while I stood, awkward and caught.

“Oh, hey,” she said languidly when she caught sight of me. “Who’re you?”

“Emm.”

“Sandy.” She hitched the baby onto her hip and held out a limp hand for me to shake. “Groovy.”

I wasn’t sure if this was a greeting or a statement on my clothes, or maybe just a philosophical observation. “Um, I’m looking for Johnny.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s cool. He’s in there, back in the kitchen, you know. Unless he owes you money or something.” She had a strange, nasally voice, an accent like his. On her it wasn’t quite as charming.

“Thanks.” I didn’t want to push past her, especially since she was now studying me up and down.

“Whadja say your name was?”

“Emm.”

“Emm.” Sandy looked a little blank for a second. “We never met before, did we?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

She shrugged and hitched the squirming baby higher. The scent of dirty diaper wafted toward me and I took an unconscious step back. Sandy wrinkled her nose.

“Gee, all this kid does is eat, sleep and shit. I guess I’d better give her a bath.” Sandy moved past me and up the stairs, babbling baby talk.

I went to the kitchen with my heart pounding and palms moist. I was already smiling in anticipation when I saw him. He was sitting in the windowsill, tipping beer in a brown bottle to his lips, a cigarette in one hand. He’d held his hair off his face today with a red bandanna folded into a thick band.

He was so beautiful it hurt to look at him.

He stopped in midlaugh and jumped off the windowsill when I came into the room. He put his beer down and stuck the cigarette in the throat of the bottle. The room fell silent as everyone turned to look at me. Candy was there, not at the stove this time. And Bellina, along with a bunch of people I didn’t know. Ed fixed me with an intense look, cutting off his own words before turning to face the woman he was talking to. Weird, but I wasn’t paying that much attention to him.

“Johnny,” I said, breathless.

“Emm.” He moved toward me like nobody else was even there.

His hand fit perfectly around the back of my neck. He tasted of beer and smoke when he kissed me, and somehow it wasn’t disgusting but just right. His tongue stroked in and out of me; my knees went weak. I didn’t care that we weren’t alone. I didn’t care that his hand was on my ass, kneading, or that he’d pulled me up close to him.

“Hey,” he said, sounding a little breathless himself when he broke the kiss.

Our faces were very close together. I fell into the depths of his eyes and swam there for a bit as everything stopped and started around us. He smiled. I smiled, too.

“You came back,” he said. “Thought I’d never see you again.”

I had no good answer for that, so I kissed him again. “So, you’re glad to see me?”

“Hell, yes. You ran outta here so fast last time I never got your number.”

“Oh…” I hesitated. Everyone had gone back to their own discussions, not paying attention to us in the doorway. “I don’t really have a number.”

Johnny shrugged. “Oh, yeah, that’s cool. Ours got turned off a while back, too. Paul says he’ll get it turned on next time he gets paid for a gig.”

“If you don’t have a phone,” I whispered into his ear, giddy from this, “how were you going to call me?”

Johnny nuzzled into me. “Phone booth down the street.”

“Ah.” Of course. Phone booths. A little dizzy all at once, I clutched him to keep from swaying. I was reminded of the TV show
Life on Mars,
about the cop who gets shot and wakes up in the 1970s while his body’s in a coma in present-tense time.

I wasn’t in a coma…not quite. But I wasn’t sure how much time I had. I looked over his shoulder, but nobody was paying attention to us. They all had their own thing going on, which made sense, didn’t it? I didn’t need them. I just needed him.

“Take me upstairs,” I said into his ear, and tugged his lobe between my teeth.

“You want to split? I can dig that.”

I snickered. I couldn’t help it. “Dig it” was so quaint, so seventies sitcom. So…sort of sexy, really, when he said it, not like he was trying to toss around slang for effect but like that’s just how it came out. Natural. Everything about him was natural.

“You’re so different,” I told him in the hallway as he linked his fingers with mine.

Johnny gave me a glance. “Than what?”

“Never mind.” I couldn’t explain that I meant he was different than himself. “I like it.”

His grin lit up his face. He put his hand on the newel post and swung around a little, one foot on the stairs. “Where’ve you been, anyway? I looked all over for you. You don’t live around here, huh? You just visiting again?”

“Just visiting,” I agreed.

We stopped to kiss at the top of the stairs. My fingers tangled in the silk of his hair. I tugged the bandanna free so his hair fell over his eyes, and when I kissed him the fringes tickled my face.

“You are something, all right,” Johnny said in a low, mystified voice.

I remembered where his bedroom was, but stopped at the doorway as Sandy came out toting the baby on her hip. She paused and looked at both of us blankly. Then she shrugged and held out the baby for Johnny to look at.

“I gave her a bath and everything. Now I’m gonna feed her a bottle.”

His arm slid around my waist and held me tight against him, hip to hip. “Yeah, sure, that’s great.”

Sandy pursed her lips and shook her head a little. “Well, see ya.”

Inside the bedroom, the door closed, we made our way to the bed where I pushed him back and he fell down onto it, bouncing a little before pushing himself up on his elbows to look at me. I pulled my camisole off over my head and stood bare-breasted in front of him. I tugged open the zipper of my jeans, toed off my shoes, pushed down the denim along with my plain cotton panties and stood before him naked.

I’d never felt so beautiful as I did at that moment, with Johnny’s gaze upon me. Never before, but always, always after. When he looked at me, it didn’t matter if I felt rounder in places than I wanted to be, or if my breasts weren’t of pornstar proportions. It was the time, I thought, cupping them and flicking my thumbs over my nipples to get them hard. Back then women could be normal-size.

There was something else different about the women he was used to. Johnny’s gaze focused on my pussy, which I’d shaved just a few nights before. Not bare—I hated feeling as if I looked like a schoolgirl. I’m a woman, and women have hair. But I had trimmed my bikini area and left a landing strip, mostly for convenience rather than fashion, since I was due to get my period in a few days.

Johnny dragged his hand across his mouth, pulling at his lips and leaving them sheened with saliva. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he was at the perfect height when I moved to stand between his legs. His hands found my ass as he looked up at me, eyes a little glazed.

Drunk, I thought. But not from the beer he’d been drinking when I found him in the kitchen. Drunk on me.

I ran my hand over his head and tugged off the bandanna. I tossed it onto the bed. His hair fell over the back of my hand when I wove my fingers in it. My fingers tightened in it, and I pulled to tip his head back.

“Johnny.” I said it just to say it. Just because I could.

“Yeah, baby.” His voice was low and throaty. Full of sex.

“Johnny, Johnny, Johnny…” Laughing, I tipped his head back farther.

He laughed, too. His hands moved, stroking my ass, the dimples at the small of my back, my upper thighs. “Yeah, Emm. I’m right here.”

“So am I.”

“I see that.” When I released him from my grip, he nuzzled against my breasts and found my nipples with his mouth. He sucked gently, one and the other, and looked up with a grin when I gasped. “You like that, huh?”

“Yes.” A sudden, vivid memory of him saying those exact words in one of his films came back to me. My cunt pulsed. “Does that make me a whore?”

I said it in my Central Pennsylvania accent, hard on the
r
at the end. Nothing like the way he said it. Johnny paused in exploring my breasts to look up at me again, brow furrowed. “A what?”

“A…whore,” I said, my voice gone breathy with painfully urgent excitement.

“A…whore?”

Fuck. The way he said it made the Fourth of July explode in my pussy. I bit my lower lip and still couldn’t quite keep in the gasp. “God.”

His chuckle sounded perplexed. His hands stopped roaming for a moment on my rear. “Do
you
think you’re a whore?”

A hooah.
“Christ, that shouldn’t be so fucking sexy,” I said.

Johnny blinked, ducking his head for a moment as his shoulders shook with laughter. “That turns you on, huh?”

“Yes. Say it again.”

He stopped laughing when he looked up at me. Something dark skittered in those green-brown eyes. He licked his mouth, wiped the back of it with his hand again. His voice got lower. “You wanna be a whore for me?”

I didn’t want to be a whore for anyone. I just wanted to hear him say it. I wanted to see him look at me that way. My fist tightened in his hair again. This time, he winced.

His hands gripped my hips, hard. “That it? That what you like?”

“You make me like it.”

He was stronger than I’d expected. I was on my back on the bed in half a second, my hands pinned above my head while Johnny looked down into my face. His denim-clad thigh rocked slowly on my bare cunt. The rough fabric sent shivers of pleasure throughout me—or maybe it was just his eyes, his mouth. His voice.

“You like that? Huh?”

“I like it.”

He nudged his thigh a little higher. “Does that get you wet for me?”

“Yes,” I breathed.

I never spoke out like that, but this, I reminded myself, wasn’t real. It was all fantasy. All made up. All of this was nothing more than some misfiring neurons in my mangled brain.

With the hand not holding my wrists, Johnny yanked open his belt. He shifted. I arched my back, tipping my hips, waiting for him to enter me—but he surprised me instead. Johnny moved his mouth down my body, over the slopes of my breasts and belly. He slid his hands beneath my ass and lifted me to his mouth, his tongue stroking over my clit before he fasted his lips there and sucked gently.

I shuddered and said his name. Johnny said nothing, just got to the business of eating my pussy.

I’d never seen this in any of the movies.

Oh, they’d hinted at his oral prowess. Soft-focus shots of women writhing as he lapped at their skin. Off-centered shots of his head at waist-level, then cuts of the women’s faces contorted in ecstasy, all of them crying out his name. But none of the movies had actually shown him licking and sucking between their legs. I had no images to call on.

This was all me.

He did it with his eyes closed. He made small groaning noises. The sound a man makes when he feasts on something delicious, a meal that completely sates his hunger. He sampled my clit for a while before sliding a finger inside. Then two. I cried out.

“So fucking wet,” Johnny muttered against me.

Pleasure coiled spring-tight in my belly. Heat rose, flushing up my chest and throat to my cheeks. His mouth burned on me. Electric. I shifted my hips under him, unable to stay still.

I didn’t notice how he’d pushed his jeans down, only that he had. I tasted myself on his mouth when he kissed me. My mouth was already open when I gasped as he entered me, and I drew in his breath and made it my own.