Five Minute Man: A Contemporary Love Story (20 page)

“Merry Christmas Eve, Holly,” he said, his voice thick.

“Merry Christmas Eve, Adam,” she said in that low, musical voice of hers. “Would you like to come in?”

“Yes, thanks,” he said, stomping his feet to get the snow off before stepping inside. He was immediately met with a push of warm, soft fur against his hand. “Hey Max,” he said, indulging the dog with a rub.

“He missed you,” Holly said softly.

“I missed him, too,” Adam said, meaning it.

Adam straightened and cleared his throat before reaching down into his pocket and extracting the contents. “You gave me a gift,” he said, “so it seemed only fitting that I give you one in return.”

Holly stared at the small package for several long seconds, but made no move to take it. It wasn’t fancy, just a crinkled sheet of white paper folded around a box. Looking at it now, Adam realized he’d actually done a pretty shitty job of it. Hell, he wasn’t Martha Fucking Stewart. And he couldn’t help it if his hands were shaking like crazy when he’d wrapped it.

“Go on,” he coaxed. “Take it.”

“You didn’t have to,” she said, but she reached for it anyway. He took some small pleasure in the fact that her delicate hands were trembling a little, too. At least he wasn’t the only one.

“Yeah, I did.”

She carefully pulled away the tape, just as he had done, revealing a small black velvet box. Her attention, however, was focused on the inside of the paper she’d just unfolded. It was the last chapter of the book she’d left him.

He heard her sharp intake of breath as she read the words. He, of course, already knew what they said. “To be determined” had been crossed off and beneath it had been written “and they lived happily ever after”.

Tears welled in her eyes as she looked up at him. “Open it,” he commanded.

Holly did. She lifted the hinged lid of the little black velvet box and gasped at the sight of a beautiful radiant cut diamond engagement ring, flanked by stunning, smaller emeralds and set in custom white gold setting.

“Marry me, Holly.”

No flowery words, no romantic poetry, just a heartfelt request.

Some might have thought Adam was taking a gamble. After all, he and Holly had only spent a couple of weeks together before spending the next several months apart under some very unpleasant circumstances. But he knew better. There was not a doubt in his mind that this was exactly the way things were meant to be, because he’d read her story. And in her written word, he’d seen her heart. Her pain. Her love. Her forgiveness. And he knew the depth of her feelings were only rivalled by his own.

“Yessss,” she whispered through the tears.

Adam released the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Before she had a chance to change her mind, he slipped the ring onto her finger and crushed her mouth to his. She’d said yes. And he was never going to let her out of his arms again.

***

G
od, how she’d missed this. Missed him.

It had all become clear to her when she’d started writing her story.
Their
story. She loved him. Adam was the other half of her soul, and without him, she was miserable. Once she allowed herself to accept that, everything else fell into place.

The last six months had been hell, but they had made her realize what was truly important. And as the details of what Eve had done and the extent of her illness had become known, Holly was ashamed that she had not given Adam the benefit of the doubt. She’d been so devastated, so ready to believe that he had betrayed her, that she hadn’t been able to look past her own heartbreak and see that he, too, had been hurt.

Thank God he was willing to give her another chance, because she would never make that mistake again.

Holly tugged off Adam’s coat and blindly managed to hook it on the coat rack. The rest of his clothing did not fare quite as well. Individual garments, both his and hers, were unceremoniously removed and dropped as Adam used his much larger body to push her farther into the house.

“Fuck, I missed you,” Adam said, breaking away from her mouth, breathing every bit as heavily as she was.

“Less talking,” she demanded, pulling him down onto the strategically placed nest of blankets on the floor in front of the fire. She didn’t think he’d noticed, consuming her as he was, but she was wrong.

“Expecting someone?” he growled, settling his heavy weight over her. She was prevented from answering right away as his hand cupped her possessively between the legs and his mouth created a trail of liquid fire beneath her jaw, down the column of her neck, finally latching
hard
onto her breast. God, she needed him so fucking much. More than she had ever needed anyone or anything in her entire life.

“Hoping,” she breathed, tangling her fingers in his hair and pulling him closer. “Praying. Wishing.”

He grunted his approval, releasing one nipple with a loud pop and roughly taking the other one. There was no slow seduction here, nor did she want it. She wanted it rough, hard, and fast. She wanted her Five Minute Man.

She felt his finger stroking her folds, once, twice, before plunging deep inside her. Her body arched up, offering itself to him if he would only just keep doing
that
.

Seconds later, she was gasping, already on the precipice, when he replaced his skilled fingers with the blunt head of his turgid shaft. “Yes!” she half-cried, half-screamed, needing him inside her more than she needed her next breath.

Adam obliged, plunging into her with one powerful thrust. Her sex clenched around him greedily, starved for that which only he could provide.

“Fuck!” he roared out above her. “Forget five minutes, baby. I’m not going to last five fucking seconds...”

Nine Months Later

––––––––

H
olly shifted in her chair again, trying to relieve some of the ache that had been plaguing her lower back for the last two hours. She smiled and greeted the seemingly unending stream of people lined up to get her to sign their books. Closing her eyes briefly, she tried to imagine Adam’s strong hands massaging her, feeling instantly better.

As of that morning,
Five Minute Man
had been among the top ten most requested downloads on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The recent publicity had resulted in a surge of demand for her previously published books as well. Holly declined nearly all the appearance requests she received on a daily basis now, but this was a special favor to the local bookstore that had been supporting her and showcasing her works all along.

“I loved this,” confided one rosy-cheeked grandmother to Holly, her crystal blue eyes sparkling. Eyes that looked remarkably like her son’s.

“Too bad it’s not real,” sighed a much younger, doe-eyed woman in line behind her.

“Oh, but it is,” the older woman said emphatically before Holly could comment.

“Really?” the brunette asked doubtfully.

“Oh, yes. It was like that for me and my Charlie,” she beamed, then turned to Holly. “And you, too, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Holly confirmed, smiling back at her. Knowing that her mother-in-law had read their personal (and occasionally explicit) love story probably would have been more awkward if the woman wasn’t such an open-minded, self-professed fan of Holly’s work. The two had often chatted late into the night about possible plots and themes and alpha males, while Adam and his father puttered around the cottage. The fact that Adam’s mother was here now, when Holly’s own mother was too embarrassed to do the same, warmed her heart.

Of course, some of that might have to do with the fact that Holly was already three days past her due date and Adam had enlisted his entire family’s assistance to ensure she was never out of their sight. He was so protective that way, and Holly loved him for it.

“Wow. You are so lucky.”

“Yes,” Holly agreed, rubbing her distended belly as the first real labor pain hit. “Yes, I am.”

Y
ou know, it’s funny where the seed for a story originates sometimes. In my case, I never know where my next idea will come from. Sometimes it starts as a dream; other times, I hear a song and the lyrics create an alternate reality. In the case of “Five Minute Man”, the impetus was the following blurb on the Urban Dictionary website:

ass-tag convention

word of the day: September 21, 2013

The accepted standard that the tagged side of a towel is for designated nether-regions while the non-tagged side is reserved for the face and hair. This convention is used to avoid cross-contamination and is to be assumed as general practice. Practical in situations where one must use a borrowed or foreign towel.

"I forgot my towel in the shower and had to use my roommates. Hopefully he observes the ass-tag convention."

Let me just say, I’m a big fan of the site. With three teenagers in the house, it’s a parental guide of epic potential. An unlikely source of literary fiction perhaps, but hey, if I could create “Faerie Godmother” based on the lyrics of Alice Cooper’s song
Poison
, it’s not inconceivable that I could come up with a short story based on this. I maintain that UrbanDictionary.com is a virtual wealth of untapped secret hipster knowledge. And while I can guarantee that none of my stories will ever feature an Alabama Tuna Melt or a Dirty Sanchez, I reserve the right to surf and peruse at my leisure.

So how did something as innocuous as the “ass-tag convention” become a story? Well, it’s just one of those things that kind of stuck in my head. First, I wondered what, if any, harm I was bringing to my family by being one of those women who tends to cut the tags off of things. I mean, it’s kind of impossible to have an ass-tag convention if there’s no tag, right? But then I soothed my own guilty conscience by telling myself that with a husband, three teenagers, and a massive Labrador who thinks he’s a human – wiping a clean behind is probably one of the least offensive uses of a towel (and it’s not like anyone ever actually hangs them up to be used again anyway).

Guilty conscience assuaged, I began to wonder who would actively employ the ass-tag convention. Male or female? Young or old? Someone concerned with hygiene, obviously. Someone not overly touchy-feelie, who likes to set definitive personal limits. A character started to form in my mind – a woman, past youthful ambivalence chronologically and on the cusp of middle-age mentally. Adorably prickly but soft at heart. Pretty and natural but not beautiful. A woman who, through both nature and nurture, preferred to distance herself from the world, to create and be content with her own little bubble of existence.

As with all my stories, I added in a few snippets from my own life. My love of animals, and my profound belief that almost any dog is worth a dozen humans. Regular GNOs with my BFF to keep me sane and talk about things that no respectable wife or mother should probably talk about over Under 550 menus and unsweetened iced teas. A love of reading and writing romantic and erotic fiction that provides an escape, allows me to lose myself in alternate worlds cruelly hinted at by professional taunters like Walt Disney and goddesses like Lora Leigh and Sherrilyn Kenyon.

Which is where the whole five-minute man thing came in.

Fantasy? Sure. But we all need something to believe in. And when we outgrow Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, when we realize the hot guy in the famous boy band is NOT going to spot us back in the hundred and seventeenth row and profess his true love, when we get out on our own and realize that men are not the perfect creatures we’ve always dreamed of, we find ourselves looking for that next thing that we can close our eyes and fantasize about.

Like Holly, when I write, I create a world I’d like to live in, with people I’d like to hang out with. When I read my favorite authoresses, I enter into their worlds. Their works are my mind’s vacation from my outside-the-home job and laundry and dishes and scrubbing bathrooms and worrying over ass-tag conventions and the long-term psychological damage I’m inflicting on my kids without realizing it. Their stories give me a place to go, something to think about, when I’m waiting or driving or doing any of the thousand things wives and mothers are supposed to do.

Hopefully, reading Five Minute Man was a little mini-vaca for you, too.