Mid Life Love (22 page)

He broke away
and pulled my sweater over my head. Pressing his lips against mine, he
whispered, “Have you ever had sex in the rain?” He started ripping the buttons
off my soaked shirt.

I shivered as
the cold air hit my bare skin. “No...”

“Are you sure?”

I nodded.

“Me either...Until
today that is.”

I gasped and
untangled myself from his embrace, ignoring the heated glare he was now giving
me. “Are you kidding me? Do you have any regard for
privacy
? At all?” I
took several steps alongside the railing, making sure I was far out of his
reach. 

“Get back over
here.
Now
.”

“What if another
yacht rolls by and sees us? What if someone from your crew comes up here
looking for you and sees us having sex?”

“He’ll record it
and put it on YouTube.”

“I’m not joking!
You don’t find that inappropriate?”

“Can I buy you a
thesaurus
?”

I rolled my
eyes. “I know you’re used to pushing the envelope, but you have to admit that—”

“My crew never
bothers me, and do you see any other ships coming our way?” He stepped towards
me before I could get away, pressing me against the railing again. “As a matter
of fact, have you seen
any
ships sailing today?”

“No...”

“
No
?” He
reached behind my back and popped my bra snaps. “Why do you think that is?”

“It’s
Sunday...People don’t sail until the late afternoon?”

“Sunday is
actually
the best day
for people to sail.” He flung my bra across the
deck. “And they start sailing early. There were over three hundred yachts
docked at the port we left and not a single one of them is setting sail today.
Why is that the case?”

I could see my
breaths suspending in the air amidst the raindrops, could feel my nipples
hardening in the cold. I covered my breasts with my hands and shrugged. “Too
foggy?”

He popped the
button off my pants and yanked them down. He ripped my panties off with one
hand and tossed them out into the sea. “
Try again
.”

“Because...” I was
withering under his ‘I’m too angry to play games with you’ stare. “Because...You
paid
all those people not to sail today?”

“
I did
.
Because the woman I’m dating insists on keeping our relationship a secret for
some strange ass reason. I think she’s scared to admit that she really is
ashamed of me.”

I sighed. “For
the umpteenth time, I’m not ashamed of you. I just don’t want other people—”

He bit down on
my lips. Hard. “If you’ve fulfilled your ‘I-must-be-difficult-with-Jonathan’
quota for the day, I would like to end this date properly—and by
properly
I mean fucking you against this railing until you can’t walk.”

“I—”

“Or
talk
...”

I gasped. My
knees had already gone weak from him saying those words.

“I like you
a
lot
, Claire. I really do.” He pulled a condom out of his pocket and let his
pants fall to the deck. “Stop trying to fight it... It’s okay for you to like me
back.”

“I never said
that I didn’t like—”

He crushed his
lips onto mine and lifted me onto the small ledge that jutted out from the
middle of the railing. He spread my legs apart and drove his dick inside of me
with one thrust—filling me with every thick inch all at once.

He grabbed onto
the slippery railing above my head and moved in and out of me, keeping his lips
attached to mine, preventing me from crying out in pleasure.

The rain started
to pick up speed, started to unleash heavier drops on us, but he didn’t seem to
care. He kept punishing me with his slow thrusts, kissing me senseless,
ignoring the hard scratches I was leaving against his back.

I moaned against
his mouth, begging him to stop kissing me so I could breathe, but he didn’t. He
made love to my lips, exploring every inch of them with his tongue.

I felt our hips
jerking at the exact same time and felt a scream rising up my throat, but he
muffled my mouth with another kiss that pushed me even further to the edge.

I can’t
breathe...I can’t breathe...

He let my lips
go for a split second, to say, “Let go” and my body convulsed and shook—every
nerve ran wild and exploded.

“
Jonathan
...”
I caught one breath and fell into his arms. I felt him pushing me back against the
railing, felt him pulling out of me. “I think I need to—”

“Stop talking.”

“But I—”

“
Do. Not.
Say. Another. Word
.” He narrowed his eyes at me. He reached down to the
deck for his pants and pulled out another condom.  “You don’t need to say
anything for the rest of the day.”

J
onathan

A
few weeks later...

I watched
Claire’s chest rise and fall as she lay on my couch. She’d fallen asleep
minutes after we had sex against my office windows.

I brought my
hand to her face and pushed a few stray hairs off her forehead, smiling at how
beautiful she was, how peaceful she looked.

She wasn’t
wearing any make-up today, and for the first time I realized that she had light
freckles on each of her cheeks, that her long and full eye lashes naturally
bowed upwards. And I’d kissed her lips thousands of times, but I’d never
noticed the tiny tan mole above her top lip.

Why didn’t I
notice her before this year? We had to have crossed paths at least once...

I wasn’t sure
what was going on between us, but whatever it was I didn’t want it stop; it was
like nothing I’d ever felt before.

The women I’d
been with in the past were mostly a means to pass the time, a way to fill my
days with something steady until I was bored or driven away by their erratic
behavior. But Claire never bored me, never annoyed me—even when she was
frustrating the shit out of me.

I trailed my
fingertips against her mouth and her eyes fluttered open.

“Hi.”

“Hi...” She
blinked and slowly sat up. “Do you get aroused by watching me sleep?”

“No, but if you
didn’t snore so much maybe I would.”

She rolled her
eyes and tapped her shoulder, her way of saying she was ready for me to put her
clothes back on.

I picked her bra
up from the floor and clasped it around her back. I stared at it for a few
seconds, looking at the black lace that covered the cups, at the red silk that
lined the edges. I looked down and realized that her panties were an exact
match.

How cute...

“Is this a new
bra?” I slid the straps over her shoulder. “I’ve never seen you wear this one
before.”

“You think I
bought brand new lingerie just for you?”

“Did you?”

“No.” She leaned
over and reached for her shirt. “Sorry to break it to you, but you’re not that
special...I found this in my closet yesterday while I was cleaning it out, and
I—”

I reached around
her and gently ripped the small white tag that was hanging from the side. I
held it in front of her and smiled. “Next time you happen to
find
something in your closet, make sure you cut the tag off first.”

Her face turned
bright red.

“I love it.” I
kissed her right strap and helped her into her shirt. “Would you like to go out
to dinner tonight? Anywhere you want—and
yes
, we can arrange to sit in a
private room.”

She didn’t say
anything. She just sat there blushing.

“Claire?”

“I can’t...I have
to be home by eight tonight. I’m helping the girls make cupcakes for a bake
sale.”

“A bake sale?
For what?”

“For the
cheerleading squad.” She put on her pants. “All twenty of them are going to be
there tonight and I need to make sure my house doesn’t burn down.”

“Hmmm. Do your
daughters know you’re dating me?”

“Not yet...”

Of course not...
“Okay, since we
can’t do dinner, let’s make use of what little time we have.”

“How about watching
a movie at your place? I think that would get me back in time.”

“No. I have a
much better idea.” I stood up and grabbed her blazer off the coat rack. “How do
you feel about pizza?”

“
Pizza
?”

“Yes. It’s a
popular dish made from dough, tomato sauce, and cheese. It’s baked in an oven
and sold in boxes all over the world.”

She smiled. “You
don’t strike me as a take-out pizza type of guy.”

“Who said
anything about
take-out
?”

––––––––

C
laire tossed
another ball of dough into the air and smashed it with her hands, making a gust
of flour float across the air and fall onto my floor. Then she giggled like a
child.

I shook my head.
“It doesn’t take much to entertain you does it?”

“I’m not the one
who suggested we make pizza from scratch...My mom used to do this with me and
my—” She stopped. “She would get all the best stuff from the store and we’d
waste a whole Saturday baking five or six huge pizzas.”

“Sounds like
fun.”

“It was...”

The oven’s timer
went off and I slipped an oven mitt on my hand. I carefully pulled the pepperoni
and spinach pizza off the rack and set it down on the island.

I felt Claire
moving behind me and turned around. “What are you doing?”

“I was going to
pour us both a glass of wine.” She held up the glasses and her eyes met mine.
“You don’t want one?”

“Yes...” My
heartbeat started to speed up.

“Is red okay
with you?”

“It’s perfect...”

We both stood
still and stared at each other, not moving, not saying anything. The second
alarm for the breadsticks was blaring, but neither of us made an attempt to
shut it off.

I closed the gap
between us and wrapped an arm around her hips, looking down into her gorgeous
green eyes, pretending not to notice how loudly her heart was thumping against
her chest.

She reached up
and placed her arms around my neck, pressing her body tightly against mine,
standing on her toes to reach my lips.

I bent down to kiss
her—watching her close her eyes, watching her take a short breath in
anticipation, but then I stopped. 

Fuck...

I cleared my
throat. “We should eat.”

She opened her
eyes and stepped back. “Yeah, you’re right...” She walked around me and grabbed a
bottle of wine.

I waited until
she sat down and we ate our food in our own special silence—though at this
point, I wasn’t even sure if it could really be called “silence.” All we had to
do was look at each other to have a conversation, words weren’t really necessary.

I could tell
when she was thinking about work, when she was thinking about us, or when she
was putting on her best poker face to pretend like she wasn’t thinking about
me.

She put down her
pizza crust and sighed. “Where do you buy your wine?”

“What do you
mean?”

“You have a wine
room in every place you’ve showed me, even on your yachts. But none of the
brands are domestic and I know my wine. You can’t buy most of your collection
in America.”

I smiled. “Very
astute. I stock up on most of it twice a year. I go to a collector’s vineyard
in France. I’ll take you there on my jet this summer.”

“Okay...” She
looked off to the side, like she always did when she doubted something, when
she was analyzing us.

“What is it now,
Claire? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing...”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

I set my plate
down and walked over. “I need to ask you another personal question, a
very
personal question.”

“Okay...” She
sipped her wine. “Go ahead.”

“We’ve been
having sex since what? Late January? It’s about to be May...”

“That’s not a
question.”

“I can’t think
of one week when we didn’t have sex at least once.”

“Also not a
question.”

“Why haven’t you
gotten your period?”

She spluttered
her wine into the air. “
What
?”

“You heard me.”
I wrapped my arms around her waist. “I’m not complaining. I just want to know
why you’ve never mentioned anything about your time of the month.”

“Oh my god! You
ask the
worst
personal—”

“And you always
try to change the subject. I’m waiting...”

“I can’t believe
you’re asking me about
menstruation
! Do you have any sense of shame or—”

“
Claire
...”

“Ugh...” She shook
her head. “I was really depressed after my divorce. I can’t put
how
depressed
into words, but... I couldn’t get out of bed, I had to force myself
to eat, and I... I just couldn’t function...So um, after I’d lost about ten pounds
from wasting away, I made myself go to the doctor and he prescribed some
antidepressants. One of the side effects was irregular periods and—Do I really
need to go into this?”

“You do. I need
to know.”

She sighed. “I
got my period every day for the first two months and they swore that was
typical for first time dosage. Then I got it for six more months, and then it
just stopped. I kept taking the medicine for a year after that, but when I
decided to stop, it never came back...They ran test after test and said that
everything was normal, that I was perfectly fine. They said that I may
experience spotting from time to time, but I’ll probably never get a full
period again.
Happy
?”

“
Ecstatic
.”

She rolled her
eyes and stepped out of my embrace. “Which picture is of your sister Hayley?”
She walked towards the fireplace.

“The one on the
left.”

“She looks just
like you...” She took the picture off the mantle and looked at it. She didn’t say
anything, but I knew why she was scrutinizing it.

At first glance,
Hayley was just a beautiful blue eyed girl in a yellow sundress. But upon
further notice, you could see the hundreds of red lined scars and cuts that sat
on her wrists; they completely covered her arms.

“That’s the main
reason why I can’t forgive my parents so easily...” I cleared my throat. “Hayley
started cutting herself once we were put in separate foster homes. That’s how
she dealt with not having any family around...I’ve paid to have the majority of
the marks removed, but she insists on keeping the ones on her arms.”

“I’m so sorry...Is
that a Scrabble necklace she’s wearing?”

I smiled. “It
is. She’s the captain of her school’s Scrabble team. Fifty thousand dollars in
tuition every year, and she wants to play Scrabble. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

She laughed. “Do
you two play when she visits you?”

“There wouldn’t
be a point. She’d beat me in seconds. The only game I can beat her in is
Monopoly, but only because that’s my favorite game.”

“Ashley and
Caroline beat me at that all the time. Even when I cheat.”

“On family game
night?”

“Yeah...” She put
the picture back on the shelf and slowly walked over to me, giving me a look
that would make me do anything for her. Then she leaned in for a kiss.

I wanted to kiss
her back,
needed
to kiss her back, but I didn’t.

I turned away
and sighed. “It’s seven thirty. I should take you home now.”

––––––––

I
pulled my
Murcielago outside of her house and turned off the engine. “Greg parked your
car three houses down. Is that alright?”

“Yes...”

“Okay. Well,
I’ll see you after work tomorrow.”

“No, you won’t,”
she said. “I’ll be busy all week.”

“You know that
already?”

“I do...” She
looked up at me, giving me that sultry look again.

God, she needs
to go...Now...

“Well, I’ll see
you when you’re
not
busy.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and opened my door,
but she grabbed my shoulder.

“Wait...Can I ask
you something?”

“Anything.”

“You haven’t
kissed me all day...Are you going to kiss me goodnight?”

“No.”

“What?” She
looked stunned. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t
want to.”

“Is this because
I haven’t told my daughters about us?”

I laughed. “No,
even though I’m pretty sure they know you’ve been dating
someone
. You
could at least admit it. They’re sixteen, not six.”

“Is it because I
was quiet at dinner?”

“I enjoy our silent
dinners.” I reached over and caressed her face. “You know that.”

“Well, you’re
going to be the only one that regrets this lack of goodnight kiss, Jonathan.
While you’re lying in bed thinking about how you should’ve kissed me, I’ll be
too busy to think about you.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes. My team is
staying late all week, so I won’t be able to slip away into your secret rooms.
I probably won’t see you until
next weekend
—maybe even the week after
that. I need to catch up with my
other
friends now that I think about
it.”

“Do you see me
crying?”

“You
are
mad at me about something! What is it?”

“I’m not mad at
you.”
I’m mad that I’m falling for you...

“Well...” She
unbuckled her seatbelt and looked around.

She leaned
forward to kiss me, but I held her still and whispered against her lips. “I
didn’t kiss you today because I made a promise to myself yesterday.”

“What promise?”

“You don’t need
to know.”

“Tell me...”

I didn’t say
anything. I just watched as she crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes.

“Jonathan,
you’re being childish again. If there’s nothing wrong, and if—”

I pressed my
finger against her mouth. “I promised that the next time I kissed you, I’d be
kissing
both sets
of your lips.”

She gasped and
blushed bright red.

“Goodnight,
Claire. I’ll see you
next weekend
.”