Worth the Fall (13 page)

And now they were alone, and he was pulling her panties off of her. It wasn
’t his first time, but he suspected it was Al’s, and he’d like to make it a bit more special for her. But dear God, if he didn’t get inside her soon….

She kept her hips tilted after lifting them for the panty removal and all thoughts of taking his time and making it special—yeah, right, in a truck?—flew from his brain, much like the blood flow had. All thoughts and blood flow found their way straight to his dick, which was now prodding along her opening.

He saw her flinch just a tiny bit. “Is this okay? Do you want to stop?” he asked.
Please say no, please say no.

“
No,” she answered, to his overwhelming relief. “I’m okay. It’s just….”

“
What? What do you want? What can I do?”

He
’d been having sex since he was fifteen. Not regularly (he
had
dated Lizzie for several months), but with enough girls that he thought he could provide what Alison was asking for…if she’d ask for it. He wasn’t experienced enough to know what would do it for her on his own. Truth be told, all that stuff south of the border on a girl’s body was still pretty much a mystery to him. But he wanted to make it good for her. It meant more to him than just getting his rocks off with a willing partner.

She
meant more to him than that.

She shook her head.
“Nothing. Just…um…can you come down here to me?”

He
’d been kneeling on the seat while he’d struggled with the condom, so he lowered himself, careful to keep his weight on his forearms. Her breasts, which had tasted so fantastic, nestled against his chest, her belly along his.

And that mouth of hers. Usually used for witty and biting remarks, its purpose tonight was so much better. He lowered his mouth and kissed her again. She was right there with him, kissing back, tangling her tongue with his. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her hands running up and down his back, across his shoulders, driving him fucking insane with want.

He reached down and guided himself into her slowly. Or, he tried to go slowly anyway, seeing if it’d be too much for her. He looked down into her eyes, and she licked her lips, then bit the bottom one as he pushed in further.

“
Okay?” he whispered and she nodded. He pushed again, lodging himself all the way in. Holy shit, she felt so good. Warm and wet and oh, so very, very tight around him. “I’m sorry,” he groaned as he started rocking into her. “I’m not going to last very long. I just…you just…feel so good.”

She wrapped her arms tighter around him, nuzzled his neck, then licked him—fuck, that was amazing—before whispering back,
“It’s okay. It feels good like this. Just let yourself…um…just do what feels good.”

Shit, it all felt good. But it was even better when he picked up his pace and slid in and out of her little body with more force. She wiggled under him and tilted her hips a little. To his great embarrassment, that was all it took.

He poured himself into her. She clung on tight and he collapsed on top of her when it was over. He was barely able to comprehend that she hadn’t come, but he was drained and it felt so good to just lie on top of her body that his mind wouldn’t quite compute it all.

He knew he didn
’t fall asleep, but it was several minutes before he could move. “Sorry. Am I squashing you?”

“
No. It feels nice,” she answered, but shifted underneath him.

Damn, this could not be comfortable for her. He started to pull out of her, but she held him tight.
“Just a little bit longer?”

Like she had to ask.
“As long as you want,” he said and held her close, not fully believing what had just happened. What it’d been like to be inside her body.

To still be inside her.

After a while, she wiggled again, and he knew he was getting too heavy for her. She made a sound of protest when he pulled away from her, but he was determined to get his weight off of her. As he pulled out, the condom started to slide off his now depleted dick, and he quickly reached down and retrieved it, feeling the warmth and wetness that their bodies had created.

He knew they
’d be good together. Nobody would have guessed it, they were so different, but he knew. Giving her some space to get dressed, he left the truck and disposed of the condom in a trashcan. Lake Superior glowed in the moonlight in front of him. He breathed in the fresh air and listened to the waves lap onto the sand.

It was supposed to be a night to say goodbye, graduation and all. But all Petey could think was this was the night when his life began.

A puck is a hard rubber disc that hockey players strike when they can
’t hit one another.

~ Jimmy Cannon

Alison shook eighteen years of cobwebs from her mind as she drove to Katie
’s house the next morning. Damn Petey for making her remember something she’d done a pretty admirable job of forgetting.

And it hadn
’t been easy.

She didn
’t have patients this morning. Normally she’d either be doing much-needed chores around her house or be over at her mother’s. She chose not to go to her parents’ house because she wanted to give her mom and Sherry some time to catch up alone.

And there was no way she was going to stick around at home this morning.

She could have gone to the hospital to visit her dad, but her visiting times were pretty regular and she didn’t want to mess with his schedule too much. She’d go see him in the afternoon at her normal time.

So she
’d quickly dressed and tip-toed past Petey’s room, feeling a little better when she heard deep snores coming from behind the door.

At least
he
hadn’t been up all night thinking when he needed some rest.

She
’d left the house and started driving, not really knowing where she was going. She could go to her office and catch up on paperwork, but there wasn’t much with the lighter patient load right now.

She ended up calling Katie from the car to see if she wanted to go out for breakfast, and Katie
’ talked her into coming over to her house. It hadn’t been a hard sell.

“
So, Sherry’s home? That’s great, right?” Katie asked her after Alison was settled at the kitchen table. Katie poured her some coffee, bringing it to her and then settled her large, pregnant girth into a chair. She leaned over and breathed deep from Alison’s cup. “God, I miss coffee.”

“
Not too much longer and you’ll be able to have a cup.”

Katie
’s already gorgeous face lit up even more as she rested her hands on her belly. “The doctor says two more weeks, but I think I could go any day. I mean, obviously we know exactly when she was conceived, but I think she’s going to be an over-achiever like her father and show up early.”

“
How do you know exactly—” Alison began and then stopped. It seemed like Katie and Darío had been together a lot longer than nine months, but they’d had a one-night stand that had created the little bun in her oven.

A thousand smart-ass retorts ran through her mind about usually conservative Katie getting knocked up, but they died in her throat. Looking at her dear friend, so happy to be with child, Alison was overcome with feelings of…of….

“Is that nissu I smell?” she asked when she didn’t want to think any more.

“
Yep, made it this morning. It should be cool enough to put the icing on now.” She made a move to get up, but Alison waved her down.

“
I’ll get it. You just relax, little mama.” Katie beamed and Alison got up and set about putting the icing Katie had made onto the still slightly warm Finnish breakfast bread. She had her back to Katie but heard her deep sigh of contentment which filled Alison with happiness and something else. Envy? Maybe a touch, though oddly enough she’d never been envious of the breathtakingly beautiful Katie before.

She slathered on more icing than was probably needed, but it felt like a morning that called out for sugar.

Something in what Katie had just said came back to her. “She? Did you say ‘she’ when you were talking about the baby? I thought you guys decided not to find out the gender?”

“
We did. We haven’t.” She got a cute smile on her face when Alison turned around to look at her. “We’ve just always called her a she. We really don’t know. But I think we may have willed her into a girl.”

“
You know that’s not possible, right?” she joked. At least she thought she was joking, but by the look on Katie’s face she wasn’t sure. Katie fairly glowed with emotion.

“
Oh, Al, there’s so much about my life that shouldn’t be possible, and it suddenly is, so I’m not counting out something like willing a baby’s sex.”

“
So, will you be disappointed if it’s a boy?”

Katie waved her question away as nonsense as Alison set the plate with the nissu on the table, then returned to the cabinets for plates and forks.

“Of course not. I’m delirious at the thought of either. I think Darío put the idea of a girl in my head and it just stuck. We’ll be very blessed no matter what.” Alison set the gathered plates and forks on the table and took her seat as Katie continued, “My God, after all these years of wanting a baby, I couldn’t care less about the gender.”

“
I know. I’m so happy for you, Katie,” she said, patting her friend’s arm. Katie looked at her like she was waiting for the shoe to drop, or the “but”. There was no but. There was no other shoe.

Katie and Lizzie were both new wives and new mothers and were deliriously happy. And Alison was genuinely delighted for them.

And yet she felt just like her patient Denise—that everyone was getting on with their lives but her.

She dug in to the nissu.

A few bites later she thought to ask, “Should you wake up Darío while it’s still warm? And awesome, by the way.”

“
Thanks. And Darío’s been awake and gone for a couple of hours now. He went to the SDC to work out, then he’s going to meet Mark for breakfast to talk golf.”

Their friend Mark managed the university
’s golf course, which was currently buried under three feet of snow.

“
If you can’t play it, might as well talk about it?”

“
Something like that. Poor Darío. He’s never really seen much of a winter and certainly not a U.P. winter. But I really wanted to be near family—and you and Lizard—when the baby came. He’s been a real trooper about it.”

“
He’d do anything for you and you know it.”

She smiled dreamily.
“I know. I’d feel badly about it, except I’d do anything for him, too.”

Alison shoved another bite of the pastry into her mouth and just nodded.

“God, I feel so awful, I didn’t even ask how Petey’s doing. They got him to your house okay? He’s settled in?”

The nissu got stuck in her throat. She took a large drink of coffee, then another before answering Katie.
”Yes. His mom and Lizzie brought him home yesterday afternoon. By the time I got there he’d been up, fixed himself something to eat, done the dishes and got back in bed.” Her voice caught a little at the end when mentioning—and thinking about—Petey in her bed. And the lovely things they did there.

“
Wow. Not surprising, though. A little thing like surgery’s not going to keep Petey down.”

“
It didn’t seem to, no.” Not if his flinging her body down on the bed was any indication. And oh, had she enjoyed being flung.

“
And stuff like showers and that kind of thing? His dad coming over to help with that, or are you going to hop in the shower and soap up that amazing bod?”

She nearly choked on her coffee, but Katie was already laughing. Ah, yes, that would be quite a joke, wouldn
’t it? Brainy Alison and brawny Petey getting hot and sticky in a shower together.

“
I guess his dad’s probably going to come over. I didn’t really get many of the details.” Because she’d been too busy kissing the man. “We barely spoke when I got home last night before I went to bed.” That was true, there hadn’t been much talking. “Oh man, I thought having Petey around would be bad enough, but Lieutenant Dan, too?”

Katie reached for her phone and hit a button.
“Let me call Darío and ask him to stop by and see if Petey needs any…man help.”

“
Thanks,” she said, more for Petey than herself. She’d be out of the house most of the day (even if she had to sit in the parking lot of Pat’s IGA and read a book!), so she wouldn’t really have to deal with Petey’s dad. But she knew Petey would much rather have Darío help him out than have to deal with his father one day out of the hospital.

With no pain meds.

Katie spoke to her husband for a few minutes, and Alison gathered that Darío was fine with swinging by her house to check on Petey.