Me, her—gettin’ down to it. Once I cracked that hard outer shell she’d encased herself in, I’d have a way to reach her, and we could figure out the rest.
I shrugged at her and asked, “Shall we begin?” I held out my arm with the palm up, directing to a position on the mat where she should stand.
“No!” she shouted. “We’re not beginning anything.”
“You are here for a required class, yes?” I started pacing her, slowly in a circle. She turned her body to follow me. “You must be trained in self-defense.” I pointed both fingers at her. “I’m here to teach you.” I pointed my thumbs back at my chest, all the while still circling her, making her more and more uncomfortable as the seconds passed.
It’s always good to have a plan.
“But you can’t just come in here and be my instructor after what—what just happened in your office but three hours ago!”
“I don’t see any other instructors in the room, do you?” I looked around at the walls for dramatic effect. “Just me.” I tightened my circle, getting closer in distance, and watched her eyes grow dark. My taunts were making her angrier by the second.
“This isn’t right, Neil—f-for you to be doing th-this to me,” she sputtered.
“There you go again with that word, Cherry. This is such a nebulous term in my opinion. I really think I need to demand a solid definition for your usage of the word this.”
“Why are you being so cruel? Haven’t I suffered enough, you sadistic arsehole!”
“Did it make you angry, Cherry? Do you want to beat me right now for what I tried to do to you earlier in my office?”
She glared and panted in short breaths, her beautiful breasts heaving under that tight pink sports top she wore. I desperately wanted to tear it off her and see her naked tits.
Soon.
I kept at her. “I would have you know, if E hadn't come in when he did?” I held my hands out in show of surrender. “Well, you know I would've had you spread out on my desk and screaming my name in under two minutes—”
She slapped me hard right across the face, the sharp sting bolstering me to finish the task at hand.
“Shut up! Shut your dirty mouth, you bastard. Why are you saying such things to me? Why are you taunting me so cruelly?”
I held out my hands, offering my body, offering myself to her.
“That's right, Cherry, let it all out. Hit me. I can take it. Say what it is that's made you so very, very angry with me. It is me, isn’t it? It’s me that you’re angry at.”
She paused, breasts still heaving, her fury on the verge of release when I let her have the rest.
“Time for the truth now, beautiful girl. Come on.” I gestured toward my chest. “No more lies, no more fading away into the background and giving up. Truth only. Say it out loud so I can hear you! SAY THE FUCKIN’TRUTH TO ME NOW.”
She hit me over the chest, arms and face, with all the wrath of a volatile female, enraged, and fighting her way closer to me with every smack and slap she dealt out.
“You didn't come for me. You should have come for me in Italy, and told me the goddamn truth. You let me believe in something that kept us apart. I loved you, and you let me stay away when you could have come for me! YOU DID THAT, NEIL.”
She collapsed against my body then, crying in great anguished sobs, the fight gone out of her, the truth finally revealed.
I held her close and cradled her head against my chest. Against my heart where she had always been, even when we were apart. Where she would always be.
“I know,” I said against her ear so she could hear me clearly.
I took her face in my hands and lifted it up. My Cherry’s face was wrecked with tears, and streaked with black eye makeup, and yet, the quiet stillness of her as I held her there to me, made her appear so beautiful. It was the truth of the moment I guess. We were finally there on the same page, at the same time, reading the same fuckin’ book.
“I know, I know, I know, Cherry Girl. I was so wrong. I should have come for you.” My thumbs caressed her cheeks as I held her, trying to make her understand. “I am so sorry.”
I kept her face very close, held in my hands and brought my lips to hers.
She flinched.
“Let me, Cherry. Let me in now,” I whispered softly, my plea both a request and a command.
I tried again, and this time she accepted my kiss. Her soft lips quivering under mine in beautiful acquiesce. I deepened the kiss. I showed her all we'd missed in the intervening years. I showed her how good it could feel to have your lover's tongue in your mouth. I showed her my love.
From there, things got crazy, to the point I was supremely grateful for disabling the video surveillance for this room.
I walked us to a padded wall and set her back up against it. Nothing was going to stop me this time. Nothing.
Not even her.
Neil’s hands were all over me; his tongue was in my mouth, his body swallowing me up. I couldn’t do much more than let him take me.
I was on fire, everywhere, and my mind was lost in the taste and the scent of him as we consumed each other in the training facility room, up against a padded wall.
He jerked up my sports top and growled when my breasts spilled out. It was a sound of hunger and emotion as he looked at me. My nipples were already hard, aching to feel his mouth on them again.
I threw my head back into the wall in ecstasy, when I felt that first exquisite touch of his tongue tasting my skin. He sucked, and bit, and licked at my nipples, and made me delirious with need. I held the back of his head to my breasts as he worked them over.
“I need you now,” he said on a harsh breath.
“Yes…” Nearly incoherent with desire, I didn’t care we were in a public room. Didn’t care. Didn’t think about anything beyond Neil and being as close together as we could get.
He’d already pulled away and dropped down to his knees. His hands went up to the waistband of my yoga pants and yanked them down. Hard. Knickers came with. He put his lips on the mound of my pussy and kissed softly, as if he were giving it a sweet greeting after so long being parted.
Well, it felt like it. My body knew his as intimately as was possible to know, and yet, here we were together in a brand new reality.
“Lift your foot for me,” he said, before dragging my right leg free from knickers and yoga pants in one fell swoop. He left the other leg alone. We only needed one side unrestricted to accomplish the goal here.
Neil was back on his feet and kissing me before I could hardly take a breath, his hand sliding up my hip and over to the front, covering my mound with his whole hand.
“I want you, Cherry.” He slid two fingers in between the lips. “Right here, right now.” His fingers kept probing me, going deeper through the slick wetness he’d created, to find my clit.
I cried out when he made contact, the burn so good I knew he’d make me orgasm in another minute. He plundered my mouth with his tongue and my pussy with his fingers, sliding back and forth over my clit until I couldn’t help but shout when the climax hit. His mouth over mine muffled the volume of my cries as I rode it out on his talented fingers.
I felt him working the front of his joggers with his other hand, getting his cock out and ready for me.
“Here we go, beautiful girl,” he said into my eyes as he lifted my legs off the ground and opened me up. I felt the head of his cock kiss my entrance an instant before he buried himself deep inside me. “Fuuuuck,” he moaned, “you’re tight around me.”
“Oh, God…” We both paused as we slipped into place together for the first time in many years. The awareness of what was happening between us, overwhelming. I let my thoughts drift as I clung to his strong arms. My back shifted into the soft wall over and over as the deliciously huge length of him stretched me decadently. In and out. Faster and harder we worked at it, our mouths glued together, our bodies struggling for the peak until I got there first, my inner walls clamping down reflexively around h
is cock.
I cried out as it happened, again, unable to move anymore, only capable of taking what he continued to give me.
Neil’s eyes burned into me as he started to come, his penis growing harder and fuller as it jerked and swelled in the peak of his own orgasm.
Time slowed and mellowed, our foreheads pressed together, Neil still gently rocking into me, but now in the way of a caress. He kissed me softly, lovingly. It all felt very beautiful and right, but as my body came down from the high of the sex, reality dawned about what we had just done together.
“I’m going to put you down, okay?”
I nodded, the lingering pleasure being replaced by worry.
He pulled out of me carefully and set my legs down to the floor, steadying me until I had my balance. I felt so much wetness this time. I realized it was more than I’d ever felt before, just as I looked down upon a stream of shiny semen rolling down my thigh.
“Oh no…you didn’t have a condom.” I bent down to the floor to franticly thread my foot back into the open leg of my knickers and yoga pants, now feeling panic about what Neil would think, or say.
I pulled them on and my sports top back down to where I was decent and thought about running out the door. I really did.
Neil must have made an accurate assessment of my emotional state because he grabbed me by the upper arms and held me firmly to him. “It’s okay, beautiful girl. Everything is okay.”
“But—but we didn’t use—but you came insi—”
Neil kissed me on the lips, probably to shut me up more than anything, but it did help a little. “It doesn’t matter,” he shook his head slowly back and forth, “because I don’t care about condoms anymore with you.”
I started to cry, all the emotion was just too much and I needed some privacy. “I—I need to get myself cleaned up and d-dressed to go home.”
“Shh, don’t be scared. It’s okay, Cherry. I’ll help you.” He kept running his hand over my hair as he soothed me with words.
“Neil?”
“I know a place. Come with me.” He held my hand and wouldn’t let go. Not one time did he release my hand as we took the lift back up to the forty-fourth floor, or later when he snuck us through a back entryway, that led to a locked door, which opened into a private suite behind his office. “This is mine and nobody else has access but me.”
“I can take a shower?” I asked, now very unsure about everything and everyone. Even myself.
“Of course.” He still had my hand in his and brought both up to his lips and pressed them in a soft kiss to the back of mine.
“What happens now, Ne—”
He kissed me firmly on the mouth, a demanding kiss of entitlement, his tongue pressing forward to find mine, moving in deep swirls. He finished in his own time, the intent to take charge of the situation very clear in his method.
“I’m keeping you here.”
“What?” I asked him, my arms now clasped around his neck, holding on to keep my legs from buckling and sending me to the floor.
He smiled at me and found my lips again for another kiss, this one sweet and gentle and slow. My legs didn’t feel any stronger.
“You’re staying with me. Tonight…in this suite.”
22
I knocked. “Elaina? Is everything all right?”
Nothing but the sound of the shower running.
Her silence worried me a little. The explosive nature of our reunion only verified how much of a struggle she was having with our training-room shag, and all of the emotions attached to it. Hell, I was dealing with more emotions than I cared to, myself. But more importantly, I didn’t want her thinking too much.
Over thinking things was often the path to doom. We were both guilty of that one.
No, I wanted my Cherry Girl alone and private just as we were, dependent upon me to show her the way back…to the idea of us.
My plan was still intact.
I knew what she needed, and I would make sure she got every little bit of it.
I tried the doorknob after a minute and surprisingly, it opened. I stepped into the steamy air of the bathroom. There she was just sitting in the shower, her back up against the wall and her arms wrapped around her knees. She looked lost, biting down on her bottom lip by pulling the whole thing under her teeth. I wanted to suck and nibble on that bottom lip until she was breathless and not thinking about things that scared her anymore.
My beautiful girl needed me right now. She was also gloriously wet and naked.
I didn’t say anything, just stripped down to my skin.
Naked was the way to play this. There would be no boundaries between us then. And keeping her naked would keep her in the room with me. She couldn’t run away if she didn’t have anything to wear. I had some intelligence after all.
Her eyes flipped up to watch me as I undressed. And then, they widened when my shirt came off. That was the moment I knew. I knew that she saw it.
I stepped in and sat down opposite her on the shower floor. Face to face, body to body, hot water falling between us, droplets from the spray bouncing everywhere, coating our skin and hair. Wetting us both.
Elaina reached out her hand and touched my tattoo with trembling fingers. “You got this to remember us?” she whispered in awe.
“I did.”
“It is beautiful,” she whispered again, as she traced the design with a fingertip, studying the ink carefully. “A dragonfly in the cherry blossoms…”
“Beautiful like you, Cherry.”
“Why did you have it done?—You got it…p-put on after I was…gone?” Even with all the water falling around us, I could see the tears pooling in her eyes as she asked the questions.
“Because I never stopped loving you and knew I never would. I wanted you forever in my skin.”
A sob came up from out of her throat in a burst of air. She closed those glassy dark blue eyes of hers, and her whole body softened in what looked like great relief.
“So did I,” she said softly, her eyes still closed and her lips still quivering.
Then she turned her back to me slowly, her head tilted to the side, extending her elegant neck. She reached around and pulled her wet hair off to the left, leaving her right shoulder exposed. As I gazed at her perfect skin, I almost stopped breathing when I saw the most stunning tattoo of cherry blossoms and branches done in sky blue and pink. It was very Asian in design and exotically inked, and also larger than I would expect for her slim body. Elaina didn’t have any other tattoos, so for her to have such an impressive image placed permanently on her back, was a gesture of how meaningful our relationship was to her.
Fate can be beautiful and that was an example of one of those times. Don’t ever forget such moments...or the gift of them.
My heart skipped a beat or two as I stared. I’d forgotten about what Ian had told me—his cryptic drunken comment about me not being the only one to have a cherry blossom tattoo. I’d been so focused on the events playing out between us, that it had slipped my mind. She’d never worn any clothes that would allow it to show.
“I wanted you forever in my skin too, Neil.”
****
I traced the air above the design with my finger, just the tiniest little bit above the skin so I wouldn’t wake her. I wanted you forever in my skin too, Neil.
My Cherry was in bed with me and she was asleep. I didn’t want to disturb her but that didn’t stop me from looking and enjoying.
She lay on her side—her body stretched out like a Greek goddess on a dais—the sheet partially draping over her body, but showing enough skin to make me want her again.
The wanting would never be a problem for me. I only had to think about her naked and I was ready. I’d had so many years of practice doing that, you see. Too fuckin’ many.
I vowed I would never be in that situation again with her though. Aching for her when she was lost to me. Afraid of trusting in the only person that could make it right for my heart. So much wasted potential. Wasted
time.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked in a sleepy voice.
“You’re awake, Cherry Girl?”
She rolled back over to face me, placing her two hands under her cheek on the pillow. “I am.”
Her eyes moved over my face, studying me with the contented expression of a satisfied female. She looked happy again. She looked peaceful.
She had the look of a woman who was staying with me.
An expression I would have killed to have seen, if only for just one time, in the last six years.
“I was thinking about how beautiful a sight it is to have you naked in my bed. To have you close enough, where I can reach out and touch your warmth just like this.”
I brought my hand to one of her breasts and caressed its softness, plumping the swell first and then ending with my fingers, drawing on her nipple, making it harden.
She gave me a sexy purr and a half smile.
“To smell the scent of you and me, after we’ve been making love together.”
I buried my nose at her chest and drew it up, inhaling the unmistakable smell of sex, mixed with her intoxicating scent.
She arched her body closer and breathed a little heavier. My words and deeds were getting her hot.
“To taste the sweet flavor of you.”
I covered her whole mouth with mine and plunged my tongue inside for a thorough taste, while my fingers found their way into her pussy lips for a slippery welcome. I pulled my hand back and popped those three fingers into my mouth, sucking everything off in a decadent show.
Another sexy moan as her eyes flared wide. Yep, she was getting’ hot for more.
“To show you just how much I love you, and that I can never bear to be without any part of you, ever again.”
She looked down at our bodies under the sheets, seeing how hard my cock was, yet again, how much desire I had for her.
“I’m thinking about how I’m the luckiest fuckin’ bastard on the planet because you’re here with me.”