It’s been a long, lazy day of nothing but bed and tea and kissing. They’d gone to bed with the dawn and slept for some hours before Reese woke her with the stroking of his fingers between her legs, finding her clit with that same unerring precision he always did. He’d given her an orgasm, and they’d fallen back to sleep.
Now he’s on his back, one arm above his head, his face turned from her. Corinne had woken a few minutes before and gone to the bathroom to pee and brush her teeth, to generally freshen up a little. She creeps back into the bedroom to stand next to him, looking down at his peaceful, sleeping face. His lips are parted, a soft puff of breath escaping every so often. His brow furrows, eyes moving behind his closed lids.
Dreaming.
Of her? she wonders. Certainly she dreams of him sometimes, mostly when they aren’t together but sometimes even as he sleeps beside her. They’ve been doing that more and more over the past few weeks. He hasn’t quite moved in with her, not yet, but he might as well have. He’s had another falling out with his father that she hasn’t wanted to ask too much about, waiting for him to tell her on his own, but she knows it has to do with Reese quitting the farm.
She can imagine how disappointing it must be for his dad to find out his only son doesn’t want to continue with the family business, and how hard it will be on the farm’s operating budget to replace Reese with higher paid labor. She knows it’s been hard on her boy, who has been looking for a job to replace the farm work, without much success. They’ve spoken of college—he wants to continue past the two-year business degree he already has. He needs money for a place to live, a car, food. School is not the priority.
She could ask him to move in with her, she thinks. Two could live as cheap as one, as the saying goes. She’s already covering the rent on this apartment and all her expenses with the waitressing. She’s eight months away from finishing her degree and already has a couple of job offers lined up for her. Accounting is far from what she’d dreamed about spending her life doing, but it will be better than the late night shift at the diner, long-term.
Besides, she thinks fondly, her boy will make her life easier, even if he can’t contribute financially right off. When he isn’t job hunting, he can mop the floors and clean the toilets and cook for her, she thinks with a small shiver of delight, imagining him at those domestic chores wearing only a pair of lace panties and a blush—he hates when she orders him to wear panties, but he loves that he hates it. Oh, Corinne thinks with another slow, rolling shiver, he will do her laundry. All of it, washing and drying and folding.
Reese shifts in his sleep, the sheet slipping down to reveal the firm muscles of his bare belly and the fine line of dark hair disappearing below the edge of the fabric. With a small, careful tug, Corinne pulls the sheet farther down to reveal the sweetly sleeping head of his cock, half-hard. He takes a slow sip of breath, but doesn’t wake.
He is so fucking beautiful.
Slate-blue eyes he likes to line with black, thick dark hair to match. His body is lean and tight from working on the farm. Before Reese, there’d been more than a few guys. High school, college, then after. She has five years on him, after all. It bothers him, she thinks sometimes, that she’s had men before him, and he’s had only a girl here or there. Nothing like what he and Corinne share. She could tell him forever that it’s different with him, but she’s not sure how to convince him. Reese knows he’s attractive because he’s been pretty his whole life, but Corinne still reminds him. It’s important to her. Making him believe it.
Once, years ago, her parents had given her a five-thousand-piece puzzle that had been nothing but black with a single crimson cherry in one corner. It took her the entire Christmas break to finish the puzzle, hours spent searching through the identical pieces to create the picture—until at last, at the end, she’d been able to fit that red cherry into the final, empty space.
In her life, Reese is the cherry.