A Toast to the Good Times

Chapter 12



By the time we get to the house, it’s dark inside except for the multi-colored glow of the Christmas tree shining from the living room.

“This feels...this isn’t a good idea,” Mila whispers as I push her up against the front door and kiss her along her neck. “Mmm, Landry, maybe I should just sleep on the couch.”

“Impossible.” I suck on her earlobe and love the gasp that jumps out of her lips. “If Santa sees you, he won’t leave us any presents.”

She presses her face into my coat to muffle her laugh. Even though it makes sense to muffle it so she doesn’t wake the whole damn house, I hate not being able to hear that laugh.

“Come downstairs with me.” I tug her by the coat, and she follows, one slow, uncertain step at a time.

“Are you sure this is okay with your parents? I feel like this is a really inappropriate holiday crash. I mean, I know they said it’s okay, but it’s Christmas tomorrow and—”

“Shhh.” She comes down one stair, then another one, and I bury my face in the comforting dark between her tits. I poke my head back out and she’s laughing again, hand over her mouth. “My parents will be fine with this. I’m an adult. An adult who is sleeping in his old basement room, but still... And you drove from Boston to New Jersey on Christmas Eve. You deserve a warm futon. This will be fun. I promise.”

Her smile falters. “Oh, I have no doubt it will be fun.”

And I realize I made her sound like a fling.

Shit.

Not the message I want to send at all.

“It will be the beginning of lots of fun.” I kiss her, my hands tangled in her good-smelling hair, running up and down her back, filling up with the swells of her tits, squeezing her narrow shoulders possessively, because that’s the way I feel about her: possessive. “Come to my futon.”

She rolls her eyes, but she follows me down the stairs, into the basement, past the washer and dryer and into the room where I spent my entire teenage life and the very beginning of my adulthood.

“It’s cozy.” She twists her hands. I close the door and flip the lock, just in case any idiot sibling bumbles down in the night.

Luckily, since I moved out, my mother gave it a thorough cleaning and no one bothered with it again, so there’s nothing too embarrassing—

“Is this a lava lamp?” Mila flips it on, watching as the blobby ‘lava’ in the bottom heats up and starts to float. “I knew you were a player back in the day, Landry, but I had no idea you were, like, some kind of professional gigolo with a whole sex lair lit with lava lamps.”

“Lava lamps are not just for sex lairs. That’s a really popular misconception.” I sit on my futon bed and pat the thin mattress. She comes over and takes a cautious seat next to me. “Sometimes they’re just a psychedelically cool way to light your room.”

I tug her close, kiss her, and put my hand up on the side of her face. She grabs my wrist and kisses back.

She pulls away, her lips still slightly puckered, her eyes closed. “Back up for just one second. How did this happen again?”

“What?” I press strands of dark hair back off her face, and she licks her lips, then pinches them together.

“How were we just friends last week? And now? How did we get here? It feels like—”

“Me getting my head out of my ass?” I press my forehead against hers. “I don’t know how I lived with you for so long and didn’t see what was right in front of my face, Mila. I’m a little dense, alright? But once I realized how right you and I are for each other, I didn’t want to waste any more time. I feel like an a*shole for wasting this much already. I know you’re not sure about all this, but keep me around for a while. I swear to you, I won’t let you down.”

I say the words, but even I wonder if they’re all just words turned into promises I’m not sure I can keep. I let people down. It’s what I do.

I’ll have to work my ass off to change that.

For her.

I think about Reggie and everyone else who realized how freaking awesome Mila was before I woke up to her general amazingness, and it scares the shit out of me. It’s a whole new sensation. I’ve been afraid to lose things before or to f*ck up, but I’ve never been scared about a girl.

Even when things went south with Heather, it was more aggravation followed by a strange, strong dose of relief.

With Mila, my world and the way I look at it has been turned upside down and shaken, and I’m just grabbing on to her like my life depends on it.

Because I have a feeling it does.

“Landry,” she sighs, and when she kisses me this time, it’s all the wild, insistent slide of her tongue, the quick nip of her teeth, the pressure of her mouth, crushed to my face as she tries to keep connected and pull her clothes off at the same time.

I back up and slide her coat off her shoulders. We lock eyes as I grab the hem of her sweater, and she nods, so I drag it up, over her head. Though I’ve done this a thousand times before with complete success, I manage to get her tangled in the shirt. She laughs, her arms locked over her head, her face covered by the soft fabric. I jump up and tug harder, and the sweater pops off her head, leaving her collapsed on the mattress, her wild hair even crazier from the static electricity.

She sits up and reaches for my hand, zapping me.

I hardly notice. She’s so beautiful, and it’s not just the fact that her shirt is off and her bra is only a few tiny, festive scraps of red lace and shiny fabric.

I mean, it’s also that.

I’m having a hard time ripping my eyes off of all that perfection. But her smile actually rivals her seriously perfect curves, and it gets my heart thumping in a way that even her very impressive rack doesn’t.

I realize how completely sappy that is, but it’s the god’s honest truth.

“You’ve got the best smile,” I tell her, looking down at her upturned face, lit up with happiness.

My words are like some kind of switch. Her smile melts and her eyes go wider and darker. She pulls in her bottom lip and bites it, then reaches her hands up to the button of my jeans and undoes it. She tugs the zipper down and I pull a breath in through my teeth. I grab the back of my shirt and pull it over my head, pretty pumped by the appreciative ‘mmm’ she murmurs when she sees me.

My pants are hanging half off my hips. I press her back on the bed, the thin cotton of my boxer briefs letting me feel enough of her that I’m getting painfully hard, but not enough that I’m anywhere near satisfied.

I move a hand down and undo her pants, pressing them off her hips and down her long legs. She kicks them off and my eyes sweep along her body from head to toe.

From sexy, dark-haired head, to Darcy sock-adorned feet.

“I gotta ask you something,” I say as I lie close to her. She rolls on her side, her thick-lashed eyes lined up with mine. “Who the hell is Mr. Darcy?”

She puts one hand on my shoulder and runs it up and down my arm, all the way to my wrist and back up to my shoulder three or four times before she links her fingers with mine. She smiles at me with a look of pity that says she feels sorry for me because I’m so embarrassingly moronic.

“Darcy is a guy from a book. A super sexy guy from a super famous book.”

“Is there a movie about his book?” I ask, drawing the back of my hand from the side of her neck and down between the nestled red lace. I stop and run a finger inside one cup, then the other, and she closes her eyes and swallows hard.

“A few. Movies...about Mr. Darcy. Yeah, there are.” She snuggles closer to me and lets her hand bump over my ribs and my abs, then come to a quick stop right at the waistband of my boxers.

“We’ll have to watch them. You know. Some morning after we have marathon sex and just need a day to recharge.”

It’s too dark to see her face, but I can almost feel the heat of her blush. I link my fingers in her panties and tug them down an inch, two, before she stills my hand.

“Wait.” She reaches down and pulls off the socks. “I know you’re a guy and can have sex with your socks on and all, but it doesn’t work that way for me. Socks just kill the mood, in my opinion.”

I reach down and pull mine off. “Okay. Darcy is sexy. Socks are unsexy. Even when combined with Darcy. Noted.”

“You’re going to have me completely figured out, and then I won’t be able to resist you,” she whispers, leading my hand back to her panties.

I push them down until they tangle at her feet and she has to kick them off. My hand runs along the small curve of her ass and up her back to the clasp of her bra, which I make quick work of.

“That’s the plan.” I kiss her along her shoulders and down lower, taking a nipple in my mouth and sucking.

She gasps and pulls her knees up, cradling me between her legs.

“Good?” I double check.

“R-r-really good, Landry.” Her nails scratch light lines down my back, and she hooks her thumbs in the waistband of my jeans, but doesn’t push them down.

She pulls her thumbs towards my stomach until they meet in the middle, then presses them out so they bump over my hip bones, trace along my spine, and rub just below the small of my back. Her fingers barely brush my skin and kind of tickle.

But sexy gigolos with lava lamps don’t get ticklish during hot sex.

Only her fingers are stroking so softly right at my ribs, and I’m not made of stone. I’m not. I pull back and laugh.

“Did I tickle you?” she asks with a wicked smile.

“You know how you think socks are unsexy?” I kiss the tip of her nose and push up on my arms to put myself out of reach of her tickling fingers. She nods and makes her face too innocent, so I know she’s got an excellent handle on exactly what she’s doing. “I think tickling, the word tickle, the whole idea is completely unsexy. For a guy, of course.”

“Sexist,” she accuses, her mouth making a perfect ‘o’ of glee. “So it’s fine for you to tickle me, but not the other way around?”

“Mmm, kinda,” I kiss her neck. “Though I think it’s always a pretty bad idea. Tickling is all fun and games until someone pisses their pants.”

I can feel the laugh that bubbles in her throat through my lips, and I rush up to kiss her and catch it, directly in the open space of my mouth.

She jerks her hands over my ribs a few times, mock tickling me, and would have kept the ruse up if I didn’t resort to true gigolo tactics. I pull away from her mouth and lick and suck down her neck, down her arms, around her nipples, over the juts of her hips and the dip of her stomach, and she only stops laughing when I kiss her thighs, along the tops.

I kiss her quiet, and run one hand between her ankles, up along the smooth muscles of her calves and to the damn of her knees, pressed as tight as her sexy smile was loose.

“Do you want me to stop here? Because you have great knees.” I kiss up her shins and she wiggles her toes at me.

“Knobby knees,” she says, sitting up on her elbows.

I trace a finger over the rounded smoothness of them. “Sexy as hell knees.”

She opens them an inch, and I slip my thumb in the space. She lets them fall a few inches farther apart, and I run my fingertips from the boney curves down the long, satiny skin of her inner thighs and all the way to the slick, warm center of her. My mouth follows my fingers, and she drops her head back and collapses her elbows, pressing her hips up and towards my eager tongue.

I link my arms under her thighs and pull her closer, licking and kissing at her as she grabs the sheets in her fists and pulses against me, her body jerking in short, frenzied bursts.

“Landry, Landry,” she chants in a hoarse whisper, and I moan against her, my dick so hard it’s distracting, but I’m determined to bring her as much pleasure as possible.

I run my hands, palms flat over the smooth shape of her, up and down her body, loving the rash of goosebumps that my skin on hers trips into existence. I grab at her hips, squeeze her ass, and knead at her thighs, all the while keeping my tongue and mouth moving against her, matching the pace of her grinding need.

When she comes, I feel like I just swam the English Channel, like I want to jump on the shore and pump my fists and scream through the awesome adrenaline rush. The exhilaration of feeling her buck and jerk against me, hearing her moan my name and pant that she wants more, is quickly eclipsed by the singular realization that if making what just happened was me swimming the English Channel, my reward is a sexy mermaid waiting on the shore for me.

Her hair is a dark, wild mess, curling down over her shoulders and half in her eyes. Her skin glows, she’s breathing hard, her eyes are sparkling. “Holy. Shit. Wow. Wow. Lay back.”

I had this imaginary image of Mila being kind of fumbly in bed. Maybe a little shy. A little unsure of what to do and how to do it.

I take a second to think about that while the universe laughs at me. Hard.

I’m lying back and Mila pulls my jeans off, shimmies on top of me, and presses her body to mine. “You feel so good,” she breathes, moving against me with a soft, slow momentum that picks up and builds as she buries her face in my neck and kisses and sucks at my skin.

Her hands run over my arms, kneading at my shoulders appreciatively. “Mmm. I love your shoulders. You have the widest shoulders.”

I close my eyes and slide my hands up her thighs and around to her back, where I pull her down to my mouth. She kisses me hard, letting her tongue slide in and out, licking my lips as her hands go to my chest and pass lightly over my nipples.

I pull back and laugh.

“Ticklish?” she teases, nipping my bottom lip.

I squeeze her ass and smack it lightly, thoroughly enjoying her yelp. “Watch it or I’ll put my socks back on.”

She starts shaking her head, but winds up rubbing her nose against mine, then kissing my jaw, down my neck, and along my shoulder while her hand move down the line of my body and right around my dick.

I haven’t had a hand job in a long time, not since early high school definitely, and there was always this impossible art to the whole thing. There’s the physically scientific element, which is a mix of pressure, momentum, and speed, and then the magic dash of that emotional special something that I always thought might be clumsy enthusiasm.

But Mila’s hand on my dick catapults over every theory, every experience, every fantasy I’ve ever had. Her hands, her mouth, her body, are all conspiring to undo me. I grit my teeth and shut my eyes, because if I don’t get control over myself quickly, I’m going to lose it.

And I don’t want this to end yet.

She leans her soft cheek to the hard bristle of my jaw, her hair pooling on my shoulders, her hips hovering a few inches away from mine, her hand nestled in the space between our bodies and working its perfect magic on my dick.

“Do you want me?” she whispers, her lips brushing my earlobe.

“Yes,” I manage to grind out through my clenched teeth.

She releases her hold on me, which makes me breathe a sigh of relief and a groan of total disappointment at the same time. She grabs her jeans from the floor, rifles through the pocket, and takes out a small packet.

“Gotcha.” She grins, rips the condom wrapper off, and rolls it on with those expert fingers.

“You knew you were going to jump my bones, didn’t you?” I ask, my words skidding when her fingers brush the base of my dick and then move lower to fondle my balls.

She kisses me through a laugh. “I know you haven’t been thinking of me as a sexual object for long, but let’s just say you’ve been the Han Solo to my Leia on more than one lonely evening by myself.”

Just when I think she can’t get any sexier, she says something that blows me away. “You thought about me when you got off?”

“Many, many times,” she whispers and rises over me.

The image of her on her bed, her hand in her panties, thinking of me, is what’s in my head when she slides over my dick, hot and tight. She presses all the way down and rubs her palms in a shaky line from her ribs to her thighs.

“Wow.” She swallows hard and looks at me, her eyes glazed. “Way better than I imagined, Landry,” she whispers, and I sit up to kiss her, locking our bodies close as she wraps her legs around me and rocks against me, then pulls back, again and again while my hands rove over her body and find too many sweet spots to stop and enjoy everything properly.

I want this to last, but her body feels so good, the weight of her in my arms and on my lap, the soft vanilla of her skin in my nostrils, her hair tangled in my hands, the slick sweet slide of her in a frantic, merciless rhythm that drives me nuts and shakes my intentions to draw this out.

“Mila,” I groan, pulling her tight against me.

“Landry, come for me,” she pleads.

I lock my hands around her hips and drive into her, over and over until my mind blanks, spaces, and all there is is Mila, in my bed, on me, wrapped around me, completely with me. I can’t hold on for another second, and she’s whispering that she wants me to let go, that she wants me to come in her, and all her sexiness collides at once and I’m done.

It’s the best f*cking orgasm of my life, and, when it’s done, I topple back and pull her tighter against me.

“Mila, Mila, you’re killing me. Beautiful Mila.” I kiss her and feel the drowsiness of the last few days attack all my senses.

I sit up, much as I hate to, to get rid of the condom, but once it’s thrown away, I burrow back into the bed tugging her towards me and wrapping the blankets around her. In the cocoon of bed sheets, she snuggles, tight to me and comfortingly warm. Her breath is slow and even, but her heart still beats hard under my palm, ostensibly from our recent exercise.

I think about getting to do this with her every night. Or day. Or whenever the hell we could. I think about being able to be with her, this close. To not just share a space, but to start to share a life. And I want it.

Badly.

“Mila,” I whisper. “I have no idea if you’re still awake, but I want you to know that I want to be with you. I want this to last. I fell for you hard. Really hard. You make me want to be better. I...” What’s the point of waiting? What’s the point of holding back and letting someone else, someone braver, swoop in and snatch her away? “I love you. I love being with you, and I love you. Don’t go anywhere, okay? I like having you around.”

I half think she’s only pretending to sleep, but it doesn’t really matter. I said what I needed to say. And now she knows that if she wants to leave me, I’m not going to let her go without a fight. I’m ready to stand up and be the man she deserves.

And, no matter what she decides, she’s in my bed and in my arms right now. For tonight, that’s more than I ever wished for and enough to keep my hope alive and kicking.