“Just you,” I forced out.
“Just me,” he clipped off, his fingers at my breast curling and digging in almost painfully.
“Just you,” I whimpered. “Only you. I’m only this for you.”
I barely registered the look on his face changing before my head shot back, hitting his shoulder, my spine arced at an impossible angle and I came.
I did it hard, knowing Johnny was watching, knowing he could see everything, the shockwaves of a magnificent orgasm setting me to bucking my hips into his as he let out a far less muted roar and his thrusts grew violent.
And he completed the task of fucking me stupid.
“See you tomorrow night.”
We’d just finished making out with Johnny pressing me to the door of my car when he said that.
I was heading home.
I did not want to head home.
But as it was with my life, I had to.
“See you tomorrow night,” I replied.
He unpinned me by stepping away and I’d just started to turn in order to open my door when he said, “Just a sec, sp?tzchen.”
I turned back.
He moved back in.
I looked up at him.
His hand landed gently on my neck and slid up to cup the underside of my jaw.
“Gotta know,” he murmured.
“Gotta know what?” I asked when he didn’t elucidate.
“What ‘just you’ meant.”
I stopped looking at him, though I was now looking at his ear so I was still kinda looking at him, just not at him.
“Baby,” he whispered, giving my jaw a tender squeeze.
“I’m not like that,” I told his ear.
“Like what?” he pressed.
“In bed.” My eyes skimmed through his until I was looking at his other ear. “I’m not like that in bed with anyone but you.”
He said nothing to that, and this lasted so long I chanced a glance at his eyes.
The instant my eyes met his in the moonlight, he asked, “How are you not like that?”
“I don’t let go,” I whispered, fighting back the heat that wanted to beat into my cheeks.
“You don’t let go,” he murmured.
“Like that . . . like . . . uh, the um, sex kitten. I don’t . . . that’s just . . .” I drew in a shaky breath. “You’re the only one I’ve felt . . . that’s made me . . .” I pressed out a heavy sigh. “That makes me like that.”
“From the beginning?” he asked.
“Sorry?”
“Baby, you were hot and wild for me from our first night.”
“Yes,” I said softly. “From the beginning.”
There was a tenseness to his frame, even a tenseness in the way his hand was at my jaw, and I felt something extreme in the way his gaze was boring into mine.
“So the sex kitten is all mine,” he stated.
“I’m not really a sex kitten, Johnny,” I told him honestly.
“Izzy, you watched your own show. You fuckin’ are.”
“Not . . . not, well . . . not like, right now.”
“Thank fuck.”
I stared up at him.
“What?”
“Always wonder how wise it is to clue you in to all that’s you, but for you, Iz, I’ll do it. Since you don’t have a dick, you can’t have any idea the man who’s got claim to that body,” his other hand came to rest on my waist, “that man bein’ me, gets off on having the sweet, cute Izzy you give to the world knowing, when I get you in bed, you’ll light up like that for me. Watch me fuck you. Let me take your ass. Watch me blow for you. And all the other stuff you give to me when I get you naked and you let go for me.”
His face dipped close and I continued to stare in his eyes.
“It’s an honor,” he whispered.
“An honor?” I whispered back.
“That you’d give me that. That you’d feel that safe with me.” His eyes changed in the moonlight. “From the beginning.”
There was something profound in that, I knew it back then.
He didn’t.
Until now.
And he definitely knew it now.
And he definitely liked what he knew.
I knew that because he kissed me.
Repeatedly.
Not deep and wet and hungry.
Soft kisses. Sometimes invading my mouth but just to stroke it with his tongue. Sometimes just brushing my mouth with his. Sometimes nibbling my lower lip.
Again and again and again.
I was holding on to his shoulders, my head tipped back, my mouth on offer to him. It was his and he could take it, kiss me like that until the sun rose, until the leaves turned brown, until the world stopped spinning.
The problem was he actually couldn’t.
I had to get home to my sister. Sleep. Go to work the next day.
And he had to let me.
He knew that better than me because he quit kissing me and murmured against my lips, “Loved tonight, sp?tzchen. Text me when you’re home safe. And see you tomorrow.”
I nodded, my forehead bumping against his and I saw his eyes smile.
My body felt fluid, not entirely from the sex, but from his soft kisses and sweet words, when he moved away from me and I turned and climbed into my car.
I started it and waved at him and didn’t worry that I looked like a dork.
I was his dork.
Johnny Gamble’s dork.
His sex kitten.
His woman.
So I could wave like a dork if I wanted to.
I waved again as I drove away, looking into the rearview mirror at him standing and watching me go, Ranger sitting at his side.
And I drove home thinking I was still ecstatic about what was happening with Johnny.
But I was no longer scared.
The Veil Dropped
Izzy
“WELL, ALL RIGHT.”
I looked from my computer to the door to see Deanna waltzing in after saying that.
She closed the door behind her.
I glanced back at the computer and again to Deanna before I said, “Addie and Brooks won’t be here for lunch for another half an hour.”
“Know that, baby girl, but just to say, heard the word,” Deanna replied.
“What word?”
“The word from Sally, bartender at Home, who gave it to Norma, who owns Home, who had her hair done this morning by some chick I don’t know, but at my hair salon, Image, where my stylist Crystal is. And Crystal knows you and me are tight. Crystal also overheard Norma telling her stylist that Sally was totally in the Shandra camp, until you did whatever you did with Johnny, being all kissy and sweet and then making him laugh real hard. Now Sally’s an Izzy convert, and from this story, Norma’s switched sides and Crystal too.”
It felt vaguely good that I was winning the townspeople of Matlock over.
But mostly I didn’t care.
“This doesn’t matter, Deanna,” I reminded her.
“Just came in to give you the thumbs up for a job well done,” Deanna replied.
“It isn’t a job. I was having drinks with my guy.”
“Your guy?”
I grinned at her. “Well, he calls me ‘his woman’ so I’m thinking it’s safe for me to call him my guy.”
Her eyes started sparkling. “Yeah, I’d say that’s safe.”
I had a feeling my eyes were sparkling too.
We sparkled at each other for a while before she said, “You do know, Johnny Gamble hasn’t been Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky since Shandra took off on him.”
I felt my sparkle blink out.