Total pages in book: 18
Estimated words: 16403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 82(@200wpm)___ 66(@250wpm)___ 55(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 16403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 82(@200wpm)___ 66(@250wpm)___ 55(@300wpm)
"Fuck, Harriet."
A surge of heat, violent and sudden, courses through me as my body responds to her in thick, liquid pulses, flooding her pussy until I feel it leaking out around my cock with every shallow thrust.
The pleasure whites out everything—thought, sound, breath—for one blinding second. There is only her. The hot, trembling clench of her cunt. Her frantic breath against my neck. The sting of her nails in my back. The way her whole body shudders in my arms.
We stay locked together, my cock still buried deep inside her as aftershocks ripple through both of us. Sweat cools on our skin. The faint scent of water and pine curls around us, grounding me back into my body.
I turn my head and kiss her hard, no finesse left, just raw need and relief and the taste of her on my tongue.
"That's my kind of alarm clock, baby. Your mouth around my cock, then your hot pussy."
Harriet lifts her head. Those eyes meet mine in the dark, that familiar dry spark flickering back to life even now. She shifts her hips once, making us both hiss at the raw overstimulation that shoots through my spent cock.
"Don't get used to it."
The corner of my mouth tugs up despite the way my chest is still heaving. I tighten my grip on her ass, fingers sinking deeper into the soft flesh, keeping her impaled exactly where she is.
"We'll see."
5
HARRIET
The cake van pulls up at two, and I have never in my life been so happy to direct traffic.
"Tent, not the porch," I tell the balloon guy, and Heath catches my eye over a wall of gold Mylar and grins like we're getting away with something.
We are, a little. Getting away with it.
The caterers arrive next with enough chafing dishes to feed a small army, which is probably what Gram's eightieth requires. Heath hauls the heavier ones, shoulders shifting under his t-shirt, and I point them toward the long tables we've set up on the lawn facing the lake.
The afternoon has turned into a choreographed dance of suppliers and rentals and people asking me where things go, as if I have any more authority here than Heath does. But Gram disappeared an hour ago—probably napping before her own party—so Heath and I have become the de facto coordinators.
"String lights go on the tent poles," I tell the rental crew, and one of them waves a thumbs-up. "The extension cords are by the back door."
Heath appears at my elbow, close enough that his arm brushes mine. "You're enjoying this," he says, and there's laughter in his voice.
"I am not." But I am. Being useful, being in charge of something that actually matters to Gram, having Heath here as my partner in all of it—it's the kind of afternoon I didn't know I was allowed to want.
"You are. You're in full professor mode. Next you're going to start making charts."
"Charts would help. Do you see how that man is trying to hang lights from a tree branch that will not support them?"
Heath follows my gaze and sighs. "I'll handle it."
He lopes across the lawn to intercept the disaster, all easy stride and broad shoulders, and I watch him go with something fluttering warm in my chest. This partnership we've fallen into feels so natural it scares me.
The florist van pulls up next, and I wave them toward the tables. Gram wanted wildflowers in mason jars, nothing fancy, but there are dozens of arrangements and they need to be distributed just right. The woman in charge looks harried, so I grab one end of a flat of flowers and help her carry it.
"You're a lifesaver," she says. "Usually we get left to figure out placement ourselves."
"What you don't get is people who care whether it looks good." The jars are perfect—daisies and black-eyed Susans and something purple I don't recognize but love immediately.
Gram will be thrilled. She will scoff and probably purse her lips, but deep down, she'll love this.
Heath returns from his light-hanging intervention looking pleased with himself. "Crisis averted. Also, I may have volunteered us to help set up the sound system."
"Us?"
"You have steady hands. I have height and the ability to carry heavy things without dropping them."
"A compelling combination."
"We make a good team."
The way he says it, casual but not quite casual, makes my pulse skip. We do make a good team. Have been making a good team all weekend, in ways that have nothing to do with party logistics.
The sound system turns out to be more complicated than either of us anticipated, involving multiple trips to the house for extension cords and a brief argument with a speaker that refuses to cooperate. Out of frustration, I may have smacked the darn thing, and it somehow worked.
Huh.
Heath figures out the wiring while I untangle approximately seven miles of cable. We finally get music playing—The Temptations, The Mamas & the Papas, and some Simon & Garfunkel because "anything else is just noise"—and he spins me around the lawn in a ridiculous little dance that makes me laugh until my sides hurt.