Don’t Mind If “I Do” by Everly Ashton

Forty-One

Mazzy

His rock-hard length under his briefs makes me feel wanton. I’ll never grow tired of this man, will never get enough.

I pull at the waistband of his black boxer briefs and lick my lips, remembering what he tastes like before I drag them down his legs and toss them aside. As I sit up straighter to continue on my quest, he tackles me, pinning me to the bed.

I yelp and laugh. “Hey now.”

“We’ll never reach the main attraction if you go there tonight.”

I grin, taking his action as a compliment to my skills. Before I can say thank you, his mouth falls to my body, worshiping every square inch. My neck, my collarbone, the valley between my breasts. He plucks my nipples with his teeth, and the sensation causes my torso to vault off the bed. Nick grinds the heel of his hand in circles over my mound while his mouth works over my breasts.

In less than a minute, I’m at that spot before I explode. The spot where if I don’t get some relief—an orgasm, him inside me, something, anything—I’m going to go lose my mind. And as though we’ve been partners for years and he knows I’m on the precipice of coming, he strips his hand and mouth off me.

My head whips up and I glare at him, but I’m met with a dark chuckle as he slides my underwear down my legs and throws them across the room.

All right, now we’re getting somewhere.

Without a word, he grips my knees in his large hands and spreads my legs wide before leaning down and trailing his tongue from my entrance up to my clit. My eyes roll back in my head and I sigh. I should yank him up by his hair and say what he said to me, but my body sinks into the mattress.

“Fuck, you should be savored.” He leans back down and swipes at me again. And again. And again.

I writhe when he focuses all his attention on my clit. I need to come.

And then—he’s gone again.

My eyes shoot open and he’s on his knees between my legs, stroking himself. I sit up on my elbows, watching without shame. His muscles bunching while he gives himself pleasure is so fucking hot. I snake my hand down toward my clit to get relief and his eyes flare. But right before I hit my destination, he grabs my hand.

He takes both my wrists and presses them to the bed, above my head, his weight bearing down on me. His hard length presses against me, so close but still so far from where I need him.

“Please, Nick.” A desperate need fills my voice.

“I’m going to give it to you.” He licks along the seam of my lips, but when I open to him, he pulls away. I growl in frustration and he chuckles.

“I have condoms.” He bends and licks up the column of my neck.

My eyes drift closed.

“But I’d prefer to feel you with nothing between us. I’m clean. I have my papers in the night table if you want to see them.”

I shake my head. “I believe you.”

He nips my earlobe. “And you?”

“I’m clean. I haven’t been with anyone since my divorce. And I’m on the pill.” I hate saying my ex-husband’s name, especially right in this moment, but it’s worth it if I can feel Nick with nothing between us.

“Well then, what are we waiting for?”

He still holds my arms pinned above my head as he pushes into me, a little at first then pulls back and pushes in again and again until he’s fully seated inside me. I gasp at the sensation of feeling so full of him.

“You all right?” he asks, letting my wrists go and placing his forearms on either side of my head so he isn’t putting all his weight on me.

He pulls out and my every nerve sighs in pleasure. Nick moves slow and steady but builds to a faster pace. My hands grip his ass, and the feeling of his muscles contracting every time he enters me is such a turn-on.

Before long, we’re a hot, sweaty mess and I’m building toward a crescendo once again. I’ll kill him if he backs away from me again.

But he doesn’t. He sits back on his heels and takes my legs from behind his back, moving them so they rest on his chest, my feet on either side of his face. Then he bends forward and thrusts into me, pushing my knees toward my chest.

And oh holy hell, it’s fucking divine. Every time he thrusts into me, he hits my G-spot and I cry out. The pleasure is intense. Almost too intense. Almost out of control. With a few more thrusts, I detonate like a bomb, my thoughts scattering around the room. I’m no longer in control of myself as I scream and my body writhes underneath him.

He slows his pace, allowing me to ride out my orgasm. When I come to and open my eyes, he’s sitting back on his ankles, gripping my waist and watching himself pull in and out of me. My legs fall to the side.

“Fuck, that was hot to watch, Maz.” His gaze meets mine momentarily.

“Imagine how it felt.” I give him a lazy grin.

“I’m about to find out.” He pumps into me in earnest again, and the drag of his cock in and out of me lights up my nerve endings again.

I grip my breasts and he growls low in his throat, slamming into me harder. We’re both panting when he circles his thumb around my swollen bud. Another orgasm consumes me without any warning, and I cry out at the same time he does.

He holds himself inside me by gripping my waist, jutting his hips while he comes inside me. The expression on his face is one of rapture, and I do my best to keep my eyes open to take him all in.

Once we’ve caught our breath, he slowly pulls out, groaning as he watches our joined bodies..

“That was…” I can’t even form any more words.

“Yeah.” He flops down on the bed beside me and pulls me into him. “It was.”

* * *

We lie in bed,naked under the covers, a glass of wine on each nightstand, and eat out of takeout containers while watching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

“This is so much better than a night at some fancy restaurant. Thank you.” I kiss him, but Nick deepens the kiss for a moment.

“I wanted the two of us to connect, not show you that I know the best restaurant in town or how much money I can spend on a date.”

I lift my wine glass from the bedside table. “Well, you know me well then. Because you know money and fancy places mean nothing to me.”

He smiles.

“I forgot how much I enjoyed painting. I think I’ll do more of it.”

“You should. You’re very good.”

“Or maybe it just looks that way due to comparison.”

He leans in and tickles me and I laugh, scooting away with the takeout container on my lap. Our laughter dies down and our attention returns to the TV until we finish our meals.

After a while, I decide to ask him the question that’s been on my mind. “Can I ask you something?”

His forehead wrinkles. “You should know you can ask me anything. What’s up?”

“When your parents came over, I got the impression they’d never been here before.”

“They haven’t.”

I shift to lean against the padded headboard to see him better. “I take it your relationship devolved in the time we weren’t speaking then?”

His parents have always been a touchy subject because it’s inadvertently bringing up his brother, but I want to know where his family stands in his life. And if we can’t talk about these things, we’ll never be able to go any further than we already have.

“After I caught you with my brother”—he squeezes my hand—“well, you can imagine the words he and I had. I showed up at the law firm the following week. My father intervened before it became a full-blown brawl in the middle of their office. Since then, I don’t see them unless I absolutely have to.” He shrugs as though he doesn’t care, but I know it has to hurt.

“What about your mom?”

“I see her more often, but not more than once a month at most. It’s a strained relationship. She knows how I feel about my dad and brother, and I think she hopes I’ll change my mind at some point, but that’s never going to happen.”

“I’m sorry.” I wrap my arms around his waist, snuggling into his side. The sheet drops and I press my naked chest against his side.

“It’s not your fault.”

“It is though. If I hadn’t let Keith—”

“No.” He shakes his head. “If it wasn’t that, it would’ve been something else. We were already adversaries. That was just the final knife in my back. In some ways, it was a good thing. It allowed me to stop trying to have a relationship with the two of them and feel bad when it didn’t go well. I was able to move on with my life and live it how I wanted. And truly, I’m happy.”

I squeeze my arms around his middle and kiss his chest.

After a few moments of silence, he asks, “Can I ask you something now?”

“Seems fair.”

He chuckles and rubs his hand up and down my side. I close my eyes from the sensation of his fingers dragging across my skin.

“Are you over your first marriage?”

I pop up and make a show of looking between our naked bodies. “Isn’t it obvious?”

He pulls me back into him. “People can have sex without being emotionally attached. Trust me, I did it for all the years we’ve been apart.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. I do not want to think about Nick having sex with other women. But we’re adults.

“We never should have been married in the first place. We weren’t a good match, but we were dating, and I was happy enough and he asked… I don’t know. I just kind of went with it. He proposed in front of my parents and they were so thrilled. Here I was marrying this man from another prominent family and they thought I was ecstatic about it. By the time I came up for air and was having doubts, dates had been set and news traveled. I convinced myself that I was just a nervous bride and that after the wedding was over and we settled into married life, I’d feel better about it.”

“And how’d that work out?”

I chuckle. “Not well, obviously.”

He squeezes me into him and kisses my forehead. “I’m sorry you had to go through the humiliation of your husband publicly cheating on you, but I’m not sorry about how it turned out.”

“It was definitely one of the hardest things I’ve gone through.”

“Not the hardest?”

I shake my head against his chest. “No, that distinction belongs to losing my grandfather and losing you. Those were equally painful.”

Nick tilts my chin up to face him and kisses me, his tongue licking along the seam of my lips and pushing inside. While our tongues glide, he grips me tighter before he pulls away. “Can I make a confession?”

I nod, unsure what he’s going to tell me.

“The day I saw your engagement announcement in the paper, I got black-out drunk. I did the same when I saw your wedding photos.”

Tears spring to my eyes. “Can I confess something to you?”

He nods.

“All I could think about on my wedding day was you and how it should’ve been you up there.”

He cups my cheek and runs his thumb along the skin. “Fuck, we wasted so much time. Time we could’ve been together.”

“We just have to make the most of the time we have now.”

He gives me a rakish smile. “Well, I can certainly think of one way we can make the most of it.”

He rolls over me and I yelp. His lips trail kisses down my body. And boy, does he make the most of the next hour.