Молли Харпер - And One Last Thing...

“Did you just put me in the friend zone?” he asked, indignant as he backed me up against his front door. My hand raised instinctively against his chest and found that all that jogging had served Monroe quite nicely.

“Look, I don’t have that many friends and you’ve been - well, you were an ass at first, but now, I think of you as a good friend and I don’t want to - mmumph” I was cut off when Monroe wrapped his hands around the nape of my neck and crushed my mouth against his, taking my breath and any semblance of coherent thought right out of my head. It felt like every nerve ending in my body was focused in my lips, so I could feel Monroe from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes. He released me, letting me settle rather unsteadily back on my feet. I blew out a shaky breath. “Okay, then.”

“Do you feel awkward now?” he asked.

I bit my lip, wincing at how bruised and swollen it felt, and considered. “No, a little tingly, but not awkward..

“Do you feel differently about me?” he asked. “Are you going to avoid talking to me or looking me in the eye because you’re embarrassed that I just kissed you?”

Right now, all I wanted to do was kiss him again, so avoiding him really wasn’t at the top of my list of priorities. “Er, no.”

“So I think we’ll be fine,” he said, taking my elbow as I walked outside on wobbly legs. “Now go home and write somesex scenes. There’s a game on tonight. Come over and have a beer, if you’re interested. If not, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Monroe winked at me and closed the door, leaving me to stare after him in stunned amazement.

What the hell had just happened?

I called through the closed door. “You know, there’s a reason people don’t always say exactly what they’re thinking!”

At last count, it had been almost four months since I’d had any sort of sex. It had been Mike’s birthday. He had too many drinks at his birthday party, and I guess he was too blotto to notice I was his wife, not his girlfriend. So it had been a grand total of one hundred twelve days, three hours, and forty minutes since I’d had even bad sex.

And it showed.

The first sex scene I wrote was basically porn. Monroe said to be as graphic as possible, so I was. I used every dirty word I knew… and some that I just made up. I didn’t even give the characters’ names or backgrounds or a plausible reason for having sex. They were just “he” and “she” and they were naked. There was thrusting, sweating, slamming, biting, pinching, and a lot of extremely clinical anatomical terms I will spare the kids at home.

“It sounds like I have Tourette’s syndrome,” I groaned, deleting it.

The problem, as usual, was that I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know what I liked in bed, so how was I supposed to write about it? Obviously, I knew how to make myself. happy. But who wanted to read about that? Well, I’m sure there were people who wanted to read about it, but they weren’t exactly my target audience. Part of my problem was I was afraid of the penis - not the body part, the actual word. I didn’t know what to call it.

Penis, I typed quickly. Penis penis penis penis. The roof didn’t cave in at this blasphemy, so I would begin at the beginning. With a non-threatening penis euphemism.

Length. Length was a good word. It wasn’t gross. It implied a healthy size. It was far more Nora Roberts than Violet Blue. My hand snaked down his slick torso and palmed the hard length of him, I wrote.

“That’s not so bad,” I said, tilting my head like a sculptor observing a new clay shape. I continued typing.

I sighed, easing back to enjoy the sensation of his fingers gliding inside of me, stroking over the already sensitive nerve endings while I rocked against him.

His hands splayed on the small of my back, anchoring me to him as he slid down my body, kissing the curves of my collarbone. Shivering for what I knew was coming, I watched him. I studied his eyes, the way they took in every detail. He knew what he was making me feel, and for him, that was half the fun. He caught me looking at him, and when I tried to close my eyes, palmed my cheek and brought me back to watch as he worshipped my skin.

I couldn’t seem to get enough of that first sensation, the entirety of my being holding its breath as I stretched to accept him. Knowing this, he pulled away from me and slid into me again. I flexed my legs, wrapping my arms around his shoulders as I rode him.

His thumb skimmed over my lips. I caught it between my teeth, biting down gently. I could feel every ridge of his cool, wet skin with my tongue. I felt the warmth of his mouth against the lines of my jaw, his fingers clutching at my hips as the pace became frantic, desperate.

I opened my eyes and found him watching me, and that was enough to tip me over the edge. It was terrifying how easily I could reach my peak with him. The force of a good strong orgasm rippled through me, wave after wave, until I felt lost in the dark. He was my anchor, driving into me, keeping me from drifting away. Allowing him to have such an effect on me put a lot of power in his hands. At the moment his hands were more occupied with keeping me afloat as I threw my head back and screamed out my release. Monroe followed, digging his nails into my back, clutching me to him.

“Gah!” I cried, yanking my hands away from the keyboard and staring at the Monroe blinking back at me on the screen. Where did that come from? I went back and deleted the name.

It was perfectly natural, I told myself. Monroe was the only available man within screwing distance. He had recently seen me naked. He was the one who put this whole sex scene thing into my head. And he had recently pushed me against a door and kissed me. Really, really well.

“He will never, ever see this,” I told myself as I continued typing.

In support of our budding friendship, Monroe and I decided to do something new: organized socializing. Instead of just spotting that the other person was awake or doing something stupid and life-threatening and coming on over, we actually agreed to meet at an agreed-upon time and make a meal that wasn’t improvised.

I struggled with what I should cook for Monroe. He agreed to provide sides and dessert and do the dishes if I brought the main dish. As egalitarian as that sounded, I had a hard time returning to that homemaker role. For one thing, I didn’t want him to think I was trying to impress him, some desperate attempt to lure a man through his stomach. And for another, I didn’t want him to expect me to present him with spectacular meals on a regular basis. I’d already had a man who learned to take my efforts for granted and I wasn’t interested in another one.

At the same time, it went against all of Mama’s genes to serve a friend some Velveeta-based slop. So I raided my pantry and found the ingredients for chicken and dumplings. Informal, unsexy, and perfect for the weather, which was finally getting frosty heading into late September.

Unfortunately, Monroe’s idea of side dishes was heated chili beans and raw baby carrots. And he forgot to add eggs to the brownie mix. No man is perfect.

“You need a mommy,” I told him, sipping a Coke as he stood at his sink, washing dishes. “Or a very patient housekeeper. I am volunteering for neither job, but you need one or the other.”

“Hey, I was subsisting just fine on chili beans and frozen lasagna, and then you came along with your homemade goodness and showed me what I’m missing. Now, when you move, I’m going to go into dumpling withdrawal.”

“So you’re kicking me out of the greater lake area already?” I asked.