Chapter Twenty

 My conversation with Sara in the driveway had at least gotten me to pay more attention to how Jay and I acted around each other.  As the next couple of weeks wore on, even I couldn’t deny certain things.  Our gazes at each other were becoming more drawn out.  The small reassuring touches we would give in conversation were turning more into caresses, which began to grow in duration.  We were growing more daring in making little comments to each other.  And of course, we both seemed inclined to spend every moment together that we could.

 As our martial arts lessons continued, our bodies spent a lot more time in contact with each other.  I hated not giving his lessons the full attention I felt they deserved, but part of my mind was always dedicated to wondering if that contact had any similar effect on him as it did on me.  He refused to let me take anything out of his rent for payment, but accepted hot meals in return for his efforts.  His appreciation for those moved me so much that I still felt indebted to him.

 One morning I heard a car pull in while Madison was eating her breakfast.  Mariah started barking.  Earl never comes by this early!  I held my breath, but there was no following engine rev.  Then Jay surprised me by coming through the door.

 “Jay!”  Madison started to get up.

 “Maddie, please sit down and finish eating,” I said.  He came into the kitchen and sat with a tired grunt.  “You scared me, I thought you were in your room sleeping.”

 “Scared you?”

 Oops.  “Well, I’m not expecting anybody or anything.”

 When he only nodded, I asked if something was wrong.  “I just feel off.  I actually slept not long after I got home last night, but they just called me in at six.  So I guess I’m kind of up for the day.  I’m not used to these hours.  It feels like I should be asleep, but I’m not tired.”  He sighed in frustration and rubbed his face with his hands.  “I will be by the time I have to leave for work again, though.”

 I had the day off myself, and I forced down a smile at the thought of spending the day with him.  Patty was training somebody new, and thanks to my newfound income I had happily volunteered to lose a few shifts to keep costs down.  “Are you hungry?”

 He shook his head.  “I stopped somewhere on the way home.  That also felt weird.”  He looked at my mug.  “Any coffee left?”

 “There can be.”  I smiled at him to keep him from telling me not to bother.  “So what did you get called in for?”

 “More annoying stuff.  A guy hurt his elbow two weeks ago.  So he goes to the emergency room at five in the morning to get it looked at finally.  Of course.  A fine reason to pull someone out of bed.”  He sighed to calm himself.  “Maybe they don’t know.  Guy probably thinks that just because the ER is open all night, everyone’s there all night.  It’s not going to go away, no point in getting frustrated.”

 “So was it a rough day?” Madison asked, and I laughed.  A week earlier, Jay had called from work just to have someone to talk to after a disturbing case involving a child.  That night I let Madison stay up so we could greet him when he came home.  For an explanation, I told her Jay had a rough day and that we should be extra nice to him.  Ever since, she had asked him that every time she was around when he came home.

 “Yes, and for all the wrong reasons,” he told her.

 “That’s too bad.  I’m sorry.”

 “It’s okay,” he said.  “I’m home now.”

 Still, Madison gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek before going out to catch the bus.  When I came back from seeing her onto it, he said “I think you might have raised the sweetest little girl there is.”  He looked thoughtfully at his coffee.  “No surprises there, she just takes after her mommy.”

 He missed my blush, and after giving it some time to fade I asked, “So, now what do you want to do?”

 My voice made him look at me.  Our eyes met, and there was a moment where we both knew exactly what we wanted.  Neither of us said anything, and the spell broke.  Sara, you were worried about nothing.  We’re both just too shy.  There had been a few such moments in the last weeks, usually after we’d been talking for awhile.  They all met the same end, with us reluctantly and awkwardly parting ways.

 “Did you have something in mind?” he asked me.

 You know I do.  You have to.  “No...  We could watch some bad daytime TV together,” I suggested.

 He thought, and I remembered him saying how much he despised TV.  “Nah.  I think I’m gonna go read for awhile, then.”

 Damn, I thought.  “Have fun,” I said.

 I didn’t even feel like watching TV myself, but I’d already told him that was what I was going to do.  I turned to a talk show where girls were getting paternity tests on men, with the amount of potential fathers ranging from five to eight.  Could be worse, I told myself, which I knew was probably the whole point of these shows.

 Less than five minutes later, Jay came back out and sat next to me on the love seat.  “I can’t even put a sentence together in my head,” he said.

 I offered the remote.  “Want to watch something else?”

 He held up his hand and shook his head with a slightly amused smile.  “So what do we have here?”

 “Oh, they do this at least once a week,” I said, and explained what was going on.  “It’s stupid, I know.”

 “So, why are you watching it again?” he laughed, pretending to pick on me.

 “Hey, if you want to make fun of me, we can just shut it off,” I said, pretending to be offended.

 “Okay, shut it off,” he said quietly.  His smile had faded but wasn’t quite gone.  I turned off the TV, noticing a feeling of anticipation.  “I just like talking to you.  That’s all I wanted to do, to be honest.  Why does it feel like ‘sit and talk’ isn’t an option, when someone asks what you want to do?”

 “People don’t seem to do it a whole lot anymore,” I said.

 “They should.  I like this even better already.”  He slid closer to me.  I saw his arm start to go up.  With a smile, I leaned into him.  “Mmm,” he said as his arm encircled me gently.  “Even better.”  His other arm came up to complete the circle.  After a bit of silence he said, “It’s nice to hold someone again...”  I could feel the movement of his mouth in my hair.

 What took you so long, then?  “It’s nice to be held,” I said quietly.  I reached up with both of my hands to give his forearm a squeeze.    His flesh was wonderfully firm and yielding at the same time, and I didn’t let go.  My head rested against a spot on his chest that seemed made for it.

 His hand started to rub my arm.  I closed my eyes, wondering if he would be so predictable as to move in for a breast grab.  He’s touching me like he might...  Is this really going to happen?  He didn’t.  Instead, he went from rubbing my arm with his whole hand to tracing his fingertips up and down its length.  He was doing it slowly, steadily, and incredibly softly.  I would have barely felt it at all if it weren’t for the thrilling tingles radiating away from each contact point.  I was waiting for him to go further, but he only kept going slower and slower.  I had never experienced anything like it.  I felt like he was somehow purposefully drawing all of my attention, all of my consciousness even, into that arm.

 His head rested against mine, and a subtle shift in his breathing told me he was smelling my hair.  I was getting aroused, and something more than that.  I felt like he was casting a spell on me of some sort, I was so unaware of anything but his touch.  “What are you doing?” I whispered, in awe of what I was feeling.

 He pulled away quickly.  “I’m sorry, I just...”

 I was about to tell him he’d misunderstood, but I wondered what he was about to say.  I looked at him with an encouraging smile, waiting for him to go on.

 “I guess I was wrong, but it seemed like...”  He started over.  “There’s something about you, Laura.  I don’t know if it’s your eyes, or something I see in the way you carry yourself...  It’s almost like I hear you crying out for affection.  And you know how attracted to you I am...”

 I couldn’t help interrupting.  “You think...  I’m attractive?”  Hearing it so plainly made my eyes sting.

 He had no idea how much that meant to me.  “Come on, Laura, I can’t hide it for anything when I like someone.  You have to know.  Anyway, I thought maybe...”  His voice lost in volume what his face gained in redness.  “You might accept some from me.  I’m sorry.”  He was horribly embarrassed, and quickly got up and started to leave.

 “Jay,” I said softly, and he stopped to look at me.  “Come here, please?”  He came back to sit, with an expression that showed a mix of relief and confusion.  I put my hand to his cheek, stunned that he was the nervous one here.  “You weren’t wrong about it at all.  And there is nobody I would rather accept affection from than you.”  We moved into an embrace, caressing each other’s backs.  “I’ve been so alone, Jay.  Even on those rare occasions when I do have a man with me, I’ve felt alone.  It’s not like that with you.  I really feel like I’m with somebody.”

 “So why did you ask me what I was doing?”  The way he asked brought to mind the last time he’d heard those words.

 I patted his back with a tiny laugh.  “That was exactly what Beth said that night, wasn’t it?  I didn’t mean it that way.  I just don’t think I’ve ever been touched like that.  There was a second where I honestly didn’t know what was going on.  I wondered if you were working some kind of eastern magic on me.”

 “Working magic on you?  No.  All I was doing was getting lost in your beauty.”

 Beauty, he says!  “Getting lost?” I asked with an enormous smile.

 He pulled away from me to look at his hands.  “I don’t know if it’s the martial arts, the tai chi I tried teaching myself, or all the meditating.  My sense of touch is extremely sensitive.  It’s like I feel things a hundred times more than I used to.”

 I put my hand around the back of his neck.  “Then tell me how this feels,” I said, and pulled him into a kiss.  Our lips brushed against each other’s briefly.  As I again started to get overwhelmed with sensation, I wondered what Jay was feeling.  Our mouths opened and our tongues met, exploring each other tentatively at first, then hungrily.  His hands came up to the sides of my head, his thumbs brushing against my cheeks softly.

 We pulled away to look at each other.  Jay kept hold of me, but his thumbs had stopped.  There was a look in his eyes that was telling me how much that meant to him.  As they bored into mine, it seemed like he was trying to verify my very existence.  “So...  Did that feel right?” I asked when I remembered how to talk.

 With a quiet groan filled with longing, he pulled me to him as an answer, holding me tightly.  I held him as well.  Then I felt a hand creep up underneath my hair, and his fingertips started gently massaging the back of my scalp.  He removed my hair tie, poked his fingers up through my hair and pulled it away, trailing his fingers through it.  He did it so slowly, the words agony and ecstasy both came to my mind.  His hand traced its way up my back, behind my head, and he did the same thing again.  As he kept doing it, it was like what he’d done with my arm.  Each time was a little slower, and each time our breathing became a little deeper.  “That feels wonderful, Jay...” I said before speaking would be too much effort.

 It felt like he did that forever, before he put his hand on the back of my head and held me to him.  “Why don’t you know how beautiful you are?” he asked me.  He was starting to get out of breath.

 The question caught me off guard as much as the idea that that’s what he’d just been thinking about.  I didn’t think I was, so I didn’t know what to say.  I didn’t want to contradict him, either.  “Well...  How would I?”

 He was silent for awhile as he continued to hold me to him.  “I don’t know...  It just seems impossible that you don’t.  Maybe I figured you could see it as well as I can.  Or that you must have heard it from every guy you meet.”

 “No, definitely not...”  Things that had been said to me started coming to mind, and I forced them back.  “But...”

 He let go of me, and looked at me.  “What?”

 “Just now, when you were touching me...”  I leaned back into him with a hand on his chest, feeling the divot between his pectoral muscles.  “Then I felt beautiful.”

 Breath rushed from Jay’s nose in a surprised laugh.  “Really?”

 I laughed back.  “Are you surprised or something?”

 “Well...  Yes.   How could I have such an effect on you?”

 I rubbed my hand up and down his chest and said, “Because I think you’re beautiful, too.”

 “You really mean that...”  He sounded sad, but when I looked up at him I saw he wasn’t.  Just touched...

 With a hand on the back of my head, he leaned in to kiss me again.  His hands started kneading the flesh behind my shoulders.  I pulled his t-shirt up and started tracing my own hands up and down his back.  He broke the kiss and rested his forehead against mine to shudder in pleasure.  “You like that?” I whispered.

 “Hmm...” he sighed in the affirmative.  His hands moved toward my front and I felt him holding my ribcage, his palms less than an inch from my breasts.  I continued, wondering again what he was feeling.

 I’d kept getting more excited, and seeing what an effect I could have on him as well made something inside of me snap.  “Jay...  Come with me.”  As I pulled away our arms trailed down each other’s, and our hands linked.  I stood and held his hands while he got up, then led him to my bedroom.

Reviews

[Sarah]

YESS! Finally. This is the moment I've been waiting for! Despite knowing it was coming, you wrote it so masterfully that it came as sort of a surprise. First, with Jay walking away, thinking he had done something wrong, and then Laura pulling him back over. I actually can't believe Laura made the first move. That was vary unexpected! Ah, okay. I need to read the next chapter!