Page 66 of The Ground Beneath Our Feet
We breathed in and out for a second, together, panting.
Just then, I looked at the turtle headed into the doorway.
“You okay, baby?” I nodded, suddenly feeling a little shy. “Go change clothes, and I’ll feed you spaghetti. I’m carbo-loading. I’ll give you it with extra protein, though.”
“‘Kay.”
He kissed me hard, smacked my behind, and said, “I love dat ass.”
I smiled over my shoulder.
After dinner of Mikey feeding me his secret recipe of protein-enriched spaghetti and meatballs, which gave me a mouthgasm, and each of us sneaking off to find a toothbrush, he bustled me upstairs and into my room, boxing me against the wall with his arms on either side of me.
“I’ve wanted you ever since I saw you,” he said in his soothing voice. He traced his hand down my bare arm. “And now that I’ve had you, I’ll never be able to get enough.”
“You can. We live together. It’s kind of ironic that we’re roommates, but the first time we get together was by text.”
That Mikey dimple appeared, and he laughed. “I maybe have heard you before.”
My eyes flew open. “Oh no,” I whispered.
“It was hot. I felt like a perv because I was invading your space, hearing you, but I couldn’t help it. This house is loud.” He kissed me, a perfect kiss. He explored, caressed me with his lips, and gave me the good, just-brushed taste of his tongue. “Tell me you want this.”
“I want this,” I agreed. There was no one I’d ever met who made me feel so turned on, but who also made me safe. While he had an edge of danger about him, I knew those huge arms would never hurt me. I just wanted to run my tongue up and down them.
“I do too. I plan on spending the entire night loving up every single one of your curves. At the end, you can tell me whether I accomplished that or not.”
I ducked under his arm and, laughing, ran for the bed and plopped on it on my back. He followed me, tumbling onto me.
He pulled at my pants, and I scooched his down. His shirt came off, and so did mine, and we kissed and pulled off our underwear. Right about when he was going to go to the other room to get a condom, the lights went out in the house.
He immediately came back in bed and cuddled up next to me, our naked bodies pressed close together.
“Welp. Old house. Gotta wait for the lights to come back on.”
“We could call an electrician,” I offered.
He sucked on my neck. “Yeah, we could, baby, but we’re grounded alright. I had the house rewired when I bought it. We just need to wait for the power to be restored.” Wrapping his big arms around me, he squeezed me tight.
“It’s funny,” I mused. “When I was growing up, I lived in the dark. My parents never opened the curtains, and we had bars on the doors. And now I live in this house that’s all light all the time. When you shine the light on something, you see the truth. There are no lies in the light. But the problem with the truth is that it isn’t always pretty. It’s lumpy and imperfect, with messes and ugly edges and problems.”
“But it’s the truth,” he whispered.
“Yeah, it’s the truth. I used to trust the darkness,” I said. “But now I trust the light.”
He turned me over, and his mouth found mine. “Did you know that there are candles in the bathroom?”
I nodded against his mouth.
“Do you feel like taking a shower?”
I shivered, and he took that as a yes.
“Let me get you warmed up. Come with me.”
He got out of bed and reached for my hand. I still wasn’t used to walking around naked, being seen. But since it was so dark, it didn’t matter.
When we got to the bathroom, he fumbled in a drawer and pulled out a book of matches. He struck a match and lit candles, which gave the room a surprising amount of light. Now I could see his eyes, his face, his body.
