Page 78 of The Cadence
Will lay me back onto his bed and we kept kissing. I’d really had no idea that it was so nice—in most of the books I’d read, the kissing was only a breezed-through intro that led to the main event: sex. But we kissed for a while, and we talked, too. He made me laugh when he said that he really had heard me screaming during his game, and he spent a long time brushing his lips over my neck, collarbone, and ears, until finally he put his mouth on my breasts. He kissed my nipple, which was so hard and seemed larger, oddly, and then he slipped the fabric of my bra to the side to suckle my skin. I shifted to try to offer more of myself, and he quickly undid the clasp behind my back to toss the bra away.
He slid his knee over my thighs, so that the rock-hard tree branch also pressed against me. Rather than making me a little apprehensive, as it had before, I shifted again to rub against itbecause now I felt very hot and bothered. I was anxious, in other words, but in a different way—I was anxious to feel more of him and for him to feel more of me.
“We’ll go slow,” he murmured, and his lips closed over my nipple again.
“You could go faster,” I gasped, and he obliged. His palm, which had rested on my stomach, moved beneath my underwear to touch me there. He cupped between my legs and his one finger moved to my clitoris. Just the lightest brush and I moaned and jerked, and his hips did, too.
“Damn, Calla,” Will muttered, and tossed away our underwear. Then he kept kissing my breasts and he kept touching me. I closed my eyes and I told him things about loving him, and about it feeling so good. Pleasure, complete and overwhelming, mounted until I was shaking with it. When it broke, I clenched and released around his fingers and he moaned, too.
“This way,” he told me, and rolled onto his back. “You can set the pace.” He was putting on a condom, which I watched blearily, and then he helped me fit his length just inside myself. I did go pretty slow, easing down over him and getting used to the stretch. Finally, he was all the way there, and both of us were breathless. I moved slightly, testing it out, and I found that if I leaned forward, then we rubbed against each other in a way that felt even better than his fingers had.
He had watched me intently as I got situated but as I moved, his eyes closed and I smiled at the pleasure that washed across his face. Sex with him was so good that I figured we’d doing it all thetime, everywhere we could, like all the rooms in the house, both cars, the loading dock...tension was building up inside me and felt even bigger than before.
“Will,” I said urgently, and his eyes opened.
“I love you. I love you, Calla,” he told me, just as intense. He stroked my clit and I froze, on the edge. And then I felt him surge and come, just as I did.
After, he held me so tightly that I could never have gotten away. Not that I wanted to, because he was my home and I was here to stay. “Are you all right? Are you sure?” he kept asking. “Did I hurt you? Are you sore? Don’t hide it to protect me.”
“I want to do it again,” I answered, and then he laughed.
“We’ll do it plenty,” Will promised, and I said I was going to hold him to that.
For now, I would hold onto him. The reality of Will Bodine, with all the quirks and all the flaws, was so much better than any dream I’d had when I was fourteen. The reality was simple, too.
“I love you,” I told him. That was where it began and where it ended, because it was everything.
Epilogue
“That’s it.” Kirsten threw down her knitting needles and one of them impaled itself into her grandma’s rug. “This is too small! It’s im-fucking-possible.” She looked up from the wad of yarn on her lap into the faces of Miss Mozella and Miss Sloane. “I’m sorry for swearing,” she told them both, and then she turned to me and mouthed, “Un-fucking-believable!”
“I saw that, too,” Miss Mozella informed her. “Pass me your hat.” She picked up the green tangle that Kirsten had produced and she seemed puzzled as she turned it one way and another. “Well…”
“How are you doing this?” Kirsten asked Will. “How is it possible, with hands the size of yours?”
He held up the tiny sweater he had been diligently working on. “I enjoy knitting. It’s very relaxing.”
“And then there’s you,” she said, turning on her boyfriend.
“You don’t like it?” Cully finished the seam and cut the threads. “I think this quilt is turning out great. I’m really into the nine-patch, Sloane.”
“I thought you would be.” She smiled at him, and he grinned back at her. “What if you and I went over to the fabric store tomorrow?”
“I can’t,” he said ruefully. “I have class.”
“That’s more important. We can pick up something for your binding later,” she said, and he nodded. He only had one more semester before he finished his degree in computer science and he had already lined up a job for after graduation, so he was all set if his career as a quilter fell through.
“This has been such a lovely visit with y’all,” Miss Mozella told us as she discreetly put the mess of Kirsten’s hat under the table. “I can’t believe that—”
She stopped, because we all heard the soft cry through the baby monitor. The little body on the screen twitched angrily, and two tiny legs kicked.
“I have him!” Ophelia Bodine called. In a moment, we also saw her on the screen. As she didn’t like to sew or knit, she had decided to take on most baby duties. “There you are, you sweet thing,” she murmured as she leaned into the crib. She carried him into Miss Sloane’s living room and there was a short skirmish as we all fought over who got to hold him.
“I win,” Kirsten announced. “He’s mine! And I don’t want to knit anymore.”
“First, I’ll do the diaper,” Cully chimed in, and they went together to take care of their little guy. We had all been concerned when Kirsten told us that she was pregnant, but she was doing great and so was her boyfriend. Miss Sloan had been a very good influence, and I liked to think that I might have been, too. Anyway, they were wonderful parents.
Will won the next argument over who got to hold the baby when Cully brought him back, now freshened up. It made sense that he could triumph over the rest of us since he was the largest and strongest person here. I thought he might have been the gentlest, too. He looked down and smiled into the baby’s face and I felt my heart actually melt.
