Nothing Done in Love Ch. 06

Katie wrapped the towel about her head as she reached for her toothbrush. "What the hell are you thinking? Doing?" She asked the fresh-faced young woman that greeted her from the mirror. Her usually tanned face was flushed, and only part of that had to do with the warm shower she had just finished.

"Your mother is fucking dying, and you are thinking about hopping into bed with a fucking Adonis." She chuckled, "Correct that...two of them!"

She wagged the toothbrush at her image for a moment before shaking her head and putting it into her mouth, brushing automatically. Up, down, back, forth, slow, steady circles.

'Fuck, since when has even brushing your fucking teeth become about sex?' For a woman that had forsaken sex as highly overrated after just one feeble attempt, she was...

She spat the toothpaste into the sink and turned on the tap, rinsing her toothbrush. "So, what the fuck you gonna do about it, Katie?"

She laughed at the outline of white foam around her mouth as she began the same motion; up, down, side to side, tiny circles with fresh water. She spat again into the basin and turned the water back on as she reached for the cup to rinse her mouth.

'You should rinse your mouth out with soap, well, your dirty mind anyway,' scoffed that voice in her head. She began to clean up. She tried to focus on the routine of that, but the situation kept coming back to her mind.

For the first time in close to eight years, she was going to sleep with a man. Not just any man, but her best friend. Hell, if they were taking shifts - two men. Of course, that did not mean that anything sexual was going to happen. Not necessarily anyway, she thought.

Her nipples hardened and became so sensitive that the rough terry cloth towel wrapped about her hurt. "Yeah, that is why you shaved? There? You have not shaved there in years."

Katie knew she was procrastinating, trying to delay the inevitable. It was not like her reflection in the mirror had any more answers than she did. After a decade of virtual silence, her best friends show up, and in the space of less than a week, her whole fucking life is turned on its head.

Not that it was not already. She was facing the hardest transition of her life. Her mother's death would leave her alone and adrift. She had spent weeks trying to figure out what happened next. Did she stay in this house that had been her home for her whole life? It was full of memories, but would those be a comfort or suck her into a vortex of depression and grief?

The damned thing was worth a small fortune, even as small as it was. Of course, if she sold it, she knew that whoever bought it would knock down the original wood and stucco structure that her grandparents had built after her grandfather left the Navy. That bothered her - as if her whole family and all it had stood for would simply be erased.

She had thought about renting it out, either subletting or seasonally. Find an agent to manage it and take some time off, a year maybe two, and just travel. Living at home as she had decided to do, she was able to save a great deal of her monthly salary as a teacher. She would be able to travel rather extensively if she chose to.

And that was not even considering the money she would inherit from her mother, though they had discussed it and most of her mother's resources would go into a trust dedicated to carrying on the work that Joy had begun in her life.

Of course, her mother had pleaded with her to consider giving up her job, teaching kindergarten, and take over that work. She knew it better than anyone else since she had always helped out anyway, especially these last few months.

Katie battled the tears as her shoulders slumped under the weight of all the indecision. Her throat tightened as she fought back the panic that threatened to consume her every time she even thought about what was next. "One day at a time," she whispered. Sometimes it was one moment at a time, especially now.

She felt the hot tear trail down her cheek, first one and then another and another. She was about to lose it, and she knew it. What was more, there was nothing she could do to stop it. It was all just too much. Too fucking much.

She jumped at the banging on the door. "What are you doing in there, Katy-did? You have until the count of three to get that cute ass out here or I am coming in. Ready or not. One," the deep male voice caressed her mind.

She inhaled and stared at that reflection one final time. "Saved by the bell?" she giggled as she tried to wipe the tears away with the back of her hand.

"Two," Chance said through the door.

She sighed and turned the water on one last time, splashing some on her face to take some of the redness and puffiness from her eyes.

"I'm coming," she replied as she reached for the towel.

"Three," the door opened, and his broad naked shoulders filled the doorway.

"Damn, is that what has been taking you so long in here?" He filled the tiny space as he came to stand behind her. His hands gripped her shoulders as their eyes meet in the mirror, "And I told you that I would take care of that for you, Katy-did." He bent and kissed her shoulder.

She shook her head, "About that, Chance. Since I am smaller, I'll take the couch. It won't be that bad," she stammered.

He turned her in his arms and used the pads of his thumbs to brush the tears away, "No, no, you won't. All kidding about orgasms aside, sweetheart, we are sleeping with you, because of this," he brought her last tear to his lips and licked it from his thumb. "The point of this night is for you to get some sleep. Real sleep. Rest."

He drew her tenderly into his arms and just held her, pressing her head into his shoulder with one hand as the other wrapped about her waist, clamping her against him in the tight space. "We don't know what is ahead, Katy-did. We don't know if this is..." he stopped and sighed heavily.

She did not just hear his pain; she felt it. Knew that this man mourned for her mother as she did, maybe not quite the same, but he did. And that united them, drew them closer as they once had been, inseparable.

He drew back slowly and did his best to smile, reassuringly down at her. "We are here for you now. No matter what happens, we aren't going anywhere, Katy-did. You are not on your own anymore." He pressed a kiss to her forehead, "You won't have to face this alone. We promise you that. Never again."

She nodded her head slowly at his words. Though she knew that they offered false hope. The truth was that eventually, she would have to face it by herself. Those same decisions that she had been trying to avoid for months, she would have to come to some final conclusion, and she alone would have to do that.

Whether they stayed for days or a couple of weeks after her mother, she sighed and forced the words through her brain...after her mother's death. Death. Dying. Transitioning. Whatever the fuck you wanted to call it. It was coming. Too quickly.

And suddenly she felt incredibly tired. Exhausted. "I'm ready for bed now," she whispered somehow.

He nodded and scooped her into his arms. She was shocked by the sudden move and clutched at the top of the towel trying to hold it in place as he carried her across the small hall to her bedroom. He practically tossed her in the bed.

Her breath caught in her lungs as he began to unbutton his jeans. "What are you doing?" she stammered.

Chance winked with a devilish smile, "Don't worry, Katy-did. I didn't go commando today." He unzipped them and pushed the denim down his muscled thighs, kicking them off his bare feet and tossing them into the corner.

The air froze in her lungs as he stood by her bed wearing nothing but a second skin of dark blue boxer briefs. She could not keep her eyes from the thick bulge at the front of them. Worse yet, she had to consciously will her hand not to reach out and caress it.

"Fuck," he growled. "Stop. It. Now. Katy-did," his hands fisted at his side.

She tried to clear the cobwebs from her mind as she shook her head, "Stop what, Chance?" she whispered as she bit her lower lip to keep from licking it.

"Stop looking at me like that," he sat down on the bed next to her. His hands framed her face and forced her eyes from his crotch that was growing thicker with each beat of her heart, "You keep looking at me like that and I promise you, you will find yourself laying naked with my cock buried inside you in less than thirty seconds."

She shivered. From his touch on her face? From the night air that was getting cooler by the moment? Or from his words...or the possibility of them becoming more than mere words? She dragged her eyes away and forced her breathing to slow. "Let me up, Chance. I need to find something to wear tonight."

He nodded as he moved aside a bit, just enough for her to squeeze past him. She held the towel tightly about her tits as she opened her top dresser drawer and pulled out a pair of panties. She promised herself that she would wear the plain white boy shorts but somehow ended up with the black lace thong that had never been worn.

They had been a bit of a gag gift for her twenty-eighth birthday from friends at work, who considered her a bit conservative and too uptight. She chuckled...what would they think if they saw her now? Alone with him in her bed? If they knew that just a few days ago, she experienced the most powerful orgasm of her life? On a public beach?

She closed the drawer and pulled out the one below it, trying to figure out what to wear. The truth was that she usually slept naked. Of course, these past few weeks she had typically worn work out pants and a t-shirt to sleep in the chair in her mother's room.

She rummaged until she located one of her extra-large t-shirts. She pulled it on over her head, leaving the towel in place until it covered her to mid-thigh, then she tugged it free.

She looked up and noticed that Chance was watching her every move. "Turn around so I can," she mumbled.

"Leave them," he groaned.

She shook her head. "You expect me to sleep in nothing but a t-shirt with a man I barely know wearing nothing but his briefs?"

He was on her in a heartbeat. His hands gripped her arms, right on the edge of pain. "Get in the bed now, Katie. Or I will show you just how well you know me."

She wanted to shake her head. To refuse him. But the look in those blue eyes warned her that would not be a wise decision. Instead, she obeyed and took a couple of steps to her bed, crawling in and scooting to the far side, as close to the wall as she could get. She turned to face the wall and closed her eyes as she felt the bed shift.

Then those strong arms turned her and drew her back until her head rested on his chest. His heart was pounding as loudly as her own and just as fast. "Go. To. Sleep. Katy-did." He sighed, and she felt it through her whole body. "Or I will find some way of relaxing you, sweetheart."

'How the fuck am I supposed to sleep with you so close?' she thought as her hand pressed directly over his heart. She was glad for the chilly night breeze coming in through her open window. The man was a furnace.

Would all of him be so hot? Her eyes drifted down to the tent in the front of those briefs. It would be so damned easy for her to slide her hand slowly down those rock hard abs. To wrap her fingers around it and discover the truth for herself.

She closed her eyes and fought back the temptation, willing her body to relax using the self-hypnosis methods her mother had taught her as a young girl on those nights when she was frightened by monsters. She was content to discover they worked as well on Greek gods and heroes as they did on faceless monsters, she thought as she began to drift off to sleep.

***

The dream was back. Always the same. Since her mother's diagnosis, but the truth was that she had had that same dream a couple of times even before her mother discovered the lump in her breast.

She was all alone on the beach, which was strange. The beach was never that deserted. There was always a stray die-hard surfer or middle-aged beachcomber, no matter the weather or the time of day or night.

But this time she was...all alone — not a person in sight. The fog was thick; she could barely see five feet in front of her. She could hear the roar of the waves, but rather than comforting her as they always did, they were so loud that her head throbbed in time with them. She was cold, so cold she began to shiver. Cold, frightened and alone, she began to run along the beach, "Mom," she called out.

But it was not her mother's face that appeared out of the fog. It was his. Chance. He wrapped her in those strong arms and held her tightly against his chest. She stopped shivering as his body heat dissipated the worst of the chill. His fingers were brushing along her cheek, "Katy-did, I'm here. We're here for you."

She tried to shake her head, but there was a pain every time she moved as if something was tangled in her hair, holding her still. "Katie?" that deep voice caressed her as she felt his hard body on top of her, pressing her deeper into...

Her eyes flew open, and she stared up into Chance's face. Her hands came up to his shoulders, tried to push him off her. "It was a dream, Kaitlin. Only a dream. You are in your bed. In your house. Everything is fine."

It was not 'fine' though. Her mother was in a coma. Joy was dying. And in hours or days, she would be all alone in this world. All alone like in that dream.

She shoved with all her might against his shoulder, "Get off me, you pervert. What the fuck do you know about 'fine'? Nothing is 'fine.' Nothing ever will be again."

She pummelled his chest and shoulders with her fists, but her efforts were as effective as all the drugs, surgeries, and chemicals that the 'experts' had given her mother. It was no use. Some battles you could not win.

She felt the tears coming back. How many were there? She felt like she had cried enough to fill the whole fucking Pacific Ocean this past year. Still, there were more?

He rolled them so that she lay on top of him, his arms wrapped about her once more as she cried. "Let it out, sweetheart. Just let it out."

She wanted to chuckle, but it came out more a hysterical laugh. 'Let it out'? As if she could keep it in. The tears came...again. Until she was snot-nosed, swollen red-eyed, and blotchy faced, then the hiccups started. "Let me up, Chance," she demanded.

"No way, Kay-did."

"I need to wash my face, get some water for these..." as if on perfect cue, "damned hiccups. So, let me the fuck up, I said."

He shook his head and used his fingers on her chin to lift her face to his, "No, sweetheart. Dreams like that," his voice got incredibly low then. She watched as his Adam's apple popped up and down as if swallowing a large, nasty-tasting pill. "Some dreams seem more real than reality," his voice was incredibly low and thick then.

She felt it. Stronger than she ever had in her whole fucking life. A dark cloud moved in and over this man. It held him tighter than he held her. She shivered at its cold fingers wrapped about her friend.

She recognized it then...despair, depression...death himself. She shook her head. No, she was not letting him, it, take Chance too. It might be too late to save her mother from his clutches, but not Chance. Death would not have him too.

Her fingertips traced tears that she noticed trailed down his cheek. She was confident he did not even know they were there. She could see by the blank stare in those blue eyes that he was somewhere else. Somewhere far away. A place she could not go.

But she was not giving him up so easily. She moved closer, pressed a tender kiss over his heart as her hands went from fists that beat his shoulders to soft tendrils that caressed and teased them. "Come back to me, Chance," she whispered like a mantra as she moved against him. "Please, Chance, I can't lose you too."

It took several moments of her soft caresses and gentle calls before she began to feel the dark clouds, which she at last recognized as the same ones from her dream, begin to lift slowly. She knew that she had won this battle at last when his fingers began to tighten on her shoulders. She looked up at his handsome face that remained lined and tight.

He forced a smile, "Hey, I was supposed to be the knight in shining armor saving you, Katy-did."

She chuckled, "You keep forgetting the way that movie plays out in the end. When he goes back for her and climbs the fire escape, remember what he asked? 'So, what happens now?' Remember what she said?"

That deep chuckle caressed her mind, the smile was still tight, but it was a tad less forced now. "She saves him right back. Is that what this is, Katy-did? People so fucking wounded that they cannot manage to save themselves saving one another?"

She frowned at his words, mostly because of how accurate they were. Was it possible? That people, too weak to save themselves, might actually find the salvation they sought in saving others? The knot tightened in her throat as she realized that the one person she most wanted to discuss this epiphany with was beyond her reach now.

She felt the soft brush of his lips against her cheeks. She realized that he was kissing away her tears. She sighed and shook her head, giving into tears that seemed omnipresent these days.

This time she was not even sure why she cried. Her mother's impending death? Chase's leg? The dark cloud of death that threatened to snatch this man in her arms? Self-pity for a lifetime of waste? The fucked up world in which they lived that fed good men into the war machine but could not heal the human body?

She was never sure how it happened, but suddenly the comfort turned into something else. A need so deep and visceral that it overpowered all those things and even common sense.

Her lips reached for his, drank softly at them for several long heartbeats before his fingers laced through her hair, holding her in place as he took it deeper, tongues warring with one another; need fuelling the battle and demanding surrender.

When he broke away he did not go far, just enough that his face filled her field of vision, "I need to taste you, Katy-did." He rolled her on to her back and pressed her deeper into the mattress.

It took her a long moment to realize what he was talking about. When she did, she felt the heat rising to her cheeks. She bit her lower lip and tried to shake her head, but Chance was already sliding down her body. His large hands cupped and kneaded her breasts until they ached and hardened. She was powerless to stop the moan that escaped her lips just a moment before he settled between her thighs.

She opened her mouth to protest. Then she felt the cool night air caress the wet folds between her legs. She had forgotten that she had not worn panties, not even the scrap of black lace thong to bed.

Chance had not though as his tongue speared through the folds at the top of her thighs, homing instantly upon the hard nub that sent electric shocks spiraling towards her brain. The sensation was totally new and oddly familiar. His wet tongue doing things to her that only her own fingers ever had. And he seemed to know precisely the right pressure and timing to send her body rocketing towards the stars.

She knew that she should slow thing down. They should talk about this. It was way beyond her comfort zone. For goodness sakes, just a few days ago, his brother had...

Her brain did not even manage to finish the thought as he captured her clitoris between his teeth and suckled, sending her over the edge. She cried out as her hips moved against his face, seeking even more of the intense pleasure he was giving her. As if he could read her mind, she felt thick fingers slipping inside her, pushing her orgasm to another level.