Hard Times

Megan glanced at the clock as her friend on the phone laughed about the latest bit of gossip that they'd just shared. "I'm going to have to go, Angie. I have somebody coming to look at the basement in a few minutes."

"I can't believe you're taking in a boarder. I don't think I could have a stranger living in my house."

"I know," Megan agreed. "It's either that or lose the house, though." She shook her head, remembering how long she and her ex-husband had searched to find a place within their means. The payments on the house had been exactly that — right up until he'd run off with some twenty-year-old bimbo, leaving her high and dry.

Now, she was struggling more than when she'd first moved out of her parent's house almost twenty years ago. Forty, and barely making ends meet.

"Well, good luck."

"See you at the gym tomorrow. Bye."

Megan hung up the phone and contemplated what she was wearing. She had absolutely no idea how to dress for this. A shrug accompanied the decision that she may as well just stick with the top and jeans she was wearing. Whoever ended up living in the basement may as well get used to her normal at-home attire, because both bathrooms were upstairs.

She did take the time to run a brush through her dark brown locks and put on a little makeup. After all, this was as much her first impression to make as it was for the potential boarders.

The doorbell rang at exactly two o'clock. Well, that's a good sign I suppose, Megan thought. Here we go.

She couldn't completely hide her puzzled look when she saw a young blond-haired man upon opening the door.

"Hi, I'm Kelly. I'm here to look at the room."

"Oh. Uhm, of course." Megan silently cursed herself for letting the surprise and nervousness she felt creep into her voice.

Kelly chuckled. "You were expecting a girl, weren't you?"

For some reason, Megan found herself smiling. "Yes, actually. I guess that's what I get for assuming that from the email."

"I'm used to it. Is it a problem?"

"No, of course not. We may as well walk around to the basement door."

"Cool," he responded, and stepped back away from the door.

Luckily, Megan had rehearsed her tour and terms several times. It wasn't all that different from what she did every day as a real estate agent, anyway. Only that familiarity kept her from faltering as she considered the possibility of having a young man living in her basement.

Still, it was all she could do to fight down a blush when part of her mind injected the word handsome into that description.

Kelly took one last look around after the tour. "Well, it's twice the size of my apartment and a couple hundred bucks less. It's exactly what I'm looking for. I've got the first and last month's rent on me."

He apparently had the money, and the rather bored property manager had attested to his record as a good tenant at the apartment complex where he currently lived — never once saying he to break her illusion that she was checking the information for a woman. Megan knew that she wasn't going to be exactly comfortable with anyone at first, so she decided to take the plunge. "You can move in any time."

****

Megan grabbed her gym bag off the bed and headed for the front door, knowing that Angie would be there any minute. So far, she had barely noticed that anyone was living downstairs, even though he was still in the process of moving in. Other than watching him make trips back and forth to the truck out front, she'd only seen him once when he came upstairs to use the front bathroom.

The doorbell rang as she was walking toward the door. She'd barely managed to open it when Angie pushed her way inside.

"Oh my god. Is that him?" She peeked out the window.

"Yes. What are you doing?"

"Panting." Angie let out a purr. "He's delicious."

Megan rolled her eyes and sighed. "Come on, Angie." She reached for the doorknob and saw Kelly walking toward the truck. He was wearing shorts and a muscle shirt, which made her silently echo her friend's thought of delicious.

"Prude," Angie chided as the door opened. She walked out ahead and waved to Kelly, who waved back, looking more than a little confused.

"Get in the car," Megan whispered through her teeth, and gave her friend a little push.

Both women sat down in the car, but Angie kept her eyes on the young man outside. "Check out those glutes. I could just eat him up."

Megan started the car and put it in gear. "We have our own glutes to worry about."

"I think I may have to stop and get batteries on the way home."

Megan rolled her eyes one more time and backed out of the drive, but found that she couldn't resist one last peek at Kelly's retreating butt.

****

It took Megan nearly ten minutes to convince her blonde friend to get back in her own car and go home after returning from the gym. Angie had talked endlessly about the man living downstairs, and truth to tell, Megan had found him in her thoughts more than a few times. Between that and the men working out in the gym, she was more than a little flustered.

Take another shower — a cold one, she thought, and headed to the laundry room to drop her workout clothes in the hamper. When she reached the door, she could hear the shower in the front bathroom running.

The realization hit her hard. Only a few feet away, her handsome young boarder was naked, water cascading down his body.

Megan sucked in a sharp breath as her nipples stiffened and the tingle of wetness creeping between her legs sent chills up her spine. She pulled the clothes out of her gym bag, once again wondering what was with her overactive sex drive the last three years. Though she chided her friend for always talking about it, part of the reason she did so was that she was always thinking about it, too. The admonitions were as much for her as for Angie.

The sound of the shower shutting off replaced arousal with panic. The last thing she wanted to do was run into Kelly in her current state. She hurried back to the other side of the house, and only breathed a sigh of relief when she heard first the bathroom door, and then the basement door close.

With the moment of anxiety over, the needs of her body reasserted themselves. She switched on the television and scrolled through what she'd recorded on the DVR. Lifetime romances, soaps, and romantic comedies filled the list. Hardly the thing to take her mind off her arousal. A flip through the channels revealed nothing else to distract her, either.

She gave up on the television and walked into the bedroom, thinking she would read for a while instead. Then she remembered where she'd left off in the racy novel. No help there.

Get a hold of yourself. Megan thought as she walked to the dresser to retrieve her nightgown. Cold shower, and then bed.

She took one step across the threshold of her bedroom door before the memory of Kelly showering washed back over her. It would be her naked beneath the streaming water, and she could almost see herself running into him as she emerged in her nightgown afterward.

She stepped back into the bedroom and closed the door.

I have got to get over this, she thought. Okay, just go to bed. Color rose in her cheeks as she hurried to strip off her clothes and put on the gown. She felt as if someone was watching her the whole time.

The vibrator in the nightstand next to the bed called out to her as she slipped under the sheets. She'd bought it two years ago when her seemingly perpetual arousal had pushed her beyond the point that her fingers could satisfy.

Her face burned as she thought about it and she let her head fall with a thump to the pillow. Only after an hour of tossing and turning did she finally slip into a fitful, frustrated sleep.

****

A crash of thunder startled Megan awake. She sat up in the bed as another boom sounded, the room lighting up from flashes of lightning outside. When the rumbling died down, she heard something else.

Tornado sirens.

Megan felt around on the nightstand until she found the remote and turned on the television.

"... Cloud spotted and moving toward the area at thirty miles per hour. Take shelter immediately in a basement or interior room. Stay away from windows."

Megan's heart raced as she turned off the television and tossed back the sheets. The wind was howling outside, the house creaking from the force of it. She threw open the bedroom door, her bare feet slapping on the hardwood as she rushed toward the basement, guided by the constant flash of lightning.

She turned on the stairway light and pulled the door shut behind her before running down the stairs. As soon as she reached the bottom, a confused sounding groan burned through the sleep fog and panic.

"Huh? What?"

Megan gasped and looked down, finally remembering her boarder. She was standing at the bottom of the stairs in a thin summer nightgown that barely reached her knees — braless.

A deafening crash of thunder shook the house, and Megan cried out. The power winked off, and she was left trembling in the darkness.

The beam of a flashlight pierced the gloom. "Are you okay? Is that the tornado siren?" Kelly asked.

Megan fought past the lump in her throat to answer, "Yes, they said it's heading this way on the news." She couldn't stop her voice from quavering in fear.

The flashlight beam fell on her and she squinted, bringing an arm up to conceal her breasts.

"Maybe you should sit down." The light moved to illuminate a couch. "You're as pale as a ghost."

Unable to find the presence of mind to answer, Megan walked to the couch, wincing at every thunderous boom, and shaking with fear. She did manage to keep her concealing arm in place, though.

A man's voice steadily rose in volume from where Kelly held the flashlight. Megan glanced over to see him standing next to his bed, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, turning a knob on something.

"Battery powered weather radio," he explained.

Megan tried to listen, but found that she couldn't concentrate because every crash of thunder caused her heart to skip a beat. A bright square of light appeared in her peripheral vision, and she looked over to see Kelly pulling something out of a small refrigerator.

He walked to her and held out a bottle of water, keeping the flashlight pointed so that the light didn't directly fall on her. "They're saying that it's to the south of us. Have a drink."

"Thank you."

"I don't think we really have to worry. It sounds to me like it's just tearing up corn fields and will blow right past town." Kelly sat down in a chair and opened his own bottle of water. "They're just being cautious by sounding the tornado sirens."

"I don't know how you can be so calm."

He chuckled. "I've been through this a few times before. Tree took out the corner of our house when I was a kid, and I lost my first car to another one a while back. Believe me; we'd know if it was actually anywhere near. You can't help but hear it. People always say that it sounds like a freight train, and that's about right."

Megan took a sip of her water, finding some solace in his relaxed demeanor.

"Glad I'm here instead of in that fifth floor apartment where I was. Guess I picked a good time to move."

"Guess so," Megan responded, feeling her jitters die down. His voice was soothing — and sexy. "It still looks a little bare down here."

Kelly laughed. "Well, I didn't really have enough stuff to fill the apartment, and I've got a lot more space here."

With the A.C. down, the house heated up rapidly. Megan reached up and wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead that was threatening to find its way into her eyes.

"Hang on," Kelly said as he got up from his chair. A few seconds later, he returned with a small battery powered fan.

Megan smiled and said, "Thank you," as she turned on the fan. With him standing right in front of her, she was overheating from more than the rising temperature. His gorgeous, muscled body so close to her, barely covered and glistening with sweat was almost too much to take.

Kelly tilted his head toward the ceiling a short while later. "Sounds like its starting to calm down a bit out there."

"Thank god. My nerves are raw."

"Probably not much hope of getting back to sleep until the power comes back on, though." He stretched, raising his arms over his head and emphasizing every muscle in his body in the diffuse illumination of the flashlight standing on a table nearby.

Thoughts of the storm receded into the back of Megan's head for a few moments as she fought not to stare. She could feel her gown clinging to her stiffening nipples and tried to nonchalantly push her shoulders forward to remedy it. It worked, but only for as long as she maintained the awkward posture.

Kelly sat back down. "I'm sort of used to the heat, working construction. Great money until the housing bubble burst."

"Tell me about it," Megan responded with a roll of her eyes. "I'm in real estate."

"Really? Maybe you've sold something I've built. Wouldn't that be whacked out? What agency do you work for?"

Megan answered, and quickly fell into conversation with him. The talk proved to be a welcome distraction from both the storm and her embarrassing arousal. Soon enough, she was laughing at stories he told from his job, and he at hers. An hour went by, the tornado warning long expired and the thunder but distant echoes of it's former booming crashes.

She started when the lights and air conditioning suddenly popped back on.

"Hey, hey. All right. Maybe I'll get some sleep tonight after all."

Megan nodded, her eyes going wide at the sight of him in full light. She was sitting below one of the vents, and the cold air was blowing directly on her sweat-dampened gown. When his eyes focused on her, she knew that he'd seen her nipples pressing against the thin material, and her cheeks started to burn.

"Guess I'll get to bed," he said as he stood up, his eyes drifting back to her face.

"I should..." Megan trailed off without even realizing it as she saw his boxer shorts tented away from his body. Even the waistband hovered above his muscled abdomen, supported by the hard organ beneath. "My god," she whispered before she could stop herself.

"Hmm?"

The sound of his voice snapped her out of her trance and she gasped, tearing her eyes away from the sight of his cock straining against the fabric. "I'm sorry," she said in a rush as she stood up and turned away.

She gasped again when his hand settled on her shoulder.

"It's okay — really. I don't mind." His hand stroked her shoulder as he spoke.

His touch nearly turned her knees to water and he snapped his other hand to her waist when she faltered.

"Kelly, what..." She couldn't find any more words as her skin broke out into gooseflesh.

"It's only fair. I was looking too."

Megan couldn't believe what she'd just heard. Granted, she worked out, but that could only do so much against the effects of gravity and a slowing metabolism.

The hand on her waist crept down to her hip. When she didn't flinch away or say anything, it moved again to her ass.

He leaned in closer, his breath hot against her neck. "I've been hard ever since you came down here."

She knew that she should stop him, but the touch of his hands and his sexy voice paralyzed her.

"So fucking hot," He said in a husky whisper and kissed her neck.

A warbling moan bubbled up from her as he kissed her neck over and over again. One hand kneaded her buttocks while the other moved from her shoulder to caress her right breast. Need welled up inside her and she spun in his grasp, seeking his lips with hers.

He pulled her tight against him, his erection throbbing against her tummy as he kissed her hard and explored her body with his hands. His tongue slipped between her lips, and hers twined with it. She whimpered into the kiss as the hem of her gown lifted.

Megan pulled away from his lips to gasp when his finger pressed against her nether lips through her panties. He let out a sexy growl and grasped her gown with both hands again. All her inhibitions burned away in the heat of passion; she lifted her arms and allowed him to remove it.

Kelly let the cloth fall to the floor and put his hands on her waist while his eyes drank in the sight of her bared breasts. If he noticed that gravity had taken its toll on the heavy globes, or the slight rounding of her tummy, there was none of it in his hungry gaze. He groaned as she explored the contours of his cock with her fingertips, his hands sliding higher to cup her breasts.

He leaned forward, and Megan's breath came in staccato bursts coinciding with kisses on first her chest, then her left breast, and then her right. Her fingers curled around his cock when he lifted her nipple to his lips.

The silken material of his boxers slipped over the hardness beneath, his manhood throbbing in her grasp. She gasped and threw her head back from the sensation of his lips locked on her nipple, sucking hard. When Kelly moved to engulf her other nipple, Megan lost her grip and reached for the waistband of his underwear instead.

Kelly sucked hard and pulled back, letting her nipple pop free of his lips. He stood up straight, revealing the head of his cock poking above his boxers — all she'd managed to reveal. Megan tugged the cloth down slowly, letting out an oh of aroused wonder as she exposed inch after inch of him.

His thick cock twitched away from his body, dancing for her as she revealed his smooth-shaven balls. She cupped the orbs and gently squeezed, moaning as he dropped his underwear to the floor with a sexy growl. The reality of what was happening truly hit her at that moment. She was standing almost naked in her basement with a man half her age, his hard, young, virile cock in her hand.

Megan whimpered in surprise when his fingers twined into her dark tresses, pulling her into a hungry kiss. A second later, the hand slid down her back and joined the other, his thumbs slipping beneath the material of her panties.

Cool air kissed her hot sex as Kyle pulled the cotton down. He left her panties hovering between her thighs, grasping her butt with one hand and cupping her needy sex with the other. "Oh god," Megan whimpered as his fingers grazed over the short curls between her legs.

"You're hairy," he said in a hushed whisper. Even as her cheeks started to burn with embarrassment, a wide smile broke out on his face. "I like it."

"Oh yes," Megan whimpered in anticipation as he bent his knees. She put her hands behind his head, pulling his face toward her pussy, but he locked his fingers together beneath her butt instead.

He answered her yelp with a grunting chuckle as he lifted her, his muscles bulging. After the moment of surprise, Megan wrapped her arms and legs around him, her heart pounding from the feeling of his muscled body.

He carried her the few steps to his bed, his eyes fixed on hers, and then sat her down on the mattress. He stood back up, his cock twitching mere inches from her face, leaving little doubt what he wanted.

She wanted it too.

Megan wrapped her hand around his shaft and pulled, guiding him to take a step forward. As soon as he was within reach, she gave the purple helmet of his cock a swipe of her tongue.

"Fuck yeah," Kelly growled while reaching for her breasts.

Megan lapped his hard organ, loving the feeling of it pressing against her tongue as she made him throb. She moaned from his touch as he squeezed and caressed her breasts, regularly teasing her hard nipples with his fingertips. After a few licks, she used her tongue to wrangle the head of his cock, and took it between her lips.

A groan passed Kelly's lips as she took half of his throbbing shaft into her mouth. She let her lips slide slowly back to the tip, turning her head so she could look up into his eyes as she did so.