Mind The Gap / 13

I got into bed and didn’t get out for almost two days.

My hip ached something awful and I just kept reliving that horrid split-second, mid-air and helpless, over and over and over until my sheets stank of it. Stuck in some awful parallel universe where nothing could ever change, except for the worst. Every moment mired in pain and lust and confusion.

I didn’t know what to do about Bella.

I was pretty certain that I needed her, somehow, and in a way that didn’t only involve rocks. Certain, now more than ever, that this all happened for a reason and that the boundary between our real lives and our extracurricular ones deserved to be breached. Seeing her in the nursery had cast a whole different light, brought her to the surface and made me realize that she’d probably amaze me just as much in her everyday world as she did on a boulder. That’s when I started fantasizing about the the mundane sort of shit, the way she folded her laundry and if she sang in the shower. Did she eat on the couch, or at the table? How many different colors of underwear did she have, and was her birthday in the fall, or the summer? Did she talk to her plants when she watered them? Was she allergic to avocados?

I peered through the crack in that giant dam and liked what I saw. A lot. The wave of the future. It pushed me right out of bed and into the shower for the first time since my one with Bella. Swept me into clothes and out the door. Hurtled me down the highway at warp speeds and deposited me at her door before I had even formulated a plan. I only knew that I wanted to be there. With her.

I plucked a poppy from the next door neighbor before I rang the bell.

I really had no idea what I was planning to do, or where we were going until we were actually headed there. I fixed her breakfast while she changed into something awesomely short and practically see-through, ushering her to the car before I could change my mind and just keep her there all day. She curled up in the front seat, making that car look better than it ever had before.

---

The road to the fire tower was like a video game.

In the little silver beamer, that is.

Twisted and full of switchbacks sharp enough to pull your stomach clear into the back seat. I let the car growl underneath me, enjoying the smooth purr of the engine which was a change from the rough, grinding growl of the Rover. Slammed my foot alternately between the gas and the brake until we came to stop dusted stop at the base of the fire tower, practically in the clouds.

I thought at first that she was fighting her fear of heights when she hesitated at the bottom of the ladder, but it really only turned out to be something much simpler than that.

Her panties could not be considered clothing. Sheer in every place that counted and lacy everywhere else.

I watched her scamper all the way to the top and disappear through the hole before I even bothered to touch the ladder myself, thoroughly enjoying the view. And then, that was it. The moment I was supposed to breach the barrier, and I felt like I need to be touching her while I did it for some reason. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I expected it to be and she agreed easily, all my anxiety for nothing. I dropped her off at home and spent the next four hours trying not to think about her.

---

The concerts started long ago with a volunteer position but became something that I couldn’t let go of. At this point, yes, I was getting paid for it, but even if I wasn’t I probably would have continued. I worked with the theater director to create the light show, timing it to a musical set list and began playing under educational contracts. A grant came through last year that allowed us to incorporate vibration sensors into the theater seats and the program was steadily expanding. I played lots of easy, recognizable standard, Disney covers and lullabyes, but the challenge wasn’t what I was shooting for.

My favorite part was the end.

I would bow and wave and smile at the kids for a while as they cheered before ducking backstage, finding my way to the front of the building so that I could greet them in the lobby as they exited. Some stood far away in groups, frantic hands and pointing conversations, while others would cuddle close and touch my fingers, cuffs and elbows. I let them feel my hands, the calluses on my fingers and answered their questions, every so often watching one of the blind children tap-tap-tapping back to a group of deaf ones to relay my answers in surprisingly fluent sign language.

Life was such a tactile sport.

I found Bella in her secluded balcony, the best seat in the house as far as I was concerned. The acoustics were better in the lofted seating and while I enjoyed my own view of the evening enough, I’m sure it was even more spectacular from above. She didn’t disappoint, met me with a hug and a squeal, and I escorted her back to my car, trying in vain to keep my eyes off the fuckhot dress she was sporting. Tight and short and covering far too much of her skin.

It rendered me completely unable to keep my hands to myself.

I was ready to take her in the car, dinner be damned. I pulled her into my lap and let her grind down on me with her lips to my neck and my fingers everywhere, prepared to rid her of the dress and get straight to the point. It was tight and short and did fantastic things for her ass but I’d much rather see her out of it. Just as I was fumbling for the zipper that laced up her back, a beam of light flooded over the roof of the car and Bella crouched down on top of me, huddled in my lap.

“Security guard,” she whispered and the light brushed slowly across the inside of the car, windows fogged. It took entirely too long for the guard eventually moved on and Bella scrambled off my lap into her own seat when he did. I reached for her, intending to drag her back but she shook her head and curled up against the door.

“Take me home,” she panted.

Yes, ma’am.

We somehow made it through her door, though I barely remembered driving there. I’m sure I parked like a complete asshole. I held off on the temptation to strip her naked on the front lawn and let her close the door behind us before I was worming my hands under the hem of her dress and demanding that she take it off. I have no idea how she got it on because it took both of us to get her out of it.

Jesus christ, she was even more beautiful underneath all of it.

Was that even possible?

She was right when she said she’d never worn much around me up until now, her tiny shorts and sports bras barely qualifying, but there was always more fabric and less skin than I secretly wished for. Now that she had it all on display, I could barely bring myself to believe it. I tossed my bow tie into the black-hole oblivion just outside the three foot bubble of everything that mattered, her right there in the center of it, trying to tell myself to take this slowly.

That rushing through this would do no justice to the time we spent formulating it.

That plan failed. We didn’t even make it to the bedroom. Instead, we ended up sprawled on the living room floor, naked and locked at the mouth and I hoped that she wouldn’t take it the wrong way that I’d stashed a condom in my pocket before I’d come to pick her up this evening. It had been burning a scorch mark against my ass cheek all night and I tried not to sigh in relief when she told me that I wasn’t the only one hoping for this.

Something about her face when she said it banished every last shred of uncertainty.

I looped my fingers behind her knees and pulled her forward, the cheeks of her ass nestled against my kneecaps and her thighs on either side of my waist. I couldn’t fucking wait to get myself in there, fingers or dick, and wasted no time sinking my thumb down into her folds, both of us shuddering. Her toes pressed insistently into my soles, breath lost, and I got her off just to fucking see it.

Once again, expectations blown.

I thought I’d seen beauty before. Some of the red-rock deserts that Jasper and I hiked into to climb, barren and twisted as a lunar landscape, had been eerily gorgeous. I’d gaped open-mouthed under sunsets stained unbelievable reds and golds, celestial Pollack paintings in the sky. Stood admiring the awesome lumbering grace of a giraffe for an entire day at the zoo last year and watched the ocean batter itself against the north shore of a mid-pacific island with a stunning sort of beauty. But I’d been using the word wrong all along. This was beautiful. Watching her fall apart against the backdrop of her hair and the flowered carpet beneath her, toes still dotting a morse code melody into my legs, was beautiful.

As soon as it was over, I wanted it again.

I pressed myself into her, planting my lips on her neck in case I made some totally indecent sounds because god fucking dammit, what the fuck had I been doing with myself all this time? Sex? That hadn’t been sex. All those other women, we must have just been playing pretend. The feel of this was unreal, an atom bomb dropped into my ocean and launching me twenty miles skyward.

I hurtled back to earth and cratered into the surface.

When I came-to, Bella was writhing underneath me, the bones of her hips pressing into mine until she found the sweet spot and everything around me clenched ferociously. We uttered expletives at practically the same time, Bella’s into the air, mine into her skin. Fuck. I gripped her tightly with tingling fingers and thrust into her as softly as I could force myself to. It was only when I remembered how fuckawesome her earlier orgasm looked that I managed to pull myself off her. I sat back on my heels and pulled her open, the sight of my dick disappearing into her just about toppling me over the edge far too soon. I couldn’t help that my next thrust was hard and fast, slippery skin glistening and wet and flushed.

“Goddamn, Bella. That’s gotta be the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.” I basically growled. Forced the words out in a rough tumble that almost didn’t make sense. Bella trembled from head to foot and ground herself into me, a push for every pull that only spurred me on, pressing urgently into her as though this was all I’d ever get. I set my thumb back down over her clit and rubbed her in time to each clash of our hips.

If watching her had been incredible, feeling it was like nothing else, ever.

They should build monuments to this sort of thing. I got a flash of the Taj Mahal, pale and grandiose, a monstrous looming statement to undying love as Bella gasped and went limp for a split second. Weightless and breathless. Skin iridescent in the moonlight and everything around my dick hugged me tight enough to make my vision go static. I held off only long enough to see every last panting second of her fall before I allowed myself the last few thrusts that I needed to swan-dive off the edge of something too deep to see the bottom of.

Holy.

Fuck.

I emptied myself in a wave of stinging heat that bordered right there up on pain, lungs gone solid and muscles slack. I rolled off her so that I didn’t straight up crush her into the carpet and gulped air like it was watered down. My dick was twitching through its death throes against my stomach and the entirety of my skin felt just as sensitive as my ragged fingertips.

God, my hip was throbbing.

So fucking worth it.

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