I was a writer, but I’d never been any good at romantic phrases, not on paper or in life.  To make up for that, I wanted to make her feel with my body, the way she made me feel with her sweet, flattering words.

Somewhere along the way, her boxers had been kicked off, and she was spread wide, knees on the couch on either side of me.  I was slouched, h*ps on the edge of the sofa for a better angle.

I ran my hands along her outer thighs.  It was more than a little impressive how she kept the pose, spread that wide on top of me.

I grabbed her h*ps again and pumped into her hard, once, twice, absorbing her cries of ecstasy with profound satisfaction.

I rubbed at her ass, sliding my hands over her legs until I could massage her inner thighs.  “Am I stretching you too much like this?  You’re damn near doing splits.”

Her only response was to moan and shift on top of me, gyrating her hips, making my entire body clench in pleasure as her tight sheath worked me.  I’d have sworn I was deep enough I must be touching her cervix.  I jammed up hard, and hit a wall so solid that she convulsed on top of me.  Yeah, that was it.  I did it again, and again, but stopped when her cries began to sound alarmed.

“Am I hurting you?” I asked, my hands shaking.  I wouldn’t be able to hold myself off for much longer.

“It’s too much,” she sobbed, but she was shifting against me.  “I feel too full.”

I started thrusting again, f**king her in absolute desperate earnest, but not going so deep, not grinding against that delicious part of her until the very end, when she fell apart again, and I let myself finally, mercifully come, jarring as deep as I could with a rough groan.

CHAPTER TEN

We turned off the cursed TV that was still blasting music videos and went to clean ourselves up.  In new sweats and wet hair, she tugged me silently to my library, where she grabbed one of my books, which she’d dog-eared about a fourth of the way in.  She curled up on my worn-in brown leather sofa and started reading.

It was the first novel I’d ever written, and I wasn’t sure I wanted her to read it, but she seemed to have already started in on it, so it was a bit late to stop her.

She glanced up, saw my face, and smiled.  “It’s really good.  I was drawn in right away.  I’m a hundred pages in and I already feel like I’m submerged in this world you’ve created.”

I started wringing my hands, a nervous habit of mine that usually only presented itself before TV interviews.  “Thanks.  That world has been a part of my life for many years now.  Though I wrote that one so long ago, I’m not really sure I can recommend it as my best work.”

“This was one of your first, right?”

“The very first.”

She looked impressed, her pretty mouth moving into a little O.  “That’s amazing.  What a talent you have.  I love the tone of the book, too.  It’s so gritty and dark.  Twisted, really.  Just perfect.”

I smiled wryly.  “That’s sort of the genre.  To be honest, I’d like to try something completely different, branch out a bit.”

She sat up, looking genuinely interested in what I was saying, which was not a reaction I was accustomed to from someone outside of the business.  “Oh yeah?  Like what?”

“I’d love to do a character piece.  Something emotional and raw, and that never mentions a word about forensics or blood spatter.”

“You should do it.”

“I could.  I’m only contracted for one book a year with my publisher, at the moment, but I’d hate to sign on for more, and be stuck in deadline mode even more frequently.”

“Fuck ‘em.  Just write what you want and go indie.”

I’d heard about this, was fascinated by it actually.  “What have you heard about publishing independently?”

“It’s a thing.  It’s catching on, and I think you should try it.  Quit signing your life away to those blood-sucking publishers.”

That was sort of my take on it, too.  “And what about you?  Do you have anything you’d like to be doing different, career wise, or maybe educationally speaking?”

She grinned like I’d just said something very funny, and I realized I’d been wearing my pseudo-dad lecturing tone.  It was ghastly, and I instantly apologized.

She brushed it off, not offended in the least.

“I could never figure out just what I wanted to do.  I still can’t.  I wish I could be like you, with something I was so good at that I couldn’t stop doing it.”

“So you dropped out of school because you weren’t sure which career path to follow?”

She smiled and tilted her head to the side.  “What are you fishing for here?”

“You’re a very smart girl.  I’m just trying to figure out why you didn’t take the college route.”

She shrugged.  “That’s really the least interesting thing about me.  I’m just done with school.  Couldn’t pay me to go back.  At the moment I want to learn from living.”

I found myself absently picking out a book, sitting next to her, sprawling out with my arm thrown over the back of the couch, behind her shoulders.

We both held books, but we didn’t read.

The rest of the day disappeared in a little puff of smoke, without a regret, as we started talking, about the little things, and the big, about the personal, and the political.  She had a mind and a motor, this one, and I found that it was just as attractive as the rest of her.