tangy and tart, the smell of her like hot musk. I moaned softly at the smooth glide of her labia against my tongue while I explored the soft folds of her flesh. She arched her back, directing me, and I found her clit hiding way up at the top of her crevice. I knew I'd found it when she groaned and rolled her hips, feeling her nails dig into my thighs.
“Your fingers,” she whispered. “Put them in me.”
I obliged, sliding two of them easily into her slick entrance, feeling her pussy clench. She rocked on my hand, my tongue. There was no stopping her now. She'd been patient until that moment, but when I found her clit with my mouth, she lost it.
Something in her snapped and her body went wild, writhing and shivering and rolling on 64
top of me. It was all I could do to hold onto her and keep my mouth anchored over her mound. And she didn't make it easy to focus because with every lick of my tongue, she grew even more eager with her own mouth between my legs. She sucked my clit hard, even raking it with her teeth, making me shudder beneath her.
“Oh fuck!” she cried as I fingered her hard, harder, driving my whole hand against her pussy, giving her as much as I could and she still wanted more. “Oh baby, yes yes!
You're gonna make me come so good!”
She wasn't the only one. My whole body was on fire for her, slick and sweaty and writhing under hers. I couldn't tell anymore what was her fingers, her tongue, it was all sensation, urging me toward yet another climax. I couldn't hold it back and when I felt her thighs quivering against my cheeks, her pussy juices dripping down my chin and pooling at the hollow of my throat, I gave into it, sucking and lapping like a greedy nursling at her cunt as I came, and she came with me too, both of us shuddering with pleasure.
We stayed that way a while, not facing each other, just stroking and petting and purring like two kittens nuzzling each other before a nap. I think it was me who moved first. I got a cramp in my thigh and she massaged it out before turning around and coming up to cuddle. I thought it would be strange, awkward. The alcohol was still in my system, making everything fuzzy, but I knew it was going to wear off and we'd have to think about this in the morning. What we'd done. What exactly had we done?
“I wish you were happy.” Carrie traced circles around my navel with her fingernail. “I've never met anyone who deserves to be happy more than you.”
I kissed the top of her head. “Except maybe you.”
“But I have Doc.” Her voice was small, almost apologetic. “And you don't have anyone.”
I hated hearing that truth. I almost hated her for saying it. But I didn't, not really.
“I have you.”
“Yes you do.” She kissed me and sealed the deal.
Chapter Four
I met Carrie at Sweetwater for coffee and a cinnamon roll. It was crowded, as usual, but she had snagged us a table in the back and waved me over when I slipped through the heavy front door, a cold wind following me. There was a nip of winter in it already.
“Cold out there.” I shivered, smiling when I saw she'd ordered for both of us already. “Thanks.”
“I can't wait for Christmas break.” She waved me into a chair, pushing my cinnamon roll toward me. It was thick and fat, the sides dripping with sticky white cream.
Perfect. I hadn’t allowed myself indulgences like these in the past year, hadn’t even considered it. Chocolate, ice cream, pastries, sex-doing anything sweet felt like a betrayal. “Doc has almost a month off. Key West and sunshine, here we come!”
I hesitated, the finger full of frosting halfway to my mouth. “You'll be in Florida for a month?”
“Two weeks,” she amended, giving me a little smile and sipping her coffee. “You can come with us if you want.”
“No.” I shook my head, tearing off a piece of roll. It didn’t taste quite as sweet now as I’d hoped. “I've got so much to do over break. My load for my last semester is even heavier than this one. And this one is kicking my ass.”
“But then you'll be all done,” she reminded me, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs. She was wearing a skirt, a gray and pink plaid wool one that ended at her knee. Her pantyhose were sheer, her legs long and sexy, still tanned from the summer spent sunbathing.
“Yep,” I agreed. And then what, I thought? What happens when I don't have school to do anymore? When I was pregnant with Isabella, I almost forgot about school altogether. It was Mason who buckled down then. He was an engineering major at the time and had brought home a four-point-oh the semester before she was born. And then we lost her and everything changed. I turned to school, focusing all my attention there, and Mason began drifting, aimless. My red cheeks stung as they warmed, and I swallowed hot gulps of coffee, trying to warm my insides as well. Although I wasn't sure that was possible anymore.
“Ugh. Don't look behind you.” Carrie wrinkled her nose and bit into her own cinnamon roll.
Of course I looked anyway.
“I said not to look,” she warned. But it was too late. There was a woman in the corner with a baby. They’d just come in and the baby’s cheeks were red from the cold.
How old? I wondered. A year? Year and a half? Isabella would have been about that age, I guessed. It was like a knife twisted in my belly, every time.
“I don't know which is harder.” I turned back to the table. Carrie’s gaze was on her coffee. “The little ones remind me of what she was like when she was born, and the older ones remind me of what could have been.”
“They all kill me.” She poured another sweetener into her coffee and stirred.
Sometimes I thought it was like neither of us could get enough sweetness or warmth.
“It sucks.” I chewed and swallowed, watching her stir and stir. “Are you guys still trying?”
“Always.” She rolled her eyes, licking her spoon and setting it carefully on her napkin. “I set an alarm to take my temperature every day. Poor Doc, I page him when I'm ovulating and he runs home from the hospital hoping he's not called back on an emergency.”
I nodded. “But getting pregnant isn't the problem.”
“No.” She sighed. “It's staying pregnant that seems to be the issue.”
“You know, I had some bleeding with Isabella in the beginning,” I told her. “The chiropractor gave me this stuff, a sort of cream. Progesterone, I think? I still have some if you want it. Maybe it will help?”
“Sure. Why not? I'll try anything.” She gave me a small, rueful smile. “I'd walk on my hands wearing garbage bags and toe socks if it would make a difference.”
That made me laugh and her smile widened into a real one.
“Hey, there he is!” Carrie waved at the door and I turned to see Doc coming in, shaking off the cold. My heart leapt and my belly clenched at the sight of him, tall and handsome, snatching off his hat, his ears still red from the cold. “I hope you don't mind but he got off early and I didn't want to cancel with you.”
“No, I don't mind,” I replied, which wasn't exactly true, as Doc wound his way through the tables toward us. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see him, that I didn’t like seeing him. In fact, I think I enjoyed it far too much.
“There's my girl.” Doc leaned over to kiss his wife and I looked away.
The mother with the baby had moved and was fully in my line of sight now. The little girl in her arms was dark haired and bundled in a pink coat with fake white fur around the hood. That could have been my life, I realized, watching her wipe the little girl's runny nose with a Kleenex and give her a plastic bag full of Cheerios. Instead I was sitting here with the Baumgartners and Mason was somewhere wasting his life role-playing. I felt a little like I was living an in alternate universe, like Alice down the rabbit hole. Was I living someone else’s life?
“Hey Doc.” I smiled and greeted him as he waved a waitress over.
Carrie helped him off with his coat. “I didn't order for you because I wasn't sure you were going to make it.”
“I wasn't sure either. I had an emergency appendectomy this morning.” He looked tired, but his eyes were still darkly bright as he glanced between the two of us.
