Page 73 of Not Home Alone

“Grant!” She clenches around my fingers again. I curl them, stroke that spot inside of her that I know no other man has touched. She makes a high-pitched humming sound that I feel all the way down my spine. She’s ready for me to fuck her with my fingers already, so I do. I give her what she wants. She spasms around my fingers, and my hand is dripping wet. She nuzzles against my neck, bites my shoulder, muffles her scream into my sweater and then goes still as she clings to me.

God, it feels so good. I don’t want anything to come between us. “Merrily…” I want to tell her everything. I have to. “Merrily, when the two weeks are over… after the holidays…”

“Hang on,” she says, lifting herself up. “Shhhhh.”

I pull my fingers out of her and suck on them, tasting her on my skin. Savoring her in a way that I’ve never wanted to savor any other woman. She is sweet and musky, and now I really feel drunk. Now I know exactly how addicted I’ll be and I’m not afraid of it.

“Hang on, hang on,” she says, climbing off me, awkwardly getting up from my lap. She is wearing the blanket like a cape, and she reaches under her long sweater and shimmies around. “I’m on the pill, and I have a clean bill of health. You?”

Suddenly, I forgot what I was going to say to her, because Yes. Me. Yes. I want nothing between us, and she is giving me what I want.

She bends down, wobbles around, swears a little, sits down on the other chair, tugs and grunts, and then she’s shuffling over to me again.

“What are you doing just sitting there?” she says, giggling. “Take it out, Moody, I haven’t got all night.”

I am slack jawed and hard as a rock, but I do as she says. I pull my pants and boxer briefs down as she holds the blanket up over me. “I don’t want the owls to see,” she says.

Fair enough.

I stroke my erection, hold my other hand out to her. She fits her legs under the arms of the chair again, straddling, hovering over me, covering us both with the blanket. “What were you saying?” she asks, as she lowers herself onto me.

“No idea.”

I suck in a sharp breath as she exhales slowly, making contact, connecting herself to me, as I blindly guide her. Slowly, over the course of a week and ten years, she takes me in. Slowly, and then all of a sudden.

“Baby…”

“So good,” she whispers.

Neither of us move for a few breaths. “So good, baby…” I wait for her to roll her hips, letting her ride me. Her skin is hot beneath her sweater. Hot and smooth, and I wish I could touch and kiss her everywhere all at once, but I also want to focus on this. Where we connect. Where I’m inside her with nothing between us. This is where I want to live. This is what I want life to be like.

Merrily clenches and releases around me, rocks forward and backward, side to side. Every movement is a blessing and a curse. Heaven and hell. I could stay here forever or come in two seconds. I’m letting her lead.

“Grant,” she whispers, just above my ear. Just my name, over and over. I feel her orgasm coming in waves.

“Baby, I’m gonna come.”

“Yes. Come inside me, Grant.”

Five more words that change everything.

I do. I cling to her hot, damp skin beneath her sweater. I come inside her. I empty myself into her, feeling her soft waves crash against my ragged shore. We fill the blanket with our heavy breaths, fill our lungs with each other. It’s the most intense, intimate thing I’ve ever experienced. And it could only ever be with her.

Merrily sighs, wraps her arms around me tight, pressing herself against me.

In this darkness, all I hear is our breaths and the beating of our hearts, and I’m still somehow blinded by her beauty.

Warmth spreads through my chest in a way that I didn’t even know it could a week ago.

I avoided her for ten years, but I never stopped thinking about her. I know a lot, and I’m right about almost everything, but I can’t say that I know for sure what being in love feels like. I just know that I fell so hard for Merrily Tucker when she was a young woman, and I’m falling even harder for the woman she’s become. It’s like that entire decade’s worth of feelings I tried to contain are being released all at once and it doesn’t even scare me.

Probably because I just ejaculated.

And also because it’s Merrily.

But she doesn’t really know me. She’s had a taste, but nobody—not one person alive—really knows me. I am so fucking tired of hiding. That was the whole point of staying at the Home Alone House this year. I didn’t want to have to perform for my family. I wanted to just be.

Why shouldn’t I give this beautiful woman the real, best version of myself? I’ll never know if I deserve her if I don’t show her who I am and what I want. Even if she doesn’t want it. Even if I’m not entirely sure what the best version of myself is anymore. I have a feeling Merrily’s the one who can bring it out of me. Why shouldn’t I let her be the one to decide if I deserve her or not?