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I shift the sheets, exposing his long, hard cock. This time when I lick my lips, I make sure it’s an exaggerated gesture since I know he’s watching.
I slide down in the bed and take him into my mouth. He’s so big that I nearly gag, but I know he loves it when I take him deep into my throat—and, truth be told, I love it, too.
After he comes, I lay my head on his chest, listening to the beat of his heart. William strokes my hair, and I feel like this is exactly where I’m meant to be. Where Ibelong.
“How long will you stay with me?” he whispers into my hair. His voice is so quiet that I feel the question more than I hear it.
My heart thunders in my chest. I’ve been in Mercury Ridge for just over a week and the topic of our marriage pact hasn’t come up yet.
Nor has the topic of kids.
We haven’t been using protection, and I can’t help but worry that William thinks I’m on the pill. I never said I was, and he never asked. But maybe it’s just assumed that forty-year-old child-free women have mastered the ability to prevent pregnancy?
Then again, he may just think I’m too old to get knocked up. The odds of a natural pregnancy at my age are very low, indeed. At my last physical, my doctor told me there was less than a five percent chance. And even if I do get pregnant, the chance of a miscarriage is extremely high.
If William agrees to try to have children with me, we need to get started on fertility treatments right away. It’s something I need to bring up, and soon; I just haven’t had the guts. After all, I’m not even sure he remembers our marriage pact.
“How long do you want me to stay?” I ask.
“Forever.” He says it so absolutely, without hesitation, that my breath hitches.
“Forever is a long time.”
“And it still wouldn’t be long enough with you, beautiful.”
I love you. I want to say the words, but I can’t. Not yet. Not when there’s so much on the line.
“Let’s give it one more week together,” I whisper. “We can reassess then.”
“Deal,” William says. “Now get over here and ride me like a Harley.”
Eight
William
IwaitforRomeoat the trailhead to our favorite stretch of the Appalachian Trail. It’s almost five-thirty in the morning, and the wintry air is crisp and cold on my skin. Once we’re hiking, we’ll warm up quickly, but right now, the air is bone-chilling.
All I have to do to warm up is think of Carly. I woke up before my alarm this morning to find her hand wrapped around my cock. After she finished me off, she said, “I just wanted to start your day right.”
The woman is a goddess.
And this time, I’m not going to let her go without a fight.
When we were teens, we fell hard and fast, but we weren’t stupid. We knew that teenagers shouldn’t make life-changing commitments at such a young age. And we both had big plans for the future. She wanted to make a career in art, and to live in a city. Her home life wasn’t great, bouncing from foster home to foster home, and she hated having to depend on others. So, she vowed to someday be able to take care of herself.
I had the opposite problem—too many people depended onme.I couldn’t love my siblings more, but it wasn’t easy being the oldest Jones kid after my mom’s death. Dad was wrecked, and I had to step up to help care for all of them—including Macbeth, who was just a baby at the time.
I didn’t have as clear a vision for my life as Carly did, but I knew I needed to leave Mercury Ridge for a while. To spread my wings and go to college. Odds were, I’d end up back in town, working at the marina with my dad, and I was fine with that. But I felt I owed it to myself to try something different first.
But there was one thing we both agreed on. We didn’t want to end up like her foster mom or my dad: old and alone. They both seemed so lonely. Dad still hadn’t gotten over Mom’s death. And Carly’s foster mom had never married at all.
So, we made a pact that when we were really old, we’d marry each other. Then we’d have someone to spend our final years with. We chose forty as the age because it seemed so far into the future. In our minds, forty meant death’s door.
I’ve never forgotten our deal. I won’t go as far as to say I’ve been waiting on Carly to come back. But I have compared every woman to her for my entire life. And after my fortieth birthday, I started to fantasize that she’d remember our pact, and show up on my doorstep.
But it was just a fantasy. I never thought she’d really come back to Mercury Ridge.
I thought she’d forgotten about me long ago. But here we are at forty, both single, and both in Mercury Ridge, at least for the time being.
