31:Expectation

August 13

Gradually coming into a semi-conscious state, Jon didn’t bother opening his eyes to the offensive daylight as he twisted from stomach to side into his usual morning stretch.  Far from usual, though, were the aches and pains that drew him to an abrupt halt and crumpled his forehead with confusion.  His back was sore, his thighs ached, his shoulders were stiff and all of them were considerably heavier they’d been when he went to sleep last night.  Why was he feeling his age so acutely this morning?

Flipping onto his back brought a different kind of pain, and the foreign tenderness of his skin against the sheets provided the perfect reminder of why he felt this way.  He’d mauled and been mauled by a hellcat. 

With a Tinkerbell tat.

That had been a surprise.  Not so much the ink high on her thigh, but that she’d had it nearly as long as he’d had his steer skull – and that she kept it touched up.  He hadn’t asked the logical follow-up questions because…  Well, they’d had better things to do last night.

After “dessert”, they’d both dozed for a while until Jon was awakened by the tickle of lips against his neck.  That “midnight snack” had turned into another mild squabble in which she gave him hell about his inordinately long recovery time, leaving him to defend his own honor – again – by impaling her from behind with an undeniably stiff dick. 

Afterward, she’d gone to shower while he fell asleep until the early hours of morning when he provided “sunrise breakfast” in the form of another hard and quick tumble.  That one had been blessedly free of her voice, other than the unintelligible screams as she came for him again. 

The woman might be a bitch on wheels, but there was no denying that he liked her in his bed.

“Fuck.” 

Even the soft swear seemed loud in the quiet room, and gritty eyes cracked open to squint against sunlight that sought to blind him.  Their preoccupation with sins of the flesh meant that they hadn’t pulled the curtains last night and Jon was paying for it now.  Pushing up onto his elbows, he averted his eyes to the other side of the bed and found it empty. 

“Of course she’s a fucking morning person,” he muttered, throwing back the covers.  It took a couple of minutes to work out the worst of the kinks, but he was soon mobile and plodding into the bathroom. 

His muscles were starting to fully loosen by the time that chore was finished, and pulling on his dirty jeans wasn’t as painful as it would’ve been five minutes earlier.  Buttoning the damn things fell way down his list of priorities, though – somewhere below coffee, coffee, sunglasses and coffee, which he padded down the hall in search of.

Entering the salon area, which he found to be even brighter than the bedroom, Jon made a beeline for the bar where he had tossed his sunglasses last night. 

The counselor was curled into a corner of one sofa, and he barely spared her a glance.  That glance, however, was enough to register that she wore his shirt and not much – if anything else.  Bare feet and legs tucked beneath her, unbrushed hair spilled wildly around her shoulders and tumbled down to her breasts, and make-up free features were pale and drawn.  She didn’t look much better than he felt, but at least she already had coffee in hand. 

As he passed by she offered a sedate, “Morning.”

Seating the blessedly dark lenses on his face, he did an about-face and skirted the couch on his way to the galley, where he presumed there would be more of the fragrant brew she held.

“I’m not a morning person with a full nights’ sleep.  Do us both a favor and don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee.”

If he expected her to argue, he was disappointed.  Rather than giving him three kinds of feisty hell just for the fun of it, she closed her eyes with a simple, “Okay.”

Evidently, she felt worse than she looked after a night of excessive martinis and lack of sleep, and it reminded Jon why he liked to limit his alcohol consumption to a good buzz.  He hated that the aftermath was even more debilitating than being drunk off his ass.

“Hangovers suck.”

“Not hungover,” she countered in lawyer-esque form without opening her eyes.  “Weary from a physically demanding night.”

Physically demanding.  Mentally demanding.  Plain old garden-variety demanding.  Any and all of the above applied to their night together and, while he wasn’t exactly kicking up his heels at the moment, he had no complaints about the demands that had been placed upon him.  The end justified the means, but he didn’t share that thought.

Humming a noncommittal response, Jon continued on his quest for the dark roasted elixir of life. 

Charlie listened to him puttering around in the little kitchen, idly wondering what the morning held in store, but weary enough not to obsess over it.  There had been a time when she had the stamina to endure a night of endless sex without being exhausted the next morning.  That time had long since passed so, while she thought he was sexy as hell walking through here in nothing but unbuttoned jeans and an attitude, she required at least one more cup of coffee before it became a true temptation.

“That’s my shirt.”

The man was light on his surprisingly big feet.  She hadn’t heard him return and parted her eyelids just enough to reveal his presence at the end of the sofa.  With feet planted wide and a steaming mug of coffee in his hands, she presumed he was looking at her through the concealing sunglasses.

“Your dirty clothes are more comfortable than mine.”

The man might consider himself to be under-caffeinated, but Charlie could still feel his energy when he accepted her answer without reaction and quietly roamed the area.  First he went to stare out one window with his coffee, slowly inhaling it while staring out over the water.  Next, he ambled to the back deck – or whatever the proper nautical term was – and did the same thing before drifting to the other bank of windows. 

Funny.  For someone who didn’t want to be spoken to, he seemed to be restlessly anticipating just that.  Did he think she was waiting for the chance to start one of their quarrels?  Well, he was wrong.  The only thing on her mind on the moment was a growing curiosity over where they were this morning. 

Had he gotten his fill?  Had his itch been scratched?  Was he ready to move on from a rebound lover to take up the search for a more permanent one?  Her feelings wouldn’t be hurt if that was the case, but it would be nice to know rather than hanging her in some kind of weird limbo.   Because if he wasn’t…

Stifling a sigh, Charlie accepted that she wasn’t sufficiently prepared to deal with this or him yet.  Jon wasn’t the only non-morning person around here, and she swallowed the tepid remains in her cup to make room for more.  Unsure and uncaring whether he noticed, she left her seat without a word.

The pot was just sliding back into place in place when she sensed his mute presence behind her in the galley.  Apparently, he had noticed her departure, and at this close range, his sense of expectancy was even stronger. 

“When will we get back to Montauk?” she asked just to break the tension while slowly pivoting to look at him.  Disheveled hair and an unshaven face were trademarks of a sloppy and slovenly man but, with him, they just colored him a different shade of sexy.  Casual versus elegant, as it were, and she found it incredibly unfair that he rolled out of bed looking like this. 

“About eleven.  Why?” 

The defensive tone bordered on belligerent and it was with rolling eyes that she slid past him in the doorway, saying, “I was just asking.  Stop expecting a fight.”

“When have you given me a reason not to?”

He was right.  He was beyond right.  He was correct, accurate and dead-on with his comment, but she didn’t feel like sparring this morning.  With her ass dragging and uncertain as to whether the things they’d done were all the things they would be doing, Charlie hovered on the edge of being an introvert this morning.

“Never,” she admitted as she sank back into the couch.  “Now can I drink my coffee in peace?”

He didn’t agree, but he also didn’t say anything.  Jon only resumed taking his bottled thoughts for a stroll as she watched.  From the way her eyes stuck to him like a magnet, one would think he was really the Man of Steel depicted by that faded tattoo.

On one of his passes, it was with a mixture of embarrassment and satisfaction that she noted his back.  It was a mess with fresh, angry scratches from last night interspersed with ones that had begun to fade from the night before.  She fleetingly wondered if he would go to the beach today and, if so, whether he would wear a shirt to cover them. 

“I think I have some ointment in my bag.  Why don’t you let me put it on those scratches for you?”

“Not necessary.  I’m fine.” Glancing away from the water, he added as an afterthought, “Thank you.”

The silence thing obviously wasn’t working out, and the simple conversation thing had been so much easier last night.  Neither had been waiting for the other to draw first blood and, between the alcohol and his concentrated effort to be polite, it hadn’t required this level of exertion.  They’d just… talked to one another, like normal acquaintances would.

Taking another pull on her coffee, she silently stewed over how difficult everything was with him – outside of sex.   

“Where do you live?” The unexpected question came abruptly when he dropped onto one of the chairs, caddy-cornered from her in the square seating arrangement. 

“Brooklyn Heights.”

That was all.  He leaned back to cross his legs and sip his coffee, offering nothing else that might explain why he wanted to know, and Charlie reached the limits of her under-rested patience.

“I am very sure that you’re as tired as I am,” she acknowledged with resignation and balanced her cup on her thigh.  “I suspect that, also like me, you don’t mind that too much because the sex was good.  Am I right?”

Without speaking, he gave one slight dip of his head.  It wasn’t much encouragement, but she didn’t need much at this point. 

“Even under those circumstances, a tired Charlie is either quiet or painfully blunt.  Quiet obviously isn’t happening, so here’s blunt.  What’s the deal when we get back to East Hampton?  ‘Thanks for the fuck, have a nice life’?”

Watching his mouth go tight at the corners, she became irritated enough with his irritation to decide she would be the one drawing first blood here this morning.  Her mouth opened but, before she had a chance to administer a dose of scathing sarcasm, he finally deigned to speak.

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“Well, figure it out,” she advised shortly.  “Not knowing and you pacing around here like a caged lion is making me nuts.”

Jon’s mouth relaxed as his features went entirely impassive.  “I’m always a little fidgety.  You make it worse.”

What did she do?  Apologize?  If so, for what?  Breathing?  She sure as hell hadn’t been antagonistic this morning.

“I don’t mean to,” was what she settled on.  “How about I just finish up with the bluntness?  This is a vacation fling in my book, and my vacation ends tomorrow.  I’d like another round in your bed – against a wall, in the pool or whatever – before I go home.  Thoughts on that?”

His response wasn’t nearly as long in coming as she would have assumed, with only a couple of heartbeats passing before the indifferent answer was delivered.

“That’s fine.”  Denim-clad legs uncrossed and, when Jon leaned forward to place his coffee cup on the table, the unbuttoned placket of his jeans parted almost far enough to let go of everything it was holding in place.  “You wanted to see the house.  Bring everybody over for another cookout this evening.”

Unbelievable.  Could he have been any more blasé about having sex with her again?  If she were a lesser woman, Charlie would’ve been wounded to the core, but she’d been wounded deeply enough in the past that this didn’t even touch her that way.  It just made her mad.

“I see you getting pissed over there, Counselor,” he said quietly before rising to come and stand before her. 

Her own coffee was taken to join his on the table and Jon extended a hand, palm up.  When she merely looked at it, he wiggled the fingers.  Charlie stared it for a moment longer before permitting him to fold her hand inside those fingers and use the grip to coax her to her feet. 

With his arms now curled around her back, those impassive features took on a smirk.  “Getting pissed without benefit of an orgasm seems like a waste of energy.  Don’t you think?”

His smirk dipped to kiss her smile and, for the first time that morning, Charlie relaxed.