52:I'm Late

August 17

“Shit!”

Jon’s eyes sprang open at the loud feminine swear behind him, and without moving, he took a quick look around to find windows with white curtains and blinds set in a white wall.  He was at Chiara’s with the Disney mural on the same side of him as the swearing, which was coming from her. 

“Dammit to hell!  Fuck!”

Rolling over just in time to witness her naked backside emerge from beneath the covers, she stood at the bedside with one hand in her hair and the other sliding over her phone screen. 

“What’s wrong?”

“I overslept!”  She hit him with a cutting glare that should’ve had him bleeding out on her white sheets, but Jon didn’t feel any pain and merely smiled in return.

That was on him and the hands that couldn’t keep from groping her during the night.  Sex hadn’t even been on his mind when awakening at about four this morning, but with her sleep soft body breathing gently beside him, Jon had been unable to resist skating a hand over the naked ass that was pointed in his direction.  When she snuffled and rolled onto her back, the groping options became endless.

A gentle tap here and a butterfly touch there was the perfect combination to get her squirming in her sleep, and the thighs that parted as a result created a new challenge.  With her sound asleep and open to his every whim, how far could he go before she awoke? 

He was selectively stealthy with each new touch and was evidently damn good at it.  So slow and gradual was his invasion that it wasn’t long before Chiara was wantonly writhing against his tongue as he lapped up the byproduct of her wet dream.  She was on the verge of orgasm before realizing it wasn’t a fantasy or an apparition licking her from stem to stern. 

Aroused and sleep-fogged, he found that she was more liberal with her pre-orgasmic vocabulary than in his previous experience.  The woman could flat out talk dirty, and it fired her up because she almost ripped his hair out when coming with a banshee howl that left his chin dripping. 

It was one of the hottest things he’d ever experienced without having – or needing – his own orgasm.  Hers was enough for the both of them, and when she curled up on his chest with a sleepy offer to suck him, he just whispered for her to go back to sleep. 

“I guess I should apologize for that?”

“Wouldn’t do any good,” she threw over her shoulder while walking out the door toward the sound of her barking dog.  “I’d still be late.”

Jon wasn’t accustomed to sleeping with a woman who worked from nine to five, and it was kind of fun to see her scurrying around.  She was a dynamo whipping underwear out of drawers and clothes out of the closet while sending at least one text or e-mail, if not more, and she was sending another when she returned to the room with Nana trotting alongside her.

“Hey Fur Butt,” he greeted the dog whom he hadn’t recognized as missing until now.  “Where was she last time I came over?”

“Same place as this time – her condo.  She likes her own space at night, but now she needs to pee.”  Brown eyes – two pairs – pleaded with him.  “If I promise to do filthy, unspeakable things to you next time you’re in that bed, would you let her out?  You don’t have to do anything but open the back door.  She can stay in the yard until I go downstairs.”

Damn if having the counselor ask him for something – with no ensuing power struggle – wasn’t a neat little novelty.  Typically he didn’t get that excited about people making requests of him, but since this was practically a first for the woman who would try and conquer the world with one hand tied behind her back, Jon wasn’t complaining.

“Hell,” he snorted, sliding from beneath the covers and looking around for his shorts.  “It only takes walking the dog?  All that missed opportunity.”

Running water muffled her reply, but he could still hear it as the waistband settled low on his hips.  “You’ll be bored with it soon enough.”

Maybe, but I’m not yet.

“C’mon, Nana.  Let’s go.”

It only took a couple of minutes to open the door for the dog and fill a travel mug with automatically brewed coffee for her.  Still, by the time he left it on the counter and returned upstairs, Chiara was already out of the shower and toweling herself off.

“Want me to call a car for you?” he offered, leaning in the bathroom doorway after slipping on his t-shirt and hat.

Bent almost in half, she glanced up from drying her calves.  “I appreciate the offer, but no.  In morning traffic, the train will be faster and I have to be at Grand Central, anyway.  I just hope I make it in time.” 

The towel was tossed toward a hook on the wall and she shimmied into her panties almost as fast he shimmied her out of them. 

“Is your boss a stickler for punctuality?”

“Huh?”  Her bra settled into place and she gave her breasts a little boost inside the cups.  “Oh, no.  I’m not in court today, so work isn’t a big deal.  If I don’t get to Grand Central around the usual time though, I’ll miss Millie.”

Having his face between her legs while she slept was undeniably intimate, but a guy didn’t really get the meaning of intimacy until he stood just like this, watching his bed partner get ready for the day.  The parts that had been offered to him so freely were being concealed from the rest of the world, but he knew what those clothes hid.  That knowledge was almost more erotic than the nudity.

He missed that about living with a woman, but experiencing it with Chiara was weird.  They were still near-strangers in all the normal ways, and this familiarity left Jon a little uneasy.  To divert himself, he asked, “Who’s Millie?”

“Homeless woman.”  This was offered as she spit toothpaste into the sink.  “I take her coffee and bagels.”

Homeless woman?  What happened to the bitch she claimed to be?  He’d seen her in action, but it was almost impossible to reconcile her with the woman who was dressing at the speed of light in fear of missing her delivery to one of New York’s indigent population. 

“You’re a frigging con artist.”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded as the pins went into her twisted hair.  “I’m no such thing.”

“Are, too.  I thought you were a hard-ass, but here you are busting that ass to make an appointment with a homeless lady.  You’re giving divorce lawyers a bad name, Counselor.”

“Jerk.”  It was said with a chuckle as she pulled out some potions, creams and whatnots for her face.  As she applied them, she justified, “I’m only a hard-ass when the situation calls for it, which has been a lot lately.  Since we sort of like each other now, maybe you’ve seen the last of it.”

“Yeah?”  The whiskers on his jaw made a scraping sound against his palm as he rubbed a hand over them.  Since discovering that he liked a little Charlie with his Chiara, Jon didn’t want the hard-ass completely gone.  “It’s not bad in small doses.”

The doodad she held over her cheek went still and startled eyes met his in the mirror before she resumed her makeup.  “Did you really just say that?”

“Yes, smart ass, I did.  You seem unnatural without it.” 

She paused again, this time in the midst of tucking lotions and potions back into a drawer, before finishing her task with a smirk.  “You really are starting to like me, Bongiovi.”

“I told you that already.”

Squeezing past him through the doorway, she grazed his lips with a passing kiss to slip into the light gray suit skirt that had been draped over the foot of the bed.  “So you did.  It’s like a new toy, though.  I’m infatuated with it.”   She shrugged into the pink button-up blouse.  “Just like I’m a little infatuated with you watching me get dressed like a peeping Tom pervert.  It’s kinda hot.”

When she sidled by him, he had turned to follow her progress and was now leaning his other shoulder against the door facing.  The last button on her blouse was fastened, and she was stepping into her heels and reaching for her jacket as he laughed, “You're just full of perversions.  Fighting and now this.”

“This isn't a perversion,” she contradicted with a dainty frown.  “Just an appreciation for your appreciation, if that makes any sense.  Even if it doesn’t, I have to go.”

“Hey.”  He stretched out to snag her elbow with gentle finger, holding her still until he was standing directly before her.  Kissing her once – hard – Jon gruffly instructed, “Go deliver your bagels.  There’s coffee for you on the kitchen counter.  I’ll let the dog in and lock up before I leave.”

“Seriously?”  The light in her eyes spoke of sexual promises on top of the ones he’d accrued for taking the dog out in the first place.  “Just put her back in her condo and make sure she has food and water?”  

“Yeah.”

“Thanks.”  One last kiss and she was dashing out of the bedroom, calling over her shoulder, “We’ve moved past like.  I now have an official crush on you.  Bye!”   

Arguing one minute, fucking like ferrets the next, getting bullied into a relationship by their families and finding out she already belonged to somebody else.  Since when was he the guy who wanted any of that but the sex?  God knew he had no interest in a married woman.  There were too many unattached ones out there for this shit. 

But they aren’t rushing to make a breakfast date with a homeless woman.

They also didn’t have balls of steel and a Disney bedroom or make him horny with a single touch.

Or have a dog who’s probably pissed at being left outside.

Stuffing bare feet into his tennis shoes, Jon left the bedroom and cut across the corner of the sitting room/office to reach the stairs.  Heavy feet shuffled down through the kitchen and dining room to the back door.  He barely touched the handle before the short-legged dog was running for it and skidded on the hardwood as she zoomed inside. 

“You’ve had enough of the great outdoors, huh?” he chuckled, closing and locking the back door before following after her into the kitchen and pondering where dog food might be hiding. 

How in the hell had this happened?  He would really like to know.  The woman screwed him out of millions of dollars, leaving Jon so mad he thought he’d never get over it.  Two weeks later, they were sleeping together, she was the one he sought to ease his loneliness and here he was taking care of her fucking dog. 

Reality was way fucking stranger than fiction.