Between the Sheets (11 page)

The entire ride over on the boat, I
can’t help thinking of Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage in The Rock.
I know others must be imagining Al Capone or George “Machine Gun”
Kelly locked up in the small cells on the island, but, not me. The
entire film plays through my mind as we cruise through the choppy
waters. The bay looks dark and scary and I wonder how in the hell
any prisoner could possibly jump in that freezing water and think
they could swim all the way to the shore. Maybe they did some
serious training or weightlifting in the slammer and considered
themselves the next to win the Iron Man triathlon or something. I
doubt it though. The big lump of earth out there doesn’t look like
it could’ve been geared toward keeping the inmates in the most tip
top shape. Instead, it looks eerie, and damp.

We take the guided audio tour, and
pass through the prison with old school headphones covering our
ears.

“
What the hell?” I tell Ty,
after listening to interviews of raspy-voiced inmates as I scan
every detail of the cement block otherwise known as a penitentiary.
I rub my ear in irritation. I’m not some high school kid who wants
to walk around like a DJ with these suckers plastered to my head.
“What happened to the little old lady docents? What the heck kinda
tour is this?”

Ty stares me down with a smirk. “Mel,
this isn’t the frickin’ MOCA. We’re visiting a prison. You should
just feel lucky the cell doors don’t have functioning locks or I’d
accidentally throw your ass in one of them.”

“
Trying to get rid of me,
huh? What, did you see some hoochie mama you’d rather take
home?”

“
Yeah, I did. That one
right there.” He gestures to a flashy woman who didn’t get the memo
that leggings are meant to be worn underneath something else.
Especially cheap, worn brands. I really shouldn’t be able to see
that she has pink check boy shorts on. If I could manage to get any
closer, I could tell you the brand too, her pants are
that
transparent. Nasty
ass. I’d expect to see this at work, not that it’s any better, but
not from a grown ass woman.

“
Oh, honey. If you want
that, by all means, go get her. You don’t have to lock me in a
cell. I’ll gladly let you go if that’s your taste.”

He tosses his arm around me and rests
his forearm on my shoulder. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
He shudders. “I guess I’ll just keep you for now.”

“
I see how it is. Keep me
for now, until something better comes along. You know I can kick
box, right? I could knock you on your ass with one of my Rambo
kicks in half a second if you piss me off, so you better watch it,
big guy.”

A big belly laugh roars from
Ty.

“
I wasn’t trying to be
funny,” I tell him as I turn to him with a finger to his chest.
“Wanna try me?”

He grasps my tiny wrist in his big
hand and rests it on his shoulder. “Yeah, I wanna try you … in
every way possible.”

Whew. Is it getting hot in here? His
hungry stare pierces my body straight to the center of my lady
love. “I’d say let’s get a room, but the metal bed frames and the
bars kind of kill it.”

He flashes me one of his trademark
grins and it hits me just as hard as his stare. When is the next
ferry off this fucking island? I need this man. I want this man.
Now.

When we’ve finished walking around the
poky, Ty’s phone is loaded with comedic photos of yours truly.
There is one of me behind bars reaching out to him with a psychotic
facial expression crying out for help. Another one shows me
flipping pages of a magazine while I sit on a dingy porcelain
commode. If there had been seat covers, I would’ve pulled down my
pants and let him get a shot of me with them gathered at my ankles.
Now, that would’ve been some funny shit.

My all-time favorite pose is of me
kneeling down in the recreation yard, my hands holding rolled up
brochures, waving them in the air. My face is pained and desperate
as I yell, “Don’t drop the bombs!” The brochures really don’t look
like the flares in The Rock, and I can’t really pull off Nick Cage
very well, but hey, I tried. And the laughs I got from the other
tourists were worth getting my pants dusty in the knees. I’d say it
was worth the humiliation, but this is me we’re talking about. Like
I’d be embarrassed about making an ass out of myself.

“
You and my sis are movie
whores,” Ty says while sliding his finger across his phone,
glancing at my photo shoot at the clink.

“
You mean to tell me you’ve
never reenacted one of your favorite movies in the big
house?”

He shakes his head with a chuckle.
“No, can’t say that I have.”

With a little tug on his belt, his
eyes lower to mine and I murmur, “Well, I’m sure there are plenty
of films we can bring to life when we get back to your
place.”

Before we head to Ghirardelli Square
this afternoon, I make Ty promise to go for a run with me. If I
don’t want to feel guilty about consuming another 3,500 calories of
hot fudge, vanilla ice cream, and chocolate fudge brownies, I need
to get my ass in gear.

We’re on our second mile when Ty slows
to a crawl. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Daddy long legs can’t keep up
with these little wheels?” I pat my thighs.

“
Babe, you know I can keep
up with you. I think I’ve more than proved I can in the last two
weeks. In fact, I think you’ve burned enough calories rolling
around in my sheets to eat five sundaes and about thirty truffles.”
Now, he’s stopped, and is panting with his hands on his hips, sweat
dripping down the side of his face. His damp skin is glistening in
the early morning sun. Jeezus. This man exudes uber amounts of sex
appeal, making me want to drag my tongue down his neck, lapping up
the salty moisture and following the trail down to his hard abs and
beyond. “Thinking about chocolate already?”

“
Thinking about dipping you
in chocolate and taking my time licking you clean,” I confess, my
girl parts squeezing with desire.

He looks at me blankly for a second
before shock registers on his face. “Well, that has to burn some
calories too. I say we stop at the store on the way home and pick
up some chocolate syrup. I wouldn’t want to deny you one of your
fantasies. I mean … who am I to get in the way of your
imagination?”

Two cans of whipped cream and a bottle
of chocolate syrup later, I’m in Ty’s shower with hot water running
down my body.

“
I had no idea chocolate
could be so sticky,” he says as he steps inside with me.

“
Yeah, no kidding. Did you
get everything into the washer without it dripping all over the
floor?”

He laughs. “Yeah. It wasn’t as bad as
it looked. I think next time we should just head to Ghirardelli’s
first and eat the chocolate there. Then we can come home and work
it off. Wearing it isn’t as hot as I thought it would
be.”

I run my fingers down the center of
his chest toward his taut abs. “Actually, you wearing it was plenty
hot. Tasted pretty damn good too. And I can’t complain about the
clean-up.” My palms flatten against his sculpted pecs now, and he
springs to life poking me in the belly.

“
On second thought, it’s
not so bad at all.” With one of his hands threaded in my hair and
his other firmly holding on to my ass, he leans in and devours my
mouth in a seriously scorching wet kiss. The sweet taste of
chocolate on his tongue fills my senses and sends my body into
overload. Again.

We just finished one round of the
hottest sex I’ve ever experienced. The warmth of Ty’s tongue as he
sucked the chilled whipped cream from my nipples. The heat of his
tongue as I watched him lick chocolate from my lips. And not the
ones attached to my face. Sweet mercy, that was just minutes ago
and here we are ready to do it all over again.

“
I’m going to go home with
muscles I didn’t know I had,” I tell Ty as he lowers himself to the
floor and hikes my left thigh onto his shoulder.

“
Shh. You have some more
syrup down here. I thought I got it all earlier. I guess
not.”

Holy shit. I think I just heard my
skin sizzle with the flick of his tongue. “Poor me,” I
groan.

Poor me and poor him is all I can
think of as we take turns getting our fill of each other. It isn’t
until we’re breathless, trying to recover from round two, that we
actually grab the soap which is why we got into the shower in the
first place.

Give me a minute, though. With the
tender touch of Ty’s soapy hands tracing lazy circles over my body
and the gentle massage of him shampooing my hair, I just might be
ready for round three.

My eyes flash open way before I’m
ready to get out of bed. Tyler is sleeping on his back next to me
with one arm resting above his head and his other hand on my thigh.
The warmth of his touch brands my skin, and I’m hoping I’ll still
be able to feel it long after I leave today.

His sun-kissed bare chest is
well-defined and smooth, with a golden happy trail that disappears
under the bright white sheet covering his lower half. He’s
beautiful. And he was all mine for two of the best weeks of my
life. From parading around the town like a couple of tourists to
acting like an old retired couple, we’ve made one hell of a
pair.

I’m not ready to leave it all
behind.

I’m not ready to say goodbye and not
know when we’re going to have this again.

I’ve been bidding farewell to Tyler
Gelson for more than half my life. You’d think I’d be used to it.
But for many reasons, it’s even harder now. When he left for
college, I knew there wouldn’t ever be anything between us, so I
used it as a time to heal my heart and move on. It worked for the
most part. I dated. I went to prom. I did what most teenage girls
do. I hooked up with teenage boys. I sure as hell didn’t fret over
my first love who was older than me and out of reach. Not much
anyway.

Ty would come home to visit his family
for the holidays or for anything else his mom summoned him for. I’d
see him. He’d see me. It’d be awkward. And then he was gone before
I could get used to seeing him again.

When I finally left for my own college
experience, the run-ins with Ty happened even less. But when I did
see him, even though there were uncomfortable stares, I knew there
was something there. And not only on my part. I was no longer some
naive girl with a nagging crush. I knew my feelings for him were
real, and I knew he had feelings for me too.

That night at prom, when our dates
ditched us, I discovered just how much he felt for me when we made
love for the very first time on a soft plaid blanket under the
stars at the top of a deserted street most of us called Hookup
Hill. Silly me, I talked myself into thinking it was just a pity
lay on his part. He couldn’t possibly share the same feelings I
had, could he?

But years later when I looked into his
eyes after I introduced him to Nick, I knew I was wrong. He did
have feelings for me. Real feelings. A lot of feelings. And it was
too late.

Ty had come home for a quick visit for
the Fourth of July holiday. Shel and I were home for the summer.
Nick and I had been dating for months but he had never met my
family. So I invited him to join us. But, I didn’t know of Ty’s
plan to make an appearance. I can still remember the punch in my
gut when I saw him and his long stare as he took in Nick’s arm
around my waist holding me tightly against him.

What sucked ass about that
bittersweet day was that I had just realized Tyler Gelson, the
great love of my life, really did love me
and
there wasn’t a damn thing I could
do about it. I had moved on. I loved Nick. Not the way I loved Ty,
but it was something. That had to be the hardest goodbye of all. It
was like I was saying goodbye forever.

Thankfully, I got a second
chance. And this time, I’m going to do everything I can so I never
have to say goodbye to Tyler again. From now on, it’s going to be
a
till next time
kind of thing.

Ty lets out a breathy sigh, and my
gaze focuses on his chest rising up and down.

This gorgeous man is mine. And I’m not
going anywhere. Geographically, yes. But my heart will always be
with him, no matter how many miles are between us.

I’ve finally got him back, and I’m not
ever letting go.

Melissa

It’s summer, yet I wake up shivering.
I’m home now, and I’m alone in my bed without the warmth of Ty’s
lean, hard body lying next to me. Not exactly what I want to dwell
on as soon as I wake up this morning. I’d rather think about our
two weeks of record-breaking heat together. And I’m not talking
about the temperature in the Bay Area either. Every minute with him
was amazing, falling into a routine, enjoying each other’s company,
both inside the bedroom and out.

My phone rings, the sound of the
Friday Night Lights theme song filling my room. I reach across my
fluffy comforter and pillows to snatch my phone from the charging
station on my bedside table.

“
Hello.”