One (Bar Dance) (4 page)

Chapter Five

Rand let us in his condo closing and locking the door. I stood watching him as he leaned against the door. Legs wide, hands loose against his side. I cocked my head to the side. I didn’t know him well enough to understand the posture. I would have tossed my purse to the nearest flat surface if I had just walked in my home but I didn’t have one with me. I didn’t even have my backpack as a security blanket. I wanted to cross my arms over my chest but I didn’t want to take a defensive stance so I stood almost exactly like him except without the leaning against something. To do that I would have to find a vertical flat surface and that was taken. I had one of two choices. Stand there looking like an idiot or walk towards him. I chose the latter of the two. I got about two feet away when Rand closed his eyes.

“Thank God.”
He reached out for me and pulled me close. He just held me. He held me tight but he just held me. His arms around my waist and his face in my neck.

I still had no idea what
he was about but he felt good. I wrapped my arms around him too. I found my face in his neck and moved it down to his chest. That felt even better. I took a deep breath. Then I took another. Then I took a calming breath and relaxed into him. When I say that I relaxed I mean that all of me relaxed. Not just my body but my mind as well. I breathed in the scent of him feeling him hold me strong. As if he could be the rock that would hold me up and make me strong.

My mom and dad met a few years after dad had started
his dental practice. Mom worked as his hygienist until she had me. Then she decided to stay home to raise me. Great for me. Bad for them. When I went to school mom was always at the school. Bake sales, carnivals, reading groups. Everything that she could do, she did. She excelled at all of it. I think that she thrived at it. She was super busy, as in, too busy for me and my dad with all that she did at the school.

I think that dad didn’t sign up for kid duty
. He had a kid and left his wife at home to do the raising while he went to work to find his next conquest. He came home after work expecting dinner on the table. Not a wife that was on the telephone doing fundraisers or baking thirty dozen cookies, not dinner.

Mom was surprised to come home and find all of dad’s stuff at his mistress
’s house and me with a car to do what I wanted. He gave her child support for two years and me a large allowance to make up for him not being there. His way of atonement, I think.

I signed up for classes and had my CNA before I was eighteen. The day I turned eighteen I was hired at the nursing facility that I had done rotations at.
Changing briefs wasn’t my ideal job but it was a start.

American dysfunction at its best
was what my family had.

I pressed closer
to Rand. He felt so right. Right enough that I felt content for the first time in a long time.

He held me tighter. The
n he asked. “You sleep in one of my shirts or naked?”

“Shirt.” I answered to his chest.

“You going to let me go,” He asked my hair, “So I can get you one of my shirts?”

“You keep doing things out of order.” I said with my mouth still against his chest.

“What do you mean?”

“You said when we left the hospital that we were getting food then clothes. We ended up getting clothes then food. Then you said dancing and sex. Now you are saying sleep. That wasn’t even on the list.” I grinned up at him.

He grinned back at me. “We’re young. We got lots of time to get around to sex. I also wanted to make you smile earlier. Talking about sex makes everyone smile.” He got me turned and was leading me further towards his bedroom. “I also saw how much the last couple of days has taken out of you with Dakota. Much less the dancing that you did. Sleep is probably more important right now.”

Unfortunately he was right so I told him that. “You’re right. I feel dead on my feet.”

He walked me to his room then closed the door. He then walked over to his dresser and pulled out one huge shirt and put it in my hands. At one time I’m sure that it was red. Now it wasn’t even close to red it was so faded. It was extremely soft though. He motioned to the open door. “That’s the bathroom. It has a door from the hallway but I always keep that one locked.”

I wanted to ask why he kept that one locked. He seemed to live alone.
He barely had enough furnishings to cover one person living there much less two. The whole place screamed rental. White walls, tan carpet, three bar stools at the counter in the kitchen. One couch with a huge flat screen TV in the other room. His bedroom wasn’t much more. Big bed, one dresser, one night stand with shoes lined up against the wall. No pictures. No knick knacks. Nothing that stated that he lived here.

I walked in the bathroom noting more of the same nothingness. More tan but in tile form this time.
A toilet, shower stall and hamper that was overflowing with clothes and towels. I used the facilities then washed my face. When I walked out I took my folded clothes with me and put them on top of his four drawer dresser. He walked past me and closed the door. He had changed into a pair of what I assumed was once sweat pants that the legs had been hack off at his thighs. They were faded and frayed so I knew the hack job was done a while ago. His bed was made, sort of. It was made by just tossing the quilt up so that it was messy. It was the first sign that somebody lived here, not just existed in the space.

Maybe I was wrong though. He may not have cared enough to make the bed. Maybe it was just a man thi
ng. You know the kind of thing that says ‘why make it when I just have to unmake it again’. I hadn’t know him long enough to make that call.

I
, on the other hand, liked my bed made so that the sheets weren’t crumpled when I climbed back in. So I did what I always do. I made the bed. I was straightening the quilt when he came back out. When he saw what I was doing he burst out laughing. “Babe we’re just going to climb back in it. It’ll be messy again in about two minutes.”

Well that answered that question all on its own.

Which I should have known the answer to when I started making the bed. It only had a fitted sheet and a quilt. The quilt was heavy and looked hand made. The bottom of it was flannel so I guess he did have a top sheet just not in the traditional sense. I shrugged at him. “Habit. If I wanted to keep my mom out of my bedroom I learned to make my bed. I also learned to wash my own clothes, for the same reason, at an early age.”

“Well then that makes you about a hundred times smarter than me. I on the other hand learned how to hide the girly magazines where my mom couldn’t find them when she did come in my room.”

One thing I had learned from my mom was that you didn’t actually hide things from them. They knew what you were up to even if you thought that you were hiding it. I looked at him and raised one eyebrow. “If your mom was anything like mine she knew exactly what you had, where you hid them. And,” I added, “She probably also knew what and where you did, what you did, when you looked at them.”

“Seven men and one woman in the house. I was the youngest. I’m pretty sure she was tired of knowing what and where we did, what we did.”

Again I shared. “You being the youngest made her check on you the most.”

At his horrified expression I shared further. “I just finished a psych class. The professor has f
our sons. She shared that little bit of knowledge with us about two weeks in to the class.”

Rand visibly shuttered.

“She has a husband and four boys. I’m betting she knows better than most how the male anatomy and psyche works.”

“Okay woman,
quit sharing. If you don’t I will have to go back to sex because sleep ain’t going to be happening soon.”

I giggled. “The professor also shared…”

I went down on the bed still giggling but with Rand on top of me. “Quiet.” He said with a smile and he found a way to quiet me. His lips were soft on mine and the moved from lip to lip and back again. I sighed and kissed him the same way. When his tongue touched my lip I opened my mouth to touch mine back to his. He was off to the side of me with one leg between mine. I lifted my one knee that was free and wrapped it around his ass. My foot resting against the back of his thigh. He was on one elbow with his other hand against my hip.

“I’m not so tired now.” I whispered to him.
My hands were roaming against his chest. Exploring. He was defined but not overly so. More in a runner or swimmer type of defined muscle rather than body builder type of muscle.

He pulled his head back and searched my face. “We have time Terra. Plenty of it.”

“Yes we do.” I helped him out when I put my hand against his at my hip and pulled the t-shirt out from under his hand. I moved it up my side just under my breast. “I don’t have to be to work for the next three days.” Then I lifted my head and gave him a kiss.

Rand groaned but he did what I wanted him to do. He kissed me. Really kissed me
. As in hands, tongue and with enthusiasm.

Now it was my turn to groan. I had
slightly shared my experience with Toad. He knew that I was gun shy. He was trying hard not to push my boundaries. What he was finally getting is that I wanted him to push my boundaries. I wanted to throw them out the window and make new boundaries. I wanted to feel. As in feel something good and right. If he was half of the promise that he had shown me I would not be disappointed.

I wanted one night of that. Then I wanted to see if I could have that for a week. If that was good I wanted a month, a year. Even more than that if he was just half of the promise that he had already shown me.

Just half the promise was more than I have ever had before so I did what any red blooded female would do. I took advantage of the situation at hand. He was distracted. I moved my free foot from his thigh, planted it on the bed and rolled. When he was on his back and I was on my knees I pulled the faded t-shirt over my head, tossed it to the floor. Then I put my hands to his chest and explored before I put my mouth back to his as I moved my other leg. Now I was straddling him. What I felt growing between us was not just emotional. There was definitely something growing between us.

I felt it. I wanted it. I felt my body move against it without conscience thought. This then put me at the
disadvantage because I was rolled over to my back. “You do that it will be over before it even starts.” Rand whispered against my lips.

“Then start
it.” I didn’t mean for it to come out so breathy, much less so needy, but it did.

I’m by no means experienced. Thinking that I realized that I should probably tell him that. I didn’t get a chance to say much when my panties were gone and so was Rand. He wasn’t kissing me anymore. He was kissing other parts of me that I had never had touched by anyone other than me.

I was shocked. Then I was so much more that I had no words for it.

Then I had no thoughts what so ever. All I had was
over whelming feelings. So much so that I felt my eyes finally roll back down and the little light bursts that I had been seeing finally faded.

“You back with me?” I heard Rand whisper against my lips.

“Wow.” I blinked a few times. I knew that came out breathy. That was all that I had in me.

“Want more or are you done?”

I didn’t know that there could be more than that. I had never had that, much less, more of that. The confusion must have shown on my face.

“Definitely more.” He said.

Then he was gone from the bed.

That I didn’t understand at all until he walked in the bathroom and back out with something in his hand. I watched his ratty shorts fall to the floor. Then his boxer briefs a few steps later. When he climbed back on the bed the only thing that he was wearing was a condom.

“Oh my.” Was my response.

He pulled my legs up a bit on his hips. “This one will be quick but I promise to make up for it next time.”

He started sliding in and ‘oh my’ didn’t even come close to what I felt. “Oh god, Rand.” That covered what I felt. He was in once, twice. The third time he thrust I came again. He held out much longer than me.

Well
, not really. When I came he was shortly behind me. I knew that when I felt plant himself deep inside of me. He stayed there. He lifted his head then yet again he studied my face.

He relaxed but kept my eyes.

“Wow.” I whispered to him. His grin was my answer to that statement.

“Wow good?” He asked back.

I shook my head no. “Wow, awesome.” I answered quietly.

He was still hard inside of me. The
n he moved a little. “You going to let me go so I can clean up?”

I nodded at him but didn’t let go with my legs. He was still fully erect inside of me. I didn’t want him to leave me.

“I need a new condom babe.”

I knew that. I was a nurse for goodness sakes. One time use only. I nodded at him and he moved to pull out. I threw my head back at just that sensation.
He pushed back in and tried to pull back out again. He even rolled us so that I was on top so that he could move me off of him.