Happy Monday! A few updates:
And now…..
-Christina Lauren — The Unhoneymooners — Loudly, Proudly, Profoundly
Ethan POV
Okay, well.
For as much as I would like to tell you that Olive and I left Camelia immediately and went back to my place for some slow intense sex, followed by fast intense sex, followed by some sleeping—and then middle of the night lazy sex—it didn’t happen that way.
For one, she still had to finish her shift at the restaurant. I waited around, talking to Diego, and Natalia, and Jules until Olive’s last table was cleaned and set for lunch the next day.
And then, on the drive home, my left rear tire blew, damaging the rim and necessitating a tow-truck. While we waited, Diego called with an infected tooth needing emergency attention and Olive was the only one who answered her phone at one in the morning—on the side of the road, with me, mid-making out while we waited for said tow truck.
When I say mid-making out, I mean I have to pull my hands out of her bra so she can get her phone from her purse.
“Diego?” she answers, already worried.
I watch her face go from concerned to guilty because she’s about to tell me she has to leave me alone with my busted car on Minnetonka Boulevard.
“No,” I say preemptively.
She cups her hand over the phone. “His tooth is killing him.”
“Tell him to call Ami. Or Natalia. Or I can list about five hundred other relatives.”
Olive shakes her head. “No one is picking up.”
“Does he know I just had my hands up your shirt?” I ask.
Diego’s disembodied voice rings tinnily from the phone: “I do now.”
“Good.” I lean in so he can hear me better. “Reunion sex. I just want you to know what you’re depriving me of.”
Olive sets the phone back up near her ear, telling me, “He says he’ll make it up to you.”
“I . . . do not need him to do that.”
Her Lyft arrives before my tow truck does, Olive climbs in with a guilty wince, and my flagging erection disappears in time with the car’s fading taillights.
##
Olive’s Lyft takes her back to the restaurant to get her car and she heads directly to Diego’s to pick him up, to the urgent care—who in turn sends them across town to a twenty-four-hour dentist—finally back to Diego’s, and by eight the next morning, when she shows up at my door—exhausted and comically disheveled—I’m dressed and leaving for work.
“You look . . .” I cup her face, considering how to tell her that she looks like Wembley from Fraggle Rock.
“Whatever you’re thinking,” she warns, sleepily, “don’t say it.”
“Okay.” I kiss her forehead. “You look very cute is all I was going to say.”
“Sure.” She slowly drops her gaze down my body and back up. “You’re going in to work today?”
“I’d call in sick, but we have some colleagues from Japan in town.”
With a grumpy little grunt, Olive pushes past me, shuffling down the hall to my bedroom where she falls onto my mattress and rolls over, dragging the blue comforter with her. Her voice, muffled from within her burrito of blankets and pillows, barely reaches me where I lean against my bedroom doorway: “I’ll be here until three, so come cuddle me when you have a break.”
“I have meetings straight through until five.”
She pushes herself up, glowering. Once Olive gets a look at herself in the mirror, she will appreciate the effort I put in right now into maintaining a straight face.
“What?” she growls. “You have meetings until five?”
“These are quite normal work hours, Wembley.” She frowns in confusion at the nickname, but I roll on: “Do you work tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Then you call in sick,” I tell her.
“It’s Friday, I can’t. Besides, David will know why, and my entire family will give me shit for skipping work to have sex with you.”
“So? Didn’t you tell me Natalia gave every female member of the family Twilight-themed dildos for Christmas a few years ago?”
Olive falls back dramatically onto the pillows. “Will I never get laid again?”
##
It does start to feel that way. Of course, Olive is gone when I get home from work, and now that I’m willing to admit I’m completely, deeply, and stupidly in love with this woman, I don’t want to be anywhere but directly in front of her for as many minutes of each day as is possible. I book a table for one at Camelia again and make sure to request to be put in Olive’s section. But what was I expecting? That she would be able to sit across from me during her shift and flirt-bicker? Camelia was recently named one of the Top Ten restaurants in the Cities by Minnesota Public Radio, so it is slammed and if anything, my presence is a frustrating distraction. Olive can’t give me more than a few seconds of her time, and they have to turn the tables over regularly, so I shove the gourmet lobster tacos into my face quickly and peck Olive on my way out the door.
Upside: I get a great meal; downside: I ate it entirely alone in a restaurant full of boisterous couples and groups and just feel more lonely for her by the time I get home.
Midnight rolls around, and I know Olive will get off work soon, but I’m fading. It’s been a long week, both with the stress of work colleagues in town for a short intense trip, my anxiety over trying to win Olive back in a grand gesture, and now the draining frustration of not having any time alone with her—not only for sex, okay, but to just be near her. I know she and I will be okay; I feel it somewhere ancient inside me that we can get through this Ethan-induced bump in the road, that she will genuinely forgive me, that she is the absolute right woman for me. But I want that part of my life to start this very minute. I’ve never been a particularly impatient person, but my desire to move forward with her feels like a persistent tapping in my chest. Even so, I’m wiped.
Which is why I wake up at four in the morning alone and with a single text on my phone, sent just after 1:30am:
I knocked for five minutes, you dumbass. Your car is here so I assume you fell asleep. Call me when you’re awake.
##
“It’s Saturday,” I say as soon as she answers my call with a pillow-mumbled Hello.
“You are correct.” She yawns loudly, groaning and obviously unaware that I did her a favor by letting her sleep until seven.
“Do you work tonight?”
“Mmhmm. But not until four.”
Warmth spreads from my chest and down every limb. “Get over here.”
##
Olive pulls up twenty minutes later, shuffling from the curb in her pajamas, and I meet her at the open door, pulling her inside and wrapping my arms around her. In the shower, I’d imagined grabbing the collar of her top and ripping her clothing clear off her body in a deeply masculine show of grip strength and libido, but now that she’s here, this blooming ache swallows up all of that urgency and I just want to hold her.
She starts to pull away, but I tighten my arms around her, burying my face in her hair. “Not yet.”
Olive laughs. “Help, I’m trapped.”
“Shh.”
“Caught in the Ethan Death Grip.”
“Shh.”
Slowly, she exhales, relaxing into my hold, giving in to this. I wonder if I’ve ever just hugged her this way, with intent and focus, without reaching around to honk her boob or grab her butt or do something to offset the depth of my feeling with levity. Levity is where we lived for so long—where I imagine we’ll spend most of our time, happily—but I gave my apology a lot of thought before I showed up at Camelia. I had to pay homage to our ridiculous roots with that green satin shirt, but only with the true devotion I feel could I have ever worked up the nerve to do it in the first place.
Her hair is soft against my cheek. There’s something so wild about the sense of smell; I would have no idea what her shampoo smells like—even if someone held a gun to my head I wouldn’t be able to tell them whether she smells like rose or jasmine or orange or whatever the fuck the scent is—but I will forever associate it with Olive. The sensation of breathing her in fills me so acutely with nostalgia and hope and desire, an odd fullness seems to swell in my bloodstream.
“I would do anything for you,” I tell her, voice thick.
“Anything?”
“Try me,” I say, adjusting my grip. “I love you. Nothing can scare me off.”
“His and hers pedicures?”
“What?” I scoff into her hair. “That’s easy.”
“Buy me tampons at the grocery store?”
“Anytime you need them,” I tell her and then pause. “Although I am hoping you do not need them right now.”
“I do not,” she says. “Would you eat a cockroach for me?”
“Alive or dead?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, of course not. I’ll eat them both.”
“Would you get a tattoo that says, ‘I love Oliver’s juicy boobs’?”
Laughing I say, “Obviously.”
“Would you see Wicked in the theater with me?”
At this, I hesitate. Finally, I mumble, “Yes.”
She pulls back, looking up at my face. “You have odd limits.”
“I really hate musicals,” I admit. “Literally my hell is having to sing my way through life.’”
Olive’s gaze searches mine. Her eyes are enormous and hold every shade of brown in their depths, from gold flecks to the deepest near-black. “Ethan?” she asks quietly. And with only the two syllables of my name, the mood shifts; the tremble in her voice cracks something wide open in me.
I can handle ball-buster Olive. Vulnerable Olive will be my kryptonite.
I reach up, cupping her jaw. “What is it?”
“I don’t know how to ask this.”
Ache slices through my chest, and I bend to kiss her. “Ask me anything.”
“Will you . . .” She chews her lip, brow creased. “Will you—no, I can’t.”
Bringing both hands up, I hold her face, kissing her slowly. Her lips are warm and soft, opening when I nudge them with mine, allowing my tongue to make a soft pass across hers before I pull back again. “Ask me, sweetheart. I don’t want anything to be off-limits for us.”
“Okay. Here goes nothing.” She swallows and I stare, transfixed, at her full mouth as she bravely forms her question: “Ethan? Would you eat at a buffet for me?”
I lift my gaze to hers and see the wicked gleam there.
For that, she gets hauled up and thrown over my shoulder. Olive scream-laughs, and I land a sharp smack on her ass, carrying her down the hall to my bedroom where I toss her down onto my bed.
She bounces, landing on her back with a delighted cry. Her hair falls over one eye and she pushes up onto her elbows, but her smile fades as she takes in my expression. “Hug time is over?” she asks.
“Long gone.” I put one knee onto the bed, bracing above her.
“For what it’s worth,” she says, tilting her head to the side to let me kiss my way from her collarbone to her jaw, “I enjoyed hug time.”
“Did you?” I kiss the delicate skin just below her ear.
“I like play time better though, I think.”
“Is that right?”
I kiss my way down her body over the soft cotton of her t-shirt, lifting it to kiss the smooth skin of her stomach, following the path of her shirt as I draw it up over her breasts. I wonder if she brought home the soap from the hotel in Maui; her skin has that same sweetness, a heady reminder of the first time we made love. There was a moment, that first time, when she rolled over onto me, pressing flattened palms on my chest before she took up a rhythm, chasing her own pleasure. She looked down at me, and our eyes met, and I felt tethered to her in a way I still can’t fully explain, but I can pull forward that feeling of happy drowning whenever I think about it. It wasn’t weird or awkward to stare at her, to watch sensation pass over her expression, to let her see the same reactions work their way across my face. Once we showed ourselves fully to each other, we never bothered to hide again. I know exactly how rare this kind of love is, and I feel so full of it that my hands shake as they move over her body.
Olive helps me get her shirt off, tossing it aside and staring at me with wide eyes. Sliding my hand around to her back, I unhook her bra, dragging it down her arms. Her breasts are full and warm in my hand, against my mouth, my tongue.
“I missed you so much,” she admits in a tight whisper. “I just want to feel you.”
I can’t help the quiet groan that escapes, and I move from one breast to the other, struggling to temper my urgency. Olive sends a hand into my hair, holding me close even as her head falls back, and she aims her quiet, hungry noises at the ceiling. As I kiss back down her torso, I am grateful that she didn’t bother to put on anything with buttons or zippers; her lounge pants are quickly tugged down and thrown over my shoulder.
She thinks I’m returning to her and settles back, readying herself for the weight of me over her, but instead, I grab her ankles, flipping her over onto her stomach. She lets out a surprised cry, turning to look at me over her shoulder as I start at her calves, kissing and lightly biting my way up over the back of her knees, her thighs, and gently sink my teeth into the perfect curve of her ass.
“Push together,” she whispers at me, grinning. “Don’t spread.”
With a laugh, I drag her underwear down and throw it to the floor, tugging my own T-shirt off so I can feel the sensation of my chest sliding over her ass and along her back as I come over her body, pressing my hips into her backside. I feel jittery, too hungry for everything I want to do. I want to taste her, and fuck her, and run my hands over every curve and dip of her body.
Olive is patient with my devouring, alternately lost to sensation and watching me with lust-drunk eyes as I make my best attempt to kiss every inch of her soft skin. We’ve done this enough times for me to remember the kind of touch she likes—where she likes my fingers to linger, how to tease with my kiss—but not so many times that the reality of her here, naked and mine still doesn’t hit me like a proverbial hammer. When she comes against my fingers and my kiss for the first time in weeks, I want to freeze time so that I can step back and witness it from every angle.
But Olive isn’t here just to be devoured, and once the pleasure drains from her muscles and her energy returns, she’s on the hunt, climbing over me, having her way.
“You know what I read?” she asks, putting her hands on me, stroking up and slowly down, like my brain and mouth will work together when she does that.
I don’t answer, but she keeps talking anyway: “I read on the internet that—”
This penetrates and I let out a one-syllable laugh.
“Shut up,” she says smiling down at her busy hands. “The internet sometimes has facts.”
“If you say so.”
“I read that a man’s lips are the same color as the head of his … you know.”
“The head of my ‘you know?’”
She tilts her head. “You know.”
“I don’t know.” I push up onto an elbow, grinning. “Have we discovered a word you can’t say?”
“His thing.”
“My thing?”
She closes her eyes. Sighs. “Erwin.”
Laughing down at her, I murmur, “This is amazing.”
“His…”
“His what, Olivia?”
“His . . . penis,” she manages, finally.
“I want you to know this moment will become iconic. The moment I realized the love of my life can say bukkake, but can’t say dick.”
“Well anyway,” she says, adjusting her grip. My brain goes wavy. “I think it’s true.”
“You think?”
She looks at me dick in her hand and then my mouth. My dick, my mouth. “They’re sort of far apart.”
“You want me to get my mouth closer to my own dick to see if an internet meme is true?” I ask. “Am I a slinky?”
Her laugh is husky: ocean water, tarnished gold.
I dig into her hair, pulling her mouth down and onto mine, opening it with my tongue, tasting.
It’s like a bolt of caffeine to my bloodstream, wanting her with an intensity that shoves aside everything else, everything teasing and measured she’s doing, and I sit up beneath her, jerking her closer. She grinds over me, kiss hungry and deep. I love the soft fill of her tongue in my mouth, her smooth little moans. I’d never tell her this, but her sex sounds are paradoxically gentle. Her hands are greedy; her strong body goes for what she wants. But her sounds are such unconscious sweetness: growls and hums; soft moans when she’s close. She glides over me, wet and teasing, and my hands turn into cartographers—mapping this new space, finding places that make her gasp, gliding over soft skin that feels the same . . . and not.
I realize only now that my brain has slowed down a little that she’s lost some weight and find that I don’t love it. Not only because of what it means—that she’s been miserable—but because the way she feels different in my hands. I know the things to say aloud and things to keep to myself and this is definitely the latter, but for whatever Olive thought before, whatever stupid misunderstanding we had from the start, I love her body. Love the weight of her breasts in my hands and the dip of her waist that leads to the soft swell of her hips. My hands could track that path for days and never feel like an expert. The perfect, full heart of her ass, thighs like soft silk.
She stares down at me, hips slowing, eyes focused and holy shit I have her, we have this, and for a short flash, a zap, I feel like a god.
“Where are your condoms?” she asks.
“Nightstand, left side.”
She leans to the side, giving me a great view of her ass and legs, and then returns with delight in her eyes, tearing the wrapper with her teeth and a snarl.
My eyes go wide. “Ooh. Feral.”
She rolls it down, down, down, so teasing and holy shit so slow and the words push out of me, unfiltered: “You’re not feeding me chocolate, Lady Godiva. Just get it on me.”
“You’re not enjoying this? Ernest, you’re hard as a rock.”
“I just want—”
She stops when I do. “Want what?”
“Olive.”
“What?”
“Sex.”
She grins. “Oh. Why didn’t you say so?”
I fully intend to watch, to absorb this experience with every one of my senses, but the second she takes me in and sets her mouth gently against mine, my eyes close, light popping behind my lids.
##
Apparently, sex makes her hungry. Since I am in no shape to leave the house—and am fairly certain that I will drag Olive back to bed as soon as my body will let me—I grab a can of cinnamon rolls from my fridge.
She startles at the pop of the container, and stares down as I carefully separate the sticky dough into a cake tin.
“What,” she says, nose scrunched, “is that?”
I look up at her, blank with shock. “Please tell me you have had Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls before.”
“I actually have not.”
“Well,” I say, “wipe that look of horror off your face because this is a food-judgement-free relationship, and I am about to blow your mind.”
“Escargot, after what you did back there with my ankles on your shoulders, you had to carry me from the bed to this kitchen stool. My mind has already been blown once today.”
Regardless, I easily blow it again, going off script when the hot rolls come out of the oven and tucking thin slices of butter into the crevasses before slathering the tops with sugary frosting.
“You must like me curvy,” she says, watching me.
“I love you in all forms.” I coax the biggest one from the tin and hand it to Olive, watching as she sinks her teeth into it, moaning.
Holy shit, I do love her. I love her gusto and sarcasm, her libido and loyalty. I love how she can meet me beat for sarcastic beat. I love her smile and her eyes and her body. And I love the way she completely gives in to pleasure, whether she’s getting it from me or a frosting-dripping Pillsbury cinnamon roll.
She opens her eyes, and immediately looks concerned, swallowing quickly to ask, “What’s wrong?”
“Wh—? Nothing.” I shake my head. “What do you mean?”
“Your face is all—weird.” She reaches forward to touch the point between my brows.
“My—?” I cough out a laugh. “I was just thinking how much I love you, you hoser.”
Olive draws a circle in the air in front of me. “This expression is you loving me?”
I screw my face up comically. “I’m gonna make this face every time we have sex now.”
“Please don’t.”
“I love you, Olive,” I squawk.
“I love you, too.” Unperturbed, she tears off a piece of the roll and sticks it in my mouth so I can’t keep making the face. “Do you want to come to Sunday dinner tomorrow?”
My brows slowly rise at this abrupt change in tone. “Torres family dinner means we’re serious.”
This makes her laugh. “I don’t know what’s more serious than cinnamon rolls from a can after acrobatic sex.”
I chew and swallow another bite she feeds me, watching her. “You know I’ll go anywhere you want, Ollivander.”
“Cool.” She nods down at the counter and then slides her eyes to me. “By the way, we’re meeting everyone at a salad bar buffet.”
I groan, dropping my head to my arms. “Oh, God.”
“Have I found the limit of your love?”
“No.” I sit up, determined. “I’m in. I mean it. Nothing will push me away.”
She leans in, pressing her mouth to mine. “Good,” she says into a kiss. “But don’t worry. It’s tamale night at Tio Omar’s.” She grins again. “You are so whipped, aren’t you?”
Relieved, I slide my hand into the back of her hair, and pull her close, deepening the kiss. “Loudly, proudly, profoundly.”
