Free The Story Guy (Novella) by Mary Ann Rivers

man who can’t make himself available to me? I’m not so young that I don’t have the benefit of experiences with such men. I trace the threads in the placket of his shirt, looking at the dense, almost blue-black bristles roughening his neck and jaw. There are more than a few gray whiskers, too. He’s not so young, either. What if all I’ll have of this man is the way he kisses?
    When I lean in to kiss his jaw, I realize that most of what I’ve really wanted, I have earned or asked for without fuss. This man, who tastes like the elderberry booze we brunched over and who touches me as though we’ve loved each other for years but it could be the last time, makes it seem that wanting something should make us afraid, or at least cautious. I can’t work out if it’s that I’ve never wanted anything I should be afraid of, or if he’s afraid of the wrong things.
    I’ve asked for him and he hasn’t answered.
    His mouth sinks into mine, so hot and slow, and here it is, what makes me want us, this ineffable rightness and bigness that turn the contentment and safety I’m so used to into loneliness.
    Our bench is removed from the main trail around the lakefront, so I don’t hesitate to hook my leg around his hip, and he gratifyingly, decisively, grabs my hips with his big hands and shoves me into his lap. His hands on my body still seem almost taboo and he must think so, too, because he instantly glides his hands up to my shoulders, but his fingers furtively skim my spine.
    “No,” I whisper into his lips moving over mine, “touch me.” I can feel his smile against my mouth.
    “Like this?” he whispers back, squeezing the caps of my shoulders.
    “No.” I arch my breasts into him, letting him feel my aching nipples that poke through my blouse. His breath hitches.
    “Like this?” He circles his finger over the bare skin on the bump at the top of my spine.
    “No.” And I catch that hand just under my collar and drag it between us, opening his palm over my breast. “Like this.”
    His tongue rubs over mine as he rakes his hand over my breast, catching the nipple firmly against the end of his middle finger, making me gasp and lurch harder into his touch. An icy hot rush is starting from that exquisite point and moving outward fast.
    “Is this what you want?” he whispers, his thumb and long middle finger rolling against me, through my shirt and bra, starting up restless throbs deep in my belly.
    “Is this what you want?” he asks me again, the same question I keep asking myself, and brings his other hand down to apply the awesome torture to my other nipple.
    “Yes.” And it is. This. Everything else. Anything else. I push against him, and he presses his big, warm hands down, down over my sides, over my hips, to settle into the curve of my lower back and bring me close. So close, I’m cradling him, the hot heartbeat thrumming over the wet silk of my underwear, his jeans snagging and frustrating.
    “Yes,” I say again. It’s what I want. This man and his faraway gaze and rare dimples and gripping hands and voice so sad it called out over all the other sad men’s voices in the city’s most desperate corner. I think I’m wrong to want him, as if I am taking him away from where he knows he should be. I feel as though I’ve picked him out for myself, and with the tenacity and willfulness of a child, I’ve decided nothing else will do.
    We rock against each other, as discreetly as we can given our semipublic spot. I feel lazy, like I could do this all day, even while we both start to unravel a little. Even while his thrusts against me have become more explicit and lingering. Even while we have to stop to breathe between every open kiss.
    From far, far away, I hear something that I can’t quite identify but don’t want to hear. “Buzzzz.” Brian shifts away from me just a little, but it’s enough that I feel the need to chase after him, to scare away the cool air suddenly between us. There it is again,