Free Going the Distance by Julianna Keyes

from her ex. He could feel her and smell her and hear her, and in no time at all she fit him.
    She fisted a hand in his T-shirt and buried her face in the fabric when she came, a whimper, not a bang, muffled by his chest. Her pussy seized him and refused to let him go, and when she was spent he drove into her a dozen more times and exploded with a shout he tried to stifle with her hair.
    When he regained his senses, his heart was pounding and he was sweating, a line trickling down his back to pool at the base of his spine. At some point she’d wrapped her legs around his hips and now they fell open, giving him the cue to pull out and dispose of the condom. By the time he’d turned back she’d already stepped into her panties, bright pink with white polka dots, and all too soon she’d covered them with her jeans.
    She avoided his eyes as she picked up a sneaker and untied the laces, something he hadn’t bothered to do in his haste to get them off. Jarek picked up the other one and did the same, handing it to her when she was ready, refusing to let it go until she looked at him. He cocked an eyebrow and she smiled, no teeth, and he didn’t know what he was hoping for.
    “Why’d you ask about the Hardy Boys?” she asked, slipping into her jacket. She untucked her hair from the collar and ran a hand over her face, pink in places from his lips and stubble.
    “Brant and Dale didn’t know who they were.”
    “Do you guys normally discuss teen detectives?”
    He smiled thinly. “No. It just came up.”
    She glanced around. “I guess I should let you get back to work. That was—”
    He stepped forward and covered her mouth with a hand. “Don’t fucking say fine , Olivia.”
    Her eyebrows shot up. “What?” Her lips moved against his palm.
    “Don’t say nice , either.”
    She swatted his hand away. “I was going to say stupendous .” She kept a straight face for all of one second, and then he gave up and smiled, too.
    “I want to make you come properly.” He hadn’t expected to say that, not out loud.
    She squeezed his fingers as she moved past. “You did.”
    He stopped her at the door, pressing a hand against the wall over her head, trapping her between his body and the trailer. “I didn’t.”
    “I don’t know what—”
    “Do you have a secret fetish?”
    She snickered. “No.”
    “Then what is it?”
    “Jarek, stop. That was stupendous.”
    “It was good, Olivia. Not stupendous. For me, anyway. You wouldn’t even let me take off your shirt.”
    She turned to face him. “Do you know how old I am?”
    He shrugged. “Approximately.”
    “Do you know where I’m from?”
    Uh-oh.
    “Do you know my birthday or my favorite food or the name of the school I teach at?” He stared at her silently, and she tapped his chin. “Then don’t ask me how I come, Jarek. That’s the least of the things you should be wondering about.” She pulled open the door and stepped outside. “Are you going to come over tonight?”
    “Do you want me to?”
    “Wrong question, dumb ass.” She didn’t sound angry, but she didn’t look back when she walked away, either.

Chapter Five
    “W ELL . G OOD T HING we built it on a dolly.”
    Ritchie looked up from his spot crouched on the floor and looked doubtful. “It’s bigger than we talked about.”
    Olivia gnawed her lower lip. “Yeah. A bit. But it looks real.”
    She took a step back, a wet strip of newspaper hanging from the tips of her fingers, and studied the papier mâché tree she’d roped Ritchie into helping her design and build. It was a prototype for the forest of trees she planned to create for her class’s performance of Little Red Riding Hood at the end of the year. She wasn’t in any way, shape or form qualified to stage something like this, but the school had given her an assignment and she had nothing better to do, so she’d taken it on with gusto. And papier mâché paste.
    “You’re making a mess.” Ritchie pointed at the pool of paste on