Page 33 of Let’s Give ‘Em Pumpkin to Talk About

Nineteen

J osh had never pushed back before when Sadie told him what she wanted, but she was glad he had this time.

When he tossed the duvet off his bed to reveal the crisp, white sheets underneath, she knew that the best way to approach this moment was with extravagance and abandon, pushing all the problems that lay before her into the future.

All she had to do now was be here, feel good, and tell Josh what she wanted. It was deliciously easy.

The first time he’d piqued her sexual curiosity was in that garage with the World’s Second-Largest Ball of Paint. She saw his skillful hands painting and wanted that for herself. She’d been fighting the urge for weeks and weeks, but no longer.

The edible body paint was corny as hell, thick with glitter, sticky and translucent like lip gloss.

It smelled strawberry sweet no matter the color.

Josh applied it to her skin in broad, cooling strokes as she lay on her back.

He painted long stripes down each leg, the bristles of the cheap brush that came with the set tickling her knees.

He drew a flower onto her belly, with a yellow center and four pink petals, like the dogwoods that peeked from the edges of the woods in the spring.

Then he focused on her breasts, directing each stroke upward and flicking the brush over her nipples.

Was it embarrassing how much she enjoyed this?

It didn’t matter, because Josh was into it if his erection’s prompt return was any evidence.

Each brushstroke on her nipple made her gasp, and she reached for her clit, rubbing slow circles over it. Josh took the cue, using the hand not painting to stroke himself.

“Tell me what you want,” he said. This refrain from him, like an offering before her.

“I want you to paint my back,” she said, “but I also want you to fuck me.”

“I can multitask.”

With a condom quickly rolled on, he sat on his heels atop the bed.

She positioned herself on her knees in front of him, and she was so wet, so ready, that he glided into her fluidly, their hips connecting with satisfying inertia.

He stroked in and out and she savored every inch of him, this rhythm that felt eternal and ecstatic.

Eventually she realized he was painting on her back, making what might have been letters. She wanted to know what it was.

“Talk to me,” she said.

The hand that had been on her hip slid around to her stomach, smearing the dogwood flower into oblivion. He pulled her upright, his cock still inside her, even deeper than before. The paint on her back was shared with his chest now, gone like an ancient manuscript lost to time.

His breath was hot against her ear. “I feel like these toys of ours have a time and place. But my time is now. And my place is so deep inside you that you can taste me.”

His words blazed a trail straight to her core.

She bounced on his cock, her thighs slapping on his, the taste of him fresh on her mind.

She tossed her head back, resting it on his shoulder, and he picked up the brush again, painting a line from her chin down to the hollow of her throat.

The groan she emitted communicated how much she enjoyed that, and he covered her throat in paint until the strawberry scent hung thick between them.

“Can I touch you?” he asked. If his touches scared her with their tenderness, she could live with that fear.

“Yes,” she breathed. He threw the brush down on the bed, splattering paint everywhere.

The hand around her stomach slid down to her clit, and the hand that had been holding the brush echoed its movements, trailing slick touches down her neck. She leaned into these movements, grinding herself against his hand and pushing her head back against his shoulder, molding her body to his.

How could his touches feel so gentle and so possessive at the same time?

When he dragged all five of his fingers over her throat, she cried out, the orgasm radiating out of her like a supernova.

Josh stilled as she bucked on top of him, riding every wave that rocked through her.

When she stopped, it was Josh’s turn, his hands steadying her hips, his teeth sinking lightly into her shoulder as he thrust a few more times, the sound of his own release conducting through her body and vibrating down her spine.

Sadie’s body was awash with confounding sensations.

She felt light as a feather but heavy with sleep.

Blissfully hollowed out yet deeply satiated.

She crumpled onto the bed where Josh gazed at her tenderly.

“The prettiest painting I ever did see,” he said, and instead of rolling her eyes, she simply giggled.

The sheets were wrecked. “Let’s put these in the laundry,” she said.

“Let’s leave it for tomorrow,” Josh said.

It was late. They’d nearly fucked through dinner.

“Where will you sleep?”

“Over the garage, with you?” Josh offered.

“I don’t remember inviting you,” she said playfully.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Sadie Fox,” Josh said, “it’s that I’ve got to learn to invite myself.”

It’s working. She wanted to let him in, but something in her resisted showing him the softness he craved. “I need to shower. You can scare up a dinner for us? Then we’ll see.” That was the best she could do.

Josh, who treasured every crumb she’d ever given him, smiled broadly.

She kissed the sensitive corner of his mouth.

He brought his lips together and turned his head, meeting her lips full-on.

He was sticky and tasted like strawberry, the paint from her shoulder smeared across his mouth.

She placed her fingers gently on the side of his neck, hoping to transmit some message through her fingertips.

You have a hold on me. I’m trying to hold you back.

He pulled away and said, “This paint really is edible, huh?”

“Seems so.”

“It would be a shame to wash it all off in the shower,” he said. She took his meaning and lay back down on the sticky bed. She thought she’d been wrung dry but his mouth on her nipples, sucking the sensitive flesh to hard candy peaks, set everything in motion once again.

“Forget the paint. I want to taste you.” Josh said the words between kisses trailing down her belly.

Josh buried his face in her, hands gripped around her thighs.

When she came again, his tongue rolling over her clit with maddening alacrity, she saw sparks against the backs of her eyelids.

She was gulping for air, nearly drowning in sheer pleasure.

For all she admired his talented hands, it was his tongue to which she was now singing praise.

Her fingers raked through his hair as she repeated the word he was always coaxing out of her, “Yes, yes, yes.”

A shower and a buttery grilled cheese later, Sadie was back in her room, a faded black sleep shirt grazing her sensitized body. A knock came at the door. Josh was standing there, having dashed across the lawn in slide sandals and a plaid pair of boxer shorts.

“What do you say?” he asked.

These were the moments she feared. When they veered into the domestic, things quickly went awry. She didn’t like the food he made, he didn’t like her habits in the kitchen, they had incompatible sleep habits.

They needed to remember the rules of their “intermission,” as Sadie called it. No sleepovers. And honesty.

She needed to be honest about how this part would never work. Someday, she’d be back in Los Angeles, and he would find someone who could actually give him what he deserved in a partner. And he’d tell that person about dodging the bullet that was Stu Fox’s bristly, impossible daughter.

Instead of being honest with him, she placed a gentle kiss on his wide, boyish mouth.

She turned the window fan up a notch. She curled into the bed, her body more relaxed than her mind.

She didn’t remember him climbing in after her.

When she woke in the night, needing a drink of water, she felt the weight of him behind her on the mattress.

She heard his deep, even breaths. She turned so gingerly, so as not to disturb him, to discover that he indeed slept like an angelic child, hands folded under his cheek.