Page 72 of The Best Man: Unfinished Business

Slowly the fists transitioned back to hands.

The speed decreased. Her frequency became inconsistent, rhythmless.

Robyn’s breathing became heavier. Harper could feel her stomach expanding and contracting on his face.

The bottom of her breasts were heaving and resting heavily on top of his head.

Robyn inhaled and exhaled, fighting to get air back into her lungs.

Her inhales quivered; her exhales quaked with sobs.

She was sobbing, exhausted, drained. And Harper was responsible.

He inhaled and exhaled with her in rhythm.

Harper was drained and exhausted also. Harper too was sobbing.

But he deserved this. Robyn did not. The darkened room was silent aside from their breathing, sniffles, and the heavy rain pummeling the house, pavement, and grass.

Harper remained on his knees, his arms wrapped around her waist, his hands gripping the fabric of her dress, his fingers rubbing and squeezing her hips in a soothing motion.

He wanted to try to ease her pain. He needed to try.

Harper felt her hands drape on his shoulders and stay motionless.

She was spent, heaving heavy breaths. Harper pursed his lips; they looked to touch and soothe where it hurt on Robyn.

He turned his head toward her waistline.

He could feel her panty line on his ear and cheek.

With his lips, his closest part to her, he sought to soothe and kiss her stomach slowly, lovingly, worshipful and reverent.

Robyn’s hands on his shoulders were now sliding east and west mimicking the rhythm of her deep breathing and Harper’s fingers on her hips.

His lips crossed her covered stomach, pelvis, and belly button with the same rhythm.

He loosened the hold of his arms around her waist so that he could continue to massage her with his hands, to squeeze love back into her, up the sides of her stomach and her lower back.

To his relief, Robyn’s hands squeezed back, awake, caressing Harper’s shoulders with each one of his kisses and each soothing touch her body received.

Harper kept alleviating her pain. He wanted it to subside.

He wanted her hurt to dissipate. He wanted to bring her body back into love, into herself, without suffering. For once.

On his knees still, he reached up as far as he could to caress and rub the back that bent over tables, and sinks, and stoves, all the way down to her buttocks where he took each one in his willing hands to squeeze and massage them through the thin fabric of her dress.

Robyn’s hands moved from his shoulders to slide along his moist head.

She rubbed the smooth skin, searching to rediscover its shape, holding on to him as he brought what tenderness he could through his hands.

Her fingers made their way to his ears and gripped them, pulled them, squeezing his earlobes between her thumbs and forefingers.

Harper continued to cover Robyn’s midsection with his lips, his hands running down the back of her thighs down to the hem of her dress and to her calves, firm from standing all day, from serving, from giving.

Her skin was soft, bare, glossed with shea butter.

His hands squeezed her muscles, released the tension, and moved up the back of her bare thighs to her buttocks again.

She was so warm, so soft, and familiar. Robyn let out a heavy moan as her fingers expanded to fan across the back of his skull, her thumbs slid back and forth along the sides of his chin.

She cradled his jaw and tugged his face toward hers.

Harper rose off his knees to obey, but did not miss kissing her torso, kissing between her breasts, and pressing his lips along her clavicle.

As he rose, his hands gripped her dress, dragging it with him up past her waist. He kissed up her neck to her chin that she’d lifted to give him access.

When Harper fully stood up and brought himself face-to-face with Robyn, their lips met with no hesitation, no thought or reservation.

Messy, wet, barely breathing, but so comfortable.

He knew those lips so well, every line, every contour.

Lips that felt so pillowy and soft, that kissed him back and that parted to let him enter with his tongue.

Inside her mouth, their tongues slid around one another, consumed with reacquainting, twirling in a muscular dance.

Her hands came up around him, and gripped him, holding tight to his shoulders, down to his arms, pulling her body closer to his, as if she were accessing a physical memory.

Her actions quickly became more urgent and aggressive.

Harper continued to give her anything she wanted.

Right now, he was hers for the taking. She, Robyn, could be as selfish as he had been.

He wanted her to take and take from him.

Anything she wanted, everything. He would oblige without hesitation.

Instinctively, his hand went up toward her breasts, and cupping them, he caressed the small ridges of her nipples back and forth with his thumbs.

She moaned, softly, a sound he remembered like poetry.

Her hands began to pull up his wet shirt that clung to him from raindrops and sweat.

Together they moved in a single mass, kissing, feeling the parts of each other they’d already learned, but with a stranger’s hunger, with curiosity for the body contours of someone new.

He pulled the top of her dress down past her breasts to her waist. She helped pull off her panties.

Her hands grabbed at his sweatpants and underwear and yanked the waist down his hips.

The erection he’d developed sprung free into the thickened air between them.

Harper helped pull his pants down farther, over the flexed muscles of his thighs, high stepping out of his clothes before clinging back to Robyn.

They wrapped their arms around each other and locked mouths again.

He yanked down her bra straps to free her breasts, and she reached in to pull herself out of each of the cups, one at a time to reveal her engorged nipples and darkened areolas, settling the swaying mounds against her ribs.

Seeing that she wanted this now, Harper wasn’t going to stop, he couldn’t stop.

She was going to get everything he had left to give.

With her body, she received the apology he had never offered.

They stood in her living room kissing, hands exploring each other’s naked bodies, wet where saliva, sweat, and rain combined with their tears.

Their midsections connected, grinding against one another, sliding together as Harper’s penis searched for an opening.

Robyn’s hands grabbed him and placed him at her center, wet and pulsating moist heat.

He slid inside and she moaned with abandon.

Her warmth, her scent, the feeling of her wrapping around his manhood was what he knew, a memory his body slipped toward with ease.

As good as she felt to Harper, though, he was not here for himself. He was there for Robyn.

“Give it to me,” she said with a throaty whisper as she enveloped his whole ear with her mouth.

“Give it to me, Harper,” she commanded on hot breath against his earlobe.

Harper adjusted his stance, crouching to gain more leverage, to use his back and his thighs, tensing them, squeezing the muscles so hard they trembled, all to give her what she asked for.

Robyn tried straddling one of his legs to assist in Harper’s stroking.

She put one hand on his shoulder and the other on the back of his head, pulling him in deeper and deeper.

“Come on. Don’t stop…” she ordered. He wasn’t going to.

He didn’t dare. He worked himself thrusting, pushing his body into its furthest limits to do whatever she said, for fear that he wouldn’t be able to make this apology, that she wouldn’t give him the chance, that if they separated for even a moment, it would be over, done and undone all at once.

So he kept kissing her, touching her, feeling her, driving love into her, doing anything he knew to give her pleasure.

To fight for soft moans from her, to persist in her pleasure blooming here and now, with anything she asked for, anything.

He’d not let go of her until…there was no until.

He’d just make use of every moment she gave him.

“Don’t stop,” Robyn said. “Don’t you dare stop…

” Robyn closed her eyes and moaned and breathed heavy as her rhythm met Harper’s.

He watched her, making sure she received what she wanted, what she needed.

She pulled her leg across to straddle his hips, settling her full weight and passion on his pelvis.

Harper steadied himself, maintaining that same challenging crouch using every muscle of his back, his ass, and his thighs to support them, to support Robyn and hold her up, guiding her by her waist. With every bit of his effort, he brought his other hand to hold on to the back of her thigh.

He could do it; he had to. The sound now was bodies slapping together, a slapping of wet skin on wet skin, Robyn riding him with a vengeance.

Harper staggered briefly but held on. Failure was not an option. Not tonight. Not ever again…