Earth Bound (23 page)

“Oklahoma.”

That was what she heard in his voice sometimes. Except she could see his mouth go tense at the confession—and it felt like a confession—so she didn’t say anything other than, “Ah. Not so much snow then.”

After a beat, she added, “What’s your family like?”

He contemplated this, and for a minute, she wondered if she’d asked for something he didn’t want to give.

Then he started speaking. “My mom is adorable. She’s always up to something: growing her garden, cooking biscuits, complaining about the neighbors. She has arthritis, and her—well, she deals with it as well as she can.”

He relaxed a bit as he described his mother—which of course Charlie would
not
do. He was looking at the wallpaper behind the bed, his eyes unfocused, probably picturing his adorable mother.

“My brother Roy is quiet, hardworking. He’s been married forever to a woman he fell in love with the first day of kindergarten. That about sums him up: He doesn’t waver. He’s the steadiest person I know.”

She didn’t want him to think of his other brother, so as fast she could, she asked. “And your dad?”

At this, Parsons went rigid. It stole over his bones, transforming him into a skeleton in an anatomy lab. Had his father passed and he hadn’t mentioned it before? Charlie wanted the question back, but it was too late.

“He’s hard, demanding,” he ground out. “I worry I… Well, I’m like him a bit.”
 

“You expect the best of everyone. That’s not a flaw.”

He chewed on his lip for a minute. “He’s bitter. Life hasn’t always been kind to them, with George and the farm. But he… he has spells where even I think he’s too much, when he’s too mean.”

Growing up with such a father must have been awful. She didn’t want to push for details, but she knew a thing or two about parental disapproval—and hers were never explicitly mean.

Charlie regretted this line of questions immensely. This was why she didn’t like cuddling and intimate conversations: She was bad at them.

“I’m sorry,” she said for lack of something better to offer.

“Me too. It’s why I ran away.”

She tried not to smile. She was picturing him with a stick over one shoulder with some food tied in a red kerchief. “Where did you run?”

“College.” Only Parsons would describe college as running away. “Except that was hard in different ways. Not many farmers there, at least not in the engineering department. The people in engineering told me to change to ag science. I kept sticking around chemical engineering. I didn’t go home much once I’d left the farm.”

“You didn’t miss anything about it?”

He stretched before answering. Now that the subject of his dad had passed, he was more normal. Except, of course, without clothing. “There’s always something to do on a farm. Everyone has a clearly defined role, and the work is… rewarding. Relentless and hard, but you can see how all the bits contribute, add up.”

“You hate feeling useless.”

He looked at her. “Am I the only one?”

She could feel herself flush. She hadn’t even let him help her with his buttons a few minutes earlier. “Oh no. I understand it. I… I think that’s part of why I wanted to—”

Christ, what was she doing? First they were snuggling and now they were sharing their innermost thoughts and desires? She was about to talk to him about work—and that had been it, the big canyon they’d built up at the beginning.

But the damage was already done, wasn’t it? He’d met her parents this evening. He’d made her feel better. Here she was, because she didn’t want to be alone. But more than that, because he made her feel valued.

The canyon had already been breached.

She took a deep breath and said it; “—that’s why I wanted to work at ASD. I wanted what I did to matter.”

He rolled on his side, putting a few more inches between them. But from this distance, she supposed he could regard her better. They didn’t have to be touching for her to feel connected to him.

“Your work does matter,” he insisted. “You’re the most competent person there.”

She yawned again, partly to hide her smile. “I’ve never had an annual performance review while naked before.”

His lips twitched. This conversation didn’t seem to bother him. On the contrary, he was enjoying it. He plucked his undershirt off the floor. He pulled it over her head. She slid her arms through it and resettled—because she wasn’t ready to leave yet.

Once she was dressed in his shirt, he leaned over her. His forearms settled on either side of her head. “I need to break the rules now, to tell you you’re amazing at what you do. Smart, resourceful, splendid. Charlie, I need you to understand that. Your parents this evening… I want to make sure you know what you’re worth.”

To you or to ASD?
She rested a hand against his chest. “They aren’t always this bad. But it… it’s mostly my mom. And you have to understand about her, how hard it was to be a woman in science in her generation.”

He made an agnostic noise.

“For a woman to get a PhD in physics in the thirties? It wasn’t done. Especially not when she kept working after Tom and I showed up. She isn’t happy about where she is, and that’s why she meddles.”

“Does she meddle with Tom?”

“No, but that’s because he makes sense to them. He did exactly what they wanted.”

His mouth was set in a hard line. He hated the idea that her parents weren’t perfectly supportive of her, and that set off an entire series of tremors and flutters in her body.

She ignored them. “I don’t like it. I’m saying I understand it.”

“And I’m saying that in all that understanding you’re doing, I want you to add in that they’re wrong. You shouldn’t be doing hard science—”

“Changing the world at the sub-atomic level?” she teased.

He made a rude gesture. “You don’t need their goals for you. You need what you want to do, what you’re good at doing. Christ, you’re perfect. They’re your parents, and they can’t see it.”

Charlie’s breathing went shallow. He thought she was perfect? That was how he saw her? To cover up how overwhelmed she felt, she tried to make it a joke. She snorted. “Perfect?”

“Yes.”

She ran her fingers over his chin. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to preen. She wanted to argue with him. She wanted to kiss him all over.

She looked away, past his shoulder to the ceiling, which sported a prominent water stain. “If I’m perfect”—she pursed her lips to show him how silly she thought the word—“then why do I hate this thing?” She tugged at the undershirt he’d clothed her in. “All day at work, in every staff meeting, I want to imagine you bare under your shirt. All those muscles just a thin layer of linen away. But every time, my fantasy is ruined. By cotton.” She made a frustrated noise, and hazarded a glance at him.

He was smiling down at her, besotted and amused. He lifted a hand from the bed, and gestured at himself with a grimace. “These aren’t so many muscles. You should see Lee Carruthers without his—”

“Shh. Tonight there isn’t anyone else in the world.”

Now they were both breathing unsteadily. This wasn’t going how she’d thought it was going to. She wanted, she needed, head-clearing sex. She hadn’t banked on the cuddling, the confessions.

She really hadn’t banked on liking them.

He hadn’t either. He looked stunned, but he also looked pleased. The crinkles around his eyes grew deeper, the color in his face darkened.

She wasn’t sure who moved first, but she could feel his breath tickling her lips. They weren’t kissing, and their intimacy was somehow more exposed for it.

His eyes were normally inscrutable, but from this distance, she could see all the different shades in them, the flecks of gold, the ridges of his irises—his eyes weren’t truly dark at all. So much richness and variation there.

His nose grazed hers, and his mouth skimmed over her cheekbones and came to rest for an instant on her temple. It was like waiting for an earthquake.

She shifted, pushing up onto her elbows, bringing them face to face. When she made that tiny adjustment, he kissed her.

She was shaking. She couldn’t tell if it was the cold or the awkward position or her exhaustion. But whatever the reason, she whispered into the kiss one word that changed everything.

“
Gene.
”

He flexed himself up, and hauled her into his lap. She straddled him so his undershirt rode high on her thighs. He twisted his hands in the hem, the backs of his fingers resting against her. “I can’t believe I dressed you.”

“I can’t believe I told you all of that about my family.”

“Yeah, me too.” He paused and swallowed. “But please don’t apologize.”

Their bodies pushed closer together. Her breasts rubbed against the cotton and against him. They inhaled in unison. Then he whisked off the shirt.

When his hands came to rest on her bare back, they felt enormous. And so steady against her trembling body.

“I’m never putting clothes on you again,” he said.

She would have laughed, but her blood was up. She didn’t have mirth or amusement or even anything as simple as humor in her now. It had burned off.

She slid her hands into his hair, and she kissed him with a carnal intensity that stunned her. He met her tongue stroke for stroke as he pulled the pins out of her hair and massaged her scalp as the twist fell out.

“Charlie,” he whispered. He put three inches of space between them. Lust, affection, warmth, and ten thousand other things zinged in the gap.

He repeated her name while he touched his mouth to her forehead, her chest, and her neck. His hands followed until she felt as if he’d inventoried her and taken possession. It felt like the end of something. It felt like a beginning. She was dizzy and wanting before he was through.

At last he retrieved a condom from the nightstand and rolled it on. She grasped his cock. They made eye contact as she shifted her weight until he was fully seated.

But then, before she could move, he put a hand on either of her knees and pushed, until she was stretched out, her legs taut.

“What? I can’t…” But as she rocked against him to demonstrate, she panted. He was buried deep within her, pressed right up where she needed him. She rolled her hips again.

“We go slow this time.” He thrust, shallow but sure, and she almost screamed.

Okay. She was willing to reconsider. This position had some merits.

They moved together. It was a gentle, swaying, gasping love. Their foreheads were pressed together, her fists were on his shoulders, their eyes were locked. No matter how she moved, no matter how they shifted, it grew more raw. Everything coursing through her, not to mention the sweat gathering on her back, was because of him.

She closed her eyes, kissed his neck, and tried for the love of God not to think.

But it didn’t work. It never did. She couldn’t shut off her brain.

All she knew was that every moment for nearly two years had led to this. Every staff meeting, every time he’d gestured with his hands, every time he’d asked more of her, and celebrated with her when she’d offered it, it had all been about this.

About this man, moving inside her, so, so deep inside her. About what she was feeling—not the orgasm—but that she believed him when he said she was perfect.

She didn’t think she was perfect, but she thought that together, they might be more than they were apart.

Together they might be something like it.

She pushed back, nodded frantically to him, and he gripped her head as they finished together. Eye to eye. Face to face.

Afterward, they were quiet. They didn’t talk, let alone reveal things about who they were. They both dressed. She didn’t put on any makeup.

But outside, under the stars, he took her face in his hands and brushed his mouth over hers.

“I’ll see you?”

“You’ll scarcely be able to avoid me.”

After tonight, that was both a threat and a promise.

Parsons wanted to whistle as he made his way to yet another meeting, this time in Stan Jensen’s office.

He wasn’t whistling, of course—he made certain he held his expression in its usual lines. But behind the mask, he was remembering last night. And wondering if Charlie might like to see his fish sometime.

He’d have to think of the right way to ask her. If she wanted to stay over at his place, maybe share a meal, that would be fine.

But if she only wanted to see the fish, that was fine too.

And if she didn’t, that was also fine.

It was all fine, even though last night had been… something entirely new. It had been raw and intense and comforting all at once. As if after one last struggle, one last feint on both their parts, they had finally invited each other in.

He’d have to ponder that more, along with how to word the invitation to see the fish.

Parsons rounded the corner at the exact same moment Hal did, five minutes before they were supposed to be in Stan Jensen’s office.
 

Hal Reed was actually early for a meeting. Miracles did happen. Parsons pondered saying something to Hal about commissioning a plaque for the occasion, but decided not to.