Off Duty (Off #7) (6 page)

“Ewww,”
I hear Sam whine from behind us. “Dad… that’s
gross.”

Holly and I break
slowly apart, both gazing at each other with smiles before we turn to
face Sam. “Trust me, buddy. One day, this won’t seem
gross to you.”

Apparently, Sam had
been watching Holly with keen interest all day, because right there
and then, he gives me an eye roll that has me laughing at the little
monster.

Holly

“I can’t,
Tim,” I gasp.

“You can,”
he urges me with a growl. “All the way down, baby.”

“You’re
too big… it’s too much,” I whine, but damn…
it feels really, really good.

“Just a little
more,” he pants, bringing his hands to my hips and pushing me
down on him some more.

He’s lodged
inside me deep… I’m on top and trying to take the rest
of him in. But geez… he’s so freakin’ big that I
don’t know if I can do it.

But this is our last
night together. He leaves tomorrow afternoon and I’ll be
working, so this is where I say goodbye to the man that I’ve
started spiraling for again. In just a few short days, he’s
become an important part of my world once more. Our time together has
been limited, between my shifts at the hospital and his need to spend
time with Sam and Denise, but we are making the very most of it. He’s
stayed the night with me a few times, and I spent another day touring
New Orleans with him, Sam, and Denise. He came to see me once more at
the hospital, and while we didn’t have sex, we did have an
amazing cup of coffee together where he told me all about his life
inside the fire department, which included many funny stories about
his best friend, Flynn Caldwell.

I want to make the
most of tonight. I want to connect to him deeper than I ever have
before. I feel an almost desperate need to make him understand…
through my words or body language… just how much he means to
me. So I’m going to take him in all the way and forge him
deeper into my body and soul.

Panting, I push down
another fraction of an inch, and Tim shudders underneath me. He
slides a hand down between my legs, presses his thumb against my
clit, and I jerk hard against the contact at the same time Tim
thrusts up into me hard.

And, oh yeah…
oh, my holy God… he’s all the way in and it’s the
absolute best feeling in the world.

I sit atop him…
holding still, relishing the fullness within me. Tim stares up at me,
his dark eyes sparkling with lust. Tentatively, I give a little
rotating move of my hips that causes him to massage against something
deep inside of me.

“You’re
killing me, Holly,” Tim groans, trying to literally pick my
body up to slide it off his cock.

I bat his hands away
and admonish him. “Hands off. I got this.”

“Well, get it
faster,” he complains.

I snicker and bend
forward to kiss him briefly. “Patience, my love. All good
things to those who wait.”

Tim’s hands
shoot up and grasp my face, pulling me back for a deeper kiss. His
tongue possesses mine, and my hips start rocking against him. When he
releases me, his voice is deep with longing. “You called me
‘your love’.”

I push up on his
chest so I’m sitting ramrod straight, circling my hips. It’s
creating a little friction… just enough to drive him crazy. “I
did call you that.”

“Am I?”
he asks, his face seriously intent. “Your love?”

I stop moving on
him, placing my hands over his heart. “A lot of time has
passed, Tim. But my feelings for you never changed. They may have
been tucked away deep in my heart, but they never went away.”

Tim just nods…
seemingly at a loss for words, so I take that as my cue to get busy.
I start to raise and lower myself onto him, slowly at first, but as I
adjust to his length and girth, a little bit faster. Then even
faster, and faster yet. Within moments, Tim’s hands are back on
my hips, helping me to practically bounce up and down on him.

“Fucking
gorgeous, Holly,” he mutters, his eyes roaming over my breasts
as they bounce along in rhythm.

My muscles clench,
tighten, and tingle. My orgasm builds swiftly, and I decide not to
hold it back. Reaching behind me, I cup his balls in my hand while I
maintain my rhythm, giving them a gentle squeeze. Tim bucks up hard
against me, almost throwing me off, and yells, “Fuck yeah”.

His hands are at my
hips once more, grinding me down hard against him, and his back
arches as he starts to come inside of me. That’s my undoing…
watching the sheer pleasure wash over his face, and I fall right
along with him into bliss.

Many moments later,
as I lay on top of him, my face sweaty and my heartbeat finally
returning to normal, Tim’s hands stroking my lower back, I hear
him softly say, “You’re my love too.”

Where I find the
strength after that bout of sex, I have no clue, but I rise back up,
leveraging myself on his chest with my forearms.

When my eyes lock
onto his, he gives me a bit of a sad smile. “I’d like to
say that I kept all my same feelings for you over the years, but
you’re smart enough to know that I was hurt by what you did. I
had anger and resentment mixing with my memories of you, but I did
hold something back. I held back the purity of what we had before it
was ruined.”

My heart seizes and
clenches over his words, because I know it’s dredging up old
hurts and peeling away scabbed-over wounds.

Tim brings a hand
up, cups my cheek, and pushes his fingers back through my hair until
he’s holding me by the back of my head. His fingers spread wide
and he grips onto me, giving me a little shake to ensure my
attention. “I held something back all these years, Holly.
Despite everything, when I saw you in that emergency room, I still
felt deep care for you. When you told me what really happened…
with your father… that just stripped all the bitterness away,
and I was truly able to see that I had held back more than I had
thought. I know it may sound trite, and maybe we’re both still
immature fools, but I do know one thing… you are my love too.”

I can’t help
it… tears immediately start pooling in my eyes. I think that
may have been the singularly most beautiful thing I’ve ever
heard in my life. “We’ve been given a second chance,”
I say hoarsely, my voice practically lost to emotion.

“We have,”
he says simply. “I don’t want to waste it.”

“I don’t
either,” I tell him.

“I can’t
do long distance, Holly,” he says matter of factly. “Not
where you’re concerned. And I can’t leave New York
because of Sam.”

I push up off his
chest, rearranging my body so I’m straddling his lower abdomen.
Smiling down at him, I say, “Well… it just so happens
that I’ve been a little homesick for New York. I could move
back.”

“You’d
do that?” Tim asks with wonder, but then his gaze immediately
turns somber. “But what about your parents?”

I wave my hand in
dismissal. “New York’s a pretty damn big place. I think
there’s room enough for all of us.”

“What about
your career here?” he asks, concern etched on his face.

Shrugging my
shoulders, I tell him the truth of my life. “New Orleans was an
escape for me. A way to go to college without the control of my
father. A way to start over… become the person I was meant to
be. I stayed here because I got a good job. I love it. Always will.
But it’s not my home.”

“Because New
York is,” he supplies helpfully.

I shake my head and
give him a tiny smile. “I’m thinking my home is wherever
you are, and since you’re in New York, then yeah… that’s
where it is.”

“We’re
really going to do this?” His palms smooth over my thighs in a
reassuring manner.

“I’m not
letting you go again,” I tell him softly. “It’s
time to take our lives back.”

Tim slips a hand
behind my neck, pulls me down, and kisses my forehead gently. I
collapse back onto his chest, feeling his heart thump against mine,
and close my eyes.

In this moment…
right now… I’ve never been happier in my entire life.

Tim

I sit at Denise’s
kitchen table as the midmorning sun shines through the window over
the sink, leaving a streak of light right across my plate of
half-eaten eggs and bacon. I take a sip of coffee and watch as Sam
awkwardly scoops eggs up with the fork in his left hand.

“You’re
getting better at using your left hand,” I tell him. He looks
up at me with a grin, and I wink back.

“You’ll
be so good with that left hand,” Denise says as she leans in
and tweaks his nose, “that you’ll be switch hitting this
baseball season.”

“What’s
switch hitting?” Sam asks as he takes a bite of bacon.

“It’s
where you can hit both left and right handed,” I tell him.

“That would be
cool,” he says, looking far more serious as he takes his fork
up again in his left hand and navigates it through the eggs. “Will
Holly come watch some of my games?

I blink in surprise
at the innocent and completely unprovoked question. When I glance
over at Denise, she gives me a knowing smile. We talked the other day
about Holly while Sam was taking a nap. I told her everything about
Holly’s father—who she called a slime-bag prick—and
what Holly did to get away from him and his evil ways. Denise
remembered well my relationship with Holly in high school. She was
only two years older than me, living at home while she attended a
local community college. Holly was a frequent visitor at our house
when we were together, and she and Denise had become close. When
Holly broke up with me, Denise never had bitter feelings toward her
the way I did. In fact, she had told me she was convinced there was
something nefarious going on we didn’t know about because that
would be the only reason Holly would break up with me.

Me, being the
dumbass that I was at eighteen, couldn’t see it and wasn’t
as open minded about the situation as Denise had been.

Now, she is sort of
enjoying rubbing my nose in the pile of hindsight. But that’s
okay by me… I’m happy to know that Denise has been right
about Holly all these years.

Denise’s lips
curve into a smirk and she nods her head toward Sam, indicating that
I need to address the “Holly situation” with him.

“Holly might
visit us in New York during your baseball season,” I tell him
carefully. “I’m sure she’d love to come to one of
your games.”

“Will we come
back to visit her?” he asks, even as his brow is furrowed in
concentration on his eggs.

“Maybe,”
I tell him. “You want to visit Holly again?”

“She’s
nice,” he says absently, now finding his eggs a bit more
interesting than talking about yucky girls.

“Hey Sam,”
I say gently but with enough firmness to get his attention. His eyes
come up to mine, his fork stilled on the plate. “You know Holly
and I use to be really good friends a long time ago, right?”

He nods at me, but
not clearly understanding why this is an important subject.

“Well…
I like Holly a lot. And she likes me, and she really likes you. So,
she’s thinking about moving to New York… so we can see a
lot more of her.”

“Cool. She can
come to all of my games then,” Sam says, and then the subject
is immediately forgotten as he turns back to his plate.

I glance over at
Denise, and she’s clearly enjoying my awkwardness in trying to
explain that I have a serious girlfriend to my child. She gestures
with her hand toward me to keep the conversation rolling, but before
I can even think about what to say next, Sam turns back to me.

“Will she move
in with us?” he asks suddenly. “The way David lives with
Mommy at our house?”

David is the man
that Bonnie has been seeing for almost two years now. He moved in
about six months ago, and he’s a pretty decent dude. And I have
to give him and Bonnie credit… they sat down with me and asked
if it was all right first. But I had been around him enough at Sam’s
various functions to know that first, he was a good guy, and second,
that he loved Sam and Sam loved him in return. They haven’t
discussed marriage, but I’m sure it’s on the horizon.

“I don’t
know,” I tell Sam truthfully, because Holly and I didn’t
talk about that. If I had my heart’s desire, fuck yeah…
she’d move in with me. But I don’t know what she wants.
“It depends on where she gets a job.”

If she gets a
job
, I think dismally to myself. I want her in New York like
yesterday, but I recognize this could take quite a while to make the
transfer. We talked well into the night about what opportunities
there may be for her. She’d prefer an emergency room setting,
but those options could be limited. She’d take a private
practice position though, if she had to. I told her that I wanted her
to wait for the perfect job, even if it killed me to be away from her
a little bit longer.

“Well, it
would be cool if she did,” Sam says. “Because Mommy was
really happy when David moved in, and I know you’d be really
happy if Holly lived with you.”

“Out of the
mouths of babes,” Denise murmurs softly with a gentle gaze at
Sam. We seem to say that a lot about that child of mine.

I swallow hard,
because it’s amazing to me how a child’s pure soul can
see through to things that we may be unwilling or unable to
recognize. Sam takes a last bite of his eggs, and I nudge him on the
shoulder. “Okay… how about you go get cleaned up. We
need to get packed soon so Aunt Denise can take us to the airport.”

“Okay,”
Sam says as he scoots away from the table.

As he trots down the
hallway, I call after him, “And don’t forget to brush
your teeth.”

He doesn’t
respond but I hear him go into the bathroom, so I know he’s
doing his dreaded duty.