Nine o'clock
Nine o'clock in the morning, on the dot, some heinous bastard started thumping on my door. WTF, seriously. I didn't get to bed until after four, and I fucking need my sleep. I have blackout curtains, I need absolute dark and absolute quiet. And I need nine hours. The light of day wasn't scheduled to make an appearance in my life until after one pm.
I rolled onto my belly and clutched the pillow over my head figuring the noise would stop if I ignored it. Wrong. For God's sake. Nobody but debt collectors would be this persistent, surely. Did I owe anybody any money? No, I'd never borrowed money in my life, except for the odd couple of bucks here and there when I was at school and hungry as a lion and needed more food from the cafeteria. No-one could possibly be chasing me for that now, I repaid every cent.
So wtf? Scowling ferociously I strode to the door, prepared to let fly at whoever had dared disrupt my precious slumber.
Holy shit. A quick look through the peephole had revealed Bella Swan, distorted in the fish-eye lens, anxious and biting her lip. She was short, as usual, and half-covered in that unruly hair. Considerably more awake than she'd been last time I saw her. Also, considerably less blissful. But hey - she was here. Back for more sweetness, Sweetness? I wish, I wish...
I opened the door and she held her hands out to me, one clutching a paper bag and a fistful of paper napkins, the other offering an enormous coffee. I knew without asking that she'd brought asparagus and blue-cheese frittata, along with a triple-shot macchiato. She knows me, my neighbor and drinking buddy, Bella.
"Well, thanks. Come in," I began happily, before I remembered that we had a Situation. She blinked furiously and chewed on her lip some more, and I was still so half-asleep and completely exhausted that it took me a second to register her gaze seemed stuck at her own eye level. She was staring at my chest, which was currently uncovered since I'd gone to bed in pajama pants and nothing else. Shit. Was my chest weird or something? I'd never thought so, but her eyes took some time to climb as far north as my face.
"Uh, we'll share this, right?" I offered lamely. We'd often met for breakfast at the diner on our block before, and I always ordered the frittata. She always got waffles, but I figured they were harder to carry around in a paper bag. The frittata was big enough to cut into two slices, although after a drunken night I could easily eat a slice on my own. Last night hadn't been drunken though, by any means. At all. For either of us, as I recalled.
But Bella pushed the offerings at me and said urgently, "This is for you. I've got to go."
"Oh," I answered, disappointment battling with relief, and winning. "What about just sharing the coffee? There's plenty."
"Um, well, um, I guess, ah, well, okay," she said, following me to the kitchen and taking a seat at the table.
Then, get over the mumbling, jump straight in, don't beat about the bush, never save for tomorrow what you can do today - go Bella.
"About last night," she said, like it was an announcement.
I hadn't even had a single mouthful of triple-strength caffeine. I was still in the middle of getting two mugs out of the cupboard, along with sugar because I knew Bella took her coffee sweetened.
"Mmm?" I said, clattering, pouring, stirring, pushing a mug towards her.
"I might as well come straight out with it. I want you to know I'm ashamed of myself," she began. "I'm so fucking sorry for violating you like that."
Whoa. Violating?
"Hold on there, Bella. I'm a big boy. I could have fought you off, you know."
"Yes, but I know you. You wouldn't hurt me. I mean - to stop me you'd have had to prise me off and throw me across the room. There's no way you'd ever do that, so you just had to put up with it. But it's not just that you wouldn't hurt me physically, I know you'd be worried about my feelings as well. You wouldn't want to make me feel rejected, even with me doing something that must have been so unwelcome. So I'm appalled at myself, there's no just excuse for my behavior. I don't even know how I can face you right now, but I had to make myself clear. Nothing like that will ever, ever happen again, I assure you. Ever."
"Ah, well - since we're talking about it - "
"God - what must you think? What was I thinking? Just because it's been so long since I - well, never mind. I mean you know all about that anyway, since I went and told you. It's not like you asked or anything. Bigmouth strikes again - giving away unsolicited information. I probably embarrassed the hell out of you. I don't know how you put up with me."
She was really rambling, heating up in the cheeks, flushing adorably. Even though I was aware of her acute discomfort, I couldn't help thinking that she looked lovely like this. Could I just lean down and kiss her, so she'd see I wasn't upset with her in the slightest? Would that make everything better?
"And what a fucking loser am I? What a - what a - I mean, really, dry-humping in a bar, in public like that? And you being more or less some hapless bystander? And me getting off? Actually getting off - like having an orgasm getting off - from rubbing on your dick? Where's my sense of decorum? Wouldn't you think some sort of inhibition would kick in and I would have been sensible and just stopped it all? Oh no, Bella's gotta keep going, grinding all over my friend's erection, losing all sense of time and place because he's hard and it makes me feel so good, and there I am just going for gold... oh God..."
Oh God indeed. I should have been sensible and gone and sat down on the the other side of the table, or I should have been sensible and put on iron-clad underwear, or I should have been sensible and stuffed an ice-pack down my pajama pants somehow as soon as I knew who was at the door, because listening to Bella talking about what had happened between us the previous night was reminding my dick just exactly what had happened between us the previous night. She'd sat astride me, pressing in with her pelvis and holding me with her arms, lips to my throat and soft moans in my ear, until she'd climaxed. On me. I hadn't actually had a single unrelated thought since, and here she was now, sitting right in front of me.
And here was me, standing right in front of her.
And I was wearing pajama pants.
And she was talking, agitatedly, about my dick giving her an orgasm.
So wouldn't you just know it? My unscrupulous, shameless, trigger-happy, grateful and opportunistic dick popped up to say hello.
Oh, yeah. I was next to the table, having just stirred sugar into coffee for her, and her face must have been a matter of eighteen inches or so from me, and my fucking dick heard her talking about it. I tried a furious mental mantra of, "Down, boy, down," but it was futile. The tightening started to happen, the thickening and lengthening, the fullness. And along with that, the excitement, and the goddamn imperative for touch, for sensation. I'm such a fucking scoundrel, and so fucking dead. Bella will hate me, with good reason.
There was absolutely no chance whatsoever that she wouldn't notice how misshapen my pajamas had suddenly become, since I was practically in her face. All I could do was step away.
But.
In the midst of her deploring how she'd acted and apologizing, she caught sight of the inappropriateness going on right in front of her nose, and she stopped speaking.
"Uh - excuse me, I remembered I have to, um, go - " I stammered, just about to remove myself from this confrontational situation.
"No, you really don't," she said, slowly. She looked kind of hypnotized.
Fuck. "Yeah, I do."
Unbelievably, her hands came up and grabbed my hips, pinning me to the spot.
"Well," she said, my rude penis at a sixty degree angle, almost fully fledged, in her face.
"Ah, yes, there's a thing I need to do, somewhere that's not here - " I insisted. "My tax return. I've really got to start on it."
"Edward."
Her voice sounded different, sort of breathy. I tried to move back but she was holding me.
"Edward?"
"Uh-huh?"
"Um - could I just take a peek? I haven't been anywhere near one of these since forever."
Isabella Swan, are you fucking crazy? You've just apologized for humping me a few hours ago and now you're asking to see my dick? What the hell for? I am not a fucking exhibit! This is not a museum, or an art show!
"Jesus. No! What the fuck! I'm your friend, Bella!" I exclaimed, ready to show her everything, but desperate not to make a mistake. I didn't even begin to know what was going on.
"Of course, you're right. I'm sorry. Forget it," she answered, face falling. "Forget I asked. I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have come over. I'm a mess."
It sounded like she was about to cry. If she shed a single fucking tear I would fall right down on the floor and cry along with her, cry her a sea, an ocean, a cloud's worth, a skyful.
"You're not a mess, you're okay. We're okay. We're good, you and me," I assured her.
She looked back up at me, swallowing deeply, velvet dark eyes pensive and beautiful.
"Edward, you've been good to me, I appreciate it," she said. "I owe you."
.
.
.