Inappropriate Desperation

The butterflies in her stomach fluttered and her palms sweated as she thought about what could happen. She let him know she could be there after dinner and told her parents she was going to Kristen's so there would be no suspicion if they saw her car there later.

She showered and got dressed in her leggings and an oversized tee just like she wore 90% of the time she hung out with her best friend. She got in her little silver Nissan Sentra and tried to focus on the music coming from her speakers and not think about the fact that she was about to continue down the dangerous road she started on that afternoon.

When she got there she did as he instructed and walked in without knocking.

"Hey! Come on back to the kitchen."

She grinned at the familiar sound of his voice, like this was just another day of her dropping in and waiting for Kristen to come out. But then she thought about the fact that her friend would be completely beside herself if she were to find out why Heather was here.

She poked her head around the corner of the fridge as she entered his space. "Hey."

"Hey." He turned and gave her a thousand-watt smile that made her spine tingle. "I was just cleaning up in here."

Slamming the dishwasher shut, he hit a couple of buttons and the machine whooshed to life. "C'mon let's go sit at the table."

The table. She let out a breathe she didn't realize she was holding. Of course he would have thought of the most perfect, least threatening place in the house to have this conversation. They would have space between them to allow them to talk without things getting out of hand. She tried not to think about what "getting out of hand" with him meant.

He took a spot facing the garage door and she pulled out the chair across from him. When she sat down his hands reached across the table to take hers. Up until that moment, she had been partially afraid that the events at the golf course had only happened in her head. He took both of her hands in one of his and put his other on top, rubbing her knuckles with his thumb.

She looked up from their hands and into his eyes. This was very real.

"Hi," he said, and the absurd simplicity of the greeting made her laugh.

"Hi."

"So, I've been thinking about what you told me earlier today."

She subconsciously tried to pull her hands away, readying herself for rejection. But he refused to let her go.

"Just listen." His blue eyes seemed to darken as he all but begged her. "I've known you since you were born, Heather. You are a beautiful young woman with a brilliant future in front of you.You will literally be turning away guys right and left this fall when you start at ASU and I am beyond flattered to have your affections."

She closed her eyes and dropped her chin to her chest, waiting for the "but" that she knew was coming.

"Look at me, Heather," he requested and gently squeezed her fingers. "Please."

She did as he asked and she watched his face grow solemn as he chose his words. "Your dad and your mom are my best friends in the world. And Kristen—my daughter— is your best friend. The last thing I would ever want to do is hurt them."

She nodded in agreement and felt her emotions rising. "I get that. That's why this has been so confusing for me."

Heather moved her hands so that now his were inside hers and she mimicked the way he had been caressing them. She looked him in the eye again to try and stress how serious she was about what she was going to say next. "This is so embarrassing for me to admit, but, uh, when I started feeling this way...at Christmas...I tried to stop it. I tried to make sense of it. You're a handsome guy and we happen to spend a lot of time together. Surely, this was just a 'weird crush'"she said, rolling her eyes for dramatic effect."

He gave her another big smile and chuckled.

"I have a boyfriend who cares about me a lot and I tried to focus on that. I want to be in love with him like any normal girl would be. I tried so hard that last night...". She bit her lip as she thought about the way Dallas had made her physically feel in that study. And that, despite all that, all she had wished was to be pressed beneath Henry's body, looking into his eyes. The same ones that were watching her intensely right at that moment.

"Can you tell me what happened last night?"

She took a deep breath.

"I tried to forget about any feelings I had for you in the only way I knew how." She blinked and wiped away a tear that rolled down her cheek, not trusting herself to be able to explain any further without having a complete breakdown.

"I know it's not my place—"

"I couldn't go through with it, okay?" she interrupted before he could go any further.

"I'm sorry, I was just worried after seeing you like that. I thought maybe..." he paused and rubbed her forearm soothingly. "I don't know what I thought. I'm just sorry you didn't get to enjoy your prom."

She nodded and took a second to compose herself. "I know how just," she searched for the right word, "insane it is for me to feel this way about you."

"It's not insane—," he interjected and she laughed bitterly. "It's not, Heather. You are entitled to your feelings. It would be 'insane' if I didn't feel flattered that you feel this way about me."

"Please don't patronize me."

"I'm not." He leaned forward to emphasize his point. "I haven't been in a romantic relationship...hell, I haven't even felt an attraction to anyone since Evelyn passed. But kissing you today..."

He regripped her hand, squeezing it as he closed his eyes in remembrance of their moment in the woods. The butterflies in her stomach returned as he opened them again, his navy blue eyes boring into hers.

"Kissing you did not feel wrong."

She grinned shyly at his confession and replied, "It was the first thing that has felt right in a long time."

"I'm 56 years old, Heather. Your dad would literally kill me...or any man our age, to be honest, if he knew they were sleazy enough to be dating a high school student."

"You're not sleazy...but I know what you mean. And Kristen would never speak to me again, if she knew how I felt about you."

He nodded silently.

"But I'm 18 years old and graduating...and moving out of my parents home," she reminded him, "in just a few months."

"And Dallas?"

She shook her head. "Dallas was the only thing I had to try and keep me normal as long as possible. I wanted so much to make it work with him...but it didn't. You kept showing up," she said, her voice strained as she tried to stress how intense her feelings were. "You are so much fun to be around. And you're...cute."

He raised his eyebrows in disbelief, blushing as he smiled. "Cute,"he repeated.

"Yes, very cute...Henry." She used his first name to remind him that he was the one who instructed her to call him that since she was an adult now. "The way I feel about you is overwhelming. I've never been in love with someone before so I don't even know if that's what I am. I just know that I want to be with you when we're apart. I look forward to seeing you and obviously the idea of being with you physically...," she paused and laced her fingers through his. "It is something I think about a lot more than I probably should."

"Jesus, Heather." He closed his eyes. "You are killing me right now."

"I'm sorry...but I'm also not sorry. I just don't know what to do. It's not going away."

"No, it isn't. And I honestly don't know if I want it to go away."

Her eyes went wide. "But what about our families?"

He nodded. "It is a huge problem. But I am not going to lie to you and say that there's not a big part of me that wants to be with you that way after hearing how you feel."

She felt a thrill go through her as she listened to him all but say he wanted her, too. "So what do we...I mean, how? How do we do this?"

He stood up, the sound of the wooden leg of the chair scraping the tile floor startling her. She followed him as he walked to the front door, double checking that it was locked. Then he went to the back door and entrance to the garage, checking those, too. He picked up his phone from it laid in the kitchen island and tapped the screen a few times.

"Nobody should be coming here for hours," he told her and she realized he'd been checking the location of Kristen and Kaleb's phones.

He walked over to where she stood, leaning against one of the living room walls. He pushed a stray lock of her hair out of her hazel eyes and she felt goosebumps spread across her skin. The look he gave her was the same one she had seen in the woods.

"So, what now?"

"They won't understand."

"I know. Did I make a huge mistake by telling you all this?"

"God, no," he answered, stroking a finger along her cheek. "Does that make me a sleazy old man?"

She grinned at his self-deprecating humor. "A little bit. But I guess that's my problem."

He looked at her with a quizzical expression.

"I'm the one who fell in love with the sleazy old man."

He took her face in both hands and leaned down to kiss her hungrily. She returned it, wrapping her hands around his waist.

His facial hair tickled and burned hot on her skin as they searched each other's mouths before he moved to kiss his way down her neck. He sucked tenderly on the skin below one of her earlobes before taking it between his teeth. Her head was spinning as her hormones flooded her senses and she felt her knees buckle.

Sensing that she needed to sit, he backed them up, refusing to take his lips away from her skin for even a second, and pulled her with him onto the plush, microfiber couch. Heather wanted to get closer and began pulling up on the hem of his t-shirt before he got the hint and took it off over his head.

The sight of his muscled, hairy chest made her gasp. "This is really happening."

He smiled as he watched her look at his body. "If you want it to be."

She nodded and yanked her own shirt over her head. As Heather reached behind herself to unsnap her bra, his hands stopped her.

"Wait," he said.

She looked at him like a deer in headlights, afraid that he was coming to his senses and realizing that he couldn't possibly do this with her.

His eyes darkened with arousal. "I want to do that."

She put her hands down as he unfastened the hook and pulled the straps off her shoulders, the small piece of black cloth joining their shirts in the floor. He took each one in his hands, admiring them as he teased her nipples. She felt a rush of warmth at her center and pulled his head towards her chest, leaning back until he lay almost completely on top of her.

"Oh my god," she moaned as one of his hands tweaked her nipple roughly as he sucked her other into his mouth.

In their new position, he kissed his way back up her neck to her mouth where she took his lower lip between her teeth. He grinded his hard erection against her hip, making her moan into his mouth. His athletic shorts and her leggings left very little to her imagination as to his size. She shivered as she imagined what it would feel like inside her.

She focused on the sensation of finally having Henry with her, his bare flesh pressed into her own, burning hotter each second they rubbed against one another. She focused on the way he tasted, the way he groaned as she sucked on his tongue.

"You taste so good," she sighed as she moved to lick and suck on his neck.

"I can't..." he panted. "Don't know how much more I can take."

He punctuated his point by poking himself into her hip again and she reached between them to stroke it through the thin fabric. "Jesus, Heather."

"Feel good?" she teased, running her hand up and down its considerable length.

"Too good." He grabbed her hand and trapped it between them before kissing her again.

When they broke for air, he sat back to allow her to sit up, too.

"Did I do something wrong?" She asked and covered her bare chest with her arms, feeling self conscious and vulnerable.

"No!" She watched as he attempted to adjust his position to make his erection seem less pronounced. She tried not to smile as he failed.

"You definitely did not do anything wrong," he said and pressed a soft kiss against her lips. "But I don't want you to think I'm trying to rush you into doing something you're not ready to do."

"Of course not," she replied with a smirk. "You still don't get it, do you?"

He looked at her, sitting there on his couch bearing no resemblance to the girl who had sat with him in the same exact spot a million times before. His gaze fell on the bite marks on her beautiful bare breasts, her long dark hair tousled from his hands, and his cock jerked in response to the sight.

She waited for him to answer, feeling a thrill at the way he was admiring her body. Heather pushed herself off the couch and stood in front of him so his eyes were level with her breasts. She saw him gulp, his face so close to them that she could feel the warmth of his heavy breathing on her erect nipples. But, instead of pressing them into his mouth like she desperately wanted, she grabbed his hands.

"Stand up."

Her words broke his trance and he looked at her in confusion before getting on his feet. She didn't budge an inch as they stood so close she could feel his cock twitch against her belly.

"I don't have some little crush on you," she started, looking up at him with her hand pressed gently over his heart, toying with the hair there. "I'm not obsessed with you. I can't stop thinking about you because I love the way I feel when I'm around you."

He pushed her hair back from her shoulders and smiled warmly at her before locking his hands behind her waist.

She put her hands on either side of his face to make sure she had his attention. "You couldn't push me into doing anything I don't want to do...because there is literally nothing I don't wanna do with you."

His eyes closed for a second as he growled softly at her words.

"I'm not asking for a commitment or anything because I know we can't have that right now anyway. I don't even know how that would work at this point."

"I know," he sighed.

"But," she interrupted. "I am young and have a lot to learn...about a lot of things. I don't want to go through those things with someone who doesn't care about me or know what I need. You would never hurt me and that's...it's kind of hot," she said with a laugh as he grinned broadly at her, his cock twitching again.

"I would never hurt you," he affirmed and leaned his head down to kiss her forehead. "I am just trying to wrap my brain around this. Which is a problem right now because my brain is a little preoccupied right now."

He grinded into her belly for emphasis. "We can't do normal for a lot of reasons. But I feel like that could cause you to feel...used."

His choice of words gave her goosebumps again.

"If we weren't in this town with the judgement of our families and friends to deal with, this could be so much more. I mean, hanging out with you everyday, taking you out on dates and treating you the way you deserve..."

She nodded her understanding. "But that's not our situation."

"Right. All we have for the foreseeable future are moments like this, hidden away from those who would be horrified by the idea of us together. That wouldn't bother you?"

"You're doing it again," she laughed.

"What?"

"You are doing everything you can to make me feel good and protect me from getting hurt. That's exactly why I want to do this with you. How could I possibly feel 'used' by someone who does that? Who could I possibly want more?"

She pressed herself up on her tiptoes to kiss him, darting her tongue out to wet his lips before tugging gently on his lower lip. "I want this, Henry. But if you don't—"

She gasped as he put one arm under knees and lifted her into his arms.

"Stop talking," he growled, crushing her lips to his as he carried her down the hall to his bedroom.

He tossed her onto the unmade, queen size bed, went back to the living room to grab their clothes off the floor, her phone from the table, and then locked the bedroom door behind him. He crossed the room in two steps to where she laid on her back, her grey-green eyes wide, and pulled her leggings off with one motion. He crawled on top of her and took one of her nipples in his mouth again while pawing and pinching the other one roughly.

She cried out as the mixture of pain and pleasure made her wet. His sheets were so soft against her back and the reality of being with him here in just their underwear was enough to make her head spin...and then his hand went between her thighs.

Her back arched off the bed as he slipped his fingers under her waistband and played with the soft curls he found there. He let his fingers dip slightly lower as he opened her folds and searched for the hard nub that would make her scream. She parted her legs automatically to grant him better access.

He watched her ever changing facial expressions, feeling like a voyeur. "Has anyone touched you here before, Heather?" he whispered against her neck.

"Just...once," she panted as his middle finger pushed inside her.

"So you know how this feels? The sensation you'll get when I rub my thumb over this little bit right here?"

She gasped as he moved it back and forth. "A little," she admitted.

He leaned in to kiss her, slipping his tongue in her mouth and mimicking the same rhythm of his middle finger. As he explored her, he felt something pliable against the top of his finger and felt his balls tighten in response.

He decided not to let her know just yet the secret he'd just uncovered, but realized there was something she needed to do before this could any further.

He removed his hand, resting it on her hip, and a small whine escaped her throat as he broke their kiss.

"Why'd you stop?" she asked, her voice husky with desire.

"I just realized there's some loose ends you need to tie up."

Her face contorted as she tried to decipher his meaning. And then she understood. "Dallas?"

He nodded. "I'm already a sleazy old man, I'd really prefer to not also be someone who sleeps with someone else's girl."

"You are killing me right now," she said.

He smirked at her and grabbed her phone from where he'd tossed it on the nightstand. As she unlocked it and opened her messages, an evil idea popped into his head.

She thought about how she could phrase it by text without being too cold.

"Are you texting him?" he asked, positioning himself lower on the bed so he wasn't in the way of her arms.

"Yeah, just trying to think of—oh my god!" she screamed in surprise as he bit her nipple, yanking it up away from her body and then dropping it to do the same to the other. He chuckled at her reaction and then began kissing down her body.

"Shh...you need to focus on your words. Let him down gently and, uh, I'll go down gently, too."

"Y-you'll what?" She panted as his tongue circled her belly button.

He stopped as her eyes squeezed shut from his kisses. She opened them to find him staring up at her.

"If you want me to keep going, you need to keep typing."

"This is so unlike you."

"Is it though? I'm keeping you from feeling guilty about what we are doing while another man thinks he still has a chance to make things right with you."

She grinned.

"Besides, he made you cry last night and so honestly I don't feel that bad about advising you to officially end it."

He could see her mind working as she gazed at him and could tell she was about to blame herself, so he dipped his head back down and kissed the skin just above the top of her small, curly mound.

She gasped and bucked against him.

"Finish typing," he whispered against her skin, and then moved himself to the end of the bed between her legs.

But she completely froze as she realized what he wanted to do. "O-okay," she stammered and tried to concentrate on her phone.