Second Chance Pass

I’m ready now, she wanted to say.

He kissed her forehead. “I’ll give you a call. We’ll set something up—get together soon.”

“Please,” she said, very conscious of the fact that she had been the one calling him since the baby’s birth. And then she watched him go. So, I may not think of him as a brother, but he still thinks of me as his best friend’s wife. She feared that might never change.

Tommy and Brenda had gone to a lot of trouble to arrange a whole night alone at the Booth house while the general and Vanni were both away in Grants Pass, but all that preplanning backfired. Brenda was edgy. Maybe scared. Not ready for it. Tom could tell after fifteen minutes that this wasn’t going the way he thought it would. The way she had said she wanted it to.

So, he throttled back. “Relax,” he said. “We’ll just watch a movie. We don’t have to do anything.”

“You’ll be disappointed,” Brenda said.

“No, I won’t,” he lied. “I told you a hundred times—we’re not going all the way until you’re ready. We’ll just watch a movie and curl up. We’ll sleep in our clothes. I’m not going to push you.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what makes me like this. I thought I’d made up my mind.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Bren. Not to me. I like that you’re giving it a lot of thought. I want you to be sure, because afterward, you have to be happy about it, not all screwed up and guilty. There’s no other way it can be, not for us. Since we’re in for the night—should we pilfer a couple of the general’s beers and put on a movie?”

“Yeah,” she laughed.

“You pick the movie, I’ll pick the beer.”

Of course it had to be a chick flick; a real groaner at that. But what the hell, if it made Brenda happy, it made him happy. Halfway through the movie and the beer, the kissing started and he thought, God bless chick flicks. They might be boring, but they sure did warm up the girls.

They reclined on the sofa and pressed their bodies tightly against each other, kissing wildly, openmouthed, tongues going nuts. He got hard, of course. By now she was used to that and she liked it, grinding against him very nicely, getting some good feelings of her own. This sort of thing had been happening between them for a while now, and it was extremely satisfying. And while Tom didn’t want her to do anything she’d regret, he definitely wanted to try out what he’d learned on page ninety-seven. Shew—the magic button. He just wanted to touch the magic button one time. Just for a second. Just to see what happened.

He lifted her shirt, unhooked her bra and felt her soft breasts. She loved it when he did that—it caused her to moan and wiggle. She was getting so hot that he wondered…“Bren,” he said breathlessly. He put a hand over her crotch on the outside of her clothes. “Can I just touch you here? Just with my hand? Nothing else—just my hand?”

“Uh-huh,” she said against his lips. “If you want to.”

He thought he might die, he was so excited. He opened the snap on her jeans and slipped his hand down and down, slowly and gently, over her flat tummy, over her soft mound, just a little further, into a place that was dark, secret, hot and damp, looking for a spot described on page ninety-seven as the trip-wire for the female orgasm. He felt a small, hard knot and when he made contact she gasped and pushed against his hand. The very second he made contact, it electrified her. “Tommy,” she said in a weak whisper.

“Yeah, baby,” he whispered against her lips. “That feels nice, doesn’t it?”

“Ooooh,” she moaned, moving back and forth, up and down. “God…”

Go for it, Brenda, he thought. Just go for it. He rubbed a little harder, reached a little further, making contact with her opening with one finger just as his other finger stayed with the magic button. He gave it a great deal of personal attention—teasing her, softly touching, roughly rubbing, all according to the suggestions in the book. The whimpering sounds she made were almost as if she was crying; panting, squirming, writhing. And then, kabam! She froze, her breath caught, and against his hand he felt the most amazing clenching sensation. “Oh God,” he whispered. “Oh my God.”

“Tom,” she said in a breath. An exhausted, happy breath. She collapsed in his embrace. “How did you know to do that? That wonderful thing you just did?”

He was not about to say his sister tipped him off. “Everyone knows,” he lied. He wondered if half the male population was as dismally uninformed as he had been. “Come on,” he said, getting off the couch. “We’re going to get more comfortable and do that some more.”

“I’m not sure I can even stand up,” she said, limp and satisfied.

“Come on,” he laughed, pulling her up.

He took her to his room, the chick flick still playing in the background. They fell onto his bed, kissing. He pulled off his sweater and then hers, holding her close with her breasts against his chest and thought—I have waited forever to feel this. It didn’t take him long to coax her out of her jeans, because she wanted his hand on her again. His pants coming off was another story. When he started to remove them, she said, “I’m not sure.”

“Let me know when you’re sure, because I’m pretty much past sure…”

“Maybe you could just put it close. Touch me there a little bit. I mean, don’t put it in yet, but touch it there a little bit, let me get used to the idea…”

“I can do that,” he said, but he was positive what she was asking for was beyond the realm of possibility. Whatever, it got him out of his pants, and he was desperate.

They’d never gotten this far before, but she had always said she wanted the first time to be special and if what she had out on the couch wasn’t special, he just couldn’t imagine how much more special it could get.

He got a condom out of the drawer and ripped it out of the package. “Brenda, we’re gonna play it real safe, honey. We don’t want to get too close and not be double safe, huh?”

“Okay,” she said, laying back, eyes closed, ready to be pleasured again.

He laughed in spite of himself. “You like that, don’t you?”

“I like that.”

Sheathed and ready, feeling as if he didn’t unload this gun he’d be walking on three legs for the rest of his life, he lowered himself to touch her in the place where he might enter her if he ever got permission, and then he put his fingers on the magic button and went to work. This thing was like a miracle, he thought. Response was instant. Faster than instant. She was moaning, writhing, panting. And he was dying, barely touching her, holding out, holding back. The strain was starting to make his head pound. He was in complete misery while she clearly neared ecstasy once again. Finally he just lost his mind. “Let me,” he begged. “God, Brenda. Let me in.”

She tilted her pelvis up a little and he slid forward. He put a hand under her bum while he massaged with his fingers. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” she said.

He slid into her slowly and discovered it was everything he dreamed it would be. He was surrounded by this tight, hot, wonderful body, cinching down on him. But he wasn’t crazy, he wasn’t letting go of that miracle button. He worked it, and beneath him she went crazy. It didn’t take long before she rose against him, froze, gasped and the spasms he had felt against his hand before were nothing compared to what he felt when she tightened around him while he was right there, inside. She went off like a missile and, although she might have been totally unaware, so did he. It was the most amazing experience of his young male life. It shook him up so bad his whole body trembled. He pulsed until his brain was emptied.

“Ooooh,” she said.

That was how much more special, he thought. And he croaked, “Good God.”

“Oh, Tom,” she said, not unhappily. “We did it.”

“We did,” he said, breathless.

“That was…Holy cow, Tommy. That was awesome.”

“Awesome,” he agreed, almost faint.

“Let’s do it again,” she said.

And that’s when he learned that for women, all things are possible, and for men, time is required. There was recovery involved. Women, apparently, could just hop back on that bus, while the men were left to deal with a flat tire. He committed that to memory—these gorgeous creatures needed no time to get ready again. “You might have to give me a couple of minutes.”

“How long?” she asked impatiently.

“Well, Brenda, we could always time it…”

She giggled. “Did you know it was going to be that wonderful?”

“If I had known, I don’t think I could have waited as long as I did.”

“I love you,” she whispered.