They showered, ate a quick breakfast and as they pulled into the familiar driveway, the weight of nostalgia settled in Leigh's chest. Kurt tugged her hand into his lap and gave it a squeeze. She blinked back moisture and gave him a breezy smile.
"I’ve got an appointment with the realtor today," he said. "We could walk through the place with him while you make a list of things to sell.”
"It'll be easier for me than Marion." A home sorted through and catalogued, pieces discarded. Her heart beat a tattoo as she looked at the lovely old home. "I want my own family to grow up in one just like this." The veranda beckoned, deep and cool in summer, protective in winter. The trees were large with limbs strong enough for tire swings.
"This was a great place for children. I was too old when I came here to hang around much, but all the little kids loved the yard and the big kitchen table." He subsided as he, too, let nostalgia claim him.
As she walked through the place again, Leigh noted the flowered wallpaper in the upper hallway was exactly as she remembered; faded yellow roses growing in straight lines up the wall. The smell was different. She sniffed. Closed in at the least, musty at the worst.
“We’ll have to put in some elbow grease to get the house ready,” she told Kurt when they reached Marion’s room. He’d listened to decorating and staging ideas without interruption. In fact, he'd been extremely quiet throughout the tour with the realtor.
She threw back Marion’s heavy drapes and opened both windows that overlooked the street. Seeing Kurt in deep conversation, she felt a stab of want so strong she could have swooned with it.
She grabbed a scatter rug and shook it out the window. Kurt caught the motion and laughed up at her. "We'll need to clean from top to bottom," she called out to him.
He waved. “I’ll be right up to help.”
She shook the life out of the scatter rug, coughing with the dust. When she turned into the room again, she found Kurt against the door frame, grinning at her.
“I tried six months ago to get her a maid service but she wouldn't hear of it," he said in his rough sensual voice. An underlying burr of desire made her moisten.
"How about some hot teenage bedroom sex?"
"You mean the way I wanted back then?"
But she'd already grabbed his hand to tug him down the hall to her old room. The furniture was more scuffed, the paint and curtains updated by a decade, but memories Kurt as a teenager were fresh and tart. "I thought of this when the realtor opened the door to this room."
"Me, too." He grinned when she kicked off her shoes and shucked her jeans. "Did you think of this back then?"
"Eventually. At first I wrote your name a million times in my journal, but by fifteen I'd moved into hot steamy dreams." She lifted the coverlet on the narrow bed. "Not a lot of room, but we'll manage."
He followed her down onto the mattress, each squeak of the bedframe a blatant reminder that they were both bigger now. Bigger, more needful, more aware and infinitely more in tune.
She giggled. "This is hot, but loud."
"I'll take your mind off loud, just let me slide down –" his bristled chin started a firestorm between her legs– "yeah, that's right," his tongue found her, "so delicious, like strawberry cream . . . "
He swept her up and off the bed, out of the room, into the heavens with his tongue and fingers, while she let her teenaged fantasies play out behind her eyes. Kurt, climbing into her window, Kurt, stealing kisses in the kitchen, Kurt, taking her in dirty mysterious ways that thrilled her teenaged body into early panting orgasm.
"Some day, will you climb in through the bedroom window?"
He looked up her body, mouth still working her. His eyes crinkled at the corners as he grinned. He chuckled with his tongue on her clit.
Electric.
She shuddered into her orgasm and swore that one day, she'd pull out her old cheerleading costume and meet him under the bleachers.
An hour later, sated and relaxed, Kurt leaned over Leigh in the tiny, squeaky bed. She stretched out in languid satiation her curves fitted against him. He didn't care that her feet were cold and tucked between his calves. He'd kept her feet in the air for most of the time spent in this bed, so payback was only fair. "Are you sure you want to leave?"
"It's a good promotion. But it would mean at least three years in Japan."
He studied her lovely, expressive face from her slight widow's peak to her determined chin. Her eyes clouded at the mention of three years.
She shifted to slide under him while awareness rose along with his cock. It wasn't their omnipresent attraction this time, but the knowledge that this would soon be over.
He couldn't see anything beyond her leaving. And he didn't want to lose her again. "What if I said I'd buy this house?"
"What? Why?"
As he spoke without thought, he filled in a new future. One with her in it. "The market's hit an all time low and I'll pay more for the house than anyone else. Marion will be better off, and we'll keep the house in the family, so to speak."
"It might be nice to imagine you raising children here. You'll be a great dad." Again her eyes clouded and he heard a soft hitch in her voice she tried to cover with a smile.
"I said we, Leigh. To hell with Japan. Stay here. Let's give this a shot." He pulled back to see her reaction.
Her eyes couldn't go any wider. Knockout eyes, killer smile, a glow that lit her from the inside. He read her acceptance before her mouth could move.
And then he kissed her, deep, hard, gentle and coaxing. He kept his eyes shut tight so she wouldn't see the wetness he felt. His hand found her wetness, stroked those velvet petals until they blossomed.
"Kurt," she breathed in between kisses, "you know how to rock a girl's world."
He pressed his fingers into her holding her deep, weeping channel. "Answer me, Leigh. I'll even climb in your window." Every week, if he had to. He rubbed her until she caught her breath.
"Three years is a long time to be gone."
He nuzzled her ear. "And this has been a long time coming for us. Try with me, Leigh."
After her initial surprise, she leaned into him, angling her head for better contact. She reached around his back and held on, smoothing her hands across the muscles, heating him through.
Her scent rose, warm and flush and he laughed with the headiness. "Let me take you home, little girl," he murmured.
Home. Home is where the heart is. And her heart had always been here. But with Kurt making it clear he didn't want her she'd forced herself to look for a future elsewhere.
"You're serious? You want me to stay?"
––––––––
"We’ll make a home together, a life in the house where it all started. I've never been more serious."
She shook her head no. His eyes turned dark at the negative shake. Thunder gathered in his expression, until she realized he’d misinterpreted. "I'm shaking my head because I can't believe it. You sent me away. I only left because I couldn't bear to be here without you."
"No Japan?"
"No Japan."
With that, he laughed from the bottom of his barrel chest and lifted her into his arms for a deep bear hug and whispered the words she’d longed to hear. “I love you. I have for years.”
Her heart kicked back into even pumps. “Even when I was twelve?”
“Especially then. You were honest, and funny and smart. The way you felt about me was written all over your face, all the time. But I was old enough to know the time wasn’t right for us.”
“So, you waited?”
“And waited, and waited. Then, when I heard about your promotion, I couldn’t wait any longer. I may have exaggerated Marion's reaction to the move, but I had to take drastic measures.”
"But you said she cried."
"She did. But I'm not sure she went to her sister's for any reason other than to give us time alone."
"Her sister was always fit and healthy so I wondered that, too."
"But just in case this move is difficult for her, I plan to have her old home movies transferred to DVD. We'll watch them together."
"Oh, Kurt. That's very sweet." She slid her hand to his ready cock. He shuddered with the contact. She squeezed the length until he groaned with need. "You made me wait a long time. You deserve to be punished." She squeezed him again and slid her hand up and down his stiff rod.
He kissed her deeply. “A long time . . . .” He pulled her under him, eager and ready.
She opened her legs and felt the press of heated flesh between her moist lips and sighed with contentment as he slid inside. “But worth the wait.”
The End