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The apartment was silent when Carmen woke up. She listened for a moment from the security of the nest of blankets, expecting to hear Sawyer in the bathroom or kitchen, but there was nothing. The clock on the bedside table read ten-thirty. Carmen winced.
“Frig.” She rolled onto her back and pulled the comforter up over her head. The move blocked the light but not the events of the night before from her pounding head. The idea of hiding was tempting, but sadly getting up was becoming a necessity. She needed to pee. With a sigh, she spilled out of Sawyer’s bed and grumbled her way across the hall to the bathroom.
She eyed the shower but decided she was not yet ambitious enough for such ministrations. A quick search through the top drawer uncovered a hairbrush and toothpaste. Carmen wet the bristles, worked the brush through the knots in her hair, and twisted the whole mess of it into a long braid. Using her finger, she scrubbed toothpaste into her teeth then bared them in the mirror.
After finishing those menial morning routines, Carmen risked a peek in the mirror. Old mascara merged with the blue marks of sleep deprivation on her pale, freckled skin. The bruise had faded, no longer a blaring beacon across her face, but a sick yellowish green. A lingering statement. Scowling at herself, Carmen used a bit of hand lotion to scrub away the make-up.
If she could find deodorant, she would be safe to run into Sawyer in the kitchen. She pulled open the second drawer and poked around. Painkillers, Band-Aids, gauze, medicated ointments. How often did this guy hurt himself?
The third and final drawer revealed toilet paper and a massive box of condoms. Carmen stared at them for a contemplative moment, considered checking the expiration date, but slammed the drawer shut instead.
“Crazy person,” she muttered at herself, but her self-scorn did not stop her from tugging at the bevelled edge of the mirror. The cabinet swung open. Three packs of toothbrushes and deodorant. She applied the latter. A bottle on the top shelf caught her eye. After glancing at the door, she picked it up, rattling the container softly. It was still full. The label read Trazodone with a date marked for three years ago. No refills. Carmen chewed her lip a moment, studying the tiny bottle before setting it back on the shelf.
Carmen floated around the apartment, out of place and on edge with no idea what to do with herself. Being in Sawyer’s apartment without him was odd, and her failure to answer Marcy’s text ate at her nerves. She would be worried, and that meant she would grow angrier by the second. An angry Marcy was a force to be reckoned with.
After pacing around the living room a few times, Carmen decided to look for Sawyer’s laptop so she could email her sister. She found it in his office. A tiny, glorified closet off the hallway nearly full of dust-coated boxes. In one corner sat a rocking chair, a faded blue quilt folded over the seat.
Cautiously, Carmen lifted the blanket and ran her fingers over the satin edging. Tiny rows of stitches marched around the seams like ants, joining the perfect squares of a teddy bear and balloon fabrics to one another. Embroidered in red across the centre were Sawyer’s name and birthday. Unexplainable tears pricked at the backs of her eyes as she folded the quilt and returned it to the chair.
The laptop battery icon flashed, and the screen went black. As a pair, Sawyer and she were most negligent electronic users in existence. As Carmen dug for an outlet, her elbow bumped one of the stacked boxes.
“Oh! No, no, no.” The tower did a slow lean and tipped over as she grabbed for it, the contents bulging through the closed flaps and across the carpet as she fumbled.
“Crap.” Carmen bent to scoop everything back into the box and froze. On the top of the pile, a framed, grainy ultrasound photo poked from the cloth carefully wrapped around it. In the corner above the round grey-and-black profile was the name C. Stevenson. Carmen stared at the picture; then, she traced her finger against the snub little nose. She remembered staring at Marcy’s photo, two little peanuts in a fuzzy black and white circle.
Carmen was no expert, but the baby in this photo must have been at least eighteen weeks. Releasing a shaky breath, she swallowed the sudden lump in her throat and set it back in the box. Underneath the frame was a plush blue lamb, the type with only a head and snuggly, cloud-soft blanket for a body. Felix and Griffin still cherished theirs, even at five years old.
Carmen’s breath shuddered. She tucked the lamp around the photo for extra protection. Quickly as possible, she returned everything else to the box and plugged in the computer. She was unsure what the box, or the picture meant, but since Sawyer never mentioned a child, she was certain whatever had happened, there was no happy ending.
****
CARMEN WAS WASHING the dishes from their drinks the night before when Sawyer came up the stairs and into the apartment. She turned as he came in, wondering if the guilt she felt over snooping in his stuff was clear on her face. Was it snooping if it had only happened because of her clumsiness?
“Honey, I’m home,” he crowed, flashing her a wide, infectious grin. Bending to unlace his boots, he looked at her from under his lashes, his nose wrinkling. “You have breakfast on the table yet, woman?”
She stuck her tongue out at him, then promptly retracted it when he growled and stalked across the kitchen toward her.
“I can think of better uses for that tongue than sassing me,” he said, slipping one hand around her waist and pulling her back against him. Carmen gasped in surprise. He had been so chaste as he held her last night, she had wondered if she’d imagined everything that had happened in his truck. There was nothing chaste about him now. A solid length of man, who evidently wanted more than breakfast, pressed against her butt. With a little moan, she arched back, pressing against it.
Sawyer released a pained sound and jerked his hips, grinding the erection against her pyjama-clad bum. Holy shit. Heat spiked through Carmen’s body, collecting between her legs, inches from where he pushed against her. Sawyer’s fingers shifted in her hair, and he lowered his lips to her neck, suckling at the sensitive nape.
“Oh,” she breathed.
“I can’t stop thinking about you yesterday, in my truck. Every time I close my eyes I see you, spread out and wanting my tongue on you.” Sawyer’s voice wrapped around her like silk sheets, and she worried her legs might give out beneath her. She still stood, pinned between him and the kitchen sink, her hands dripping soap suds, extended in front of her.
“Sawyer,” she sobbed, tipping her head so he could run his tongue along her shoulder. He gripped the strap of her tank top in his teeth and tugged it down, his hands still wrapped around her hips, rocking her body back and forth against his. “I want—” She faltered, unable to put into words the wild need he had kindled in her. She had felt nothing like it. Not with Billy, not with anyone. She thought she might combust from his words alone, stroking at her with their brazenness.
“Tell me what you want, Carmen. I need to make you happy.”
She moaned and leaned back into him. One big hand left her hip and slipped into the loose waist of her pants and past the lace of her panties. Carmen whimpered, forgetting her wet hands as she reached back and wrapped her fingers into his hair.
Sawyer’s finger tapped the place where the throbbing had centred, and Carmen gasped, arching into his hand. He rubbed the pad of his pointer finger in small, tight circles. Carmen couldn’t believe how fast he could undo her. Already her knees shook, swirls of heat pooling low in her belly and spreading across her thighs.
“Oh, oh God.” She held on to his hair, the climax building in her until all she could do was give herself over and reach for it.
A loud BZZZZ filled the apartment. Carmen jerked in shock.
“Shit!” Sawyer gasped against her neck. “Not now!”
“What is that?” Carmen choked, still shaking, her body screaming at her not to stop. She wanted to come, not stop.
“A customer downstairs,” Sawyer ground out. “Carmen . . .” His finger pressed and moved once more. “Come for me quick, baby. I’m not leaving you like this.”
“I . . . I can’t. You have to—oh, oh God.” But she could. It spooled from the centre of her, where his fingers massaged, and violently out through her limbs. She turned liquid against him, gasping and trembling as he steadied her. When the sensations eased, he raised her chin with his free hand. He kissed her, hard and fast as another BZZZZ split the air.
“Can you die of horniness?” he asked against her lips. “If so, RIP me.”
“Sawyer, I’m—” She could still feel the hard length of him pressed against her. Twice now he had rocked her with an orgasm the likes of which she’d never known, and she had yet to even touch him in return.
“Shh, don’t you even dream of apologizing to me right now.” He grinned and kissed her again. Stepping back, he turned away, executing a funny little hitch with his pants she could only wonder at. “Duty calls. I’ll see you later, all right.”
“All right.” She watched him lace his boots, feeling the slick heat between her thighs and the lasting tremors moving through her limbs.
“Oh, and, Carm?” Sawyer paused with his hand on the doorknob.
“Yeah?”
“I really enjoy having you here.” The boyish grin nearly stopped her heart, and then he was through the door and thundering down the stairs to the garage.