Kareem’s still laughing as he takes her hand and her arm, lifting her back to the bench, then sitting next to her. He checks the status of her knee. “I didn’t mean to scare you that time.”
“Well, I guess you must be naturally scary, then! What are you even doing here? You’re not even my bag driver.”
“I just felt bad about before, I don’t want you to worry about getting me into trouble or anything. If you’re hurt…”
“It’s super not a big deal,” she assures him. “I fall down all the time. I probably would have fallen there even if you didn’t honk at me, so don’t worry about it.”
His smile is softer, softer than she’s seen it, the humorous edge gone. His hand is just as soft as it comes to rest on her thigh. “Is there any way I can make it up to you?” he asks.
It would no doubt surprise many of her friends and co-workers that this Letter Carrier has a go to head-only answer for when someone asks things like ‘Do you need anything?’ ‘Can I get you anything?’ or ‘Is there any way I can make this up to you?’ Nervous as she is beneath his gaze, an exciting sort of nervous that ramps the stupidity up to eleven, she says, “Diiiiiiiick?”
“Dick?” he repeats.
“Mm,” she says. She likes the way he says it.
“You are suggesting that to make amends for scaring you, you would like… dick,” he says. She really likes how he says dick. “My dick?”
She clears her throat nervously. “That was the thought, but now that you mention it, it’s kind of presumptuous on my part, like blackmail almost. I certainly don’t want to make it seem like you need to buy my silence with, you know…” He looks baffled, so she says it again, “Dick.”
“Your face is very red right now.”
“I bet,” she says, her voice kind of squeaky.
He puts his hand on her shoulder blade and chills skate up her back. “Are you suggesting that having sex with you would be an appropriate thing to do to make up for the honking?”
“No, I just said I wasn’t suggesting that,” she says, feeling her face get redder still. “Because it would be…”
He kisses her and her nerves keep her from responding until he’s drawing back uncertainly. She stands and walks to the open door, to push it shut. It can’t be locked from inside, but she leans against it as she turns back. This leaves only a tiny crack of light from where the bolt holds it out of the frame, and that spilling in from the apartment building’s lobby from the little windows in the mailboxes.
He stands, too, approaching her slowly. “It would be like… robbing a bank, and when I get caught the police hand me all the money I left behind.”
She bites her lip, glad it’s dark because her face is on fire. On second thought, she begins to worry it could be glowing. “So you want to…?”
He gives her that smile, and she’s glad that she has the heavy metal door to prop her up as he leans toward her. He touches her face as his mouth comes against hers again, gently, and this time she has the wherewithal to part her lips, tilting her head up to meet him more fully. Another step forward, and his body is pressed to hers. His hand slips back, beneath her thick braid, cupping her neck. His other is at her waist, his thumb resting inside the belt of her satchel. She opens the large buckle, then the other smaller buckles, so she can push the thick padded straps off her shoulders and let the satchel fall to the floor.
His hands move down, around her, the movement of his lips and his tongue becoming more passionate as he lifts her legs around him. She grips his broad shoulders excitedly, trying to keep kissing, but the feeling of being in his arms makes her grin and he draws back a moment.
He smiles back, “What?” He has this way he says it, throwing his chin crookedly upward, that makes her smile wider.
“You’re really strong,” she says.
“You think?” he replies modestly, but he flexes his arms, clearly pleased. One doesn’t spend hours at the gym without the hope of gaining appreciation. He kisses her again, pressing her against the door and she likes the feeling of being squeezed by his bulk. She likes the feeling of his hair between her fingers and his scruffy cheek beneath her thumb. She really likes the musky scent of him halfway through his workday mingling with faintly sweet cologne and a hint of tobacco smoke. Every time he stimulates another sense it dawns on her again that this is really happening, and she smiles.
His hand ventures into her high-visibility shirt, smiling back at her. “What?” he asks again.
“Nothing,” she replies, reaching down for her belt. She ducks through her uniform shirt, losing her hat with it, and lets them fall. To keep it fair, and because she has imagined it a thousand times, she pulls his shirt off, too.
“What?” he asks softly as she looks at his bare chest, taking in every detail.
“What, nothing,” she says. “What?”
“You look very happy.”
“You’re very hot,” she explains.
He chuckles and kisses her softly, “You too,” he says. His left hand finds her right breast, tracing her hardening nipple through her sports bra, his right hand stays beneath her butt.
She pulls her belt off, letting it fly toward the wall, and her route keys drop with a clunk. Her button is open, and her zipper is down. His hands go in around the back, gripping her butt tighter and sliding the navy-blue fabric down, but they reach an impasse, her legs reluctant to unwrap themselves from his torso for the moment required to remove her shorts. He lifts her, carries her to the bench, only two steps away, and lowers her carefully onto it, negotiating with her legs by offering a deeper kiss and a sensual massage of her sensitive breasts.
Finally, she straightens one leg so he can pull it up ahead of him and slide her shorts at least half free, knocking one shoe off in the process. He grins as he leans down to her, kisses her jaw, and puts his arms around her again. Pressed together crotch to lips, she can feel his manhood bulging eagerly with his jeans, throbbing against her belly. She reaches for it, and he looks at her with a smile that robs her of breath a moment. She can’t believe she’s so close to that smile.
A shifting in the light beyond the boxes should have warned them, but they aren’t paying attention to anything but each other. The Letter Carrier jolts to awareness when one of the mailboxes opens, fortunately too pinned to go rolling off the bench.
“Hello?” calls a frail voice through a box in the second row. “Are you there, dear?”
“Yeah,” she calls back, and Kareem’s eyes widen slightly in surprise, perhaps alarm. “Hi, Mrs. Smith. I have your package, just give me a second, okay?”
“Oh, thank you, dear,” Mrs. Smith says.
The Letter Carrier motions with her head that Kareem should get off her, and he isn’t fast enough so she hisses, “Get off a second?” as she shoves his shoulders.
He rolls to the side to let her up and she sits for the relay bag, snagging the tag first out of force of habit, but her satchel clip isn’t an easy reach so she discards it and pulls the drawstring hurriedly. Kareem leans against her, his lips at her neck, watching her work.