I sealed the copy in the box, smacked a shipping label on it, and sat it aside.
When he heard a slight roll of thunder, Tater rested his head on my thigh as I sat at the desk to check the weather. I scritched him between his ears with my left hand as I worked the mouse in my right to check on the track of Brandi’s last leg for the sequence. I smiled in relief when I saw her flight was already on the ground at Lambert.
I occupied some time by penning some more personal acknowledgments to family and other friends into more books, and boxed them up as well.
Rain is going to make commute nasty. Be home as soon as I can read the iMessage from Brandi fifteen minutes later.
I looked out one of the windows and the clouds looked ominous and dark. A louder clap of thunder led Tater to hunker down in his crate.
Drive carefully. I’ll have dinner waiting when you get here.
😘
Forty-five minutes later I heard the garage door opening.
“Hey, Baby!” I said as she approached me.
“I missed you,” she said, settling herself against me with a warm, tender embrace.
“I missed you, too,” I said before kissing her softly.
It was a kiss of reconnection and reunion.
Tater did his best to wedge himself between the two of us until he got his greeting from his “mother.”
“It smells good in here,” she said, placing her overcoat on the tree by the door. “What’s for dinner?”
I removed a lid from a pot. “Fettuccine alfredo with chicken. There’s a baguette in the oven that’ll be ready in about five minutes.”
“Sounds delicious,” she said with another kiss.
I plated our dinner. We sat at the bar height counter for most casual meals.
“How was the sequence?” I asked before I brought my first forkful of twirled pasta and sauce to my watering mouth.
“Pretty easy, actually. The crew seemed to mesh really well. We had a good time together. Both the FO and the purser had crazy senses of humor. They were fun to chat with. It’s too bad crews are assigned basically randomly. I wouldn’t mind one bit flying with all of them again.”
“I know y’all have a no-fly list kind of thing, but no favorites list? Hell. This is the social media era of likes and followers. Airlines should do the same thing. Call the home office, Brandi. Be an influencer. Get them on board.”
She chuckled at my urging.
“Nope, about the only way people finagle that is if their seniority is high enough and they all bid the same lines. Then they have a better chance of being crewed together again. Otherwise, it’s largely coincidence and a damn-near impossibility in any regard of getting all six of us back aboard.”
She went into more detail about her four-day three-night sequence as we finished dinner.
“How’s book four coming along?” she asked as we cleared the counter and began the task of hand washing the rest of the dishes.
“I think I might have cursed myself when you called from Houston.”
“Oh? Why?” she asked.
“I told you I wrote a ton on Sunday when you called, which I did, but I wound up sending more than half of it into the incomplete ideas bin. I’ve kinda hit a block because I think I’m writing around an untenable angle. I’m a little spooked, to be honest. Signing a contract to include six books might have been a dumb idea.”
“Come on, Rob. Stop diminishing yourself. I’ll be right here beside you wherever we go.”
“Oh!” I yelped. “I almost forgot!”
I went to the office to retrieve a certain something.
“Here it is,” I said, handing Brandi the first ARC I’d pulled from the boxes.
She brought it to her nose and grinned. She slowly read what I’d written in it more than an hour before.
“I love you so much, Rob,” she sniffled. “Thank you. Your words are so kind.”
“It’s all true,” I said, opening my arms for her.
She whispered in my ear after lightly nibbling it, “Someone’s getting laid.”
“Oh?” I whispered back. “Might it be Mark Wright?”
“I don’t know about that,” she purred. “But I’m pretty sure Grant Robins is. Dishes can wait because I can’t.”
She held my hand and led me to our bedroom.
Her suggestion earlier that morning of something was an absolute understatement. While she wore a bra under her uniform’s blouse, she wore nothing under her slacks. Her surprise was revealed as she slowly lowered them beyond her bottom. The vocalizations I made as she slowly disrobed were unintelligible even to me.
“Come here, Baby,” she whispered. “I’ve missed you.”
Again, our first kisses were ones of welcome and of affection. Holding her naked body next to mine made my earlier worry and self-doubt fade into the background.
“You’d better get your clothes off before I rip them from you,” she warned. “The way you’re kissing me has made me quite horny.”
Before I did, I encouraged her to recline at the foot of the bed. I nudged at her thighs, tacitly asking her to open them. I knelt between her legs and smelled her. Goosebumps rushed over wide expanses of my skin. Intense memories flooded my brain of the first time I’d experienced Brandi in that way.
It was at our hotel the night before our wedding when I begged her to offer me a hint. That moment, mere minutes before midnight, my brain went haywire. Through her clothing, her feminine fragrance was heady, rich, and undeniably arousing. She’d also revealed, mere hours before, she’d been so horny she had to escape between rehearsal and dinner to change her panties because she’d been fantasizing about our wedding night. I never admitted to my wife that I had to fight the urge to rub one out in the shower when I’d returned to my room the night before we wed. The cold water did its job.
I nuzzled my nose through the curls on my wife’s mons. The texture had entrapped me the first time I’d run my fingers through it. It was such a beautiful golden hue. She tilted her pelvis upwards and groaned audibly when I placed my tongue atop her clitoris and massaged it.
“Robin— oh!” she groaned when her orgasm arrived.
I stood from my crouch and removed my own clothes. We became one flesh.
“I adore you, Brandi,” I whimpered as she accepted me into her.
In mere minutes, clutching my wife wherever my hands happened to be, I spent myself in glorious, rapturous spasms.
“I love you so much, Robin,” she whispered into my ear while comfortingly tickling my back with her fingernails as my insensate self slowly returned to Earth. “I know I might say this to often, but… I’m still so happy you and I managed to connect.”
“Thank you, Brandi,” I whispered. “You mean the world to me. If not for you…”
“You don’t need to say it, Baby. I understand. You owe me nothing. Just think. Five years after you peed on my fence, here we are.”
I burst out laughing.
The dishes remained unwashed until the next day.
BRANDI
Friday, March 6, 2020 12:08pm
“Oh, wow! It’s turned into such a gorgeous day!” I exclaimed from outside the opened back door. “We should go for a walk.”
Rob joined me and looked at the sky.
“Absolutely. Let me go save the file and start a backup, put on my shoes, and grab my jacket. It hasn’t been this nice since like, what, October?”
I did many of the same things. Tater’s nub wagged happily when I pulled his leash from the drawer and attached it to his collar, and became more animated when Rob and I approached the front door.