Page 125 of Let's Kiss and Tell

“Stop.” Lucy places a hand on mine. She guides us off the bed and she gets down on her knees in front of me. She places both of her hands on my aching cock, stroking it, and my eyes shut in pleasure. “Iwant to make you come…and I want to taste it.”

It’s when I feel her plump lips around me that my eyes open and I look down at her. Lucy’s perfect and all it takes is one glance at her on her knees for me to become undone. I let out a grunt, and she pushes me evendeeperdown her throat. As I come, I swear to god I can feel her smiling.

When I’m done, she wipes the corner of her mouth. Placing both of my hands on her cheeks, I pull her up and give her a kiss.

“So, just checking,” I say, “that’s a yes to the new arrangement?”

The next day I’m sitting in my office, working on an article on the downfall of the housing market in Los Angeles, when my phone vibrates.

Lucy:

How did you sleep last night?

Marsh:

Like a baby. You?

Lucy:

Same, but I woke up with a pretty big ache between my legs.

Lucy:

I can barely walk

Marsh:

Don’t flatter me.

Lucy:

A really BIG ache.

Marsh:

What are you doing tonight?

Lucy:

You, hopefully.

Marsh:

That can be arranged.

Lucy:

Come to my place after work.

I simply “like” the message and put my phone back on my desk. If I continue, I’ll lose control of what happens below my belt. I get back to writing and look at my assigned stories for the week. There’s no surprise that my workload is a lot; in fact, I would be offended if it wasn’t. But now that I’m seeing Lucy after work and I might be seeing her a lot during nonwork hours, I start to feel a tinge of stress.

In my entire career, I don’t recall a time where I was worried about working late. I’m programmed to work at all hours of the day. Whether it be coming home from the office past eightp.m.,spending all weekend in my home office, or skipping out on a friend’s birthday to turn around breaking news. That comes with the territory. News stories need to be told.

But now, there’s an unfamiliar urgency to wrap by fivep.m.Because whatever is going to be waiting for me after work can’t wait. I don’t want it to wait.

I put my phone notifications onDo Not Disturband set an alarm for an hour and a half. I end up getting through two stories: the one about the Los Angeles housing market and another one about the millions of gallons of untreated sewage and industrial chemicals flowing from Tijuana into southern San Diego County.Something I’ve been doing lately is keeping a separate document on my laptop that holds alternate perspectives for each of my stories. What angle would I approach if I wasn’t writing each story fairly and accurately? If I wasn’t understanding an issue from multiple angles?

My bylines are not opinion-based, they are hard news. There are guidelines that need to be protected and that is how I conduct my research and writing. But when Lucy opened the idea of making note of how Ifeel,I took that and ran with it. Of course, not in anything I’ve written forThe Journal,but I’ve been making notes here and there of things I wouldwantto say but can’t. For example: Instead of saying, “Research suggests that even breathing the San Diego air may be harmful, as toxic particles in the water have the potential to become airborne,” I could say, “As if there wasn’t enough reason for people to be worried about the state of our future, an act as simple as breathing is now something we should all fear.”