Five Minute Man: A Contemporary Love Story Read online

  “Fuck, I missed you,” Adam said, breaking away from her mouth, breathing every bit as heavily as she was.

  “Less talking,” she demanded, pulling him down onto the strategically placed nest of blankets on the floor in front of the fire. She didn’t think he’d noticed, consuming her as he was, but she was wrong.

  “Expecting someone?” he growled, settling his heavy weight over her. She was prevented from answering right away as his hand cupped her possessively between the legs and his mouth created a trail of liquid fire beneath her jaw, down the column of her neck, finally latching hard onto her breast. God, she needed him so fucking much. More than she had ever needed anyone or anything in her entire life.

  “Hoping,” she breathed, tangling her fingers in his hair and pulling him closer. “Praying. Wishing.”

  He grunted his approval, releasing one nipple with a loud pop and roughly taking the other one. There was no slow seduction here, nor did she want it. She wanted it rough, hard, and fast. She wanted her Five Minute Man.

  She felt his finger stroking her folds, once, twice, before plunging deep inside her. Her body arched up, offering itself to him if he would only just keep doing that.

  Seconds later, she was gasping, already on the precipice, when he replaced his skilled fingers with the blunt head of his turgid shaft. “Yes!” she half-cried, half-screamed, needing him inside her more than she needed her next breath.

  Adam obliged, plunging into her with one powerful thrust. Her sex clenched around him greedily, starved for that which only he could provide.

  “Fuck!” he roared out above her. “Forget five minutes, baby. I’m not going to last five fucking seconds...”

  Epilogue

  Nine Months Later

  Holly shifted in her chair again, trying to relieve some of the ache that had been plaguing her lower back for the last two hours. She smiled and greeted the seemingly unending stream of people lined up to get her to sign their books. Closing her eyes briefly, she tried to imagine Adam’s strong hands massaging her, feeling instantly better.

  As of that morning, Five Minute Man had been among the top ten most requested downloads on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The recent publicity had resulted in a surge of demand for her previously published books as well. Holly declined nearly all the appearance requests she received on a daily basis now, but this was a special favor to the local bookstore that had been supporting her and showcasing her works all along.

  “I loved this,” confided one rosy-cheeked grandmother to Holly, her crystal blue eyes sparkling. Eyes that looked remarkably like her son’s.

  “Too bad it’s not real,” sighed a much younger, doe-eyed woman in line behind her.

  “Oh, but it is,” the older woman said emphatically before Holly could comment.

  “Really?” the brunette asked doubtfully.

  “Oh, yes. It was like that for me and my Charlie,” she beamed, then turned to Holly. “And you, too, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Holly confirmed, smiling back at her. Knowing that her mother-in-law had read their personal (and occasionally explicit) love story probably would have been more awkward if the woman wasn’t such an open-minded, self-professed fan of Holly’s work. The two had often chatted late into the night about possible plots and themes and alpha males, while Adam and his father puttered around the cottage. The fact that Adam’s mother was here now, when Holly’s own mother was too embarrassed to do the same, warmed her heart.

  Of course, some of that might have to do with the fact that Holly was already three days past her due date and Adam had enlisted his entire family’s assistance to ensure she was never out of their sight. He was so protective that way, and Holly loved him for it.

  “Wow. You are so lucky.”

  “Yes,” Holly agreed, rubbing her distended belly as the first real labor pain hit. “Yes, I am.”

  Author’s Note

  You know, it’s funny where the seed for a story originates sometimes. In my case, I never know where my next idea will come from. Sometimes it starts as a dream; other times, I hear a song and the lyrics create an alternate reality. In the case of “Five Minute Man”, the impetus was the following blurb on the Urban Dictionary website:

  ass-tag convention

  word of the day: September 21, 2013

  The accepted standard that the tagged side of a towel is for designated nether-regions while the non-tagged side is reserved for the face and hair. This convention is used to avoid cross-contamination and is to be assumed as general practice. Practical in situations where one must use a borrowed or foreign towel.

  "I forgot my towel in the shower and had to use my roommates. Hopefully he observes the ass-tag convention."

  Let me just say, I’m a big fan of the site. With three teenagers in the house, it’s a parental guide of epic potential. An unlikely source of literary fiction perhaps, but hey, if I could create “Faerie Godmother” based on the lyrics of Alice Cooper’s song Poison, it’s not inconceivable that I could come up with a short story based on this. I maintain that UrbanDictionary.com is a virtual wealth of untapped secret hipster knowledge. And while I can guarantee that none of my stories will ever feature an Alabama Tuna Melt or a Dirty Sanchez, I reserve the right to surf and peruse at my leisure.

  So how did something as innocuous as the “ass-tag convention” become a story? Well, it’s just one of those things that kind of stuck in my head. First, I wondered what, if any, harm I was bringing to my family by being one of those women who tends to cut the tags off of things. I mean, it’s kind of impossible to have an ass-tag convention if there’s no tag, right? But then I soothed my own guilty conscience by telling myself that with a husband, three teenagers, and a massive Labrador who thinks he’s a human – wiping a clean behind is probably one of the least offensive uses of a towel (and it’s not like anyone ever actually hangs them up to be used again anyway).

  Guilty conscience assuaged, I began to wonder who would actively employ the ass-tag convention. Male or female? Young or old? Someone concerned with hygiene, obviously. Someone not overly touchy-feelie, who likes to set definitive personal limits. A character started to form in my mind – a woman, past youthful ambivalence chronologically and on the cusp of middle-age mentally. Adorably prickly but soft at heart. Pretty and natural but not beautiful. A woman who, through both nature and nurture, preferred to distance herself from the world, to create and be content with her own little bubble of existence.

  As with all my stories, I added in a few snippets from my own life. My love of animals, and my profound belief that almost any dog is worth a dozen humans. Regular GNOs with my BFF to keep me sane and talk about things that no respectable wife or mother should probably talk about over Under 550 menus and unsweetened iced teas. A love of reading and writing romantic and erotic fiction that provides an escape, allows me to lose myself in alternate worlds cruelly hinted at by professional taunters like Walt Disney and goddesses like Lora Leigh and Sherrilyn Kenyon.

  Which is where the whole five-minute man thing came in.

  Fantasy? Sure. But we all need something to believe in. And when we outgrow Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, when we realize the hot guy in the famous boy band is NOT going to spot us back in the hundred and seventeenth row and profess his true love, when we get out on our own and realize that men are not the perfect creatures we’ve always dreamed of, we find ourselves looking for that next thing that we can close our eyes and fantasize about.

  Like Holly, when I write, I create a world I’d like to live in, with people I’d like to hang out with. When I read my favorite authoresses, I enter into their worlds. Their works are my mind’s vacation from my outside-the-home job and laundry and dishes and scrubbing bathrooms and worrying over ass-tag conventions and the long-term psychological damage I’m inflicting on my kids without realizing it. Their stories give me a place to go, something to think about, when I’m waiting or driving or doing any of the thousand things wives and mothers are sup
posed to do.

  Hopefully, reading Five Minute Man was a little mini-vaca for you, too.

  About the Author

  Abbie Zanders loves to read and write romance in all forms; she is quite obsessive, really. Her ultimate fantasy is to spend all of her free time doing both, preferably in a secluded mountain cabin overlooking a pristine lake, though a private beach on a lush tropical island works, too. Sharing her work with others of similar mind is a dream come true. She promises her readers two things: no cliffhangers, and there will always be a happy ending. Beyond that, you never know…

  Read more at Abbie Zanders’s site.

  About the Publisher

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