by Megan Hart
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
I laughed. “Oh, right. That’s why she’s been so open and accepting of me all these years. Why she’s embraced me fully with open arms.”
“She thinks you don’t, that’s all.”
“She knows it today because I told her off after I found her invading my privacy, James.”
“Are you sure she wasn’t just—”
“What? She tripped and fell and caught herself with my journal? And it just happened to flip open and she had to read it?”
“I didn’t say that.” He withdrew his arm and sat back.
The swing moved us back and forth, and I put a foot down hard onto the deck to stop it. “I guess you don’t think it’s as big a deal as I do.”
His expression told me that was true. “I guess not. It was just a calendar, right?”
I got off the swing. “Not just a calendar. It was where I marked down important events, or things that happened. Snippets of thought. It was personal, and it was private. If I wanted the world to read it, I’d have set it out on the coffee table for everyone to flip through.”
I could tell he still just wasn’t that upset about it. I put my hands on my hips. He rocked the swing, bringing the edge dangerously close to my shins but never letting it hit me.
“I wrote down everything in that calendar, James.”
It took him another second. The swing stopped. “Everything.”
“Yes. All of it. Everything about you and me…and Alex.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, shit. Funny how important it suddenly becomes when it’s about you, isn’t it?”
“That’s not fair, Anne!”
He sounded angry, and I poked him just a bit more. “It might not be fair. But it’s true. Isn’t it? You didn’t see much harm in your mom reading about my fight with my sister or how many drinks my dad had, or when I got my period or how much my sandals cost. Those things she has a right to. But when it comes down to you and your love affair—”
He stood, menacing. “It wasn’t just mine.”
“You’re right. It wasn’t. But I guess the difference is I don’t really care if anyone knows I gave Alex Kennedy a blow job. And you do.”
I think he was more surprised than I when he grabbed me. I’d taunted him into it. James didn’t like to think of himself as a man who could be pushed that way.
“And it wasn’t a love affair.” His fingers gripped my upper arms. “Was it?”
“You tell me,” I said in a low voice.
“If you have something to say, maybe you’d better just say it.”
“He told me what really happened the night you got that scar.” I poked it, and he captured my hand, squeezing my fingers into a fist.
“I told you what happened.”
“Apparently, you left out a few things.”
James pulled me so close I had to tip my face back to look up into his. “What did he tell you?”
“He said you got upset when he told you about the guy he was fucking.”
“I did!”
“Why?” The question came out quieter than I’d expected it to, and less accusatory.
We both were breathing hard, our anger mixing into a different kind of tension. One more familiar. We hardly ever fought, but we’d fucked plenty.
“I was surprised.”
“Were you, really? He was your best friend. You’d known him for years. Was it really a surprise when he told you?” I slid my hands up his chest to curve over his shoulders. “Or were you just disappointed it wasn’t you?”
James let out a low, shuddering breath. “Jesus, Anne. What a hell of a question.”
I waited patiently for an answer.
“He dated girls. Fuck, Alex got more pussy than I ever did. He was sleeping with senior class girls when we were sophomores.”
“So you were jealous.”
“Yeah, a little. He got any girl he wanted.”
I smiled. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
James made a face.
He still hadn’t really answered my whole question. “You didn’t get mad about that.”
“Hell, no.”
“But you got mad when he told you he was sleeping with a guy?”
“He threw it at me out of the blue. What was I supposed to do?”
I shrugged. “Understand? He was your best friend.”
“I didn’t even know he liked guys,” James said. “We were drunk. Maybe things got a little out of hand.”
I put my hand over the scar beneath his shirt. “Or a lot out of hand.”
There was a long, long moment while the world revolved and we went with it. He kissed me, soft and slow and sweet. He hugged me, too, folding me close to him. I put my arms around him, my cheek to his chest. Beneath the scar his heart thumped steadily.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I never thought it would end up this way.”
“I know you didn’t.”
We swayed together to the music of the wind and water. James nuzzled my hair and the side of my face. I opened to his kiss and tasted beer.
I put my hand to his chin, arresting the kiss. I looked into his eyes. “I don’t love him the way I love you, James.”
He smiled like I’d given him a gift. He’d been slowly dancing me back toward the kitchen door as we spoke. Now my heels hit the threshold, but I didn’t trip. The small step brought me just high enough that I didn’t have to tip my head to look directly into his eyes. His hands slid down to cup the curve of my ass and pull me against him. I put my arms around his neck and he lifted me, carrying me over my laughing protests back to the bedroom. Darkness made it hard to figure out where we were going, and I flung out a hand to hit the wall switch as we passed.
We fell onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and scattered pillows everywhere. His body on mine felt different, somehow. Heavier and more solid. He felt real to me, finally. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I didn’t feel like I was waiting for all of this to go away.
He looked down at me. “Everything’s going to work out all right. You’ll see.”
I pulled his mouth to mine for a kiss that got hungrier as it went on. He stole my breath and gave it back. Our lips mashed, bruising as our tongues tangled. He slid a hand into my hair, pulling my head back. His other hand went beneath the small of my back, lifting my hips against his. He ground his erection on my belly.
“Do you feel that? Do you feel how hard I get for you?” he whispered against my lips as he rubbed the bulge in his shorts against my crotch. “That’s for you, baby.”
I put my hands under the hem of his shirt and into the waistband of his shorts, finding the twin dimples on the sides of his spine. I rubbed them, then moved down over the slope of his buttocks. “Take these off.”
He reached between us to undo the button and zipper and together we worked to shove the material down over his thighs. He wore his favorite boxer briefs beneath, the soft fabric outlining his cock as it strained the front. When he lay back down on top of me, I felt his heat.
I ran my hands over the clinging material covering the mound of his ass. I hooked my fingers in the elastic at his waist and tugged it down. He kissed me harder, pressing me into the pillows as his hips lifted so I could make him naked. We wriggled and writhed, working off our clothes as fast as we could without letting go of each other’s mouths for any longer than it took to pull our shirts over our heads.
Naked at last, James covered me again. The hair on his legs rubbed my smooth skin, while the patch on his lower belly teased and tickled. My nipples could have cut glass. When he slid down my body to take one into his mouth, I moaned, arching.
“I love the way you sound when I do that.” He slid lower, urging another soft moan from me when he nipped at my hip. “And that.”
He paused between my legs to look up at me. I ran my fingers through his hair. His eyes gleamed in the light from the bedside lamp. They looked incredibly, particularly blue tonight against the fl
ush of his cheeks and dark arches of his eyebrows.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, not a typically male question. Not a typical James question.
“How blue your eyes look.” I rubbed the black wires of his brows with a fingertip.
He planted a kiss on my belly button. “Good.”
I passed my hand down his face to his cheek. Warm skin. We were both sweating. “What did you think I was going to say?”
“I thought you might be thinking about him.”
“Oh, James.” I could have said something perfect, but I said something honest, instead. “Not this time.”
His eyes closed. He pressed his lips to the curve of my stomach, his hands curled under my thighs. He breathed out, his sigh a gust of moist heat on my skin. Then he kissed me softly. And again. Small, light, feathering kisses that tickled and tantalized. He moved lower.
In the early days of our lovemaking I’d often been content to lie back and allow him to do as he pleased…even if what he was doing missed the mark. It had taken his asking me to tell him what I liked and wanted. Here. There. How hard, soft, the pattern and rhythms to which my body best responded. Like this. Like that.
Now I could lie back as James did what he pleased, and I didn’t have to show him how I liked him to touch me. We’d grown together over time. We’d found the places on each other that felt best, learned what pleased the other.
Yet as he bent his mouth to my clit and licked me, I could feel the differences the past few months had wrought. My body no longer leaped the way it had before. I’d changed, but so had he. We’d both learned new things.
He slid a finger inside me, pressing upward as he licked me. Pleasure jumped inside me. Electric. James shifted on the bed, rolling to his side so I could see as he fit his fingers around his cock and stroked it with the same thrusts he made with his hand.
Watching him, I wanted to touch him. I wanted to taste him. I wanted to fill him up and be filled up. I murmured his name and he looked up. I pulled him toward my mouth so we could kiss. His penis lay against the side of my leg, and that wasn’t close enough. I wanted it in my hand, mouth, cunt, between my breasts.
I pushed his shoulder so he rolled onto his back. I was no longer satisfied to lie back and allow him to have his way with me. I needed more. I wanted everything, all of it. All of him. I needed all of him with a sudden desperation I understood but didn’t want to think too closely upon.
Straddling his thighs, his cock jutting between us, I took him in my hands. Using both, I stroked him up and down. James lifted his hips a little, moving my weight as though it were nothing. His back arched. His hands reached for the spokes of the headboard and grabbed them.
We’d done a lot of things that couldn’t be discussed even in impolite company, but we hadn’t ventured into any sort of dominance and submission games. I didn’t have a scarf to whip out from a drawer to use as a blindfold, nor handcuffs lurking to bind him. I had only the power of my words and his willingness to obey.
“Don’t let go of the headboard,” I told him. “Not until I say you can.”
James uncurled his fingers but tightened them immediately. “Is that what you want?”
“It is.”
I left his cock and ran my hands up his chest to pinch his nipples lightly. I loved the way they tightened under my fingers. I also loved the way his cock bobbed against my stomach as I leaned forward.
“I won’t be able to touch you,” James said.
I looked at him. “When I want you to touch me, I’ll let you know.”
There wasn’t any menace in this command. I hadn’t turned into a dominatrix. But I needed this, to be in charge of our lovemaking. I’d spent the past few months with hands and mouths and pricks doing everything I could have ever wanted. I’d taken that pleasure as a right, gorged upon it. Sated myself with it. Now I needed to be the one who held back a little bit.
“Take down your hair,” he whispered. “I want to feel it on me.”
I unclipped the mass of curls I loathed and loved in equal amounts. My hair fell just past my shoulders, refusing to behave. I shook it a little and ran my fingers through the strands.
“You look so fierce when you do that. Like you should be carrying a spear out in the Amazon somewhere.”
“Do I?” I shot a look into the mirror across the room, but the angle wasn’t right and I could only make out a blur.
“Yeah. You look like a warrior.”
I never in my life had felt like a warrior. I threaded my fingers again through it, pulling out some tangles. “Does that…turn you on?”
He pushed upward with his thighs. “What does it look like?”
I looked down at his prick, straining upward. I took it in my hand and gave a gentle, downward stroke. His breath hissed out.
“Should I go and get my spear?” I murmured, stroking.
It was good to hear him laugh. To be amused with each other instead of angry, or so caught up in the physical pleasure we knew how to give each other that we forgot about the importance of connecting mentally, too.
“If you want to.”
“I think I left it at the cleaners.” Stroke up. Stroke down. His penis got harder even as I touched it. Impossibly hard.
“Can I let go of the headboard now?”
I looked up, gaze sharp. “No.”
I meant to take the time to relearn his body, to imprint him on my hands and mouth and between my legs. I wanted to replace the memories of anyone and anything else with him. I didn’t intend to torture him, but I won’t deny there wasn’t some small measure of satisfaction in listening to him moan as I took him in my mouth, or traced his body with my lips and hands.
He was good. He didn’t let go of the headboard, even when I took him close to climax and eased off. And again. Not even when his muscles strained and he muttered curses at the way I sucked and stroked him, then pulled away to straddle him and made him watch me touch myself.
Then, at last, I couldn’t take anymore. I was torturing myself as much as him. I’d spent hours filling my senses with him. There were no more shadows between us.
“Put your hands on me,” I said, and he did.
It was old and new, familiar and strange. For me, it was a reinvention of our marriage. One that wasn’t quite so invested in being perfect.
Later, with the overhead fan stirring the air over us, I unstuck my skin from his and turned on my side to face him. “I never get tired of looking at your eyes.”
James yawned, which somehow ruined the moment since he closed his eyes when he did. “How romantic.”
“It’s not romantic, it’s true. They’re amazing. I hope our children have your eyes.”
He looked at me, then reached to twirl one of my curls. “I hope they have your hair.”
“I don’t. It’s a mess and so hard to take care of. And I’m not so sure I want a bunch of warriors running around the house.”
“The color, at least,” he told me. “A bunch of little sunset-colored heads running around.”
“Sunset?” That was very sweet and made me smile.
He yawned again. “Yeah. Gold and red. Like a really good sunset.”
“It’s settled then.” I snuggled into the pillow and slung a leg over his. “They’ll have your eyes and my hair.”
“And my sense of style.”
I laughed. “What sense of style?”
“Hey.” He looked offended. “I clean up pretty good.”
“Yeah,” I said fondly, caressing his cheek. “You do.”
He kissed my fingers. “A bunch of little mini-me’s running around. I can’t wait.”
His sentiment touched me. “Jamie, I have to tell you something.”
He was already drifting toward sleep, but honesty couldn’t wait. If I really wanted a new start, it had to begin now. I pulled the blanket up over us, tucking us up in a little cocoon. He waited, and I was sad to see how wary he looked.
“I stopped taking the birth control shots
.”
“I know.”
I shook my head. “No. Just a few weeks ago.”
“I don’t understand.” His brow furrowed. “I thought you stopped—”
“I know. I didn’t tell you otherwise, and I should have. I just let you assume I had because we’d talked about it, but when it came time for my appointment I just couldn’t do it. And then things got so hectic around here, I just never told you.”
“You let me think there was a chance you could get pregnant and you didn’t tell me?”
I couldn’t figure out if he was angry or hurt. Or both. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t ready to try for a baby.”
“So why didn’t you just tell me that?”
“Because you were so gung-ho on the idea, and I just…” I faltered. “I just wasn’t ready. I wasn’t sure I could get pregnant. As long as we weren’t trying, I couldn’t fail.”
With a hand on my hip, he pulled me closer. “Baby, it wouldn’t have been failing.”
“I’m an idiot. I know it.” I managed a watery smile.
“The doctor said the chances were good that the surgery took care of everything and you’d have no trouble.”
“I know. But…there’s more.”
So I told him all of it. About Michael. About the long-ago baby that hadn’t survived, and how I’d wished so hard for it to go away I felt responsible even though I’d done nothing to make it happen.
He listened to my story without interrupting. I thought I might cry, but it came out without tears. Somehow I’d become distant from it. It didn’t hurt so much any longer.
I told him, too, about the day on the lake with my father, and how my mother had left us. I told him how it had felt to be responsible for them all, for making things work. Fixing. How I had needed to keep everything so bright and shiny, polishing the reflection, so that’s all anyone saw and nobody looked underneath to the way our lives really were. I told him why I dreamed of drowning.
And I told him how hard I’d tried to be perfect, even when I wasn’t sure exactly what being perfect was.
I talked for a very long time. He listened. The room grew cool as the night deepened outside, but in our cocoon and with each other, we didn’t get cold.
“I’m sorry,” I said when I was finished. “I felt like I was lying to you. I didn’t want to keep it hidden, anymore. I want us to be honest with each other, always.”
