by Christa Wick
"Oh," she said excitedly, turning in my arms to capture my face with her hands. "And tomorrow will be our first sunrise! Please can we set an alarm?"
I barked out a laugh and hugged her tight, kissing her sweet mouth so hard I made her lips swell. As soon as I released her, she spun again, looking away from the sunset.
"Where's the moon? This will be our first moonrise together.”
I released another laugh. Grabbing her around the waist, I positioned her back toward the sunset. "No moon tonight, baby, but it'll be back tomorrow. I promise, we can pack a basket with dinner and watch it come up over the pond.”
Resting her head on my shoulder once more, she tilted her face upward and lightly kissed my neck as the last of the sun dipped below the horizon.
15
We took a late dinner with Austin and Gina, both Lacey and I wanting nothing more than to return to the guesthouse and decompress in one another's arms, but Austin was her kin, her biggest champion before me, and my friend. So we ate, tendered slow goodbyes and promised to keep Austin updated on the return visit to the specialist the following day.
"Can we set the alarm right now for the sunrise?" she asked the second we entered the house.
"Sure, love," I answered, my hand against the small of her back out of habit.
She stopped suddenly and stared at me.
"Baby, are you okay? Do we need to call the doctor?"
She shook her head, grinning. "No, I just wanted to watch you while hearing you call me ‘love’. Could I hear it again? I wasn’t ready the last time.”
Damn, my baby girl kept me smiling when she wasn't giving me a heart attack from the sudden return of her vision or her smacking her sweet skull against the underside of a massive wooden desk.
“If it’ll have you looking at me the way you are right now, I’ll say it in every sentence for the rest of our lives, love,” I answered.
Her cheeks pushed ever higher as her grin deepened. I saw a flash of dimples that I'd never spotted before, probably because she had never smiled quite that hard in her entire life.
Winding her way into my arms, she folded her hands against my back and looked up at me. “But I like all the other names you call me, too. 'Lace, baby, baby girl.' I don't want to lose hearing those sprinkled in among the 'loves.'"
Matching her grin, I bent my knees and scooped her up into my arms. She responded with a delighted squee and the tight wrap of her arms around my neck.
"Let's get that alarm set, baby girl."
I carried Lacey into the bedroom. Placing her in front of the dresser, I showed her how the alarm function on the clock worked then I took out my phone and checked the time given for sunrise.
She clicked through to the right hour and minute then flipped the switch to activate the alarm. A perplexed squiggle distorting her mouth, she looked at me through the side of her glasses. "How can we be certain I didn't goof it up?"
I thought about it for a second then realized she would probably spend the next few weeks trying to reinvent her way of doing things despite all the skills she had accumulated to cope with her blindness remaining relevant and, at times, more efficient.
"You've still got your phone, baby," I reminded her.
She nodded but didn't seem to get my point.
"And you know how to use a voice command to set the alarm, yes?"
She covered her face in embarrassment then pulled out her phone and set a second alarm for the same time. She placed the phone next to the clock before she turned a slow circle.
"So this is our bedroom?"
"For now," I answered, my heart skipping a few beats. "With Austin's engagement scheduled to be announced soon, all the security risk is going to be centered on them."
I squared my shoulders before continuing, a trace of my old worries telling me I should brace myself before I made the suggestion that had been on my mind for the last few days.
"Gina has a big family, more than the main house can accommodate during the ceremony and the weeks leading up to it. Plus, many of her relatives live out of the area. So, I was thinking it was a good time for us to look for a place to rent."
"Together?" She practically beamed the question at me and I felt, for a second, that the sun hadn't set at all. It was right there in the room with me and had the most beautiful blue eyes.
"That's what I want." I melted against her as she stepped back into my arms and placed her head against my chest.
"Can we start looking tomorrow?"
Her enthusiasm made me chuckle. Every time I thought I was moving too fast, I quickly discovered that Lacey was chomping at the bit, more than ready for me to move even faster.
"We can start looking online, baby, and I'll do most of the looking this first week. The doctor said not to strain your eyes and staring at the computer is about the worst thing you can do."
I knew winning her compliance on the specialist's orders would be a 24/7 undertaking. She was so ready to discover everything in existence. I half expected to wake up in the middle of the night to find her ordering two plane tickets for us to see the Grand Canyon. I thought about saying that out loud as a joke, but I didn't want to jinx myself and really wake up to that exact scenario!
"Yes, sir," she answered, surprising me with her compliance. Pushing up onto her tiptoes, she grabbed me by the ears and pulled my head a little lower so she could kiss me full on the mouth. Releasing me, she waggled her eyebrows. "You do realize we're in the bedroom, right?"
Enjoying her playfulness, I pretended to be confused and a little lost. "I think you're mistaken, love. Usually you're naked when we're in here."
All the mirth in her face froze.
This time, instead of panicking and assuming something had gone horribly wrong with her eyes again, I tried to think about what would make a sighted woman suddenly look as if she were on the verge of freaking out.
"Baby, you haven't looked at yourself yet, have you?"
She answered with a slow shake of her head and a glimmer of horror.
I exhaled and shook my head. "You really aren't like any other woman I've ever encountered."
She looked worried. "That's a good thing, right?"
Always making me smile, always keeping me on my toes. Pulling her toward the center of the mirror and turning her to face it, I gave Lacey my reply.
"It's a great thing, baby."
I kissed at her neck while she examined herself in the dresser mirror. My hands wandered her curves, worshipping her flesh as I reassured her.
"Just because you can see how you look doesn't mean anything has changed about how you look to me. You still have a body that brings me to my knees. Your smile brightens every second of my day, even in the dead of night."
Realizing something, I stopped long enough to turn her once more, this time so that she faced me.
"Okay, one thing has changed. As beautiful as your eyes were, I couldn't see through them before. Now I feel...this is going to sound crazy, especially coming from a man who hasn't been in a church in over five years, but now I feel like I can see all the way into your soul. And never will I find anything more beautiful than that."
The tears that had been building in her eyes finally flooded down her cheeks, but she wouldn't agree with me completely.
"One day you'll look into the eyes of your son or daughter—"
"Or both," I conceded before adding, "the eyes of our children."
Damn, I really wanted that. Really, really wanted that with this woman and no other.
She pressed her forehead against my collarbone and lightly slapped at my chest. "You're going to turn me into a blubbering fool!"
Capturing her face, I gently forced her to look up. "As long as they're happy tears, that's okay. I love you, Lacey."
It took her a very long minute to respond because I immediately covered her mouth with mine and drew her into a deep, probing kiss. When it ended, she parted from me with a sigh.
"I love you, too, Wake."
&
nbsp; She turned bashful as soon as she said it and her nose scrunched like a rabbit scenting a carrot. "You know, all that talking doesn't change the fact that we are in the bedroom. Well..."
Pausing, she tilted her head and I could see her scheming behind the dark glasses. "I guess parts of what we said make it highly relevant that we're in a bedroom because that's one of the places babies are conceived if I'm not mistaken."
My cock had been anything but dormant since I first scooped her up into my arms right after we entered the house.
"Extremely relevant," I agreed, reaching for the bottom hem of her blouse.
"Oh, no," she shook her head, the laugh erupting from her infinitely dirty. "Before you can undress me, you have to undress you—slow and sexy, cowboy."
Leaving my arms, she tapped the base of each bedside lamp until it was as dim as it would go and then she placed her shades on one of the night stands before sitting at the foot of the bed, one shapely leg crossed over the other beneath her skirt.
"You may commence."
Loving her cheeky grin, I made a slow show of removing my shirt. I flashed my abs, then lowered the shirt. I rucked it up again and stepped a little closer to her. I drew it up over my nipples, pausing when her hands pushed forward and started to explore the contours of my chest and stomach.
I pulled away, teasing her with the distance between us as I lifted the shirt off, dropped it to the floor then reached for the front of my jeans.
"Stop!" she blurted.
16
Blushing furiously, she said boldly, “I just realized I might be cheating myself."
She crooked her finger, gesturing for me to come close again. I obeyed, my hips pushing forward like a gunslinger as I took the four steps that brought me back within her reach. Her fingers curled around my waistband and she tugged me in.
My cock strained against the front panel of my jeans, acting contrary to its own best interests by impeding Lacey as she unthreaded the top button, but helping her by exerting force against the zipper as she eased it down.
Slowly lowering the curtain of my briefs, she released a big sigh and wrapped her hands around my shaft. Her face innocent and flushed with desire, she looked up at me.
"You know how you always taste me?" she whispered.
I thought of her hot, wet pussy, especially the way she squirmed and moaned when I sucked at her clit, and rasped out a rough, "Yes."
"Is it pleasurable for a man to have a woman do the same with her tongue...and lips...and teeth?"
I almost came on the spot. Gulping in more air, it took me a few painfully long seconds to respond. "Yes, when it's gentle."
She scooted along the mattress, pulling me with her and ordering me onto my back. Once I was flat and in the center, I kicked my shoes off.
Normally, I wouldn't have allowed this kind of intimacy with a partner. It wasn't that the scarring from the bullet wound or the two surgeries that had been necessary to fix what the shooter had tried to ruin embarrassed me. I knew women liked what they saw when my clothes came off. It was the intimacy I shied away from all those other times.
With Lacey, I welcomed her exploration of my body.
She started at the bridge of my nose, her fingers whispering over flesh she had already touched but this time with the assistance of her newfound vision. She kissed, stroked, the line of her intent clear but unhurried.
Down she went, testing if my nipples could be as sensitive as hers (yes, when it was her tongue curling around them) and whether my torso jerked when she stroked down my sides (it did, the light tickling sending a fresh swell of blood to my already engorged cock).
When she reached the top band of my pants once more, it was a miracle I didn’t erupt at the first brush of her lips over the pulsing head of my erection. Tugging at my jeans and boxers, she glossed around my cock, content to let her hair ghost across the hyper-sensitive flesh that yearned after her mouth as she peppered kisses down my thighs.
Finished stripping my jeans and socks off, she slow-crawled back up the bed until her head was even with my shaft and the bulbous, demanding head. She pressed the flesh-colored portion of her upper lip against the flat side of the head, her bottom lip brushing the curve where the glans joined the shaft. Hell, the way her eyes fluttered shut as she inhaled soft and slow, it was as if she was taking in the scent of a new wildflower she’d just found out in the garden.
Pre-cum immediately began pearling at the tip, and she spent her sweet time experiencing that, too. She lifted her head, just the tiniest bit, her tongue darting out to catch the pearl before using her top lip to spread it across her taste buds.
She groaned—almost as loud as I did—as she swirled her tongue around the head of my cock before sliding her lips a few inches down the shaft. Her hands splayed across my hips and pelvic area, her flat palms flexing and contracting while the points of her nails pushed against my skin then receded like a kitten seeking milk.
If she didn't stop, she’d be getting a hard shot of my cream overflowing her mouth soon.
"Baby, that's enough...for now." I speared my hands through her hair and tugged gently.
She looked up, blue eyes wounded. "Was I not gentle enough? Did I hurt you?"
"No, love," I answered, croaking out the words as I fought to contain my climax. "You were already driving me over the edge from how great it felt to have your mouth on me."
"Oh," she colored at the compliment, the impending frown instantly inverting itself. "But I wanted to see what you see, to 'look through you,' too. I don't quite know what that means but I thought this would be clear when it happened and it would feel good for you, too."
"Baby, if you could only know how fucking great it felt," I assured her. I cupped her ears and gently tugged her upward. "But if you want to see through me right now, you'll let me do the tasting."
Her body turned completely malleable at the suggestion. I stripped her clothes as I positioned her. Her still exploring hands helped as much as they hindered. She would raise an arm to let me tug part of the blouse off but then her fingers would find my cock, wrap around its smooth, burning surface and softly stroke until my eyes rolled back in my head.
She had me so worked up, I couldn't finish removing her panties entirely. They wound up as a fashion accessory for one of her ankles. I pushed her thighs apart, famished with the need to visually soak in the beauty of her splayed sex before I let her flowing juices drench my tongue.
Propped up on her elbows, Lacey stared intently at my face. Her breathing had turned to sharp pants, her body primed for my touch. Faced with all that raw need, I couldn't keep my eyes open at the beginning. I buried my face against her sweet pussy and nuzzled, my mouth tracing quick circles between her labia as my tongue flicked and pushed and bullied from the slick center to her clit and along its length.
Air rushed from me, the heat of both our bodies and her moist flesh fusing into a thin layer of steam. Groaning, I pushed two fingers into her and opened my eyes for the first time since my lips had found their way between her legs.
I looked up, met her gaze.
Tears jumped to her eyes and her mouth formed a lovely O, filled with wonder but so sexy and fuckable I knew I had to have our positions reversed again before the night was through or I would go crazy.
"I see it," she whispered, her voice jagged and breaking. "I can see into you, too."
She was crying and the emotions whipping through her were too powerful for me to evade. I broke contact, surged up the bed and curled my hands around the side of her face. I devoured her mouth, rasping that I loved her, too, as my cock found her entrance and thrust inside. I dropped one hand to the mattress to prop my torso up, the other hand wrapped around the back of her head so that she had to stay upright as I pounded into her.
I loved her, fucked her, loved her some more, my hips moving hard and fast, stretching her, butting deep up inside to the slowly expanding mouth of her cervix.
Reeling backwards so that my ass braced again
st my calves, I hauled her up onto my cock, impaling her more roughly. I clutched her to me, one hand controlling her head and the other flat against the small of her back. My ass and thighs worked to bounce her up and down my shaft.
Up and down, fucking, loving, kissing, hard then harder and harder still until she squirted her release against me and I filled her so full of my cum that it squeezed past the seal of her tight pussy to join the smear of her juices on my thighs.
Only once she went limp in my arms did I relent and lower her to the mattress.
Perspiration made her face glow as I tenderly pushed away the hair plastered against her cheeks. I kissed her softly, murmuring how much I loved her, how she was the one that had brought me up from the darkness, not the other way around.
"You saved me, Lacey," I said as we both drifted off toward sleep wrapped in the other's embrace.
"We saved each other," she answered, our bodies surrendering at last to the night and to a future together.
Epilogue
~ Lacey ~
A gentle spring sun filtered through lace curtains lining the bay window of the house Wake bought after proposing to me. In my arms, I held Jonah, our infant son. At six months, he was still nursing, although his boisterous appetite indicated it would soon be time to move onto heartier fare than mother's milk.
As the sucking slowed, I stroked once along the corner of his mouth. He released the nipple, nuzzled my fingertip for an instant then sighed with all the contentment a warm body and full belly can bring.
Tiptoeing through the open door, Wake held my cellphone in front of him. I handed Wake our baby and he handed me my estate attorney in exchange. Seeing the caller ID, I waited until the door to the sitting room softly closed before I took the phone off hold.
"Gregory, I wasn't expecting a call so soon after the last filing."
My tone was hesitant. For three years, I’d been battling my mother by proxy, our attorneys squaring off, launching lawsuits and appeals over the final disposition of my father's estate. By all rights, she should’ve been thrown in jail for conspiring with my father's lawyer to hide his last true will and testament. But she wasn’t.
