by Lilia Moon
“Faster.” I manage to get the word out around melt-in-my-mouth-good pastry and egg studded with every kind of delight. Bacon, but also some kind of ridiculously sweet onion, and something else with a bit of fire. I take a much bigger second bite.
He reaches for a wine glass on the side table, filled nearly to the brim with orange juice, and holds it for me to take a sip. He takes one of his own and then ferries it back to the side table, like eating in bed with a ravenous bear is something he does all the time.
I can’t believe how hungry I am.
I make it halfway through a second quiche before I slow down a little. I try to savor really good food, and this absolutely qualifies. I lean into his shoulder. “Thank you.”
He smiles and kisses my cheek. “I was hungry too.”
Clearly. He’s almost keeping up with me on quiche consumption. I chew contemplatively and give him a more thorough once-over. His hair isn’t as mangled as mine, but the elegant Callum Burke definitely looks rumpled this morning. Which means he spent whatever time he was out of bed heating up my breakfast instead of making himself pretty.
A man with his priorities straight.
I lean in and try the cheek-kissing thing he’s so fond of. His is covered in morning scruff, which starts to wake up other kinds of hunger. I shake my head as a couple of interested flames dance in my low belly. There needs to be a lot more breakfast in me before I worry about any other appetites.
Callum lays a companionable hand on my bare ass under the covers and squeezes. “Like that, is it?”
I grunt and reach for one of the cute fruit cups that were hiding behind the quiche. “It shouldn’t be. You nearly broke me last night.”
He shoots me an amused look and steals a strawberry from my fruit cup, licking his fingers with gusto. A man who isn’t at all afraid to get messy, which is only one of the many things I learned last night and should probably take a look at in the clear light of day.
The next strawberry he takes is for me. I lick his fingers too, which stirs up all kinds of things it shouldn’t.
He grins and rolls onto his back, pulling me on top of his hard cock. I squirm off and settle primly back on the bed. “I’m not done with my breakfast.”
He rolls again so he’s half on top of me instead, and nibbles on my ear. I hear the condom packet, just in case the nibbles aren’t a clear statement of intent. “In that case, I’ll find ways to amuse myself that don’t disturb your eating.”
Even the ear nibbles are doing that. I’m so tuned to him this morning. Wanting more of whatever magic happened last night.
His hand slides between my legs.
I pop a blueberry into my mouth. “After this, I need a nap.” I imagine we’re well and thoroughly snowed in, and morning naps are my favorite kind. I spread my legs a little so he has better access to what he’s just discovered. “I was having a very good dream when you woke me up. I want to find out how it ends.”
He lifts himself over my splayed leg, and in one slow, delicious thrust, lands balls deep inside me.
I drop my forehead to the bed and groan.
He rocks gently. “Sore?”
Probably, but in the best possible ways. I try to rock against him, but that’s a fairly pointless exercise with the full weight of a sexy Irish warrior holding me down. I offer a blueberry over my shoulder instead. Clearly one of us has to stay focused on getting us fed.
He gathers the blueberry with a tongue that offers all kinds of suggestions on what it might do when it finally ends up where his cock is. He pulls almost completely out and slides back in—and then he’s all the way out and rolling me over, neatly rescuing the fruit cup before it spills all over the bed. My legs spread instinctively as he lands between them.
His eyes darken as he slides back in. “There. I’ve a mind to watch your face as you come this morning.”
The words are sexy and delicious and so is the man they come from, but it isn’t that I’m caught by. It’s the ease, in him and in me and in the whole feel of this morning I’ve woken up to.
Sometimes the drawing on my wall in the morning is hard to look at.
This one, as big and as bold and as far reaching as it is—isn’t at all.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Callum
She reaches her fingers toward my face, drawing lines only she can see, or maybe just smudging them some. I thought this would be a morning full of words, but I’m wrong. She’s not a woman who looks in the mirror and backs away. She saw truth last night, the one where she knows, right down to her sweat and tears, that I won’t make her smaller.
More importantly, she caught a glimpse of who she might get to be if she stops prowling the bars of that particular cage and just jumps over them instead. It’s one of the hardest things, growing out of boundaries we no longer need. I saw one of my own disappear last night. The one where magnificent love only shows up once a lifetime.
I cover her hand on my cheek with my own, a little overwhelmed by this new chance I have, and a lot grateful. I know it might be far too much to have riding in my eyes, but there’s nothing I can do about that. Nothing I would want to do.
Sometimes, truth comes quickly.
She lifts her other hand, threading it through my hair. “I remember the first time I picked up really good charcoals after my marriage ended.”
I’ve heard some of this story, but I clearly haven’t heard all of it. I rock gently inside her. My version of charcoals.
Her eyes glint with something halfway between amusement and mischief, not missing any of my meanings. “I don’t remember what I drew, but I remember how it felt.” She sucks in a breath, and I can hear it shaking. “I knew they were going to be the rest of my life.”
My breath isn’t any steadier than hers. “There are very few of those moments.”
Her smile wavers, crooked and unsteady, but her eyes never leave mine. “This isn’t one I can have alone.”
Wild, brave, fierce woman. “It’s a good thing we’re both in it, then.”
Relief—and bubbly, gravity-defiant delight. She arches up against me, her hips asking me to sign the promise of this morning with something more than blueberries and quiche.
It takes effort to slide my hips a fraction away from hers, the elastic band of what’s just been said tugging me sharply back in. I resist its pull long enough to find a little leverage. Some signatures need to be memorable.
She gasps as I repeat the motion, her arms and legs wrapping around me tight. Reinforcing the elastic band. I grin and move in for a kiss. Some joinings are about bells and whistles and skills. This one is about soaking in the brilliance of a chance encounter in a small gallery that has somehow connected to a rainbow via a faery treehouse in the woods.
Her lips meet mine, warm and questing and tasting of blueberries, and it’s all I can do not to fall right in. Her hips find the kind of tiny, persistent rocking motion that shifts tectonic plates and heads me straight for a kind of embarrassment I haven’t dealt with for decades. I back up far enough to give her a stern look. “You’re coming with me, woman.”
Her grin is more than a little loopy. “Bacon as foreplay?”
I find a stitch of room to thrust and give her a taste of her own medicine. “It seems to have worked.”
She groans into my shoulder and rocks again, but her rhythm is starting to shred.
I find her hands with mine and lace them all together over her head. I can feel my heart in my chest, beating against hers. The tight, needy friction as our hips try to meld. The incoming laughter as berries spill and start running downhill on the bed toward us.
I’m no artist—but if I were, this is the way I would draw joy.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Epilogue - Daley
I look over my shoulder at the man lazing on the couch behind me. “Opinions?”
He smiles at me over his morning tea. “Your breasts are lovely.”
I roll my eyes, but it’s pretty obvious to both of us
that I don’t mean it. One of the changes he’s brought to my life is a steady stream of heady, slightly embarrassing compliments. “I mean about where to hang this.”
“Somewhere you’ll see it when you need it.”
I shake my head and walk over to another wall. He’s hopeless. And also right. It’s one of the best drawings I’ve ever done, but it’s heady and slightly embarrassing in a very permanent way, and I’m not sure just how on display I want it to be. The consequences of agreeing to him taking a few pictures one afternoon after he’d turned me into a well pleased puddle.
Except that’s not what the drawing captures, and he knew it then. It took me a few cranky days to agree with him, to look beyond the haze of sexual pleasure in my eyes and see the woman, vast and expansive and whole.
He had me draw her so I won’t forget.
Bossy, insightful man. I need to have him on the receiving end of my charcoals soon.
I turn around. I know where the drawing belongs, and standing out here hoping I can turn it into something less potent by putting it on display for an audience is pure foolishness. I lean it up against the arm of the couch and take a seat beside him. “I’ll hang it in the bedroom.” On the wall I see first thing when I wake up every morning. Or what I usually see first thing. If my Irishman wakes before me, the view can change rather substantially.
He smiles and tucks me into his arm. “I’ve a gift for you.”
The man is full of them. Most of them aren’t things. They’re time. Care. Shared adventure. We’re planning travels together that make my belly bubble with delight. Copenhagen. Kiev. Khartoum. Cities rich with art and food, the kinds that spill over into the streets and change the soul of a place.
His last gift was an introduction to a woman who sculpts nudes in a city that often sees them broken with hammers. She will be my guide in Khartoum, my entry into a circle of underground artists, women all, who are only willing to meet me because they’ve seen my art. Which is humbling and challenging and fraught, and I can’t wait.
I snuggle into the man who will let me disappear into those streets and feed me when I get home, likely with whatever he’s managed to acquire on his own adventure. He understands closeness better than anyone I’ve ever known—and also how distance can deepen it. Especially when that time is spent soaking in the vibrations of feminine artistic bravery.
He bends down and pulls a gift-wrapped box out from under the couch. It’s large enough that I’m not entirely sure how he snuck it into my house, and wrapped in shiny silver paper, topped by a flamboyant bow in every shade of pink. I give it a careful look as he sets it in my lap. “You didn’t source that from around here.”
He chuckles. “True.”
The man gives terrible hints. I slide the bow off the side of the box, setting it carefully on my end table. It will make a really fantastic offering for Trouble when we head over to dinner at Liane’s later. The box is one of those where the lid is wrapped separately from the rest of the box. Whatever’s inside doesn’t want to make me work to get to it.
I lift off the lid and stare. I’ve stopped trying to guess what Callum might come up with next, but pink vases wouldn’t have been anywhere on my list, even oddly appealing ones that are just different enough from each other to be handmade. I set down the lid and stroke a finger down the middle one, which is a dusky-rose color. The others are equally lovely shades of pink.
Callum makes a small sound of pleasure beside me. “They match very well.”
I blink. They don’t match each other, and they certainly don’t match my house. I rarely do pink, although I can certainly be convinced to make an exception for voluptuous vases. I pick one up. “They’re quite sexy.”
A quirk of his dimple out of the corner of my eye. “They’re meant to be.”
My hands still. There’s something here I’m missing.
He kisses my temple. “Some people look at the card first, but as I’m not sure where that’s ended up, perhaps a look at the bottom of the vase will enlighten you.”
I tip it up and look at the end. There’s a stamp, in a bold, easy-to-read font that I heartily approve of. My eyes eventually meander from form to function, and read the words. Ladyparts Art.
I start to laugh, even though I don’t have all the parts of the joke yet. “I don’t have any parts that look like this.”
Another kiss, this one very amused. “This is one of her less-explicit products. It’s the color she’s matching, not the shape. I picked these three quite intentionally.”
I stare at him, and then at the vases, and then I take his still-warm tea and gulp half of it down, because apparently I haven’t had enough caffeine yet this morning.
He points. “This would be on a morning after we’ve made slow easy love in front of the fire the night before. This one happens after I’ve spent a while pleasuring you with my tongue.” He gives the dusky-rose one a fond stroke. “This one only happens in the sauna.”
It can happen more often, soon. I have a sauna on order from a guy up the lake who grew up in Finland. I shake my head and finger the logo on the bottom of the vase. “She makes art. In ladypart colors.” It’s brilliant and hilarious and subversive, and I want to know her. Which is probably part of the gift too. But mostly I’m a little stunned by something that I somehow should have known, but didn’t, and it’s undoing me with uncomfortable delight. “My pussy changes colors?”
Chapter Fifty-Six
Epilogue - Callum
Giving her things will never, ever get old.
I touch the dusky rose vase that was the first one I chose. “It does. In very pleasing ways, I might add.” I extract myself from a lovely armful of woman and rise to my feet. “Shall we put them on the mantle, do you think?”
She splutters, but I can see the reluctant glee blooming in her eyes. There’s nothing she likes better than to sneak unsuspecting bits of sexiness into the world, and I’ve become her very willing co-conspirator. I flash her a grin. “You should invite Bee over for tea.”
Daley leans back against the couch, shaking her head, but her eyes are laughing at me. “Only if you want your vase maker to have to make a set in every color she’s ever imagined and a few she probably hasn’t.”
Evangeline, who makes the vases, has broad experience with the various shades a pussy can come in—or be persuaded to turn. I walk back and gather a second vase, still nestled in soft silver tissue paper. Daley strokes it as I pick it up. “The morning after, really?”
I bend down and kiss her. “Truly.” I make a move to take the last vase from her as well, but she cuddles it in tight. I smother a smile as I walk away. It’s the sauna one she’s chosen to cuddle, and that stokes a fire inside me that’s been very well tended of late. We’ve both a deep awareness that this is something special, and worth treasuring.
Worth anchoring with objects that hold truth and help us remember, should we get lazy.
She cuddles into me when I return to the couch, rubbing her head against my shoulder. “So. What are you up to today?”
Not a change of subject. Her fingers are rubbing small circles on the vase in her lap, making it her own. I let my fingers roam over her ribs, doing much the same thing. “I’ve a bit of work to do.”
She nods against my shoulder. “Do you want breakfast before you head in, then?”
Much as I like spending time with Matteo and Rafe, that’s not my plan this day. “I’ll be staying here, if you don’t mind my presence.” Sometimes she wants the space to work, and that’s not a hardship either. The give and take of that has been astonishingly easy. I’ve my cottage rental still, but my use of it has grown very small. I don’t imagine it will be a need much longer, although that’s not a thing I’ll name. I’ll wait for the frown that hits her forehead anytime I leave to sleep elsewhere do its work.
“You can work here.” Her fingers roam the rim of the vase in ways that make my cock hard. “I’ve got one new commission to take a look at, but I’m not sure I’m goi
ng to take it.”
There’s an odd note in her voice.
I kiss her forehead. “What’s troubling you about this one?”
She makes a face. “It didn’t come from a woman. It came from her partner, with a pretty explanation trying to do an end run around the part of my form where I make it really clear I need the consent of anyone who’s naked in the photos I’m sent.”
I wince. “Is the man’s name Adrian, by chance?”
She shoots me a dirty look. “What do you have to do with this?”
I hold up a palm. “Not a thing. I just happen to have been an innocent bystander when Rafe was on the phone with his friend who was looking for something special for his wife. She’s pregnant and feeling like a whale and he wants to surprise her.” I eye Daley to see if she’s softening. “His friend’s name is Adrian.”
She makes a face. “He took naked photos of his pregnant wife without asking her permission?”
I sigh. In for a penny and all that. “Adrian’s a Dom, sweetness. One with ethics as wide and deep as the ocean, and he’s been friends with Rafe for more than a decade. India too. But you’re right, he probably didn’t tell Evangeline why he was taking them.”
A long, thoughtful pause. “Do you know her as well?”
“I do.” I touch the vase in her hands. “You’re holding her work.”
Another long pause, this one with more zing in it. “Innocent bystander?”
I shrug, because innocent comes in a lot of shades too. “I can tell you she’s an exhibitionist, she’s very comfortable with her own nudity, and I’d be astonished if Adrian’s pictures are anything but deeply respectful. They might be quite explicit, however.”
Daley sighs. “I’m really clear on the submission form. Nothing pornographic.”
I wince again. “He would have understood that differently than you mean it. For a man like Adrian or myself, the line between pornography and art is about respect, not about which body parts are showing. And as I’m buying Evangeline’s art for you, he likely jumped to some conclusions about your life experiences and where you draw that line.”
