Thick & Thin (Thin Love Book 3)

by Eden Butler

  “I’m waiting,” that look she gave me said. “Come and take what’s yours.”

  It only took five minutes.

  Aly asked me inside her condo. She wanted me to see the changes she’d made since the last time I’d visited. I didn’t care about how she kept her house and neither did she. She wanted the waiting to end.

  Five minutes. I only knew that because Koa had texted, informing me that they’d gotten to Mandeville okay.

  Five minutes and Aly threw her purse on bar and shimmied out of her jacket, laying it on the second-hand sofa that separated her small living room from her even smaller kitchen. She had her back to me and against the lamp light and glint of moonlight that came through her thin drapes, her shape and size looked like a gauzy mirage, something surreal but definitely mine for the taking.

  Five damn minutes.

  I stood behind her, resting one palm against the sofa right next to her hip. She froze, small animal caught, waiting for the predator’s next movement. Just then, she was my prey.

  Her skin still smelled mildly of sweat, but it also held the hint of lavender and I closed my eyes, getting closer to her as I gripped the fabric on the sofa.

  She didn’t speak, did hardly do anything more than move her head, not looking at me directly, but moving her eyes toward my face, her gaze kept down as I lifted my hand to the back of that thin skirt she wore.

  I could hear the slow release of her deep throated gasp, felt a tremor working through my chest as Aly leaned back against me, but that didn't keep me from touching her. Slowly, I lifted that skirt. It was a dark red thing, something that was wispy and would brush against her thigh as she danced. My heart pumped faster as she arched further, like a cat moving its hips, bending when it got too near a tom. Her skin was perfect, flushed then, just a bit, by the slow movement of my fingers cupping her fine, perfectly apple-shaped ass, holding one cheek in my hand, pulling down her tights as best I could without hurrying through any of this. I’d never want that. It had been too long for us. Tasting, teasing, was nothing to what Aly felt like wrapped around me, pussy clenching, tightening against me. God, how had I survived so long without her? Her body? The sweet, tempting feel of her fingers on me.

  “Nani…” I said when she moaned, smoothing those pants down and that thin, gauzy skirt up. She wore a white lacy thong - of course she did. Aly bent forward then, keeping silent, offering me whatever of hers I wanted.

  Just then, I wanted it all.

  I ran the tips of my fingers up that exposed cheek, making the skin jiggle slightly as I pressed my fingers into that fleshy mound. She groaned, seeming to love how I moved my thumb, letting it slide dangerously close between her cheeks, pulling her thong down until it dragged against her sweet, tempting flesh, making that ass shake, just a little. My fingers glided gently over her ass, coming close to spreading those cheeks apart.

  “Are you wet already, baby?” She only nodded, and I smiled against the back of her neck, licking there and up the side of her neck. “I’ll get you wetter. I’ll get you so wet you’ll barely feel me sliding inside you.”

  “Oh, I’ll feel you, shoushou.” She lifted her ass deeper into my hand, rubbing herself against me. “I’ll feel every inch of you.”

  And then, I gave her a tease, picking that beautiful ass up, moving the cheeks apart to grind against her, knowing she could feel how hard she made me. Aly whimpered when I held onto her hips, pushing into her, mimicking what I wanted to do to her. And then that whimper came out as a growl when I lifted her arms, pulling off her shirt, her bra until she was totally naked except for the cover of my hands as I cupped those perfect breasts, pulling her back against me, thumbs flicking against one nipple.

  “Ransom,” she breathed, my name sounding airy and wistful all at the same time. “Please, cheri, I want you inside me.”

  “You’ll have me, nani. I promise.” I moved her forward, against the back of the sofa, keeping her still with my fingers digging into her hips, trying hard to hold back as she kept that ass moving against my dick. She only paused when I kissed up her back, my tongue and teeth nibbling against her smooth skin, licking a path that got me to her neck, behind her ear and Aly responded, tilting her head back, rubbing her nails against my skull, pulling me closer as I kissed her neck and then, I lost hold of my sense.

  She smelled so good, she tasted better and I had gone so long without her completely and could not think of anything other than being inside of her, threatening to never leave.

  “Yes,” she muttered when I yanked on her hair, pushing it from her neck as I devoured her body—neck, collarbone, until I turned her around, picking her up to wrap her around me, kissing, taking, divesting myself of any composure at all as I walked with her to her bedroom, moving my hand over her skin, reminding me of our dance, how quickly we’d escalated to this and I didn’t care. She didn’t argue, didn’t do anything but respond and respond again when I moved one hand from her thigh, to exchange it for another. She pulled off my shirt, keeping her mouth and mine together without any distractions. Until we fell on the bed.

  I made a meal of her flesh—biting her nipple with my mouth, while my hand cupped and moved her free breast against my palm.

  “Ransom, please…” Her breathing had become labored, erratic and when I slid my hands down her stomach, over her hips, I understood the urgency. She was ridiculously wet, definitely ready.

  Before I even had my fly down, Aly tugged against me, using her heels against my ass to get me close and keep me there. And then, with the twist of my hips, and the achingly slow brush of the head teasing against her clit, she jerked my hips forward, eyes on mine, something I recognized as raw need swimming in that bright green color, and I was finally inside her.

  It took a moment for us to acclimate our bodies to what was familiar. That joining, the sharp feel of her soft, wet sex around me, tighter than I remembered, was simple enough. And it felt so right, somehow, even after all this time, being inside her felt like coming home. I moved slow, at first, gazing at her, watching her expression as she moved her fingers up my stomach, my chest, holding my face still as we watched each other moving together. Then our bodies became frantic, a desperate commotion of thrusting movement that burned and blistered and felt so damn good. But our gazes, our expressions were like the quiet after a storm—steady, soaking in the things we’d missed, the way it felt to be together like this, to feel this needed and wanted and greedy all at the same time.

  Finally, when it seemed she couldn’t keep from it another second, Aly pulled me forward, taking my mouth, moaning over my lips when I doubled the movement of my hips.

  I wanted to strip her bare. I wanted the night to go on and on, to treat her body like it was a topographical map and my hands, my mouth would search her, would look under the planes and valleys and know the geography of her. Mostly, I wanted to break inside of her, free the small but momentous things she kept hidden from the world. The things like the memories she never liked to recall or the fears she kept locked away, because she was too scared for anyone to know her deepest fears and greatest sins. But loving Aly, loving anyone, means seeing all it is they keep from the world. It means taking apart the gray and shadowy places because beyond that there is light and beauty and colors so vibrant, so rich that the shine blinds you and you are happy despite that blindness because for one brief moment you experienced real, honest beauty.

  I wanted all of these things from her. I wanted a million more and I wanted the past to be forgiven, erased and to hold what was once mine and give her all the shadows and light within me too. The things I had never shown anyone. The things that Aly had only caught glimpses of. Now I wanted her to see it all.

  We’d never danced like this. Not really. It was rush and frenzy and the tilt of the world all coalescing around us. I didn’t remember how I got free from my clothes, but suddenly there was nothing between us, nothing at all, and there was only me in her and her open to me.

  “Wi, cheri. Ah, shousho
u, wi.” Her voice lifted like music around us, invading the air, the heat that moved between us and then, she cried out and clenched around me. Tighter, grip on my shoulders digging in and her hot, wet heat massaging me so that I had to lift up, grab the metal headboard to sink deeper into her, anchor myself as I pushed inside her and let go of everything that I was holding back. Her response was instantaneous—Aly arched up, shoulders coming off the mattress and I watched her break to pieces and shatter all over me. It was beautiful, my ke aloha makamae losing herself to sensation, watching all those strongly constructed barriers she used to keep hidden, crumble with each throb of her cresting body on my still thrusting cock, and the steady rhythm of my body moving inside hers.

  I did not let her fall gently from her orgasm. Before she came down completely, I kept at her, lifting her lazy leg over my shoulder, urging her on, whispering for her not to stop, to keep giving herself to me, loving the noises she made, the soft cries that sounded like pleasure and pain all at the same time.

  But eventually she settled, and then my beautiful Aly, my beloved warrior, my champion of all things, moved on me and told me that now it was my turn. She would give as much as she got.

  Even with me on top, she worked me, eyes smiling, staring as I moved deep inside her, pulling almost all the way out before I slammed back in. Aly loved it, ate up the sensation like chocolate and then she pulled on my face, making me open my eyes, scratching her thumb nail over my nipple.

  “Slow down,” she said, tongue peeking out to wet her dry lips, one eyebrow arched in a dare. “Shoushou, go slow for me.”

  “I don’t…I don’t...” I was slipping—my control growing thin as the pressure on my nipple tightened and Aly squeezed against my dick. “Ah…”

  “Slow, cheri. Slow and deep, nnmourèz mwen.”

  In that moment, I’d give her anything, everything she wanted—my body, my heart, my life right then, to exist in that moment. Right then I existed only to please Aly, to let her please me. I would become less than myself, and so much more just to live in that moment with her.

  Aly heightened the rate of my heartbeat, leveled up the heat and friction moving between us as she sat up, shifting me to my back, climbing on top of me. She kissed me, breathless, silent and then slipped her hand to my dick, stroking me once before she eased down on me, tightening her muscles with the slow descent.

  “Slow,” she said, kissing me again, tongue teasing. “Slow because I want this to…to be the first moment of many. A million, cheri, a billion to make up for all the time we wasted apart from each other.”

  I sat up then, my fingers raking up her sides, her back to push down on her shoulders as I jerked my hips up, both of us moaning at the sensation. “Slow,” I repeated against her sternum, moving my hands down until my thumbs grazed her nipples and gripped hold of her breasts. “Slow…” I tried but then Aly squeezed against me again and I replied with another hip thrust once, twice, three times before my body betrayed me and the feel of her wet pussy milking me, left me powerless and I exploded up into her body, spasm after spasm of release into the center of my world, my life.

  “Wi, Ransom. Slow this time and the next and sometimes fast, sometimes very fast.” Her words fanned across my forehead until I could do nothing but sink back against the pillow, taking her with me, letting Aly ride me until there was no thought, nothing but the taste of her on my tongue and the rhythm of my heart reminding me that this was not a dream.

  The slow, wet trail of my tongue against her back, down to the dip where her spine and ass met. The soft, round dark nipple pebbling under my tongue. The taste of her wet pussy, how it heated when I touched it, when I buried my face so deep that only sensation remained—in my nose, against my mouth, her fingers pulling at my hair. She was everywhere. She was everything.

  She spooned in front of me, fitting perfectly against my chest, that sweet, supple ass nestled close, but we weren’t spent from fucking. We weren’t resting. She had not stopped me when I wanted more, not asking, taking because she was mine now. She always would be and I was hers, more than I’ve ever been anything to anyone in my world, I was hers.

  “Like that?” she asked, breath airy, lazy as she bent her leg, offering it to my waiting hand so I could spread her further apart as I took her from behind.

  “Exactly like that, nani.”

  Her sheets were damp with our sweat, despite the chill that had turned the air outside her condo into a mini front. The fabric was soft, but only the fitted sheet remained on the bed. Her precious jewel toned pillows, the flat sheet and comforter got lost in the tussle of our bodies coming together over and over—her atop me, me from behind, tasting her body, letting her lap her mouth and hands and tongue on every square inch of me. It had been hours and still we had not tired ourselves out.

  We simply couldn’t get enough of each other.

  “There,” I groaned when Aly clenched around me yet again, “there!” And I was lost, could only hold on to her, my mouth on her shoulder, my hands pulling her tight against me, holding her breasts in both hands as I came. “God…”

  It was as close to a prayer as I’d come tonight.

  We went still then. Quiet as we lay together, bodies still joined, sweat drying on my back, along her shoulder and I kissed one small droplet, loving the taste of salt in my mouth. It was that moment that always comes when you’ve worn your body and that of your lover’s from sex. It doesn’t happen always, only when you genuinely care for the other person. At least, that’s the way it’s always been for me. The quiet. The slow, lazy strokes of satisfaction, absently done, against naked flesh. Small kisses that help you come off your exhausted high of climax. Tender. That’s what I guess you’d call it. And that’s what this was with her now—tender. Quiet. Perfect.

  Her breath had not quite evened out. Maybe, I thought, it would make her answer come easy if she was still distracted by her climax and the tangle of limbs and parts that made us fit together so perfectly.

  “Nani?” She’d refused me so often I didn’t expect an answer. She’d stop giving them long ago.

  She didn’t move and her chest had finally slowed to swift pants. “Hmm?”

  The sweat on her shoulder had nearly gone, but I kissed her there anyway. “Nani…marry me.”

  She didn’t stiffen or retreat from me and I held my breath, watching her profile as her closed eyes blinked open. Aly rolled on her back, moving her attention to my eyes as though she wasn’t sure she’d heard me right.

  “Marry me. Okay?”

  Breath still didn’t come easy then and for a moment I didn’t care if it ever did again. Nothing in that moment mattered but her expression, or rather, the lack of one. She knew what I had said and disappointment leached into my mind, telling me that I had probably spooked her, like the time before. Maybe it was too soon. Maybe she needed more time.

  Maybes can run around in your mind so long, with such frequency that they become easier to take. They set you up for the inevitable and so, when she didn’t answer right away, it was those maybes that distracted me, right until I noticed how Aly tilted her head, how she reached for me, drawing a small circle under my bottom lip with her finger. Right until I finally moved my gaze to her face, to that slowly breaking bright, wide, dazzling smile.

  A thousands lives haunt this place.

  Music,

  Love,

  Death,

  Sorrow,

  Breeds of memory uncontained.

  The thread woven

  Mangled

  Mended

  Cloak the chill of night.

  A thousand and one

  Me and you.

  Strengthen that tapestry.

  Cover ourselves from the numbness.

  Six Months Later

  The French Quarter, New Orleans, on a Sunday afternoon

  .

  We looked like New Orleans—an amalgam of so many cultures, each peeking in through what we wore, how we wore it and the party that followed behind
us. Ransom’s umbrella was black, but Keira and Mack had hot glued white ginger lei leaves around the brim to match the lei that he wore during the ceremony. The priest had looked a little skeptical at the leis and the kahu, holy man, chanting me toward the alter Kona insisted be there to add a little Hawaiian flavor to the ceremony. But I was New Orleans to the core, Tremé born and bred. It was the one good thing my Papa had bequeathed me—a rich cultural history and a place I could belong to. I was also Creole, and the French side in me wanted a priest. I’d have a Second Line and the whole day would mark who we were, all of us.

  So, yes. We were New Orleans on a Sunday afternoon when spring had brought life to the city. The scent of gardenias and magnolias lined around the Quarter and the crepe myrtles had begun to bloom, showering the streets and sidewalks with small pink and white blossoms. Those small pedals brushed under my skirts as I danced next to my husband, my own white umbrella spilling champagne glitter and plumes from the white boa that surrounded the brim as I moved it up and down, laughing as Ransom tried to keep rhythm with me.

  We’d hired Rebirth, a brass band with ties deeper than mine to the city, who played “Do Whacha Wanna” like nobody’s business, dressed for the Second Line and our wedding in fine, black suits and sharp, white hats with a knife edge brim. We followed that band, my husband and I, leading our family and friends behind us to wave white handkerchiefs in the air as we made a small parade from St. Louis Cathedral, all through the Quarter. We went the long way, for affect Rebirth’s lead trumpet play suggested, taking Pere Antoine Ally to Chartres, down St. Louis until we finished at Latrobe’s on Royal Street.

  In New Orleans, we Second Line to open businesses, for christenings, weddings and to usher our dead to their eternal rest. It was quintessential New Orleanian to want the fanfare—that loud, sweet music wafting over the streets, the constant dance of family, friends and folks you do not know joining in as the bride and groom form the main line with the band, celebrating the life they begin that day. It was an honor to be on that main line. It was an honor to be a Riley-Hale and that’s what I wanted for the day; dancing with my husband, with our friends and family following behind and to be his. Always.