by Emerson Rose
I only move my lips away for a second to allow him room to yank the shirt over my head, and then our mouths crash together again. I kiss a blazing trail down the side of his neck, where his blood pulses through his arteries under my lips, to his chest, where his heart pounds furiously, and ending at the edge of the pajama pants that he wears for me.
I pause to look into his heavy-lidded bedroom eyes and drink in the lust there until one corner of his lip lifts in that sexy fucking smirk. Without an ounce of restraint left, I pull the cotton string on the waist of his pants. His hips thrust up immediately, allowing me to remove them. I kneel between his legs, moving down his body, taking his pants with me.
I stand on the mattress and shimmy out of my shorts, dropping them into a pile of pizza and clothes next to the bed. I pause my sudden attack to admire Marcus lying under me. He’s hard as hell and ready for me. I can’t wait another second and I lower myself over him and let him take control as only he can.
He guides my hips down until he slides his impressive length into the hot liquid of my sex plunging into me again and again. I meet him thrust for thrust until he begins circling my clit with his thumb.
My head swims and my heart hammers so hard I’m sure it’s going to explode. I can hardly breathe and I’m sure I can’t hold on for one more moment, and then he plunges into me so deep that my vision goes white.
I gasp, and he intensifies the penetration by sitting up until he is so deep that I don’t know where I stop and he begins. I wrap my arms around his neck, our mouths reconnect, and our tongues circle with an indescribable hunger.
He lifts my body, and I ride his thick cock, sliding up and down while a fire builds inside my belly that begs to be extinguished.
We match the increasing intensity of the building music, and his thrusts become faster, more demanding. The sound of our heavy breathing, panting, and the slapping of our slick bodies fill the room until he yells, “Now, Imani!”
We explode together in a supernova orgasm that claims every cell in our bodies. The experience is so intense it’s impossible to focus until the music fades away, taking that little moment of heaven along with it.
We cling together while we come down together, and the playlist continues to the next song, Stay by Rihanna.
He moves his mouth to my ear and whispers, “Stay.”
I’m overcome with emotion, tears slide down my cheeks, and he sweeps them away with his thumbs.
“Will you?”
“I’ll stay. I promise,” I whisper. He lowers our bodies back and gently shifts me into our sleeping position. I rest my cheek against his chest and listen to his heartbeat while I wonder about the complicated promise I just made to this complicated man. Will I be able to keep it? If he stays who he is, I think I can. If he doesn’t, I’m not so sure.
Twenty-Six
“Imani.” Marcus nudges me softly with his shoulder. “Imani.” He repeats only slightly louder. I snap my eyes open and try to make out something familiar in the pitch-black room.
“Why’s it so dark?”
“You fell asleep.”
“Why are you waking me? Do you need to get up?
“No, you didn’t take anything. I was worried you might have a nightmare. I stayed awake as long as I could watching you, but I need to close my eyes for a few minutes.” I prop up on my elbow and look at the time. It’s 4:30 a.m. I haven’t slept this long without a sleeping pill or a nightmare for… well, for ten years.
“Shit, I’m sorry. You didn’t have to do that; you should have woken me earlier.” “Baby, you were sleeping so well, there was no way in hell I was going to interrupt that. I enjoy watching you sleep. All of your wheels stop, the worry melts away, every muscle on your face relaxes, and you look so peaceful,” he says, brushing the back of his knuckles against my cheek.
“I haven’t slept unmedicated and without a nightmare since it happened,” I whisper.
“I figured as much. Another reason I let you be.”
“Thank you.”
“You, my dear, are very welcome,” he says, lacing his fingers with mine. “I have nightmares, too.”
“I remember. I heard you once when you were in the hospital.”
“Yes, you did, didn’t you?” He’s sharing, and I don’t want him to stop but I’m not sure how far to push.
“Why do you have them?”
His eyes close, and I’m afraid he’s changed his mind about opening up so I lower myself off of my elbow and snuggle into his side.
Maybe if he doesn’t have to look at me, it will be easier. His muscles uncoil and he begins to relax.
“I didn’t have the best childhood. Actually, that is putting it very mildly. My mother was schizophrenic.” He waits for my reaction, but I give him nothing. This is hard for him and is important. I don’t want to scare him off.
“My sister and I were left home with her a lot while my father traveled for work. He was in denial. He didn’t want to believe there was anything wrong with his wife.
Elena and I had no idea what was wrong with her, but we knew enough to know that other children’s mothers didn’t act like ours. She was delusional, psychotic, and abusive. She had hallucinations, she heard voices, and spoke to people who weren’t there.
She forced new religions and beliefs on us every week. We barely slept, standing guard at night protecting each other. She starved us in the name of sacrifice to whatever god she was worshipping at the moment. She locked us up in dark closets and forced us to pray for hours on end.
Teachers and people in the community turned a blind eye. No one understood mental illness in my country back then. Everyone knew something was wrong, but my father was an influential man and they followed his lead, ignoring all of the obvious signs of abuse. We thought it was our fault; why else would a mother treat her kids that way?”
He pauses, and the enormity of his pain starts to sink in. How could two little kids survive with no hope of ever being rescued from the abusive hands of their own mother? “What about your family? Didn’t they suspect? Why didn’t anyone intervene?”
“No, Imani, they didn’t, they couldn’t. My family had Mob connections, and my father was not someone they wanted to cross. Being caught on my father’s bad side could be fatal for anyone except for my Aunt Angelica. She never gave a fuck about what my father said. She was the strongest woman I ever knew until I met you. She was his sister and she was blind, but that woman never feared him. She was fierce, and I never understood why. Elena and I would sneak to Aunt Angelica’s house when Mother went to sleep, and that was not very often. She would feed us, bathe us, stroke our cheeks, and show us love like no one else in the world. But she had no choice but to send us home. She knew my mother was sick, but she also knew her limitations. She was a band-aid on a critically hemorrhaging wound. She did what she could, and we clung to those moments desperately. One time, my dad had been gone on business for over a month. Elena and I were down to anorexic weights and exhausted from guarding each other every night. Mother went over the edge. We were ten years old, and she came at Elena with a butcher knife. She was screaming some nonsense about swapping a sacred pendant with an alien. She thought the aliens were spying on her with it. We had no idea what she was talking about, so we hid in our bedroom with the door locked. She smashed through and held the knife to Elena's throat.”
I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until he stopped talking.
“Did she hurt her?”
“I don’t know how, but I talked her out of slitting her throat. I told her that it was me who switched the fucking pendants. She tossed Elena aside and turned her rage on me. I was a ten-year-old boy, malnourished, vulnerable and weak. There was no way I could defend myself. She stabbed me, here.” He takes my hand and places it over the thick scar on his abdomen.
“That was the last time in my life I was defenseless and vulnerable until my coma. I vowed never to let myself get in that position again. I take care of me and only me. I protect my
heart by keeping people at arm’s length, and I do not love.”
I tighten my hold on him.
“How badly were you hurt?”
“Most of the wounds were superficial. She nearly killed me, though, with the stab to my gut. She nicked my femoral artery, and I nearly bled out on the bedroom floor.”
“Oh my God.” That explains the scars I saw when I bathed him in the hospital. The thought of Marcus’s mother stabbing her own son nauseates me. I swallow back the bile in my throat and pray that he’s finished with his story, but he’s not.
“The sight of all the blood stunned her for a moment. It was long enough for Elena to slip out and run to Aunt Angelica’s house for help. She sent police and an ambulance right away. They took us all to the hospital where I had surgery. Elena was given IV fluids, and they fed her. Mother was committed to the psychiatric ward, and Aunt Angelica stayed with us until our dad came home. The scar tissue and a severe infection that developed as a result of the stabbing made me sterile. She almost killed me, and she stole any hope of my having family.”
Fucking hell. I went through torture, but it was at the hands of strangers, not family. I can’t imagine how that messes a person up.
“I... I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry, Marcus.”
“I don’t want your pity any more than you wanted mine for what happened to you. I just thought you should know what you are dealing with here. I owe you that. My shit is seriously fucked up, Imani, and I want you. Fuck, I want you so much. But you should know all of it before we go any further.”
He’s giving me an out, but he has no idea that it’s impossible for me to take it. No matter what he tells me, I’m in this all the way. There’s no going back.
I’ve been guarding my heart, trying to hide my feelings for him, knowing that he could easily crush me. But now he needs to know how much I care, how far I would go for him.
“Marcus, you took my breath away the moment I saw you in that hospital bed, and I haven’t been the same since. I’m drawn to you the way the moon is drawn to the earth. I couldn’t stop my heart from loving you if I wanted to.”
We turn until our bodies are molded together. Scooping my hair out of the crook of my neck, he fans it out on the pillow behind me. I sigh as he trails his fingers up and down my back. If I could have one wish, it would be to stay in this moment forever, close to him, warm, safe, loved and cherished.
His hand leaves my skin, and I hear a click followed by a piece of beautiful classical music that I don’t recognize, but it makes me melt into him. He knows how to take a wonderful moment and make it perfect. Too perfect. The familiar uneasy feeling I always get when things are too good creeps into my soul, spreading through my body, wreaking havoc. Marcus senses it.
“Stop worrying.”
“How do you know I’m worrying?”
“I know everything.” I can hear the smile in his voice and some of my uneasiness evaporates.
“Ok, Mr. Genius, if you know so much, tell me what do I want to do right now?”
“You want to take a bath with me,” Hmmm, not what I was thinking exactly, but it sounds like an excellent idea.
“You do know everything, don’t you?”
“Yes, I would never lie to you.”
“I thought you were tired.”
“I’m feeling a second-wind coming on.”
“How do you propose we take a bath with you in a cast?”
“Imani, we have figured out how to do just about everything with this fucking cast in the way. Bag it up, and I will hold it on the edge of the tub. Come on.”
I hear a pop and feel the sting of a slap on my ass.
“Hey!”
“Up woman, let us bathe.”
Playful Marcus, I don’t see him often, and I love it. I crawl from the bed and look toward the bathroom. There’s no tub in his Taj Mahal shower.
“Where are we going to take a bath?” I ask, hitching my thumb toward his bathroom.
“Your bathroom, of course,” he says with fanfare.
“Oh, of course, the claw foot tub. How silly of me.”
The sun is coming up, and he’s been awake all night, but we set out at 6 a.m. to take a bath.
In my lavender bathroom, I set about running the water very hot, the way I like it, while Marcus leans against the vanity with his crutches. He follows my every move until I kneel down to cover his leg with a plastic bag to keep his cast dry.
We make our way to the tub. He smiles confidently and hands me his crutches. Curious as to how he plans on entering the water, I watch him perch his perfect ass on the edge of the tub facing me. He twists his torso and reaches behind him to the other side of the tub. Lifting all six feet four inches of his body weight with his arms, like a gymnast on parallel bars, he lowers himself into the water while resting his cast on the edge of the tub.
“Impressive upper body strength, Mr. Castillo,” I say, biting my lip.
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. You wait until this thing is off, and I will impress you with my lower body strength.” I giggle at his use of slang. It sounds so funny coming from Mr. Proper English.
That damn smirk is back in full force, eyewink and all. I shiver, and it’s not from the cold. I’m thinking about Marcus at full strength; it’s pretty damned perfect now, I can’t imagine it getting any better.
“Get in, you’re cold,” he says, mistaking my shiver for a chill.
I step in facing him, and he holds me still by my thighs. I feel the sting of his hand as he caresses the perfect red handprint on my ass.
“You have the most beautiful skin, baby. Come here.” I turn and sit down, scooting back between his legs. His arms circle me and he slides me backward until my back is flush to his front. I can feel his cock pressing full and thick against my back.
“Water too hot?” I ask.
“No, not at all.” He curls his arms under mine, and I drop my head back onto his shoulder and turn my face to his waiting lips. He kisses me gently before licking a trail across my bottom lip, urging them apart.
I give him access, but he continues to tease me with his tongue, nipping and sucking lightly. When I feel him pull away, I whimper and frown at the loss of his warm mouth on mine.
He smiles against my cheek and reaches to a table next to the tub for a bottle of body wash. He squeezes lavender-scented gel into his hand and nudges me forward to wash my back. He circles his fingers over my trapezius muscles and all of the tension in my body melts into the water.
I drop my chin to my chest, and his hands glide around to pinch each of my sensitive nipples. I inhale a sharp breath, and he continues down my belly between my legs.
“Braid your hair,” he says, in a seductive voice. I scoop my hair around to the side of my neck and braid the tangled black mess into a long rope.
“Much better. I can see all of you now,” he says, slowly circling my clit. His free hand slides over my breast, and he rolls my nipple between his fingers while masterfully stroking my clit.
My hands find their way out of the water and onto the sides of the tub. He finds a rhythm that launches me out of this universe. His breath on my shoulder is electric, and my senses are all in overdrive.
“You like that, don’t you, baby? Just. Like. That.”
I never could have imagined a more erotic scene than the one I’m watching in the mirror on the wall at the end of the tub. Skin beaded with sweat, steam coming off the water, our eyes heavy with desire. He slides two fingers inside of me and continues stroking my clit with his thumb.
That’s it, it’s over for me. I come hard and unexpectedly. Throwing my head back on Marcus’s shoulder, I grip the edges of the tub hard and press my feet against the porcelain.
“Oh my God, Marcus!”
My head is foggy from the heat of the bathroom and the heat we’re making together. When I’ve recovered just enough to open my eyes, I see him staring back at me in the mirror with a tinge of his trademark smirk on his lips.
> “I love watching you come,” he says, setting his chin on my shoulder.
“I love when you make me come.”
Finally, something we agree on 100%. He scoots me up in the tub in front of him and unbraids my hair. Pressing my shoulders gently down, I cross my arms over my chest and allow him to submerge my body long enough to wet my hair.
Breaking the surface face first, I slide back into position in front of him. Shampoo in his hands, he starts to work at washing my hair, which is commendable, it’s no easy job. My hair is a mess of tangles after our bedroom gymnastics.
He works silently and meticulously starting at my scalp, massaging and lathering. It’s amazing how such a mundane everyday task can be so tender and intimate. No one has washed my hair for me since I was a little girl.
When he has finally worked his way to the ends of my hair, he leans closer to kiss the side of my neck. He repeats the process and starts getting silly, dunking me several times under the water. By the time we are finished, I’m a bundle of giggles and there’s water all over the floor.
“There, all clean, even though I love you dirty,” he says, kissing the back of my head. I try hard not to react to the ‘L’ word, but I stop giggling and meet his eyes in the mirror. We stare until I abruptly announce that I need conditioner or we’ll be cutting my hair into a bob.
The bath water is cooling, and it occurs to me that he is still in a precarious state behind me. This bath has been pretty much all about me.
I wiggle my ass against his cock, “What about this? Should we figure out a way to take care of you in the tub, too?”
“I am fine, Imani. The bath was for you.” Uh, yeah, right, I’m not seasoned in sex but I know how things work, and I’m not about to leave him this way again.
“No, let me take care of you, too. I want to.”
“Imani, no, we can work on it later. I have a lot to do today. Hop up so we can go rinse off in my shower and get your hair conditioned.”
I turn around in his lap to face him. With one leg up on the side of the tub, he’s trapped. He’s twice my size and he could flip me easily if he really wanted to, but I don’t think he’s that opposed to the idea of a hand job before work.
