by A. R. Hadley
He put his lips near her ear. “I want to watch you come."
His breath knocked down the door of her skin.
He grabbed at the hairs under her neck, bunching them in his fist, and in that instant, he ripped open the tiny holes of the fishnet, wasting no time wiggling two of his fingers inside her panties.
He touched her flesh.
For a moment, Annie tensed, her body tingling everywhere, electrocuting her. Her chest was tight, hurting. God, she couldn’t breathe. Breathe, breathe, breathe. And yet, she somehow gasped, making wild noises but attempting to hush.
She. Could. Not. Hush.
Annie kept imagining his fingers pushing up inside her, desiring it and fighting it. Let go. Let go. She needed to give herself to him.
“Take me home, Cal,” she whimpered, glancing into his resolute eyes. “Not here.” Her chest rose higher. “I want to wait until we’re home. I want to feel you inside me. God, I just want to feel you.”
“Fuck," he growled. "You’re so warm … so wet." His magical fingers couldn’t fuck her into the oblivion she needed. The stubborn woman fought it.
"I can’t, Cal." She shook her head. “I want to wait.”
Cal's fingers no longer moved, but he kept them inside the torn fishnet of her stockings, inside the lace of her panties and inside her body. "Do you want me to be myself with you?"
The universe ground to a ticking halt. Her eyes stopped with it. "Yes."
"Then listen to me." He spoke those words as a command, not a plea, yet the tone of his voice contained the slightest tinge of vulnerability. "I want to feel you come. I want to keep my hand on you. My fingers in you." He pressed his thumb against her. "Right here."
She took in a sharp breath, then swallowed. "People will hear us."
"There are no people." Cal cupped her cheek while massaging her clit. "It's just you and me." He wandered into her woods, getting lost in the deep green forest of her eyes. "You and me. Give yourself to me … like always. All over again, Annie." He brushed her clit with the pad of his thumb with such delicacy she scarcely knew it was there. Oh. It was there all right.
"Now." He increased the pressure. "For me."
Still, she fought it, not wishing to, but she did, and he could see it. He knew the habits of her depression were hard to scorn. Cal needed the control as much as Annie needed to allow it. Her subjugation gave them both power.
“We’ll have all night to be in our bed, in our warm bed. I want you to come now," he said but removed his hand. The loss between her thighs was palpable. He put those same two fingers over her bottom lip. "Here…" He dragged her arousal across her lips. "That’s it. Taste yourself.” The honeycomb in his voice picked up determination as he pushed those juice-covered fingers into her mouth.
"Tell me to touch you," he said, and she sucked and whimpered. "Beg me, Annie."
Staring into his eyes faster, harder — a rocket ship leaving earth — she leapt into the green and fell under their hypnotic spell, unable to breathe or speak. Her throat constricted. The universe spun and spun.
"This is a new start for us." He slid his fingers out of her mouth. "Tell me. Please. I need you, baby."
"Touch me," she said and exhaled. "I need you too. Put your fingers inside my body … where they belong. You belong with me. Inside me.”
Instantaneously, he cupped her pussy harder than before, slid the same two digits up and forward, leaving his thumb to circle her clit as he studied the freedom on her face.
Her breath hitched. She closed her eyes.
"So fucking sexy," he said in time to the penetration of his fingers.
"Oh, God." Her head did a dance side to side against the rest while she kept her eyes shut and smiled.
Cal nibbled her bottom lip, tasting the arousal he’d painted on her as he continued bringing her closer to the place of no return — the place of submission, ecstasy, of no inhibition. Then he spoke against her mouth. "You’ve always been mine, baby."
"Yes. Please."
"But I wish..." He turned his head away, slowing down the finger-fucking. Her eyes popped open after she heard the break in his tone. "I wish you had never left me."
"No." She touched his face. "I never left you." The cold air entered her lungs, along with awareness and truth.
But she had. She had left him. Not intentionally. She hadn’t wanted to, but she had.
"You did, Annie." He spoke softly as he brushed strands of hair from her eyes.
"Please, don't stop touching me." She willed him to continue what she had at first denied, asking with her gaze and the clenching of her thighs, shocked at the need he’d stirred up within her in the short amount of time.
"Listen to me." The guttural sound of his vocal chords scared her, ignited her, and drowned out any remaining hesitation. "Don't. Ever. Leave. Me. Again."
God, had he ever been sexier, more open, full of love and hurt and all man? The well of tears became full pools ready to spill. "I won't." Taking ahold of his cheeks, she pulled his face toward her mouth. "I'll never leave you again."
"Never..."
"Never." As she kissed his lower lip, the salt of her tears mixed in their mouths and around their tongues.
"Show me your never." He began to move the two fingers inside her body again, picking up the onslaught, tapping them over and over her g-spot. "Let me hear your never."
Annie wiggled her hips and tugged his lower lip with her teeth, spilling carnal sounds into his mouth. Arching her hips forward, she yanked his lapels as though she were clinging to life itself.
And she was.
Her life.
Their life.
They were one.
Inching his head from her beautiful face, he said, "Look at me."
Biting back tears, she listened while nodding, speaking the never as a solemn pact between their eyes, their hearts, his fingers, and her sounds.
"Never," he repeated like an oath, his breath shaking.
"Never," she whispered.
"Louder."
Every vein, every nerve ending surged with a rapid, indescribable energy. It charged through Annie. The feeling she often had in her throat — the throbbing lump, the ache — ripped through her everywhere, pulsating in her groin, her stomach, her legs — fuck — her thighs, her chest, tearing her apart, inflicting her with a pleasurable, tingly pain.
"Never," she burst. "I love you."
"Again." His fingers thrust her inner walls as he circled her clit, then he pinched it unexpectedly.
"Never!" She sobbed.
"Come," he ordered.
He didn't need to say it twice. Her muscles tightened around his fingers, and as they did, Cal's eyes glossed over. He watched her come. He felt her release and abdicate, and with it, a safety returned. Her orgasm blanketed them. He watched her love and her lust and her passion become one with him.
They became one.
Now.
Today.
Again.
The woman who had been his from the start — his always, his forever, his, tied to him and bound — spoke new vows. Never had it been like this until her. Never before in his life had there been a forever. Annie was forever. He inhaled the breaths she exhaled. His body contained her soul, and hers contained his.
The new beginning was the new forever.
She would never leave him again.
Indefinable
Who are you?
What defines you?
What defines who you are?
Benjamin was twelve months old, but Annie felt a year older for each month he’d lived.
Her world had changed as everyone who knew her — everyone who really knew her — had predicted.
It had changed in ways she never could’ve imagined, and now she had finally settled and embraced it, and with this change, she knew there would still be more to come ... and more ... and more and more.
She couldn't stop it, and she could no longer fight it, and the strength she’d once poured into her st
ruggle now poured back into her very bones, carrying her up and over every hurdle with a new sense of ease.
It wasn't just Annie's world that had changed.
She’d changed.
Just as it had been after Peter died, so it was now.
She couldn't be the same. She had to move forward. She had to surge ahead. She was different. Annie had, at last, come out on the other side of a many-months-long depression amazingly unscathed — but she had changed.
It would’ve been impossible for Annie to feel what she’d felt, lose what she’d lost, and gain what she’d gained without metamorphosis.
New life after a fire blazing through a vast forest.
Without the burn, without the flames, there could be no new growth — there could be no creation.
From the ashes rose life.
Cal and Annie walked up to the door of a sprawling estate located on the beach in Malibu.
It was a beautiful late afternoon in May of 2016.
Cal had business in Los Angeles, and this time Annie accompanied him — without Ben and with no regrets.
The wind whipped Annie's white hippie skirt up her legs and blew caramel-colored strands across her face. She’d had her hair cut. It curled at the ends, wispy-like, falling just over her shoulders.
Something else had fallen over one of her shoulders.
Eyeing Annie’s bra strap through his aviator sunglasses, Cal tucked the pink piece of lace under her top the moment a wobbly and giggling stranger opened the beast of a front door.
“Oh,” the faltering guest said as he passed. “Excuse me.”
Annie and Cal exchanged a smirk as they stepped over the threshold. Cal's shiny, metal sunglasses concealed his all-knowing eyes while the lenses reflected the blotchy and nonuniform patterns of the beautiful slate stone floors, the color matching the rocks making up the Petrified Forest.
Standing an arm’s length ahead of Cal, Annie let go of his palm and gave the immense room a once-over. Feeling like an observer behind a sheet of glass, she peered into a secret world the likes of which she’d never seen before — not up close, anyway.
High ceilings, enormously high, climbed an entire second story. Clusters of people, drinks in hands, fresh Botox, pouty lips. Museum paintings. Everything seemed huge — larger than life — but it didn't make her feel small.
Wearing confidence on her sleeve — the way she wore everything on the damn thing — her sense of belonging-anywhere-she-damn-well-pleased shined like a fresh, glossy coat of lipstick ready to smack against anything that breathed.
After slipping his sunglasses inside his shirt pocket, Cal nuzzled Annie’s neck, his mouth tickling her skin, and wrapped his hand around her waist. He kissed her cheek and said, “Are you ready?”
She squirmed from the contact, the sun-on-the-sand warmth of his breath, and the magnets under his skin. After slipping her fingers into one of his hands — the ones that kept her safe — she glanced at the makeshift bar located along the rear of the Hearst Castle-esque room.
“I am.” She tilted her head toward him with a smile. “I’m ready for a drink.”
“Cal,” a man said, interrupting as he slapped Cal on his shoulder — an unlit cigar was wedged between his fingers. Another man approached as well, and so the four of them stood spread out, forming a circle.
“Bill.” Cal took his hand and shook it. “Good to see you.”
“Did you just arrive?”
“My wife and I just arrived." Cal tipped his head toward Annie.
“I was wondering when I was going to finally meet this mysterious bride of yours,” Bill said with a wry smile while yanking his pants toward his protruding waist. “I was beginning to think she was a figment of your imagination.” He winked at Annie.
“I’m real,” she said, reaching out her hand, but Bill surprised her by lifting her fingers and kissing them instead of gripping them.
“Bill, this is my wife, Annie.” Cal then caught the eye of the second man, the unfamiliar one. “I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.”
Bill dropped Annie’s palm and cleared his throat. “I apologize.” He shoved a hand in his pocket, beginning to jingle keys or change or something rattling and distracting. “I thought the two of you had already met.”
“No,” the other man said in a thick Southern accent, possibly New Orleans. "I never forget a face." He smoothed his tanned fingers over the tips of his dark mustache. The Southern man was big, tall and sturdy like a mighty tree, and high and mighty like a lofty king. “My name is Beauregard. Beauregard Templeton.”
“Hmm,” Cal said, the Rolodex of his mind flipping through card after card. “That name is familiar.”
“Like I said,” Templeton grumbled, fingering the jet-black mustache again. “I don’t forget a face.”
“We’ve done work for Beau, Cal,” Bill said.
“Here, in Malibu?” Cal asked.
“Yeah. It’s been a few years.”
“Bill said you’re here for the merger, and he tells me you’re the best,” Templeton said.
Cal found the card.
His veins filled with epoxy as he stared into the imperious man’s bulging blue eyes.
Fuck. Him.
The memory of how and why the name Templeton was familiar infiltrated his mind, traveling at a rate faster than the speed of sound, deafening his reason.
Annie took note of Cal’s face — the color had vanished — and she grabbed her husband’s hand and held onto it for life — his.
“Cal is the best,” Annie said, extending her free hand toward Templeton, the tall and mighty czarist tree.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Templeton said, grasping her palm. Annie thought his handshake had too much sugar and spice and everything nice and not enough backbone. “You must think me to be rude. It’s nice to meet you Mrs.…?”
“Mrs. Prescott.”
“That’s right,” he said with a snide bit of laughter. “Prescott. Bill told me that. You’ll both be here all week then?”
“Yes,” Annie replied.
“Well, it’s too bad my wife isn’t here,” Templeton said. “I think the two of you would probably get along well. You could shop and gab and do whatever the hell it is women like to do. I’m sure all this man talk just bores you to tears.”
“Not at all.” Annie wore an impressive smile despite the salmonella the man’s presence gave her gut. “Will she be here later in the week?”
Cal clamped down on Annie’s hand. His palm was damp.
Bill shifted his gaze.
Templeton’s eyes stopped, though, and opened wide like an eagle’s. “My wife is ill,” he said with an oddly bitter tone as though her illness had offended him personally.
The revelation, “My wife is ill,” pushed Cal back several feet, but he remained rooted to the spot. Maybe he was melting into the Petrified Forest floors. His eyes were sinking. The green was mutating and beginning to match the pale of his cheeks. Everything in the room suddenly seemed pale and lifeless and empty. The man who always had control of any situation couldn’t bring himself to speak.
“I’m so sorry.” Annie touched Templeton’s arm, but he only peered down at her fingers, his eyes conveying both salacious and self-righteous thoughts.
She removed her hand from his cold body and looked at Cal. Bill cleared his throat and stood on the balls of his feet while rolling the cigar between his fingers.
“Beau, you old devil,” a man said, appearing from somewhere. People were appearing and arriving and filling the room and bar and deck. “How is Reegan?”
“She’s fine,” Beau said as he shifted around to answer the man. His gruff voice was loud, and each word he spoke could be heard by anyone within twenty feet. “She’s off getting treatment. The best. You know it’s nothing but the best—”
“Excuse us, Bill,” Annie said politely while glancing at Cal. “If you don’t mind. I think we’re thirsty.”
“No, of course. Get yourselves a drink. I’ll
be over shortly. I want to start on this bullshit tonight.” Bill turned from Cal and faced Annie. “It was nice to finally meet you, Mrs. Prescott.”
“It was nice to meet you as well."
Annie took a seat on one of the bamboo chairs at the end of the bar, and Cal stood next to his wife and played with the tips of her hair. A drink was in his other hand.
Annie stirred the olive-coated toothpick around her triangular-shaped glass. The two sips of Grey Goose hadn't eased the burn or swell in her throat, though. She glanced at Cal, off and on, waiting for the words he held back to roll off his tongue — to choke off — but she realized they may never come out of the quiet man's voice box.
Tilting the mouth of her glass to her lips, she sipped some of the martini and then began to fidget with the cotton of her skirt.
"Did you love her?” she finally asked, then waited for Cal’s wandering gaze to meet hers.
The moment he met her magnifying-glass eyes, his heart skipped several beats. He felt astonished — or not, because she’d always been perceptive, always known how to chase away his fears — at the way she knew him and understood him and at the solace her pretense and tone imparted.
“No,” he replied, bringing his glass toward his mouth. He downed half the whiskey.
“You cared for her?”
“I felt sorry for her.” His voice held no pleasure, only a dull knife of regret.
“When did you know her?”
His palm around the glass, he readied the words and exhaled. “I met her”—he recalled Reegan’s kinky, waist-length blonde hair—"close to a year before I met you.”
“She’s the distance you needed from L.A.?"
Cal nodded and looked to his glass, wishing the alcohol could swallow him whole instead of the other way around.
"Why did you—?”
“Have an affair?” Inhaling the shame, his eyes bounced around the people, the room — same bullshit different day.
“Yes.” Her reply held his regret, her empathy at a pinnacle. “I’m sorry. I have no right to judge you.”
