by Ali Parker
Soon enough, lunch was done, Kristo and his father joining us to scavenge the last of it and then help us clean up. Kristo barely said a word to anyone, and he seemed utterly and completely lost to whatever was going on in his head. Part of me wanted to shake that loose, but I knew I had to let him come to me on his own. If I had found out anything after being married to him for this long, it was that trying to get him to do what he didn’t want was only going to end badly.
“This has been amazing.” Jolene hugged Nonna as the day drew to a close. “I’m going to come back and visit soon.”
“We’re already looking forward to it.” She brushed Jolene’s hair back from her face and cupped her chin in a display of tenderness I would never have credited a woman of her nature to be capable of. Jolene grinned, and I felt my heart swell once more. It was good to see my sister so well-loved, so comfortable.
We said our goodbyes and put Jolene back into the van and drove back down to the home where we would be dropping her off. Kristo was still quiet, but I focused on spending a little more time with my sister and gave him some space. He probably just needed time to himself after that day with everything all at once. He was a solitary kind of guy, and that must have been something close to hell for him.
Jolene was back in her room after giving Kristo a big hug that made his face light up for a moment, and then we were back in the car as Kristo drove us back to the apartment. I watched him, the way the light played on his face as we made our way back to the city, but I couldn’t get a read on him. His jaw was set tight and his eyes focused on the road, and he didn’t seem to realize I was waiting for him to talk to me, to tell me what the hell had been going on all day.
We arrived back at the apartment, and I followed him back up there and tried not to think about that morning when he had helped me with the briki. He had been so sweet, so understanding, the way our hands had touched as he’d guided me making my heart sing with excitement. But now it was like someone had flipped a switch deep inside of him and turned him off, and I couldn’t figure out why.
I was planning on giving him some space and letting him catch his breath and get his head straight, but he made his way straight to the bedroom and half-turned his head to look at me.
“I’m going to bed,” he muttered, and he lingered for a moment longer as though something else was on his mind. Our eyes met briefly, and I saw a flash of pain in them that made my brain zing with upset. And then he turned and headed into the bedroom, leaving me standing there staring after him.
No. I wasn’t going to let the night end like this. I was his wife, and I was going to do everything I could to make things better. I might not have been able to get him to talk to me, but that wasn’t all I could do to comfort him right then and there.
I followed him into the bedroom where he had already stripped down and was about to climb into bed, and he turned to glance up at me. Before I could overthink what I was about to do, I leaned down and kissed him.
As soon as our mouths met, I knew it was different than before. When I had been with him in this apartment previously, it had always been a swell of desire for each other, as though if we didn’t take each other right then and right there, we might expire, but this was different. He slid his arm around my waist and drew me on to his lap. I could feel the tension unwinding from his body, everything that he’d been carrying all day long rushing out of him. I slipped my arms around him, and he guided me down on to the bed so that he was on top of me, his body pressed down on mine, the warmth and strength of him comforting me in ways I didn’t know I needed.
He stripped me down swiftly and deftly, and I noticed the way his ring caught the light as he moved, and my heart skipped a beat. Sometimes, I forgot that we were bonded in such a profound way. I reached up to brush the hair back from his face and saw my own ring on my finger, a reminder of what we shared, the secrets we carried for each other. He kissed me again, this time with more intent, and we moved our bodies against each other as though they were the only things in the whole damn world that mattered. The two of us floated in an ocean of doubt, but we could make it work if we clung to each other to stay above water.
He moved his hand between my legs, and I planted a kiss on the corner of his mouth, watching the way it curled up as we touched each other. I felt a little twinge of victory, seeing that smile on his face and knowing I had put it there, but then his hand found my pussy and everything else seemed to fade. He flattened his fingers against my clit and massaged me softly, pulling back an inch so that our mouths weren’t quite touching, so I could feel his breath teasing my skin. It took everything I had not to cry out in pleasure, not to beg him for more, but I wanted him to take the lead here. I wanted him to use us to make himself feel better, to explore that connection and figure out just how deep it went. I closed my eyes and moved my hips back against him, and before I knew it, the pleasure had overwhelmed me, taken me, owned me.
“I need to be inside you,” he breathed in my ear, letting his touch trace briefly over the arch as he reached into the bedside cabinet for a condom. I parted my legs and ran my hands over his back as he sheathed himself, watching the way his muscles moved beneath his skin with every motion. I wanted to touch him, every inch of him. That feeling from before coursed through me, the reminder that this wasn’t going to last forever, that I wasn’t always going to have this man at my beck and call, that I wouldn’t always be able to just slide between the sheets with him to make things better. I forced it to the back of my mind as he slid between my legs and kissed me again, guiding my legs back and easing himself inside of me.
“Oh my god,” I gasped, and he brushed his mouth softly over my neck as he began to move inside of me. How could he still feel this good? Even when the novelty wasn’t there the way it was before, even when we shared this out of affection instead of straight desire, it felt so unbelievably good.
I ran my hands through his hair and tugged his head back so that he was looking at me. His eyes were soft, but they felt as though they were burning straight through me as we connected in this way, in this way that I never had with anyone else before in my life. I could see he felt it, too, even if he would never have admitted it. He needed this more than he knew, needed whatever the hell the two of us were sharing right now. I hooked my ankles around his back and drew him in deeper, feeling as though I could crawl inside his skin and not feel close enough right now.
He thrust into me slowly, but the pressure was building fast, as though it had been waiting to spill over all day. Kristo leaned down and wrapped his arms around me, pressing his head into my shoulder, and I sank my nails into his back and moved back against him, the two of us finding each other at a matching pace and fucking until it felt as though the entire world around us had dropped away for good, forever.
“Oh,” I groaned in his ear, and the intimacy and the intensity pushed me over the edge all at once, my body crumpling around his. He thrust deep inside me, and I could hear his breath, could feel his heart. Everything about him, the blood pulsing through his veins, felt as though it was pouring into me as I came. And moments later, he tipped over the edge as well, holding me so close, I wasn’t sure we would ever disentangle as his cock twitched deep inside of me.
We held ourselves like that for a moment or two longer, and I listened to his breathing as it returned to normal, planting my hand on his chest to feel the race of his heart. He pressed his forehead to mine and closed his eyes, and I stared at him, at the man I had tried so hard to convince myself I didn’t love. Whatever lies I had been spinning myself all this time, they were starting to come apart at the seams, and I couldn’t wait to see what lay on the other side.
40
How much sleep did I get that night? It couldn’t have been more than an hour or two, that was for sure. I felt as though my head was leaking, brain dripping down my front like so much syrup. She was wrapped around me like a vine on a tree, and part of me just wanted to put my arms around her and go back to sleep. But t
here was no way in hell that was happening, not now that I was conscious enough to start thinking, to start putting the pieces together in my mind.
A war was raging inside of me. It might have sounded melodramatic, but it was the only thing that came close to summing up everything that was running through my head right there and then. It was as though bombs were exploding and people yelling and turf being torn from the ground even as I tried to keep myself together. I was surprised I was only in one piece, that the emotional turmoil hadn’t made itself known on the outside too.
It had all started with that conversation my father had with me the day before when he’d taken me aside at Nonna’s place. I had assumed it was just going to be something along the lines of “how’s the business going?” but to my surprise, when he closed the door behind me and turned to me, there were tears in his eyes.
“Dad, what’s wrong?” I demanded at once. For one panicked moment, I was certain he was going to tell me that he was dying or something, but he shook his head and waved his hand.
“I’m sorry.” He quickly gathered himself. “I just need to talk to you.”
“What about?” I pressed, glancing over my shoulder. I knew Amaya and Jolene could hold their own, but I still wanted to be there for them if they needed me, to dive on any grenades that might have sprung up over the course of dinner with my family.
“About your wife.” He slapped me on the shoulder, and for a split second, my stomach felt as though it was going to drop out the bottom of my feet. Oh, shit. He knew. I didn’t know how, but he knew this was a con, that she was only around for a year. Had one of the guys who’d drawn up the contract leaked it? Shit, I needed to—
“You seem so happy with her,” he continued, and I shut my head up and took a deep breath. He was just trying to be kind and fatherly. He wasn’t here to bust me about anything.
“I am,” I replied. It was the truth. He just didn’t need to know about the reality of our arrangement and what was due to come after it when this year was all done with.
“And I just …” He shot a look toward the door. My father had never been an emotional man, far from it, but it looked as though he was straining as he stood before me trying to come up with what he wanted to say.
“When your mother left us,” he began, and his voice hardened a little, as though he was used to batting away the feelings that came with that memory. “When she left us, I didn’t think I would ever fall in love again. I thought I was too … I thought there was too much baggage there, you know?”
I eyed him for a long moment. Was I really about to get marriage advice off the guy who had done it four times? Well, I supposed if anyone knew how they worked, it would be him.
“Right.” I nodded, and I felt myself soften a little, thinking of Amaya, of everything we’d shared these last couple of months. I did love having her around, that much was obvious, even to me.
“And I tried and tried to find someone to love properly.” He shook his head. “And it just didn’t work. You know that. You saw them come and go.”
“Sure did,” I replied sharply, reminding him that it was us, his family, who had had to deal with the blowback from all his wives leaving, the hysterical, accusatory phone calls, the fury, the rage, all of it came down on us as much as on him. He held his hands up, acknowledging the fact.
“But now that I’ve met Karen, I just know this is it,” he went on, and there was this calmness to his voice that let me know he really did believe what he was saying right then and there. I stared at him for a long while, waiting for the crack to appear in his armor, but it didn’t. He looked back at me, clear-eyed and confident, and I realized he really meant this. That woman waiting out there for him, God help her, he really did love her, and he really did want to spend his life with her.
“Can I ask what this has to do with me?” I pressed. I was still sharp around the edges from everything that had happened the last couple of marriages.
“I see the way you look at Amaya, and I’m just glad my son has the same thing as me.” He grinned, slapping me on the shoulder once more before heading over to the door. “She’s a good one, Kristo. I don’t know how you managed to convince her to stay but keep doing it.”
I watched as he left, and I felt my stomach churn with panic. Fucking hell. Even my family thought this girl was the one for me. I paused for a long moment in the kitchen before I returned to join everyone else outside and did my best to paint a happy face on for the rest of the day. But I couldn’t. Amaya could see through me, see down to the truth I was doing my best to smother, because she already seemed to know me better than anyone else, even my own family.
And when we had arrived home that evening and she had slid into bed with me and made love to me, I felt as though I was helpless to resist her. I had never really made love like that in my entire life. Fucking? Sure, but this was something new. Her body was good and sweet beneath mine, her breath playing on my skin, her touch light and playful as she skimmed her fingers all over my body and drew me in deep. It had felt as though she was peeling away at my walls, brushing them down so nothing about them mattered any longer, as though I was the only thing she wanted and needed. And her ability to be open with me in that way drew it out of me as well, pushing something that I had tried to bury down inside me all this time to run up and over and take control.
And now, as I lay here in bed next to her while she slept peacefully, I found myself envying her. Because she had been the one to tell me she loved me, and she had been the one to take back control and lay the ground rules, and all that time, I had told myself over and over again that love just wasn’t something I did. Hell, sometimes I wondered if love was even something I was capable of at all. I never considered that there might be something more between us, that I might be the one shoving down my desire and my need for her.
But I couldn’t love her. I couldn’t do it, not the way she wanted and needed from me. She needed a man, strong and steady, who knew where he was in relationships, who could love with a broad openness that didn’t have him running for the hills every time he felt anything even remotely intense. And yet, here I was her husband, and I felt illiterate in the face of everything I was trying to give shape to. My heart burned in my chest as she lay there next to me, unknowing, probably committed to keeping her heart safe and playing out the year and having a little fun in the process, where I felt like my chest was going to burst with everything I felt for her.
But it was more than just her. That was the problem. It was her family, Jolene, her job, her commitment to it. Her sense of humor and her style and the way she tipped her head back as she came like she was escaping from reality for a moment. All of that was piling up on top of itself to create this image of a woman, a woman I didn’t know could ever exist in my world. A woman who I might have been able to love if I just let myself, the way my father had finally found love after so long fucking it up. Maybe this was how it happened for me, no matter how crazy that sounded.
All my father wanted was for me was to be happy, to be loved, and maybe that’s what I’d needed all this time, to ignore the gold diggers and my job, to bring life to this sparse, empty apartment. To share my life with someone who understood me.
We had nine months left. I had a running tally in my head that felt as though it was constantly flashing with the reminder of what I had agreed to when I had given her that contract. When this was over, she would have every right to just slide on straight out of my life and take the money and never look back. I had nine months to figure this out, to figure out exactly what I needed to do to get her to stay. When I thought of it like that, as a game, I could feel my competitive nature kicking into high gear and my enthusiasm to take this shooting up a couple of notches. But it was more than just a game. This was me trying to break down the walls I had so carefully constructed and lovingly maintained for so long and spend the next nine months convincing the woman next to me that everything I’d told her about myself up until this point had been
a lie. That she had rendered it that way.
She began to stir next to me, and the feel of her hips wriggling against mine as she came to wakefulness was enough to stir something in me, same as last night. I looked down at her, and she grinned as soon as our eyes met.
“Good morning,” she murmured, and I knew she had one thing on her mind. Maybe that was precisely what I needed to get myself out of my own head, to give myself over to a little fun for a change.
“Come here,” I ordered, pulling her on top of me and wrapping my arms around her waist. I slid a hand up her back and grabbed her hair, tilting her head back so I could kiss her neck. She giggled and then let out a sigh of pleasure. And for a while, I was able to pretend to myself that this was all I’d been looking for, that this was all that really mattered between us. Everything else could wait as long as Amaya was here in bed with me, her supple, soft body willing next to mine.
41
I had to rush to get out of bed that morning after those morning activities had rendered me a little late. I grinned as I showered and wondered if I should invite him in to join me, to see just how many times he could make me come before I had to leave for work. I got ready as fast as I could, and he planted a kiss on my cheek before I went out the door.
“Have a good day,” he told me, and I smiled back at him.
“You too,” I replied, and I felt that familiar little fizz in my chest, the one that came every single time he did something that could have been mistaken for the actions of a loving husband. He seemed to have cheered up from last night. I had asked a couple of times what his father had spoken to him about that had gotten him so out-of-sorts, but he didn’t tell me, offering me vague half-answers to deflect the question. Probably something about work, something too dull to bother me with. I didn’t let it get under my skin. All that mattered was that he was back in his usual form this morning and couldn’t have been the sweeter or more attentive husband, making me come before I’d so much as rolled out of bed and then bringing me coffee and letting me linger as long as I could between the covers.
