Sift

by L. D. Davis

  “No, it wasn’t. I wouldn’t want a herculean body. I don’t want a meat head. How many women, Connor?” I asked again, silkily. “You know how many I’ve been with.”

  “You can count your conquered men on two fingers. I need two hands.”

  I picked up the hand he had burnt and kissed it softly. “So, let’s count. We’ll count me first.” I pulled his pinky finger between my lips and sucked on it, making his breath hitch. “That’s one.”

  “Pancake girl,” he murmured, watching me expectantly.

  I sucked on his ring finger next. “Two.”

  “Umm, Sienna. A woman I used to work with.”

  I drew his middle finger in deep. “Three.”

  I could feel his heartbeat speeding up.

  “My ex-girlfriend Margot.”

  I stroked his pointer finger with my tongue and sucked on it as if it were another part of his body. “Four.”

  “And three others that don’t matter anymore,” he said quickly, grasping my shoulders. “Come up here and kiss me.”

  I grinned. “No.”

  Carefully, I began to move down his body. Having a bum leg made things a little awkward, but not at all impossible, and no less hot.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice raspy. He pushed himself up on his elbows and gazed down at me. The dying firelight was just enough to see the desire in his eyes.

  “I’m going to make those other women so insignificant, you won’t ever need to count them again,” I said, and then I took his erection into my mouth.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  We were in his bed, spooning, except he was buried deep inside of me. There was nothing between us but skin, sweat, and heat.

  “I’ll never have you any other way again,” he said in my ear and moaned.

  I wanted to tell him I couldn’t agree more, but then his hand moved between my legs, and the only thing that came out of my mouth was a cross between a whimper and a moan.

  Connor began to move faster. Harder. Deeper. He wrapped his arms around me and murmured nonsensical things in my ear. I shrieked and cried out his name as he plowed into me.

  “I’m going to finish in you,” he whispered roughly. “I’m going to leave some of me inside of you. Then I’m going to stay there until I’m hard again and do it all over.”

  That undid me, and my undoing was his. I screamed, and Connor shouted as he came inside of me.

  I trembled—we trembled together in the aftermath. We stayed as we were, breathing heavily and too drowsy for words. I don’t know which of us fell asleep first, but some time later, I don’t know when, I woke up to Connor hardening once again inside of me.

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  I lay on my stomach, with my eyes barely open as I gazed at Connor. My fingers moved through his beard and he sighed with contentment.

  “Can I ask you something?” I whispered.

  His eyes were closed, but he was just as much awake as I was. “Hmm?”

  “Why didn’t you come see me when I was out of the hospital and in the hotel room?”

  He opened one eye. “That’s a loaded question.”

  “I’m sorry, but…I want to know. It’s been on my mind.”

  “Are you sure you want to hear it? There is nothing chivalrous or honorable in my answer. My reasons are entirely selfish and petty.”

  I almost laughed. “You are the least selfish and petty person that I know. Now you have to tell me.”

  He groaned. “You’ll think I’m an asshole.”

  I gasped. “You’re cussin’ again. Next cuss word and we’re gonna have to wash your mouth out with soap.”

  In response, he kissed me wonderfully slow. When he finally pulled away, he looked very satisfied with himself.

  “That was nice,” I said. “But it didn’t distract me. Tell me.”

  He sighed again. “Okay. You know why I wasn’t there when you woke up, right?”

  “Cherry told me that you and Cade had an epic thumb war, and Cade won.”

  He pinched my ass. I yelped and laughed.

  “Okay, yes, I know why. Go on.”

  His fingers stroked up and down my back.

  “I came back the day before you got out of the hospital so I could make sure you had somewhere to go while you recovered. I had decided that I wanted to see you. Your family and Cherry did a great job keeping me updated, but I needed to see you with my own eyes. I knew your parents usually left you alone a couple hours a day around dinner time, so I went to the hospital. I stopped in the gift shop and bought a whole bunch of Get Well balloons. They were a pain in a butt to carry, but I didn’t care. I knew you would like them.

  “I was maybe two steps from your open door when I heard…him. I heard him tell you he loved you.” His fingers paused on my back as he looked at me through narrowed eyes. “And I heard you repeat the sentiment.”

  That must had felt like a kick in the teeth for him after all he had already done for me. I was sorry he had witnessed that exchange, even though it wasn’t what it had appeared to be. Cade and I had already been over at that point—we’d been over for a long time already, but there was no real way of Connor knowing that.

  “I used the balloons as a cover as I walked past your room,” he continued. “I know it sounds like something you’d see on television, but it worked. You didn’t see my face, but I saw yours. I saw you and Cade holding hands and heard your soft murmuring. I thought…” He shook his head. “I thought he won. I thought that he had won and that I had lost. I didn’t want to see you two together, or to see any signs of you two being together on your face. I didn’t want to see your eyes light up for him, or to realize that your smiles were reserved just for him. I didn’t want to hear his name on your lips as you dismissed me from your life. So, I didn’t come.”

  I rested my palm on his cheek. “I know how it must have seemed, but it wasn’t what you thought it was.”

  Connor raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Really. Do tell. What was it then?”

  I sighed softly. “We were two people who loved too hard, to the point of being injurious. Mentally. Emotionally. Physically. We were two people who loved too hard that saw that the end was near, and we wanted to make the most of the time we had left.”

  We were quiet for a long time as his fingers resumed moving up and down my back.

  “Is it really possible to love anyone too hard?” He asked, after an undetermined amount of silence. “Love is…it’s love. It’s supposed to be a good thing, isn’t it?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “You’ve heard the question about which one weighs more, a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers, right?”

  “Yes. They’re the same. They both weigh a ton.”

  “Right. It’s a no-brainer that a ton of bricks can hurt you, but maybe you look at the feathers and think, ‘How bad can it be?’ They’re soft. Pliable. Comfortable. But it’s a ton of feathers. They can still crush you. They can smother you. They can kill you softly. Love ain’t no different. It is a good thing, just like some feathers in a pillow can be a good thing. But too much of anything can hurt you. Even something that’s supposed to be good.”

  He stared at me for a while. I could tell that he was thinking, and it didn’t take long for him to tell me what was on his mind.

  “I think you’re wrong,” he said softly.

  My brow furrowed. “What?”

  “I think you’re wrong about it being possible to love someone too hard. There’s no such thing as loving someone too hard. I think that you just loved the wrong person. I believe that in my bones, Darla, because I love you harder than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything in my life, and I want you to love me back just as hard. I wouldn’t want you to hold back because you’re afraid of it being too much. I don’t want you to be afraid that we’ll break. If you can’t promise to give me everything you have, no matter how coarse or brutal it may sometimes be, then we can’t go on from here.”

  A couple of tears slid out of m
y eyes and dropped onto the pillow. Connor’s hand had again paused on my back, but he didn’t pull away from me. He simply waited.

  I moved toward him, kissed him softly. “I promise to give you everything I have.”

  He let out a long, relieved breath. “I promise, too.”

  His mouth and my mouth met again. Soon, I was on my back, and he was sliding into me, sealing the promises we had made.

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  I still didn’t know what time it was. I just knew that the sun was out, and had been for some time.

  “I really do look like I’ve been attacked by a vampire,” I said, eyeing my neck in the bathroom mirror.

  Connor started the shower before coming up behind me at the sink. He looked at the enormous love bite in the mirror as his fingers gently probed it.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Only when we’re touching it,” I said, slapping his fingers away.

  He kissed my neck, right below the bite. “I wish I could tell you that I’m sorry that I marked you, but I’m not.”

  I tried to hide my smile as his arms came around me. “Savage.”

  “Only when it comes to you,” he murmured on my skin.

  He continued to kiss my neck as he ground his growing erection against me. He glanced up and saw me watching him and smiled mischievously.

  “Have you ever watched yourself come?”

  I shook my head as I pushed back against him. I was sore all over. My leg was especially sore, but I didn’t care. I wanted him again.

  Connor gripped my hips. “Remember what I said about fucking you?”

  I moaned. “I love hearing you cuss.”

  “Hold on to the sink, Darla,” he whispered in my ear.

  I gripped the edges of the vanity and watched our reflections in the mirror as he entered me from behind.

  “Oh, damn,” I groaned.

  “Hold on tight,” he said in warning. “Don’t let go.”

  In the next moment, I was screaming as he slammed into me. My eyes began to close, and my head began to droop.

  “Keep your eyes open,” he demanded sharply. “Look in the mirror, baby. Look in the mirror while I fuck you.”

  I watched my face. My mouth was open in an endless cry of pleasure, and my cheeks burned pink. Connor’s grin was almost evil as he stared back at me. The muscles in his neck and arms were tight from the effort.

  He kept going, even beyond the point where I thought he could go no more. Slamming into me over and over. Deep. Hard. Harder. Deeper. His fingers dug into my hips, and his grunting and growling grew louder and fiercer.

  I thought that I couldn’t come anymore after all we’d done through the night, but to my surprise, my body gave in. I screamed and cussed and bit down on my bottom lip so hard that I tasted a little bit of blood.

  My words failed me first. I couldn’t even say his name or anything that made any kind of sense. Then my breaths were quite literally fucked out of me. I gasped and gasped for air and couldn’t get enough of it into my lungs. As my orgasm reached it’s peak, as I screamed incoherent things, and sobbed, I did indeed forget my own name.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Two weeks after that long, sleepless night with Connor, he gave me a ring. It wasn’t an engagement ring, but a promise ring. A white gold band with a round onyx gemstone in the center, surrounded by diamond accents. It was the most beautiful thing I owned, and more than I deserved.

  As weeks passed by, I couldn’t believe that I had gone almost my whole life without Connor in it. How does a body function without a beating heart or without lungs? How did I survive almost twenty-four years without him? He was as much a part of me as my own blood. Had I realized that earlier, maybe life would have been different. Maybe the awful events of July Fourth would have never occurred, but I couldn’t think about what could have been. The reality was that Connor and I were together, in love, and beginning a new life as a couple.

  I had moved into Connor’s, though I couldn’t say what the exact date was. It had happened so gradually, that neither of us really noticed right away. Not until one day when we were at my dad’s for dinner, and we both got up to go after we’d had coffee and a pound cake I had made and brought with us.

  “Y’all goin’ home now?” Daisy had asked innocently. “Take this damn cake home, too, or I’ll be the fattest pregnant woman in Augusta County.”

  Connor and I had looked at each other with startled amusement.

  “Home,” we’d mouthed silently.

  Home it was. It was the most at home I’d felt since I was a child and still small enough to sit on my daddy’s lap. Once, not that long ago, but a lifetime ago, I imagined myself bundled up in Connor’s flannel shirt, my feet in wool socks, and his arms around me in front of the roaring fire. I had imagined us sipping soup and hot chocolate, and baking together, and I had even imagined the heat we would have exchanged in his bed. All of that and more had come to be.

  I was happy. I fell asleep wrapped up in Connor’s arms every night and woke up to his kisses every morning. He spent his days working either in his office or out on the road. I spent my days working hard to regain the strength in my leg and baking. Lots of baking.

  Word had spread fast that I was baking again, and people were again paying me for their pastry needs. I even sold dough for fresh mini pretzel braids to Louie’s. All they had to do was pop them in the oven when they got an order. He served them with various dips or with cinnamon and sugar. We were in discussions about other possible items to add to the menu.

  No matter what kind of orders I had, though, or who needed what from me, at the end of the work day, I happily gave my full attention to Connor. If he were home early enough, we made dinner together. His baking skills still stunk, but he was otherwise pretty good in the kitchen.

  On New Year’s Eve, we had a huge bonfire in our backyard. Pretty much everyone we knew had been invited, even my old friends from Philly. Everyone brought food or drinks. We roasted a whole pig, made burgers and chicken on the grill, and cooked our hot dogs and sausages on sticks over any one of the smaller fires we’d had going throughout the yard. I made a ton of cookies and cupcakes, and of course, there were plenty of gooey S’mores made.

  There was hot coffee, tea, cocoa and apple cider, as well as cold drinks in buckets packed with the little bit of snow we’d gotten. There were blankets, extra jackets, and sweaters, and mittens and of course, people were free to hang out inside if the air was too cold. It was three in the morning before we’d finally put the fires out, and the last of our guests didn’t leave until after breakfast. It was one of the best nights of my life, and it was also the night that something inside of me that had been slumbering for months woke up.

  Like I said, I was happy. I really was, but…something was missing. As busy as I was in my new life with Connor, I had been feeling more restless with each passing day. I often found myself standing at one of the windows staring at the mountains, dreaming of other mountains in other places that I’d never seen. Sometimes I’d look up at a plane flying thousands of feet off the ground and wonder where they were going. What would they see when they got to where they were going? What language would they speak? What would they eat?

  It was that burning curiosity, that wide eyed wonderment that had been slumbering inside of me, turned off like a light with the crunch of metal and crack of bone. Everything that had once been on the horizon, almost tangible, had just blinked away. I really believed those dark thoughts that had lurked in my mind. My dreams were too big. My dreams were unreachable. My dreams were ridiculous. My dreams were simply that, dreams, with no actual place in reality. It was easy to believe all of that. How many people in the world wish for, work for, try so damn hard for their goals and never reach them? They die trying, without ever having even a taste of their dreams or fantasies. It wasn’t until New Year’s Eve, on the cusp of another year of my stagnancy—and living in the very town I had fought so hard to get out of and stay out of—tha
t I understood how much I had given up when I gave up on my aspirations.

  My hopes and dreams had been a part of me. They had been what propelled me out of the state of Virginia, still wet behind the ears, and too damn eager when I was just barely eighteen years old. They had propelled me through culinary school to graduate third in my class. My hopes and dreams had kept me afloat when I’d had no support and no backup, making me even more determined to succeed so that I could show everyone who had doubted me how wrong they’d been. Even when the fantasy had seemed too far away, too far off in the distance, I had still been able to see it. I had kept my head above the water and hadn’t let myself drown in my heartbreaks and disappointments. When the accident happened, and those goals and wishes had disappeared into the dark, they’d taken a part of me with them.

  So, even though Connor Chandler was perfect for me, and I was content and jubilant with our life together, I wasn’t complete without that hope. Even if I never, ever left the soil of the United States again, I couldn’t be the real me, the Darla I had been when I’d shared a plate of nachos with my brother’s old friend just under a year ago without hope. And my brand of hope wasn’t just wishful thinking and daydreaming. My brand of hope involved planning. Pursuing. Action.

  My first action a week after the new year was to sit down finally and open my hospital bills and my other bills that I’d been ignoring for months. At least then I’d be able to figure out where I was financially, which I already imagined would be too much to come back from, but I had to at least look.

  And I did look. At every medical statement. I checked and crosschecked and rechecked and added and subtracted, multiplied and divided. I made phone calls and sent emails, and did more checking, cross-checking, and rechecking over a few days. Finally, when it was very clear where I stood as far as my medical bills went, I took action again. That Friday morning, I took the train from Charlottesville. By late that afternoon, I was back in Philly.