He brushed his lips over her eyebrow. “We are different.”
She stiffened under him. He continued as if she hadn’t turned to a board in his arms. “I also like sugar in my coffee and you hate it. You’ll put the most disgusting pieces of offal in your mouth and chew, and I’d eat McDonald’s in every city in the world.” His cheek curved in the dark. “We’re different, but if a difference is important, we can change. I have changed, for you.”
“I know.” Her whisper in the dark was almost as loud as her heartbeat. She’d been remembering that all day. “But I haven’t changed at all. How could anyone love that?”
“I could. I do.” He rolled to his side and rested his head on his own biceps, face inches from hers. “Do I wish some things were different? Of course. I wish you would treat our house like it belonged to you and not like you’ve moved in with a roommate. I wish you’d make more of an effort to talk to me or message me when you’re gone.” He reached out with one hand and pushed her hair back behind her ear. “But I don’t want you to change who you are. I get lost in my research sometimes too, you know. I used to go under for weeks at a time, lose track of my life entirely. But keeping tabs on you, hearing what you’re doing, wondering what new thing you’ve discovered, that keeps me connected to you. Even if you’re far away.” She tried to hold still but shivered as he traced the curve of her cheek with a fingertip. “And I worry too, you know, that you’ll get tired of coming back to me.” He tucked his head down, avoiding her gaze now.
“Never.” The block on her chest was dissolving, had melted with his words, so different from what she’d expected. From the words she’d been so very afraid to hear. She closed her eyes. “I thought you would grow to hate me.”
“Never.” He echoed her, lips ghosting over her face.
The promise and his featherlight touches unlocked the words she’d been holding in for so long now. “Why haven’t you taken me home to meet your family?”
He lifted his head. “Is that what this is about?”
“No. Sort of.” She tried not to stutter, but couldn’t help it. “I-I don’t know how to do family, Javi. And I’ve lost mine because of it. Now I’m keeping you from your family too, because I’m bad at that. Staying close to people when I’m far away from them. It feels like you’re losing them because of me.”
Javi rolled over and pulled her on top of his chest, his belly shaking under her as he laughed. “I call my mom every Sunday. You know that. Is it awkward that I haven’t been home to visit in a year? Yes. But I told her that you’re like, like . . . a butterfly. I have to hold still for now, so you know it’s safe to land.”
“A mariposa.” She’d learned that one, the delicate syllables finishing on a puff of air and a sigh.
The silhouette of Javi’s cheek curved. “I did think about describing you as a wild ass I was trying to tame with carrots, but I figured we’d have this conversation someday and I wanted to suck up in advance.”
She buried her face in the crease between his arm and his chest and breathed deep. God, she loved him so hard.
He stroked a hand down over her tangled hair, smoothing it from the crown of her head to her shoulders.
“I can be that for you, Magdalena. I can be the person who anchors you with family. We will go see my mamá, who will feed you and lecture you and tell you that when you are at home you should make tamales and freeze them for me so I can eat them when you are gone and think of you.”
Her laugh hitched in her throat, sounding more like a sob.
But it was easier somehow, now, to dig for those last tiny, bitter words she’d buried so deep and bring them to the tip of her tongue. She’d been right about this at least. They were too good at talking for the truth not to come out.
“About that list . . .”
“Yeah?”
She spread her fingers against his chest. Maybe she would feel it, if he flinched.
“Do you want to have kids some day?”
No flinching, no hesitation. “Yes.” The word she’d feared was so tiny, and it didn’t feel like it hurt. “Does that frighten you?”
A siren’s bleat, never the same anywhere she traveled, revved louder as the emergency vehicle neared and then faded away. She waited until the noise was long gone.
“Yes. I’m not ready.”
“Okay.”
“What if I’m never ready?” She hadn’t meant to ask that. Had figured they’d burned through enough relationship goodwill for one night and tomorrow’s problems were sufficient unto the day. But the floodgates were opened and she couldn’t help herself.
“Then I would be sad. But I wouldn’t stop loving you.” Javi ran his hand down her back and snugged it beneath her ass, tugging her closer to him until the rough scrub of his pubic hair and the semi-hard length of his cock pressed against her inner thigh. “I’m sorry I’ve let you worry like this, by yourself. I should’ve pushed you harder. But I wanted to give you space. To let you come to me.”
She’d learned enough about herself tonight to know the answer to that one.
“I think I have too much space sometimes. You can hold me tighter.” She pressed a kiss to his forehead like a blessing. “I love you.”
He lifted his face to hers, repeated the words back to her. “I love you.” She rolled to her side and then her back, tugging at Javi until he let himself be pulled on top of her. Her arms were steel bars across his back as she lifted her hips and wrapped her legs around him, needing this man so much she’d feared it would break her. Tears spilled hot over her temples, wetting her hair, and she closed her eyes as he surged into her, knowing only the feel of him hard between her thighs and heavy in her heart. “I love you.”
And he was there, with her, in the sticky honey of the moment, muscles tensing, fingers digging into shoulders, into hips, the clean salt of his sweat in her mouth as she pressed her teeth to his arm. The cliff was at her feet, the edge crumbling beneath her toes. She flung herself over and the fall was long, long and sweet, and she hoped Javi would catch her.
He never let her down. Forever steadfast.
Heart thumping still, a beat that pulsed in her fingertips, in the thin skin of her lips, Magda let the world take form around her again. Javi settled against her side and she let herself relax into the feel of his slick skin over hard muscle against her softness. This man would always want to lie tangled up with her whenever he had her close.
His voice roused her. The words came slowly, but she heard the weight behind them and listened closely.
“I’ve missed so much in my life. It’s why I was in Goa. Traveling like I never did when I was a kid. But I hated it. Nothing needed doing. A bunch of bums hanging out on beaches and talking about the tourists ruining it all. I was a tourist. Assholes.” She laughed silently against his chest, hearing the rue in his voice. Idleness would never suit Javi. “I thought I’d missed so much. Turned out I didn’t like any of that shit anyways. But you do. And I don’t want you to have to miss anything. It’s why I plan so much, even though I know it drives you crazy. But they’re just plans.”
She picked her way through the words like a soldier in a minefield. Getting it right had never been so important.
“I want you to be able to make plans with me.” She tested his skin with her tongue. Salt and musk and home. “Even if it’s just to go see your mom and learn how to make her tamales. For now.” She stretched her arm across his chest, draped her thigh across his hips. The urge to roll away would always be there. Too much of her life had been spent alone, surrounded by strangers. She would try to remember to hold him while she could. “You know, I never feel alone when I’m away from you, because I always know that you’re waiting for me to come home.”
“I am. I promise.”
She believed him. Which made it easy to be brave. “And when I’m gone, I can try harder to make you feel less far away.”
“Okay.” The relief in his voice swept over her like a riptide, pulling her out to sea in his
arms, knowing she’d find her way to shore again, calm in the face of a struggle that might sometimes seem long. It would be worth it. “And I promise to push you harder if I think you’re worried about something, okay?”
Easiest promise ever. “Yes.” The pressure in her sinuses eased, and she swallowed, weak with the ebb of tension and adrenalin after the longest day.
Javi would have his plans. She would disregard a plan in a heartbeat to follow an interesting story. They would meet, somewhere in the middle, whenever they could, and fill the time in between with stories shared from far away. And maybe someday they would find a way to make plans that were bigger than just the two of them.
But now, right now, they were still together, in this moment.
And she had more to show him.
“We’re leaving Sevilla in the morning.” Magda straddled his waist and draped herself across his chest, playing with the ends of his hair. Javi closed his eyes and groaned. “I know. My rearrangement of your carefully planned schedule pains you.” She gently bit the tip of his nose and smiled at him, her lover, her husband. “I want to show you the Alhambra. You’re going to love the gardens.”
In a blink, she was on her back, Javi above her, his hips pressing into hers with a suggestiveness that was more theoretical than practical, given what they’d just finished. “I’m going to love you.”
“I know.”
“You sure? There seemed to be some question about that.”
Her heart stuttered as she smiled at him. “I’m sure.”
“Good.” Javi buried his face in the curve of her neck, snuffling against her like a puppy. “Because I kinda want to cross that one off my list. Love Magdalena.”
She stretched her legs along his and tangled them together. The sky in the window was graying, a pale yellow staining the Sevilla horizon as light broke over the city. Dawn was breaking.
She might not know everything about her husband yet, but she knew the important things. Where to touch him to make him shiver. What he needed from her. How he loved. That he knew her. Understood her.
That was more than enough.
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About the Author
Amy Jo Cousins writes contemporary romance and erotica, both straight and LGBTQ, about smart people finding their own best kind of smexy. She lives in Chicago with her son, where she tweets too much, sometimes runs really far, and waits for the Cubs to win the World Series.
The best presents are the ones you unwrap early
Callie, Unwrapped
© 2014 Amy Jo Cousins
Play It Again, Book 1
Gabe picked up on her tension from ten feet away.
“Get over here, girl.”
He leaned the cue against the rail and patted the bar stool where Kate had sat. Callie eyed him for a moment and then hopped up. He spun her around until her back was to him, tipped her head forward and down with fingers at the base of her skull, draped his large hands over her shoulders, and pushed a groan out of her when he flexed and dug in to her trapezius.
“God, I missed this,” she said before she could think better of admitting it.
“My magic hands.” He sounded smug. The hands in question pushed her further forward as they slid down her spine, thumbs pressing to each side of her vertebrae.
She snorted.
“No. Your willingness to trade back rubs for sex.”
The knots in her neck muscles were melting like taffy and Callie was feeling much more I-don’t-give-a-shit about the noises she was making as Gabe stroked and smoothed his hands over her. The heat in her belly pooled thickly with the growing need to be touched. Her eyes were barely slits, staring blindly at the floor, her long hair curtaining her face, when the toes of a pair of dark brown leather boots stepped in close to the bar stool.
“Hey now.” Kate’s voice was already familiar. A gentle hand fell on the back of her neck. “How’s our girl?”
“Run your fingers through her hair. Think you’ll find out.”
Callie hugged her knees and braced herself, knowing what was coming and cursing Gabe under her breath for never forgetting a goddamn thing that involved sex.
Kate’s fingers combed through her long hair, separating strands and trailing through them until Callie could see the ends drop off Kate’s fingertips. She could feel the tug of each individual hair on her scalp and the tiny, sharp pains when Kate hit a snag or the tangle of crossed waves of hair. Every nerve from her scalp down the length of her spine to the top of her ass fired awake and she shivered, knowing they could see. Knowing they could feel her skin quiver and her back curve under their hands.
Kate brought her hands back up and sank her fingers into Callie’s hair again. But this time she scraped her nails against the sensitive skin of Callie’s scalp, hard enough to leave tingling trails over the crown of Callie’s head. Gabe’s hands settled at her hips and dug in hard, his thumbs pushing almost to the point of pain at the base of her spine. She pressed her lips together but couldn’t keep it in.
“Fuuuuuck,” she groaned out, fingers clenched on her kneecaps. She loved having someone’s hands in her hair, as Gabe clearly remembered. The same way that a light touch on her lower back made her skin tingle until her ass clenched and the way she remembered thinking she could come if her lover would just keep sucking and stroking and licking her breasts. Only one thing made it even better.
“Slide off for a sec, Kate.”
Gabe’s hand felt larger and harder in comparison as he wrapped it tight about most of her hair, strands still hanging down from her temples. He twisted.
And pulled.
“Ahhh!’
She hoped the soft cry didn’t travel far, but kept her eyes closed now as Gabe forced her to sit up, not wanting to see if he was making a spectacle of her in this very public place. Gabe leaned in close and spoke quietly near her ear.
She could hear the smile in his voice.
“Are you ready to play, Callie?”
There was only one answer.
“Yes.”
She felt more than heard Gabe’s chuckle, her eyes still shut. Then his mouth was on hers, the faint scrape of stubble abrading her skin as he dragged his lips back and forth against hers. Her stomach dipped and rolled and every nerve in her system fired as he tested her bottom lip with his teeth and tugged. The tiny sting vanished when he licked her lip before pulling away.
“Put your hand on me.” His breath feathered over her face. It took her a moment, then heat exploded on her face and she snapped her eyes open. Even the tips of her ears were on fire and Gabe was right there. She shivered. And obeyed.
He was thick and long and more than halfway hard beneath his jeans, and her hand closed around him reflexively. Memories washed over her, sensory black holes that sucked her into the feel of him sliding into her, the first few moments of pain from his size hitting her system like a drug, because her body knew what that pain meant. Pleasure. Heat. A slow grind or a hard fuck and a building pressure that would break her into a million pieces.
She slid her hand down the length of him to the tip and scraped her fingernails across the denim there until Gabe shivered too and pressed his hand over hers, pushing against her palm.
She leaned forward and kissed him, opening her mouth until his tongue surged into her mouth and every squeeze of her hand sparked
a bruising attack on her lips. She dug her free hand into Gabe’s hair and pulled him close, closer. God, yes, she still wanted this man.
Kate’s words had her sitting up straight again and pressing her hands to warm flushing cheeks when they finally registered.
“Didn’t she tell you yet? What we’re playing?”
The other woman grinned and spun the wooden triangle rack she held around her index finger.
“I think we distracted her.” Gabe rocked the hand tangled in her hair, making her head tilt from side to side, and then let her go. He moved to where Kate stood and leaned back against the pool table, the edge pressing into the back of his thighs. He reached out with one hand and slid it under the back of Kate’s shirt, grabbing the waistband of her jeans and tugging her back until her ass pressed against his crotch.
“Callie?”
Kate’s eyes were wicked. Callie could almost feel Gabe’s fingers sliding down over her own ass as she watched him touch her. The muscles in her own back and shoulders were loose and warm and her skin tingled from having had so many hands on her. So many lips. She was a little dizzy.
“Tell Gabe what I told you to say.”
Shit. She’d forgotten about that.
Callie cleared her throat. Felt her face heat.
“That we’re going to play cutthroat. And the winner.” She lost her breath for a second, light-headed with want but so, so self-conscious as she remembered Kate’s exact words. As if she could forget. They were seared on her brain, burned into her skin like a brand. She swallowed and continued at a near-whisper. “The winner gets to decide.”
Gabe wrapped his arm around Kate and watched from over her shoulder. Callie saw Kate relax back into his body. Using his cheek to brush pieces of her mussed hair back, he laid open-mouth kisses along the length of Kate’s jaw, his eyes locked on Callie the entire time.
“Decide what, Callie?” Kate asked.
Every time one of them said her name it made her shiver.
“Who fucks who. First.”
The Rain in Spain Page 5
