by Mara White
“Let me explain,” he says calmly.
“There is no explanation! You lied to me!”
“Lenny, talk to me. Breathe, breathe. Please,” he says.
“I thought you were dead!” I scream. “Liar!”
Somehow I feel like I’m on the edge of consciousness; the world rolls, the clouds loom and reality feels too surreal to be anything other than some kind of sick, twisted fun house. I’ve got a fever and this mirage will fade away when I sober up. I shake my head, blink my eyes, stare past Lucky’s face up into the sky.
“Look at me. Look at my eyes,” he coaxes and I purposefully look away. Lucky grabs my chin and forces my head back, demanding that I look at his face.
“Liar!” I scream. “You’re alive!”
In his eyes I see years of my life, built moment upon moment. A stolen kiss, a tear, a hug, a lick of frosting from his lips. Emotions I lived through with him all come rushing at me at once.
Fear, and Luciano protecting me; confusion, and Luciano explaining things to me; insecurity, and Luciano showing me how to be confident; failures, and Luciano never being anything but proud of me. My chest was gutted, hollow, and achingly empty without his love. Now it’s in overdrive, short-circuiting, going haywire with input.
“Liar!” But my scream is gone, exhausted from my chest.
“Len, I’m so sorry.”
“I thought you were gone. How could you do this?”
“I was, but I’m here now,” he says. He pulls my hand to his chest and places it on his heart. There’s a giant scar that slices down the side of his face, and another on his arm, and what looks like a surgical scar on his shoulder.
“You were never going to tell me?” I ask him. Tears slip down my face in abundance. I can feel his cock surge to life through his wet jeans. It hardens against my thigh and I melt into pure, mad delirium.
Already. Our response to one another is like getting caught in a hidden trap. One, two, snap. Captured. Rapt. There is no escape. There is no going back.
“I took it too far, Belén. I got to where I didn’t know how to backtrack. I wanted to. Every single day I’ve wanted you, but how was I going to come back from the dead?”
“How could you lie about that?”
“What am I gonna do? Stage a fucking resurrection and scare everybody I care about into an early grave?”
“I can’t. I don’t understand. Why? Why did you do this to me?” I scream. I stare past his face up into the sky again and think about how many thousands of times I prayed to be right where I am now. In Luciano’s arms, in his safety, basking in his love. I never thought I’d have it again. I believed I’d have to wait until death to feel his arms around me again. So many desolate prayers. Years. Did God hear me up above?
“I thought I hurt you, that it was wrong, that I was ruining you. Bey, I fucked up.”
“Are you going to be with me?” I sob. The cries leave my body so forcefully that I convulse with their exodus. I feel like I’m splitting, cleaved in half. If Lucky is alive we have to be together. It can’t be any other way.
Through all of the emotion that threatens to dismantle my mind, a maddening soup of grief and joy, pain, sorrow and rapture, I see Lucky smile. It’s a smile that I know so well; it’s cocky, boyish, it’s daring and mischievous and quintessentially his. A Lucky smile, no one else’s but his.
“You want to be with me?” he asks. “You wanna be my girl?” He sounds surprised.
I sock him in the face with the hand he’s let go of; it kicks up sand and sprays it in his eyes.
Then I only inhale and Lucky is kissing me. His mouth on my mouth and all of his heat and warmth driving into me. I gasp, moan, cry, and smile all at once. One of his hands wraps around the back of my neck and the other tunnels through the sand to find my waist. His mouth tastes like salvation; his heart beating against my chest feels like an incantation. I’m frightened by the powerful and all-consuming magic that together we make.
Love magic. A bond so tenacious even death couldn’t break it.
My heart is erupting. It rains live sparks that light up the darkness. Rivers of fire run under my skin. The stars can collide, crash and burn, freefalling into the ocean. The world can stop spinning if it wants to because suddenly all the doubts I’ve so desperately clung to my whole life, roll away into oblivion. I don’t care how similar we are, if our genes are thirteen percent identical or if we are not one particle alike. His arms are my home and his mouth on my neck is pure, heavenly delight.
Lucky and I were meant to be together, to love under the same stars, to share the same life. Love one another until we burst, until we die, until there’s nothing left of us but the glowing embers of the memories we made.
Together.
The universe made Luciano for me and I will never let go of him.
“Bey, I dream of this.” His body moves rhythmically against mine while sand magnetizes to my wet clothes, sticks to my hair.
I sob more and cry tears of joy, repeating his name. Our bodies soften together, merge, and move in unison. He presses his erection into me and I cry out. He wants to take me already.
My boy. My body was made for you. No one else.
“Luciano!”
“Here, come inside with me. Are you cold?” He pushes back off the sand.
He helps me up and grabs my hand. I remember every callus, every vein. How the joining of our two hands could make tension ease and sweet relief flood down my spine. As a toddler, as a little girl. Luciano has always been my life-line.
He closes the door to the beach bungalow and we’re together again, hands, elbows, bent knees, removing our wet and sand-covered clothes. Trying to walk up a set of stairs with our bodies impossibly close. He pulls me to the shower in silence and we step in together under the rush of hot steaming water. His mouth is on my shoulders, my neck and my chin. He sings a sweet apology between every single kiss. I don’t care if it’s a dream. I don’t care if I’m hallucinating. His love fills me so full of hope that inside, again, I’m finally opening.
“I’m sorry, Len. I lost it. I never wanted to let you go.”
“Shh,” I tell him and capture his mouth.
Fingertips trace and touch. We remember everything. We are bound, neither one of us willing to let go, determined this time to never ever give up.
Lucky wraps a towel around his waist, while he dries me tenderly with another. He still looks like a Marine. I check out his body, which is even more cut than it was. I’m not the same. More womanly and no longer a girl. My hips have spread; I’ve gained weight in places where before there was none. And I’ve had a baby.
Luke.
When do I tell him? There are too many things to say. Too many missed moments, separated, a whole lifetime away.
“What?” he asks, his brows knit with concern.
“Just make love to me,” I tell him decidedly.
He raises his eyebrows through our kiss.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?”
I shove my hands into his chest, pushing him in the direction of his bed. I don’t want to think about it. I want him inside me in every way possible. I want him so greedy that he steals parts of me I’ll never recover. I want to lose myself in this man until the pain of losing him goes away forever. If he hesitates, I’ll kill him. If he brings up the guilt, I’ll slug him. I want Luciano to fuck me like he used to fuck the girls from the park.
Play with me, player.
This time I want to be the girl who gets fucked.
The neat tucked-in corners of his made bed distract me from my determined stance.
“Your house is so clean. Do you have a wife or girlfriend?” I ask him, grabbing ahold of my senses. Lucky might have a life here with someone. I don’t want to do something we’ll both regret later. I know nothing about this Lucky; he could be married, have babies.
“I’ve got a housecleaner. Bey, just you. I only want you,” he says. His smile is back, showing a cross between lau
ghing at me and looking at me in wonder.
“No talking, just sex.”
“Okay, boss.” His smile widens.
He strokes my face with two fingers. Two fingers turn me from hesitant to certain. Luciano walks backing me onto the simple king-sized bed with four posters and a wooden headboard. He’s naked, he’s hard. I’m bewildered but ready. More so than I’ve ever been.
Our towels are shoved away and we’re warm flesh on flesh. He never stops kissing me as his hands reacquaint themselves with my body. I’m not as fit as he is, as svelte or defined. But Lucky doesn’t care. We hypnotize one another. Together we are perfect.
He rolls me underneath him and looks into my eyes. His are alive and bright, so unchanged; they still hold both a shimmer of mischief and of darkness, an exhilarating combination I’ve adored ever since I can remember. No one else’s eyes speak so much. I recognize myself in his gaze and feel like I’ve finally come home. The real Belén is back. She’s here in this room with us. I’ve spent so many years running, trying to escape our beautiful and tainted love. But this love is the only true part of my life besides my son.
“You sure?” he asks tentatively, the head of his cock already at my entrance.
I grab his hips in response and pull him to me. He slides in easily because I’m so wet, my constant sexual fantasy now the reality before me. No condom. Nothing comes between us. He’s huge and thick and so deliciously hard as he slides in and out. This is what I fantasize about every time I have sex, what I pretend to see. It’s almost too much to have the fantasy come to life, to have Luciano under my fingertips.
I arch my back and become instantaneously vocal. I moan and pant and gasp at every thrust. When I open my eyes, the way he looks at me is enough to make me come just from eye contact.
He thrusts hard and I spiral up to a peak that never seems to crest. Higher until I’m half-crazed with lust so ferocious it threatens to break whatever remaining hold I have on my sanity.
“Lucky!” I scream as I fall backward through the darkness. I’m so convinced it’s a dream that I dread the bottom of the orgasm because I know I’ll wake up.
But I don’t. Instead, I grind into him like I’m possessed; I ride him this hard because it feels like it will never be enough. As soon as the orgasm leaves, another is cresting. I’m swimming in an ocean of devotion, drowning in complete and absolute love for this man. Time missed wasn’t time at all, but another life; it was something else. A void. A wound. A penance. Something I carried. This, in turn is freedom.
Lucky comes with me the second time, gripping my ass hard and biting my nipple as his hot semen bursts inside me.
I’m still panting and my hair is a tangled mess, but I can’t get enough, I already want to go again. I grind my hips into his thigh and suck on his shoulder.
“You missed me, Bey?” he asks. His voice is a hoarse whisper; he sounds slightly out of breath, but the smile on his lips is taunting. He kisses my forehead.
I look into his face and nod. I can’t form words. There exists no vocabulary for this.
Lucky’s hand dives between my legs and he groans out my name when he feels how wet and swollen I am for him. His fingers stroke me expertly, penetrating into my tender flesh. I clamp my thighs around his wrist and tremble as I come into the palm of his hand, grinding out my orgasm while he cups my sex. My body shakes as the spasms of pleasure unwind all the knots that were tied so tight inside me. Exhausted, I collapse my weight onto his chest and with the last breath left in me, I tell him:
“Lucky, stay with me.”
“I’ll never let you go again.”
Luciano chips at my walls and defenses until I’m so raw and vulnerable it hurts to be alive, to look at him, to even imagine what it would feel like to lose him again. That’s what I risk by walking into this relationship. It’s the same kind of love I experience when I look at my son, a love so full it’s painful, agonizing, it’s almost too much. There is just as much stress at having him back as there was to have him lost. Because the potential for loss presents itself anew. I could lose Lucky again, and I already know exactly how much that hurts.
I can’t leave his body. I can’t stop touching him. I trace my fingertips over his scars and wince at how extreme they are. I marvel at the miracle of his life, of him living through so many grave injuries, any one of which could have easily been a death sentence.
“I want to see my boy,” he says and kisses my hairline.
“He’s not your son, Lucky. He’s Adam’s. But Adam left me.”
“He’s my boy too, Belén. The child we would have had if I didn’t fuck up.”
I caress the side of his face. Luciano’s words make my head swim.
“The separation has been really hard on him. That’s why we came down here, just to get out of the apartment because it’s so accentuated in that space that his dad isn’t there anymore.”
“So you’re technically still married to the jerk?”
“He is not a jerk. But yes, until we can file for divorce, we’re still legally married.”
“Did you fuck him?” Lucky asks, rolling back on top of me. His brows knit together and his jaw is set firm. His cock is steel and he lets me know it.
I’m surprised and not surprised, simultaneously flattered and baffled by his jealousy.
“What kind of question is that? Of course we were intimate. We were married! What are we, still teenagers?”
But Lucky is grinding the whole length of his cock into my belly. He’s jealous and sexy. I want to protest more at his immaturity but I have to admit his proprietary comments stoked a little fire inside of me. Lucky is greedy and as much as it is childish, his reaction is a turn-on. He thinks my body belongs to him.
I undulate my hips and grind back into him despite every inch of my body being sore, every single part already savagely taken by him.
“Was he better than me? Did he make you feel like I make you feel?” His voice is husky and his erection slips out of his boxers, sliding easily through my tender flesh.
“No,” I choke out, feeling like I’m committing slander against my ex-husband. “He saved me when I was faltering. He brought me back. I was a mess when he found me. He gave me my son.”
Lucky slides inside me with full penetration. His hips and his lips crush mine with possession.
“He left you.”
“But nobody is you, Lucky. No one ever came close to filling that need.”
He pulls my arms above my head and leaves them there, scraping his fingernails down the sensitive undersides. He rakes the flesh along my sides, his nails tracing the curve of every rib. His passion is beastly as he dips in and out of me, holding back only enough to tease me. His torture is heavenly. Luciano, he intoxicates me.
His brow still furrows, contemplating my involvement with another man.
“I’ll take him out for leaving you. How the fuck were you not good enough?” Lucky asks with real fire in his eyes. My bad boy from childhood, grown up into a man. He’s still street tough, still jealous and possessive. Macho. Being contradictory doesn’t matter to him; he’ll assert his claim even when it makes no sense to.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say and gasp at his penetration. Lucky owns me and he knows it. His sultry smirk is pure manly greed and satisfaction.
“This body is mine,” he growls as he fucks himself hard into my brutalized tenderness. His big hands wrap around my butt cheeks and he sucks my nipple into his mouth hungrily. He’s insatiable. Luciano is lust-drunk and we disappear together into the hidden realms of our own love spell.
We’ve loved for a lifetime and no one can deny us these hallowed minutes we steal.
“Lucky!” I breathe, rolling into yet another orgasm.
“Len, I’m gonna fuck you until it hurts, until you can’t take any more. Because we missed too much and it kills me that somebody took my place.”
There are tears in his eyes and he grips my body as if starved for my touch. Luciano sets fire to
my heart, tattooing his burn into my frozen defenses, throwing open the forgotten doors and setting ablaze my emotions.
“Do you still use?” I ask him. He stills as if I’ve caught him in the crosshairs. I lick my lips and search his gaze. I need to know.
“Bey, I’m clean. I swear to fucking God I won’t do that to you again.”
His answer provokes fresh tears that stream down the sides of my face and pool into his pillowcase.
He’s kissing me again, murmuring my name as he thrusts. His fingers interweave with mine and his weight crushes me in the very best way possible.
“I’m done fucking up. I want to come back to you right.”
In his absence I’d developed stage fright at my own life. With Lucky’s return, bright light runs like lava through the night, burning into my dark spots, all the spaces I’d shut off. I’m ablaze in his love—so open and vulnerable it hurts. I whimper and moan, praying to the sky, God, the heavens and the whole universe, to never take away again the only boy, the only man, I could ever love.
Lucky looks in my eyes. He lays his forehead against mine and cries out my name as he comes.
We walk into Titi’s house hand in hand. It’s the very first time we’ve ever been together openly in front of a family member and I’m so nervous I’m nauseated. The shame is still fierce and dark, holding the weight of the world in its grasp. What do you do when your truth is sinful in the eyes of everyone else?
I wipe sweat off my brow and wish I didn’t look so thoroughly fucked. My hair’s been soaked through and curled up; the remainder of my eye makeup creates dark circles under my eyes. I’ve got fresh love bites and hickeys blooming all over my neck. My lips are swollen from his ravenous kisses and his musky scent is the same one that I’m sure is coming off of me with every step.
“Mommy!” Luke shouts. He drops his teddy bear and runs to me. I lean down to my knees and hug him hard into my chest, smelling his hair and kissing his head. “Auntie Wilda gave me a popsicle and we watched a movie.”
Tears slide down my face as I watch Lucky gaze with fascination at my boy. He rubs his chin between his thumb and forefinger; his smile is huge, beautifully curious and achingly genuine. His eyes fill with tears and I don’t want Luke to notice.
