“What?” I breathe.
“You have my heart in your hands. I’ve never been as vulnerable with anyone in my life as I am with you right now. So just…don’t play with me, okay? Don’t—” He exhales on a shudder. “Please, don’t hurt me—don’t break my heart, Elyse.”
I don’t know how else to make him understand that I have no words just now. They’re jumbled and whirling and clotted in my head and my heart, blotted out and blinded by the white-hot nuclear flash of wild need that currently eclipses all else. I’m literally vibrating with need. I feel too much need to feel something real and physical and true.
I push him backward onto the bed and plant kisses on his chest, over his ribs, across his belly. He sucks his stomach in and reaches for me, grazing fingers over my spine but not quite daring to touch me fully just yet. It is as if he is afraid still of taking this, of letting himself have this. Maybe afraid of waking up from a dream he’s had a million times before, only to wake up alone.
I understand more than he can know.
I palm his chest and scour his shoulders with my hands as I kiss my way down his body, and then, when my lips reach the waist of his once-pressed and now-wrinkled khakis, I trail my fingertip down his chest and over his navel, pausing at the closure of his pants. His stomach is concave, sucked in with anticipation. I gaze up at him over the plane of his body, meeting his eyes. Unbutton, unzip. I hook my fingers in the elastic of his underwear and pull them away from his body. He lifts his hips off the bed, and I yank his khakis off, along with his underwear.
He’s waiting for me, hot and thick and long and hard, and I gasp with need, groan with anticipation. He is utterly still, waiting, as if he can’t believe this is happening. I remember what he told me about his ex, and remember that the last time we were together like this we were both half-drunk, filters and inhibitions flooded and overcome by booze. But I remember every single moment, even the half-asleep moments in the early dawn light that resulted in the child inside me.
I remember it all with stark clarity.
I want it all, and I want more.
He’s naked, lying on the bed with a mammoth erection, staring at me watchful and waiting, chest heaving, stomach curving in with each inhale, flattening with each exhale. Waiting. Wanting to know what I’m going to do, willing to let me take my time doing it. His hands are fisted near his hips, as if the effort to hold still requires everything he has.
I kiss his hipbone. His navel. His palms stutter over my shoulders and his breath catches. “Elyse?”
A tornado of words and sentiment and expression blast through me, but they lodge in my chest and bang and tangle in my throat, and I use my lips to kiss instead of speak. Kiss his thigh. Just below his navel.
His hands graze down my back, seeking to go lower—he peels my shirt off, and I’m naked for him from the waist up. The peaks of my breasts graze his chest, the tips stiffening and aching.
I turn my eyes up to his. Smile—a hungry, eager, teasing grin meant to telegraph my intentions.
“Elyse?” His voice is harsh, hoarse.
I curl my fingers around him, groaning in delight at the feel of him in my hands. A slow twisting downward stroke, and then I kiss him, devour him, lips and tongue singing over his salty, firm flesh, and he’s gasping in disbelief and arching his back and I’m whimpering at the taste of him and the feel of him—
And then Jamie hauls me desperately up his body and yanks my fleece sweatpants off and my underwear and his fingers tease me and slide into me and circle me into a writhing state of eye-rolling arousal, riding the edge of explosion.
I wrestle his hands away from me and straddle him, and our palms meet, fingers tangle. Our eyes lock.
“Jamie.” I lean over him, breasts draping silky soft with hardened nipples against his broad chest, and I lower myself against him. “Please.”
He lifts his head, captures my mouth with his, and our lips slide and mesh, and our tongues wrap like needy serpents around each other, twining and twisting and tasting and licking. I let go of his hand with one of mine, and his palm immediately skates down to cup my breast and then my bottom, and then caresses my back and my shoulders and my hair—everywhere. With my free hand, I reach between us and grasp him, and guide him to me. Nestle him where he belongs, where I need him.
“Ohhhhh god, oh god,” he breathes. “Elyse, you—god, you feel so good.”
I kiss him, taste his words, absorb them and let them fill me—and then I sink down around him so he fills me.
“Elyse, Jesus—Elyse!” he gasps. “God, I love you.”
I move, eyes fluttering back in my head, and I tangle our hands and rest my weight on him and writhe. A whimpered wail escapes me as he surges through me, and I’m flooded by feelings, by sensations, by him.
There’s nothing between us, this time—just skin on sweat-slippery skin, just us bare together; slow lazy familiar perfection.
And yet this is more—so much more than the last time we made love. I feel his lips on my sternum, on my shoulder blade, on my cheekbone, on the swaying slope of my breast, and then his warm wet lips suckle the peak of a breast and I’m whimpering at the feel of his lips on me, and the sensation of his thick hot shaft inside me, and the groan in his chest as I move above him.
“Elyse…” he moans, and cups my cheeks in both hands and brings my face to his, demands my mouth—I give it to him, and in return take his tongue, demanding his breath.
I feel an upwelling within me, a drowning, subsuming, rapturous detonation. I shudder above him, lift upright and his hands scour my hips and my thighs and over my belly and clasp my breasts, and even his hands make me feel absolutely beautiful.
He’s chanting: “Perfect, perfect, perfect—”
“What’s perfect, Jamie?” I ask.
“You are. We are. This is.” His eyes meet mine as I lift up, roll my hips down, and balance on him with my hands on his chest. “You are the most gorgeous and sexiest woman I’ve ever known in my life. So damned beautiful, Elyse. You are so beautiful.”
I choke at his words, because the shimmer in his eyes and the movement of his body and the eager relentless sweep of his hands tells me he means it down to his marrow. “You’re beautiful, Jamie.” It’s a trigger, unleashing a torrent. “You’re a beautiful person. A handsome, amazing man.” I gasp and lift and moan and fall to impale him deeply. “You’re everything, Jamie. You’re—oh, ohhh, oh god, Jamie—you’re everything.”
His eyes shine and shift and shimmer and burn. He grips my hips and helps me lift up, yanks me down around him. His hips pivot and drive, and we move together in perfect synch, in perfect rhythm.
“This is everything,” he grates through gritted teeth. His movements falter, his rhythm stutters.
I whimper. “Not yet, Jamie. Not yet—I’m almost there.”
He presses a thumb to my aching, sensitive center and that’s all it takes—I’m gone, I’m screaming and wailing and crying as the explosion erupts in my core and expands like wildfire through me, cell by cell, making my skin tighten and my extremities tingle, and my breath rush out in a sob, and my entire body spasm, my core clamping around him.
I don’t need to say anything—he knows. He feels it. He sees it.
“Elyse, god…yes! There’s never been anything more beautiful than you coming apart for me.” He moans and his thrusts quicken, become fast and rough, and I delight in it, speed my own movements, riding him faster. “There’s never been anything as beautiful as this. As us.”
As the climax rips through me, rips me into a million shivering pieces, I collapse onto him and cling to him. He coils his strong arms around me and rolls us over, and now I’m under him and I’m shaking and shuddering and he’s still moving, driving. I wrap my legs around his waist and palm his taut backside and grind with him as he takes his time reaching his own climax.
His fists bury in the mattress to either side of my face and I see his breath coming faster and feel him moving harder and I�
�m brought to tears once again by the rapture of his beauty as he cries out, his forehead nudging mine. I slant my lips over his and taste his moans—my name, chanted, wept:
“Elyse, Elyse, Elyse—” and then he’s coming and I feel it and I’m filled with him and taken by him, and now his chant shifts. “I love you—I love you—god, I love you, Elyse!”
His climax triggers another of my own, this one erupting from deep within me, centered somewhere behind and below my belly button, and this one is hotter and deeper and wilder and more intense by exponential amounts, and I can’t even scream, can’t make a single sound. I’m shredded by this, by him, and I throw myself into the black hole of this climax, this mutual explosion, his body spasming as he shatters above me, crying out and groaning wordlessly, clinging to me, driving into me, lips fumbling at mine as our bodies coil and twist and tangle and braid together.
And then I have my breath and I’m sobbing, broken open by the shared climax. How could I have ever denied myself this? How could I have ever pretended this wasn’t perfection?
“Jamie…” I gasp. “Jamie!”
“I’m here,” he murmurs in my ear. “I’m here.”
I palm his cheek and blink tears away from my eyes and kiss him with trembling aching exquisite tenderness. “I love you, Jamie,” I say. “I can’t help it. I’m scared, I’m terrified, but I love you.”
He laughs, and his voice is emotion-clogged. “You don’t have to be scared, Elyse. I’m yours and you’re mine and I’ll love you like you’ve never known love could be possible. You’ll never be alone again. You’ll never—” he cuts off, overcome. “I’ll love you like I’ve always known I was meant to love someone—I just couldn’t, because I didn’t know how until you. Now I know, and now I can love you the way you deserve.”
“I’m going to throw your own words back at you, Jamie,” I say. “I’ve never been this vulnerable with anyone. I’ve never wanted anyone—needed anyone—the way I want and need you. I’ve never loved anyone like this. Like you.” I let him see me, my tears, the depth of my terror. “Daniel hurt me, almost broke me. You—Jamie—you have the power to absolutely destroy me.”
“It would be mutually assured destruction, Elyse,” Jamie says, still above me, inside me. “Because you have the same power. Instead of talking about destroying each other, though, let's promise to give each other everything we have, everything we are.”
“You already have all that, Jamie,” I say. “Why do you think I resisted so hard?”
He kisses me. “Fear is a powerful thing.”
“It is,” I say. “But love is stronger.”
“It can be, if you let it.”
I push at his chest. “Let’s get cleaned up.”
Once we’re back in bed, I curl up against him, my head in the nook of his arm. Our breathing is synchronized. I feel the silence like a living thing between us.
There’s still one thing we haven’t addressed. “Jamie?”
He rumbles. “Hmmm?”
“I’m pregnant.” I have to say it out loud. For myself, for him, for us. “I’m going to have our baby.”
He sighs long and deep. “I know.”
“Just so there are no doubts—I’m keeping it.”
“There was no question in my mind.” He twists so he’s levered over me, angled toward me. “When I told you I loved you, that was a promise.”
I sniffle, my emotions at high tide and ready to overflow at a moment’s notice. “A promise?” I ask, my voice thick and my eyes wet yet again. “What do you mean?”
“A promise, Elyse. It means I promise to love you, no matter what.” He gestures with a nod of his head toward the wall. “It means I promise to love and be there for Aiden.”
I choke back more tears. “Oh.”
He wipes them away, and then his big warm strong hand covers my belly. “And this little one, too.”
That breaks the tears free all over again, and once more Jamie doesn’t try to shush me or stop me from crying, he just kisses me as I weep. He holds me, giving me the time I need.
“Jamie, I—” I fight for words, hunt for the right ones amid the maelstrom inside my head and heart. I can’t find them. There’s too much inside me.
Instead, I again resort to showing him.
I find him ready—more than ready.
Again and again into the small hours of the morning, until I’m sore and exhausted, I show him. And in the process, I discover how much there is for him to show me, in return.
There’s everything for us to show each other. Finally, aching and sore and sated—with an extra ache from the whiplash for me, which is painful but not debilitating—we take a shower together and clean each other and brush our teeth and collapse naked and clean together into bed, and sleep.
Wrapped up in each other.
We sleep into the late hours of the morning, and finally greet the day around noon. Jamie woke up early and called in to take a personal day at work, and to call in for me, and also to let my parents know I was okay and resting. Then he crawled back into bed with me and we slept on, drowsy and contented.
19
I keep the news of my pregnancy to myself for a few days. Jamie and I don’t get any more time to ourselves in those couple of days—and the night we spent together wasn’t anywhere near enough to sate us. But it would have to make do.
The weekend comes, finally—after a week spent on the phone with insurance and car shopping. I know I have to have a family meeting with Mom, Dad, and Cora. I’m not entirely certain how I’m going to handle Aiden—I’ll have to talk to Jamie more about it, I just know I’m not quite ready yet. I arranged for him to spend the afternoon on Saturday with a couple of friends from football so I could have some time alone with my parents and Cora.
Jamie called me as I was on the way from dropping Aiden off at my parents’ house. We’d snatched a few kisses last night after Aiden went to bed, but I wasn’t comfortable having Jamie stay over just yet, so a couple of stolen kisses was all we were going to get for the moment.
“Hey, Elyse,” he says, when I answer. “What’s up with your Saturday? I thought you and Aiden and I could go for a ride into Hanover and have some fun.”
“I, um—he’s with some friends. Jake and Jimmy. I’m headed to my parents’ house.”
Something in my voice must have given me away—I wasn’t excited about the upcoming talk. In fact, I was nervous as hell. But I was also pretty certain it was too soon to involve Jamie in this kind of thing.
Or rather, I was scared he wouldn’t go with me, and so didn’t invite him.
“To your parents’, huh?”
“Yeah. Cora will be there too.”
He lets silence build for a moment. “Wait. You’re telling them?”
I hesitate. “Um. Yeah. I hate secrets, and they’re my support system. They need and deserve to know.”
“Without me? That’s a conversation I need to be a part of, Elyse. We’re a couple now, remember?” His voice is firm. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“I know, Jamie, but you don’t have to—”
“Elyse?” he interrupts, his voice—well, not quite hard, but authoritative. “We’re in this together.”
“I know, but…I guess I figured it was a little too soon for this, with us.”
“It’s not.” He sighs. “You’re looking at this wrong, Elyse. I don’t have to be there with you holding your hand while we tell your parents and Cora—I get to.”
I breathe out a shuddery breath. “They’re my parents.”
“Yeah, but this is us, Elyse. You can’t cut me out of things anymore. I’m in this with you, start to finish, no matter what. I’m your support system too, now.” His voice goes tender. “I get that you’re used to be independent, doing things on your own. But you don’t have to, okay? I don’t want to uproot or change your life or Aiden’s—I want to make it better. That means letting me. Letting me be part of things like this. All right?”
I nod,
but he can’t see me. I have to actually respond verbally. “Okay,” I whisper. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for letting me be part of your life.”
I arrive at my parents’ house, and Cora is already there, sitting on the porch with Mom and Dad, drinking iced tea and chatting.
I exit my car and head up to the porch, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans. I know they can’t, but it feels like they’d be able to tell I’m pregnant just by looking at me.
I take one of the rocking chairs on the other side of Cora and accept a glass of tea from Mom.
“So,” Mom says, her voice bright and chipper. “Is this a social call, girls? It’s nice, the four of us sitting here together. Reminds me of when you girls were in high school. You’d sit out here on the porch doing homework and cackling about boys.”
“Cora cackled about boys,” I clarify. “I do not cackle.”
“No, you sound more like a hyena,” Cora teases.
“If I sound like a hyena, then I’m not sure I can come up with a metaphor for what you sound like.” I grin at her, falling back into old rhythms. “Krusty the Clown on helium?”
“Yeah, well—” Cora starts.
“Girls, girls,” Mom soothes, laughing. “Sometimes I swear you two haven’t grown up a bit.”
Dad eyes me, silent and brooding, wise and insightful. “You got something on your mind, girly?”
Cora catches the note in Dad’s voice—she’s as adept at reading his moods as I am. “I think she does, Dad. Don’t you, Mom?”
I sigh. “Can we just drink our tea and make fun of each other for a minute or two?”
Cora frowns at me. “Did something happen? That accident shook you up worse than you thought, didn’t it?” She puts her hand over her mouth. “They found something, didn’t they? Cancer? You’re not dying are you?”
I sputter. “Oh my god, Cora, relax. No, they didn’t find cancer, and I’m not dying. Yeah, the accident shook me up, but I’m fine. A little whiplash, but it’s mostly gone already.”
Pregnant in Pennyslvania Page 22
