by Anna Edwards
Email: [email protected]
Dedication
While it might seem weird for me to dedicate an erotic romance to my dad and brother, I do so because they both have Parkinson’s disease and every day I am in awe of how they refuse to let it stop them living their lives to the fullest. It’s not easy seeing a loved one deal with a debilitating disease, but my dad and brother do it with stubborn strength and sardonic humour. Their strength inspires me.
Love you, Dad and Darrell. Shakes and all.
Diagnosis
The ring I bought for Sami forty-two minutes ago is in my right-hip jeans pocket, burning a hole in the denim. Searing into my skin. Reminding me, as I sit and stare at Dr Murrell like he’s grown an extra head, what I’d planned to do tonight.
Ask Samantha King to marry me.
Reminding me I’d planned—at roughly eight p.m.—to begin a whole new phase of my life.
Now…
“Ben?” Dr Murrell’s eyebrows dip into a frown. They’re wiry and grey and look like they belong on a Bond villain. My sister—a high school English teacher—would call them “expressive”. Right now, what they’re expressing is, I’ve just dropped a bomb on poor Ben.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I shift in the hard plastic chair opposite his desk, and the ring box nudges my hipbone. Drills into it. Don’t forget about me. I’m still here. Remember? The proverbial shit may have hit the proverbial fan, but don’t forget about me.
Sami has no clue I’ve bought it.
I’d spied her admiring it two days ago when we were shopping.
The moment I saw her looking at it in the window of the jewellery shop in our local shopping mall I wanted to marry her. The moment I saw the corners of her mouth curl in that gentle way they do when she’s thinking of something she likes, when she’s in her head and the world doesn’t matter, I wanted to marry her more than I wanted breath.
We’d never discussed getting married. It had never come up. I guess maybe a part of me wondered why we needed to formalise what was already an incredible relationship with a gold band and piece of paper?
But when I saw her looking at that engagement ring, when I saw that distant smile play with her lips…
Yeah, everything changed in a heartbeat.
She is my history, my present and my future. Pretty certain I’ve just butchered a Shakespeare quote, or an Austen one, but it’s the way it is. My sister would kill me.
Huh, kill me. Given what Dr Murrell has just told me, Jess is going to have to get in line now.
“Did you want to call Samantha?” Dr Murrell’s eyebrows do their thing. In this very second, their thing is full of worry and concern.
“No.” The word comes out scratchy. Shaky.
Huh. Again. Shaky. I guess that is my word de jour now. Today, and every day moving forward.
Dr Murrell’s eyebrows express discontent and disapproval. Would he be pissed at me if I held him down and shaved them off?
“Are you sure?” he asks.
I think of Sami’s reaction to what the good doctor has just told me.
“I’m sure.”
We’ve known each other for over ten years. Met at university. Sami and I, not Dr Murrell and I. Me and the doctor first started our relationship when I was referred to him by my GP after a blood test six weeks ago. Sami and I literally crashed into each other in the student parking lot when we both reversed at the same time without checking the space behind us. My excuse? I’d been preoccupied by the gorgeous girl I’d seen fifteen minutes earlier striding from the uni library. The gorgeous girl I’d just reversed into. Hers? She was late for work.
After that inauspicious introduction, we discovered we both enjoyed cheesy sci-fi TV shows—live long and prosper—, Stephen King books, paddle boarding, and rollercoasters. A month after we crashed into each other, we moved in together. Finished our degrees together. Raised an animal-shelter dog together—a rescue greyhound we called Sloth, who ended up sleeping at the end of our bed no matter how many times we said he had to sleep in his bed in the living room. We loved him, cared for him and cried our eyes out for him when he got brain cancer. Said goodbye to him together…
Ten years together. After Sloth left our lives, we travelled. Everywhere. Five years ago, we talked about buying a house but decided to travel some more.
Sami is an adrenaline junkie with an inquisitive mind. We’ve backpacked through countries and terrain a sane adult would balk at. We’ve dived some of the most beautiful reefs in the world. She’s talked about wanting to climb Everest. She’d do it, too, and I would do it with her, for no other reason than to see her face—the excitement in it, the life shining in her eyes.
Except now…
The ring box digs into my hip bone, and I close my eyes.
“This is not a death sentence, Ben.” Without seeing Dr Murrell’s eyebrows, I can’t tell if the statement is placating, condescending or compassionate. All three?
“You’re only young,” he continues, as if I don’t know my own age.
I do. And I am. Young, that is. I’m only thirty-two, for Pete’s sake. Thirty-three in five months. Sami has been talking about going paintballing for my birthday. Thirties are the new twenties. According to the media, I’m the right age to both fuck up the planet and save it. Yeah, I own a stainless-steel straw. Yeah, I drive a Prius. Yeah, I still eat meat. Yeah, I’m free of credit-card debt. Kind of. Give or take a $3000 engagement ring. So, yeah, thirty-two is young.
“And medical advancements happen every day,” Dr Murrell goes on. “And you’re fit and healthy.”
I raise my eyebrows. Let them do the talking for me in that split second.
Healthy? That’s the word Murrell’s going with? After what he just told me?
His eyebrows do their thing: Calm down, Ben. You know what I mean.
I let out a shaky breath—ha, there’s the word de jour again—slump back in my seat and hold my hands, fingers splayed, palms down, out in front of me.
The left one is trembling more than the right, as if to prove a point. The whole reason I made an appointment a seven months ago. I’d noticed my left hand was weak and trembling a little from time to time, especially when I was tired or after some serious exercise, and/or serious sex. You know how they say sex should make you quake to the bone? Shudder? Tremble? For me, for a while now, it has quite literally been doing just that.
Sami said it was because our sex was so fucking intense our bodies didn’t know how to cope. “We are freaking elite sexual practitioners, Benny,” she’d panted one night, grinning after I’d given her a multiple orgasm with my tongue. She’d damn near scratched my scalp to pieces holding on for the ride before pinning me to the bed, impaling herself on my cock and fucking me until I couldn’t grip her hips any longer.
Elite sexual practitioners. Sex so good it left us shaking.
Yep.
Except now it seems I was left shaking for other reasons.
“So,” I say, raising my stare from my bastard hands to the good doctor, “what happens next?”
Eyebrows saying…something, he hands me a piece of paper. An information pamphlet.
I take it with my slightly less-shaking hand and read the words on the top.
“Living with Early-Onset Parkinson’s Disease.”
Early-onset. And to think, only last night, I was pissed at the grey hair I’d spied in my beard.
My left hand, hanging between my knees, decides now is the perfect time to tremble like it’s trying to vibrate off my arm. I reckon if someone looks at me from the side at this very point in time, it’ll appear as if I’m jerking off.
Hey, maybe I’ve found the one upside of having Parkinson’s at thirty-two? The ability to jerk off without too much effort? There’s got to be some perks with having your whole fucking life turned upside down.
Right?
Of course, one of the downsides is damning those you love to a life of looking after you. If, t
hat is, they stay around.
I think of Sami, of her energy and lust for life and adventure and adrenaline.
And my heart clenches so much I’m in pain.
Good thing I’m in a doctor’s office.
“Hey, babe.” Sami wraps her arms around my neck, rises up onto tip toe and kisses me like she hasn’t seen me for a year. “How was your day?”
This is how Sami kisses. None of this we’ve-been-together-for-ten-years-all-you-get-is-a-peck from her. She glides her palms up my chest, skimming my nipples through whatever shirt I’m wearing, sometimes pausing for a heartbeat to tweak them with her fingertips. Sometimes, if I’m not wearing a shirt, she pauses to give one of them a quick flick with her tongue, and then tangles her hands in my hair, draws my head down and captures my lips with hers. There are no half-measures with Sami. Her tongue is demanding and hungry, and I’ve never yet denied her.
Why would I? I love her. And she makes me so fucking horny, the second she touches me, I’m hard as a pole.
Being kissed by Sami is the ultimate foreplay to foreplay.
There have been times she’s kissed me a few minutes before we’re meant to walk out the door to go to dinner with friends, or meet up with my sister and her husband, or to go to the movies, and all I can do is slam her to the closest wall and fuck her brains out, making us late.
I’ve seen Jess swap smirks with her husband when Sami and I arrive way behind the scheduled time, but given I’ve also caught a glimpse of a hickey on my sister’s neck, high at the back near the hairline, she can smirk all she likes.
Sami’s insatiable hunger for my lips feeds mine for hers. Always has. From our first kiss on a park bench in King Edward park overlooking the Pacific Ocean one cold, windy winter afternoon a week after our less-than-orthodox meeting, to this one, the lust and desire and craving in Sami’s kiss turn me into a ravenous beast who wants nothing else in life but to lose myself to her.
We ended up bonking like rabbits there and then on that cold winter arvo, out in public and without a care in the world, and thank freaking God, it was so cold no one was in the park, ‘cause the second her boob was in my hand, the second her hand was around my cock, nothing could stop us.
Her tongue slides over mine now as she tightens her fists in my hair. I groan into her mouth, my heart quickening. I shake from the inside out. And a distant part of my mind reassures me I’m trembling because I’m so aroused by her, so in love with her. But another part—a brutal part—tells me it’s because I’m now broken, defective, and it’s only going to get worse.
How will I be able to haul her off her feet and drive into her, her legs locked around my hips, her back pressed to the wall, my hands pinning her wrists to the wall above her head, when I lose control of my muscles?
Fuck.
I pull away, suddenly cold.
Bleak.
Blue eyes seek out mine as Sami’s fingers slip from my shoulders. “Hey?” Her soft voice, a little husky with confusion and unsated desire, plays with my senses. Guilt worms through me, and I ball my left fist. My trembling bloody left fist. “What’s up?”
The doc told me I’ve got early-onset Parkinson’s disease today.
The words form in my head, heavy and acrid, but I bite them back. I spent the afternoon Googling this fucked-up condition I now have. It wasn’t pretty.
It won’t be pretty. Not for me. Not for anyone caring for me when it gets…ugly.
And it will. It will get very ugly. I will lose control of my ability to swallow. I’ll lose the ability to stand upright, to walk. I’ll lose the ability to smile, to have any other expression except a blank one.
Fuck.
I squeeze my fist again, even as I watch her frown at me. As I remain motionless when she feathers her fingers over my jaw and down my throat. “Everything okay?” she asks.
No. Sami burns with life and adventure and energy. And all those things will be taken away from me soon.
I’ve got Parkinson’s.
Again the confession whispers through my head. Again, I can’t utter the words.
Am I a coward?
I’ve run with the bulls in Paloma. I’ve bungee-jumped in New Zealand. I’ve sky-dived. Surely I can’t be a coward?
But I can’t tell her.
The words refuse to come. They just refuse.
Instead, with a growl that’s part angry, part carnal need, I grab her wrist with my right hand, yank her to my body and capture her mouth with mine.
She groans, the raw sound vibrating through my body. It’s a good vibration. The right kind. I draw her closer with my left hand, cupping her arse and bringing our hips together.
Dragging my lips from hers, I nip and bite my way up to the shallow dip below her ear. “Everything is okay,” I murmur, before sucking a little harder on her skin than I normally do.
She groans again, rolling her hips to rub the curve of her sex to my engorged dick.
Pleasure rushes through me, and I tremble again, but this time I know it’s nothing to do with Parkinson’s and everything to do with plain-and-simple desire.
There are things swirling in my mind, nebulous thoughts and decisions, dark clouds building over an inescapable future, and I know I can’t ignore them forever.
There’s a ring in a box in my drawer upstairs, a ring I bought this morning when my future was so very different and simple, when it was all laid out before me, free of a debilitating, humiliating disease. I have to make a decision about it, about how everything has change, about how a life with me will now be like, and how that’s no life for Sami, for anyone to live. But for this very moment, all that matters is the woman I love, the woman I desire, the woman who turns me on so much I can barely breathe.
Thank fuck I don’t have asthma as well as Parkinson’s.
I return my mouth to hers and kiss her until she claws at my back. “Wanna fuck me?” she asks, mischief and desire dancing in her eyes.
I chuckle and then moan as she slips her hand down the front of my jeans and wraps her fingers around my erection. I never wear boxers or briefs. Hate the restriction. If Google is telling me the truth, at some point in time in my future I’m going to be wearing fucking adult—
Mate, what are you doing? Don’t think about that kind of stuff now!
I shut off the complete mood-killer of a thought and kiss her again. Hungry, impatient, almost savage kisses. Am I taking out my anger at what fate has dealt me on Sami’s lips?
God, I hope not. But I’m scared of the future ahead of me. A future without—
Stop it!
I scoop her up, because I still can, and carry her to the kitchen.
I deposit her on the counter. “I want to be inside you,” I murmur. Every breath I pull smells of her.
“Then hurry the fuck up,” she orders, shimmying to the counter’s edge to lock her legs around my hips. Our groins align perfectly, and my hands may already be shaking—fucking hands—but there’s only solid steel in my cock. Hard and upright and straining against my jeans.
She pulls me closer to her with her legs, even as she tugs my fly open. Of course, my cock springs free. When it comes to Sami, it’s a greedy organ. She closes her fingers around its length, and I groan. My knees shake, but I don’t care. Not when the warmth of Sami’s fingers and palm radiate through my dick. Not when she squeezes and pumps it with a perfect rhythm no amount of wanking will ever replicate.
Another groan falls from me, and I move my fingers to the front of her dress. My knuckles bump against her exquisite breasts as I pop open the small buttons, one by one. No problems. No fumbling.
Take that, Parkinson’s disease.
“You are gorgeous,” I state the obvious, brushing my thumbs over her taut nipples. They pucker harder beneath the lace of her bra and, impatient, I push her dress from her shoulders and reach behind her to release the clasp of her bra.
And fail. My fingers can’t do it. They’ve always been able to do it, but they can’t now. They’re too fu
cking trembly.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Sami, unaware of the cold dread sinking into my gut, chuckles. She nips my bottom lip with her teeth, reaches behind herself and unfastens her bra.
It falls free of her breasts, and I forget I hate what my future holds and cup them with my hands. Neither—thank fucking God—are shaking now. No, I don’t know why either. Google hasn’t taught me everything yet, and the pamphlet Dr Murrell gave me didn’t have a section titled Cupping and Squeezing Boobs.
“I like that,” Sami murmurs, arching into my touch. Her nipples rub against the centre of my palms, sending ribbons of raw pleasure through me. I knead the heavy swell of her flesh and then lower my head to take her left nipple in my mouth.
I suck, sliding one hand down her ribcage and up over her back, into her hair.
“I like that as well,” she whispers, the words hitching as I flick my tongue over the point of her nipple.
I move my lips to her other breast. A distant part of my mind recognises my left hand is trembling again. Not a lot, but trembling all the same. Is it just overwhelming desire? At this moment?
Or is it—
Stop it.
Obeying the internal command, I feast on Sami’s nipple, worship the tight nub as I rake my hands down her back and grab her arse. Squeeze it.
She moans and yanks my head back with a fierce and sudden grip in my hair. “Fuck me, babe. Now.”
Of course, I’m not going to argue.
In a fumble of hands and clothes, we’re both naked.
I haul her back up onto the kitchen bench and spread her thighs wide. Yeah, I’m trembling all over, but I know why this time. Going down on Sami is one of my favourite things in the world. It gets me so fucking hot. Long before I started to notice the trembles in my hands when I was tired, the lack of strength in my left hand, I shook whenever I went down on her. I get lost in her taste, her moans as I lick her gorgeous pussy, her hitching groans as I suck her perfect pink clit.
I could stay between her thighs, bringing her to the brink of orgasm with my mouth over and over and over, for hours. And then when she does come all over my face, my tongue… Ahh, fuck, it’s heaven. Like I’ve died and am in paradise.
