Because He's Perfect

by Anna Edwards

  So the shakes I’m experiencing now don’t scare me or fill me with cold dread. They tell me it’s all good.

  If only for now.

  This moment, swiping my tongue along her seam, drawing her clit between my lips, flicking it with my tongue…this is what matters.

  I hold her thighs wide and surrender to the euphoria of her wet, hot flesh on my lips and tongue. She gasps, fists in my hair.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she pants. “Yeah, that. That’s it. Keep doing that…”

  I do. Until I feel the trembles begin in her. Deep inside her. Her thighs quiver beneath my palms and, with a smile and low chuckle, I remove my lips from her and blow a gentle stream of cool air on her sex.

  She laughs. “Bastard.”

  I smile up at her and straighten until my face is level with hers. “As if I would let you come straight away.”

  Another laugh falls from her, husky and throaty. “I can’t even bring myself to be mad at you.”

  I grin and then groan with carnal delight as she snags my hair in a fist and crushes her lips to mine. She licks her juices from my tongue and then, with an even huskier laugh, shoves me back down to my knees. “Get back to work, babe,” she demands, planting the soles of her feet on my shoulders.

  I obey, burying my face between her thighs and fucking her wet pussy with my tongue.

  I lick her to the edge of eruption more than once, until she’s begging me to let her come.

  I don’t.

  I know what she wants. She wants me to keep denying her climax until she’s demanding it.

  And she does. With a savage thrust of her hips, and a savage tug of her fists in my hair, she grinds her sex to my mouth. “Do it,” she snarls. “Do it, babe.”

  I capture her clit with my lips and suck it with ravenous greed.

  “Oh, yeah. Yeah.” She rolls her hips and digs her heels into the back of my neck. “Yeah…”

  I smooth my hands to the warm junction of her thighs and sink one thumb into her pussy, wriggling it as deep as I can into her sodden tightness as I flick her clit with wild little lashes of my tongue.

  “Yeah,” she moans. “Yeah…yeah…”

  She erupts, her release flowing over my tongue and lips.

  Groaning my delight, I lap at the new moisture filling my mouth.

  She cries my name, her fists in my hair turning painfully, wonderfully fierce, and then, with abrupt speed, she plants her feet on my shoulders again and pushes me back.

  I let momentum take me for a split second and then, as her heady stare finds mine, I destroy the distance between us, shove her thighs wide, grab her hips, and slam my cock—harder than it’s ever been—into her.

  Lose myself in her.

  Surrender to the absolute pleasure of being inside her.

  Being with her.

  I drive into her, wild and almost desperate, and then, as she claws at my back and shoulders, I take back as much control of my body as I can.

  Slow my strokes. Bury them deeper into her.

  Move with her. Together. As one.

  Brand every second into my memory.

  As if I’m joined with her for the last time.

  Contemplation

  I’m listening to the sounds of Sami shower as I stare at my laptop’s screen.

  Normally, I’d join her in there after sex. Who doesn’t enjoy languid touching after monumental, bone-shaking sex?

  There’s that word de jour again.

  I told her I was going to start getting dinner ready instead.

  A flicker of confusion had filled her eyes for a second, and then she’d nodded and headed for our bathroom.

  The second the water started running, I’d called the restaurant and cancelled our reservation.

  Guilt and uncertainty knotted in my chest. Almost choked me.

  After yanking on my jeans, I’d snatched my laptop from the small table in the far corning of the living room we use as a faux home office and dropped onto the sofa.

  Google hadn’t painted a pretty picture for me on Parkinson’s disease earlier, but maybe I’d missed something. I mean, becoming an expert on the degenerative nervous system disorder in the hour between leaving Dr Murrell’s office and Sami arriving home just wasn’t doable.

  It didn’t take me long to realise I hadn’t. Missed anything. Not really. Yeah, there were medical breakthroughs happening all the time—next time I saw Dr Murrell, I’d have to apologise for doubting him—but those breakthroughs…

  I gave up on clicking on links.

  Instead, I spent five minutes writing the most absurd ‘Pros and Cons’ list ever created.

  The Con list was a fucking nightmare.

  Rigid muscles.

  Slow movements.

  Tremors. Aka the fucking word of the fucking day: shakes.

  Walking and balance problems. Great, so I’m going to look like I’m a drunk when I’m walking down the street.

  Weakness in limbs.

  Loss of automatic movements. How the fuck do I wipe my arse then?

  Losing the ability to smile.

  Parkinson’s delirium. A symptom I still hadn’t quite grasped, but it sounded a lot like dementia.

  Speech changes. Slurring, it seemed, was in my future. Oh joy.

  Erectile disfunction. Fuck. Or more to the point, no fuck. Shit.

  That was just what I’d discovered so far.

  The Pro list was…different. And, yeah, I am aware of the lunacy of having a pro list for being diagnosed with a progressive disorder of the nervous system, trust me.

  So far, my pro list had two things on it.

  Same disease as a celebrity. I now had a lame claim to fame with Michael J. Fox, who was diagnosed at twenty-nine.

  Increased sex-drive. This one only happens on certain medication for Parkinson’s and not to everyone taking it. Plus, it can become hyper-sexuality and cause sex addiction, which probably also meant it belonged on the con side, right?.

  Told you the pro list was… Well, let’s be serious, the pro list was a joke.

  But I had no other way of trying to work my way through this alone.

  Alone.

  Another word of the day.

  Dragging my stare from my laptop’s screen and the saddest pro/con list in existence, I look toward our bathroom.

  The water has cut off. Sami is finished.

  Give or take a few minutes, she’ll be walking out into the living room, smelling of soap and deodorant and uniquely her, and I’m going to want to take her in my arms and kiss her and love her and ask her…

  No. I can’t.

  Not with this fucked-up future in front of me.

  Not with a pro list only two items long.

  There is no pro to having Parkinson’s disease, so why would I expect anyone I love to live it, even indirectly.

  I can’t. It’s selfish.

  I love her too much to do that.

  But I love her too much to live without her.

  Fuck. What do I do?

  What do I—

  “Thought you might have joined me,” Sami says, strolling into the living room.

  My heart smashes into my throat as I slam my laptop shut.

  She arches an eyebrow at me, pausing on her way to the kitchen.

  I pull a deep breath, my gut clenching. She’s dressed in her favourite black silk boxer shorts and a loose Iron Man T-shirt. The boxers are short enough for me to see the curve of her arse cheeks, and a purely male reaction rushes through me. My dick twitches, and my balls tighten.

  She flicks my laptop a glance, a tiny frown dipping her eyebrows. There’s a whole conversation going on there to rival Dr Murrell’s expressive eyebrows, but it all boils down to this: I’m acting weird, and she knows it.

  I hope to hell she won’t ask me if I’m okay. I can’t lie to her, but I don’t know what to say.

  I know Sami. Better than I know anyone else. I tell her I’ve been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, she’s going to take it upon herself to c
are for me.

  “I was looking something up,” I say. It’s the lamest excuse but the only one that pops into my head. I’m an engineer, not a lawyer. Thinking on my feet has never been one of my strong points.

  Her frown deepens, and then she shrugs and heads for the kitchen. “I thought you must have been ordering something for dinner.”

  Shit. That would have been a better excuse. Double shit. Getting dinner ready was the reason I gave for not joining her in the shower.

  A lump forms in my throat, so thick I have trouble swallowing it. “What do you think about Lim’s Kitchen?” Her favourite Chinese restaurant. “I’ll order take-out.”

  Reaching for a glass in the cupboard, she nods. “Good choice. Want to give them a ring, or shall I?”

  A ring.

  An invisible punch slams into my gut, and I let out a groan before I realise it.

  A ring. The ring. Upstairs in my sock drawer.

  Just over two hours ago, I’d been planning to slip that ring on her finger tonight. Now I’m…

  What? Planning to return it?

  Without even talking to her about my diagnosis?

  “I’ll do it,” I say, although it sounds more like a croak.

  I rise from the little desk, join her in the kitchen and retrieve my iPhone from its charging dock next to the electric kettle.

  Warm hands slink around my waist, and I stiffen as she nibbles a little path up the back of my neck. “I haven’t even asked you how your day was,” she says, walking her fingers down over my stomach to playfully cup my groin. “I mean, not counting what we just did. Didn’t you have a doctor’s appointment to—”

  I spin around in her arms and crush her lips with a hungry kiss. Silence her. Kill the question.

  She laughs and kisses me back, and before I know it, she’s on her knees in front of me and… Well, there’s no way she can ask any questions now.

  Thirty minutes later, as I’m scrolling through my contacts list, looking for the Chinese restaurant’s number, she settles in beside me on the sofa. “I’ve been thinking,” she says.

  “About what?” I notice she has a bottle of metallic blue fingernail polish in her hands. Hands that are steady and beautiful and should never have to help me go to the toilet.

  I grip my iPhone tighter with my right hand and fist my left one. It’s freaking trembling again. If I lay it on a table, it’d probably tap out an SOS. Or the backbeat to a Bestie Boys track.

  “I think we should do the Kokoda Track next year.”

  My heart stops. Everything goes cold.

  The Kokoda Track is a sixty-mile single-thoroughfare path over and through some of the most intense, ruthless terrain and conditions in Papua New Guinea. It’s become almost a rite of passage for some Australians to complete the harrowing, challenging week-long journey that was the site of a brutal World War II battle between Japanese and Australian forces in 1942. It was a way to remember what our soldiers did for our country. Only the extremely fit and healthy can endure and complete the trek. People die on it.

  A thirty-two-year-old guy with early-onset Parkinson’s is not likely to do well.

  Right?

  Fuck.

  Tell her.

  Scrunching my eyes closed, I lean forward, toss my phone onto the coffee table and let out a steady breath.

  Steady.

  Something my hands aren’t.

  “Sam,” I say, opening my eyes as I turn to her.

  She’s watching me. Expressionless. Even her eyebrows.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  She stops me with a shake of her head. “Give me a second, okay?”

  Before I can respond, she straightens to her feet and disappears out of the room. Strides from it like she’s on a mission.

  The base male part of me can’t help but check out her hot-as-sin arse as she goes. The bleak realist part of me accepts that after this conversation, I’m never going to get to squeeze it, knead it, see it get wider with age…

  For a moment, the realisation I’m not going to see her arse get saggy as we enter our sixties together tears me apart. My chest constricts, and I scrunch my eyes closed again.

  “PD is not a death sentence, Ben.” Dr Murrell’s declaration whispers through my head.

  It isn’t. But a life without Sami feels like one.

  And I can’t do this to her. Not her. Not the woman who lives for adventure and adrenaline. Not the woman who wants to do the Kokoda Track. Not the woman who wants to climb Everest.

  I’ll be okay on my own. It’s better that way. When I’m too far gone to look after myself, I’ll move into a nursing home and—

  Jesus, I need to get a grip on my—

  “Open your eyes, babe.” The sofa cushion sinks a little as Sami drops onto it beside me.

  I do, although my fucking vision is blurry. Shit, are those… Am I…

  Fuck, tears. Tears.

  Oh God, I can’t…

  “Ben.” Her voice is stern. Her teacher voice. The one, I suspect, she uses on her first graders when they’re being mischievous.

  Dragging in a slow breath, I rake a hand through my hair and meet her gaze.

  Her eyes are so blue, her stare so direct. I love her so much. “Sam, I’ve got to tell you—”

  She holds up a book.

  I blink and read the cover.

  Parkinson’s Disease for Dummies.

  Decision

  I blink again. What?

  “What?” I say, looking back at her.

  She shrugs. “I bought it a while ago. A couple of weeks ago.”

  I blink for a third time. “Why?”

  “I figured it might come in handy. And if I was wrong… Well…” She pauses, licks her bottom lip and frowns. “Am I wrong? Is this why you’re behaving so weird this evening? Is this—” she places the book on the coffee table and taps its cover with her finger, “—what Dr Murrell told you you have?”

  Swallowing—hell, when did my throat become a desert?—I turn to the book. It’s thick and bright yellow and there. Undeniable. “How…” I rake a hand through my hair and look back at her. Holy crap, it’s shaking like mad. My hand, not my hair. “How did you…”

  A small smile curls the corners of her mouth. “I kinda put two and two together. Plus, I spent a bit of time on Google. And WebMD—although WebMD was adamant you had cancer. Kidding.”

  I snort. Trust Sami to drop a joke at this point. Everyone in the world knows the only diagnosis you’ll likely get from WebMD is cancer. Or more to the point, hypochondria.

  Frowning at the book again, I let out a ragged breath.

  “I’m a teacher, babe,” she says, taking my left hand—the one doing most of the shaking—in both of hers. “You know we teachers don’t like not knowing the answers. And I had an uncle with PD.”

  Had.

  I can’t miss the past tense of the word.

  “He died when I was eighteen,” she says, clearly seeing inside my head. “In a car accident.” Her smile widens a little, even as a faint ghost of sorrow shimmers in her eyes. “On his way to skydiving.”

  I stare at her.

  “He was sixty-two.”

  For a fourth time, I blink.

  She shrugs again. “So if you have some fancy-arsed notion of, I don’t know…ending us, telling me it’s over because you don’t want to subject me to a life of looking after you, I’m going to be really pissed at you.”

  I open my mouth.

  Close it.

  She snorts. “You are so predictable, Ben Adams. And just so you know, even if you were stupid enough to tell me we were over, I wouldn’t accept it.”

  I open my mouth again, and let out a startled gasp when she climbs onto my lap, tangles her fingers into my hair and forces me to look at her, the tip of her nose touching mine. “I don’t just love you because you can walk a straight line and zip your own fly, Ben.”

  “But,” I say, gut a churning mess, “I’m going to—”

 
“Always be you.” She nudges her forehead to mine. “And you is who I love and want to spend the rest of my life with. You. Trembly or not.”

  Gut not just churning, but broiling and roiling and knotting like a son of a bitch, I shake my head. “You’re too young to throw away—”

  “Do I need to repeat myself, Ben?” The teacher voice is back. “I’ve read that book. Cover to cover. Plus the three others I bought along with it. It’s going to be okay.”

  “How do you know?” the question leaves me a scratchy whisper.

  She smiles. “Because the one thing every book says that will help a Parkinson’s patient through it is someone who understands. Who doesn’t care about the crap. For you, that’s me. I’m not going anywhere, Ben. I’ve been yours since you reversed into my car in the uni carpark. And I’ll be yours when they finally take your driving licence away because you are the worst freaking driving in the world.”

  “Hey,” I protest, although it sounds like a laugh.

  How can I be laughing right now? I shouldn’t be. Everything’s changed.

  But I am. I’m laughing. Because of Sami. My reason for breath. My reason for smiling. My other half.

  My Sami…

  She grins, cups my face in her hands and brushes her thumb over my bottom lip. “It’s true. You are a very bad driver. But I still love you. Will always love you, because you’re perfect, trembles and all.”

  I study her face. Search her eyes. See the truth in there. See the future in there. Our future.

  Whatever life throws at us, whatever challenges are presented to us, we’ll tackle them together. Just as we’ve always done.

  A soft breath leaves me, and I lower her hands from my face. “Give me a sec, will you.”

  I slide her off my lap, straighten to my feet and power down the hallway to our bedroom.

  The little box is burning a hole in my hand—shaking, naturally—when I return to the living room.

  Sami frowns at me as I cross to where she’s sitting cross-legged on the sofa. “What’s going—”

  She stops when I lower down to one knee.