Page 123 of Love What's Left
The loss of his touch is unbearable. The need for him to finish me turns my brain to static. I can’t think. “I want to, but I’m afraid to lose control here,” I say.
“Trust me. I won’t let anyone see or hear you. Give me your mouth if you want to come.”
I lift my lips to his. He reenters me with his fingers, massaging that place inside, and using his thumb to add steady pressure to my clit. All sense of time and place evaporates. Then I’m shooting into space, a woman gone supernova as stars burst behind my tightly squeezed eyelids, and, through it, he keeps me restrained and steady, his arms tight and immovable as he angles my body away from any possible prying eyes. He swallows every one of my cries and holds me as I drift slowly back to earth. When I’ve subsided into relaxation and my muscles have turned to water, I drop my head to his shoulder and shiver with aftershocks.
He sucks his fingers clean as his cock throbs beneath me.
I shift. “You were good at being subtle. I’m not sure I’d be able to pull it off for you.”
He smirks, and it takes me a moment to catch my accidental pun.
“So mature,” I say, laughing.
“Nature-Time is over.” He rises then hauls me into his arms, this time facing him with my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.
“You don’t have to do this. No one carried me when I was a kid, let alone a grown woman.”
“You’re tired. I’m here, capable, and want to do it. Let me.”
I put my head on his shoulder and stop fighting something that feels so good. He crunches over the gravel. When we reach the steps to the porch, he sets me on my feet, and we climb them together.
He closes the door behind us, and I kick my shoes off. The bed with the ivory wedding ring quilt waits for us against the back wall. During that fall festival all those years ago, I made Gabriel apple pancakes in the kitchenette with the green painted cabinets to our right. The brown leather sofa where he slept in front of the fireplace the first night we stayed here lies to our left.
“We spent our wedding night here,” I say, remembering it well.
He tugs the T-shirt over my head. “Yeah, we did.”
“We stayed a lot of weekends while Zack gave you your tattoos.” I work his belt loose.
“I may have asked him to go extra slow on those,” he says.
“Shocking.” I drag his belt from the loops and toss it away.
“I slept on the couch most of the time.” He reaches around me and pops the hooks on my bra open, then drags the straps down my arms.
“Most?” I pull his shirt up until he finishes the job for me.
“We didcome in November twice. We banked the fireplace overnight and had to share body heat.” He leans down and sucks my nipple, swirling his tongue over the hardened peak.
It takes me a second to recover. To remember he said something. I point at the electric baseboards. “We couldn’t turn on the heat?”
He laughs, then slides my shorts and underwear down my thighs and groans.
I free his erection and wrap my hand around his hard length. “Gabriel?”
“The power may have accidentally, on purpose, gone out,” he rasps. “Fuck.”
“I remember those nights.”
The look in his eyes turns to pure mischief. “Do you?”
I tug him closer by his dick and he comes more than willingly. “I knew you tripped the breaker, and I may have forgotten to mention there was a generator in the shed.”
Both of us kick off the last of our clothing, and Gabriel hits the lights, leaving us in near darkness with only the warm yellow glow of a low-wattage bulb above the little stove still burning. His hands circle my waist then slide down to cup my butt. “We played a lot of stupid games to make excuses to be close to each other.”
“Games make it sound fun. We tortured ourselves because we were too afraid to trust each other,” I say.
Gabriel huffs a laugh. “You edged me for seven years.”
