Page 77 of Sublimate
“Nobody ever…holy bells. Nobody ever…”
“Good so far?” he asked and gave me another lick.
It was so good that I came, right then, with all the moaning and heavy breathing that Cadence had shown me in her books and I had thought was just fantasy.
“It’s really that good,” I told Nolan. It felt like I was floating a little. I reached for him, too, and ran my hands over his erection. “You tell me.”
He answered something, more like a word that had turned into a gasp as I rubbed. He buried his face in my neck and kissed that same spot he had already discovered, the one that made me get so quivery. I didn’t really want to pull away from that but I wanted to touch him like he’d done for me. I wanted to feel how warm his chest was against my breasts while I kissed his neck, too, and then I wanted to grab his butt to steady him while I licked him up and down.
He thought all of that was good—amazing. He lasted for only a little bit of licking before he was asking me if I was ready, and I was. Then he didn’t yank me under him and start pounding away. We turned on our sides, like we were spooning again, andI felt him adjust a condom before he slid inside me, not hurting at all. He touched me at the same time, kissing the good spot on my neck and massaging my clit as he moved in and out. I intertwined our fingers so that I could show him how it would feel even better there and then—oh, it was bliss.
“I thought all the orgasm stuff was a lie,” I said drowsily.
“Not for me,” he said. He was breathless.
“Not for me, either. Nolan,” I murmured, and turned so that I could snuggle against him. “I do want to marry you.”
“Because the sex is so wonderful?”
“It’s all wonderful. We don’t have to wait,” I said. “We can just skip a few steps and sublimate.”
He laughed quietly. “Were you just studying that?”
“No, you told me about it on the night that we met, and I remembered. I thought it would be great to be able to suddenly switch into something else.”
“Like how we were strangers and now we’re in love.”
Exactly like that.
Nolan picked up my hand and we looked at the green stone. “We’re transforming,” he said. “It’s almost supernatural.”
“Except that I’m not scared of it and I know it’s real. There’s no doubt.” I absolutely believed in us.
Epilogue
When I clapped, the sunlight reflected off the green stone in my ring and off the little clear ones that surrounded it. The clear ones in the band, the circle of diamonds that I wore closer to my heart, glimmered as well. The rings were so pretty in the summer sun but I also enjoyed looking at them in the glint of the flames in our fireplace in the winter. I took them off before bed and put them in a little dish on my nightstand, just like I had once pictured, and they were beautiful there, too. The rings were perfect, of course, but I was more interested in what they meant: Nolan and me, together forever.
He looked down and smiled as he also clapped. “I think he’ll hit it this time,” he said.
Finley looked determined to try. He stood at home plate and wiggled his little hips like a real ballplayer, except he was facing the dugout instead of the outfield. Beau, acting as his fatherand as the team coach, helpfully picked him up and turned him around the other way.
“Let ‘er rip, baby!” Finley’s mom called. Cadence joined her cheering and they both got louder when he did make an attempt. He missed and hit the T, but the ball toppled onto the ground so he took off for first base. The other team’s player was sitting comfortably on the bag but was ok, because Finley sidestepped the base and continued running into the outfield.
Nolan laughed so hard that he had to wipe his eyes on the collar of his shirt. “We have to come to every T-ball game,” he said. “Maybe someday—”
He stopped but I knew what he’d been about to say. Over the past few months, he’d brought up the idea of starting a family. He’d mentioned, “I need to read more about the genetics of red headedness. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a daughter with hair like yours?” And he had stated, “Beau doesn’t know anything about baseball and he’s coaching Finley’s team. I can ski and play tennis, but I should brush up on other things to prepare.” Then he’d immediately added that he was speaking in generalizations, he meant sometime in the future, and there was no pressure on me.
Beau had finally caught his son and planted him on first base, so the next player was up to hit. There was another break in the action because he was crying and his mom had to step into the batter’s box to console him.
“Cadence, how are you doing?” I asked her. It was warm today because we were past the frost date. Both of us had discoveredthat we had green thumbs, and our gardens were already growing.
So was her tummy. “Not bad,” she said, rubbing it. Her long curls, which she now left untwirled, bounced in the breeze. “She’s really starting to kick. Finley gets excited because he thinks I might have a kangaroo in here and I hope he won’t be disappointed by a baby.”
“He’ll love his sister,” Finley’s mom Victoria assured her. It was lucky that they all got along, because I had seen extended family relationships go badly before. Like one time, my sister had built a homemade bomb and put it under the driver’s seat in her ex’s new girlfriend’s brother’s truck. Fortunately, it hadn’t detonated. It was probably also fortunate that Patchouli was locked up again, at least for the next five to seven years. My mom was out but living in Nevada and we had bought her a house, for which we paid the utilities, maintenance, and everything else. I hadn’t seen her in years, though, and she wasn’t pushing because I didn’t think that she wanted to see me, either.
“The house is for you,” my husband had explained. “You’ll feel better knowing that she’s ok, even if I don’t think that she deserves it.”
The thing was, people rarely got what they deserved. But it did happen. For example, Kolter—
