Page 98 of Love Always

We hit the five-in-the-morning sign-up, and much to our surprise when we finished at nine thirty, there was the clan. Even Jackson arrived. I can’t explain the experience of running beside the woman I love. I still can’t believe she managed to find me a blade, financing it with some of her Christmas tree money. The whole thing is overwhelming.

By the time we get home we both think we’ve recovered until we have to get out of the car. This was her first half marathon and Laurel did great. Training for it is one thing—doing it is another. Your sense of pacing is off, how much you’re drinking, the little carbo packets that you slurp down taste suddenly so good. The whole thing is sort of surreal.

“Oh my God,” she moans. “I need to take a shower.” But instead, she flops on the bed.

I slip out of my shorts and remove Skippy. “That’s gonna stink,” I say, pointing to the sleeve.

She pulls me down on the bed on my back. I’m still wearing my tank top with my number and she starts to slowly peel it off of me, starting at the bottom.

“What have you got in mind, young lady?” I swallow because I’m pretty sure I know what she’s got in mind.

Laurel

He lies there with his shirt partially up over his abs with just a hint of those dark nipples showing. With his hands crossed behind his head and flat to the bed, his chest torques up, his ribs expanding, stretching his stomach flat. I slowly start to slide the shirt up further and twist until it’s up tangled around his wrists.

“You’re just a little bit kinky,” he says.

“Just enough,” I whisper, straddling him. I take his hands and stretch them further, deepening the symmetrical shadows of his groin and hips, and my breasts gently touch his chest. I kiss him, sliding my tongue between his lips, opening him to me. He sighs and then gently rolls me to my back, so he is on top. The tank is tossed to the floor.

“What stamina,” he whispers in my ear as he presses his pelvis to mine.

I am wet, as wet as I have ever been with him, and he slides into me so gently, but so fast, my body doesn’t have time to ready itself and stays supple, never going rigid.

“I need you,” he breathes again. He makes my back arch by placing his hands under my shoulder blades. His voice finds me again. “I want you just as much.”

Need and want. Together. This is new. My breath is even, as is his. He stays there on top of me, inside me, just holding us together, for a really long time. Finally, with a shaky breath, he slides up and down inside me, just using his ass, thighs, and knees, but slowly. He stiffens even more, deep in my sex, and then curves his hips slightly for a different angle. Now, when he pushes deeper, he somehow hits a spot behind my pubic bones. Nerves fire and my gut clenches.

I shudder and my arms go limp. “Mateus,” comes out as a whisper.

He remains silent, while I dissolve into ecstasy, loving me always, no matter what. His kisses are soft along my neck and he never alters his strokes. Same pressure, same beat, a thumb on my clit, working in the same pattern. Suddenly, almost without warning, my groin wells up and I come, explosively, convulsing in his arms. With each shudder he holds me tighter.

He starts to ease from me, but I open my eyes to stop him. I grip with my vaginal walls and raise my hips.

“Your turn.”

I expect a joke, a comeback, but his face is serious, open, vulnerable. He takes my face in his hand and kisses me. I writhe slightly beneath him, trying to find purchase, trying to find a way to give him what he has given me.

΅

We lay together in bed half asleep, a used washcloth on the floor. I can hardly move. Between the half marathon and the sex, my limbs are leaden.

Mateus sleeps, the light white sheet up around his waist, his eyes closed and a hand on his chest. A dark trail of hair dives down his stomach under the sheet. I touch a nipple, swirling it with an index finger. He opens his eyes. I kiss it.

Cory bursts in through the front, the screen door banging shut, and I sit up, clutching the sheet to my chest.

“Time for pancakes!” yells Cory, barreling into the bedroom, a tiny plastic dinosaur in each hand.

I glance at the clock. “Cory, it’s not breakfast.”

He will not be deterred. “Lunch!”

“It’s not lunch yet either. You want a snack?”

Mateus sits up on one elbow and looks at Cory. “Go in the kitchen and get the bowls out, buddy. We are going to eat in ten minutes. Put the timer on. And shut the door please.”

My son disappears, the bedroom door banging shut.

“What’s gotten into you?” I ask.

He tugs on my arm, pulling me back down beside him. I nestle in, my head on his bare shoulder. He rubs my arm for a moment, nuzzles my hair, and then smiles.

“I’m starving.”