Chapter 24. Sage
Raking the maze this morning soothed something in me today, but it in no way made me feel calm. I guess you can be excited for every rise and dive of a roller coaster and still can’t stop your physical reaction to it or the way your stomach soars.
I spend most of the afternoon getting ready, fussing over the typical, senseless things. I send Wren pictures of about eleven different outfits before I land on a matching skirt and top in dusty blue, with a flirty strip of my waist on display. I get antsy and decide to change my nail color at the last second, but miscalculate the time and end up just leaving them bare. I slip on all of my favorite rings and a simple pair of sandals before I kiss the animals goodbye and head out into the meadow.
My senses feel clear and heightened, the early evening holding its breath around me, like the sun-cooked grass itself is excited, too. The last flickers of nerves melt and heat in my veins.
I let myself inside when I get to the Andersens’ front door and am greeted with a smell that makes me nearly moan. I find Fisher in the kitchen and stop to take in the view of him.
He looks entirely in command of the space around him. He’s wearing a green, short-sleeved button-down that ripples with his movements. His hair still looks wet from a shower. He takes a pull from a nearby bottle of wine, and his throat works in a way that makes my chest tingle.
“Hey,” he says when he spots me, his face breaking into a broad grin, one side tugging up higher. He rounds the island and meets me halfway, lands a chaste kiss to the corner of my mouth. He smells better than the meal, and for a second, I consider trying to peel him away. But for as much as we’ve revealed to one another, this feels like something intimate he’s putting on display.
Acoustic, broken-down versions of popular songs play from a speaker somewhere, and I slip onto a stool at the breakfast bar and watch him work. He tells me he’s making me a four-course meal, but will serve small portions of each thing so that it’s not overwhelming. We make light small talk, laughing when he tells me how flustered Indy acted when he asked if she’d see Sam in Gandon this weekend.
“I just hope she’s not too hard on the kid, I guess,” he says. “I know I’m probably supposed to act overprotective and glad at her being aloof, but, I dunno.…” He fades off, bracing his hands on the butcher block. “My sister was very young when she had her. And people were cruel.” He raises a hand to halt my condolences. “It’s okay. She was okay. I think I took things more personally than Freya did. But, I also think, as a result, Indy has an intensely independent spirit. She won’t entertain anything that might get in her way or hold her back. I used to be the same.”
I angle my neck to study him. “You’re not anymore?”
He checks a saucepan and concisely gives it a stir, the points of his shoulder blades working beneath his shirt. “I just keep putting bits of your sage advice to good use, and it’s getting easier. The more trust I show, the more she gives,” he says, then pivots back to another task in front of me. “I just have to keep being steady for her.”
Fuck, he’s perfect. No, it’s worse because he’s imperfect and honest about it and he’s deserving of so much love. This is wonderfully terrible for me. “You’re doing really, really well, Fisher,” I tell him.
“Thank you,” he says, his voice low and grating.
He dices with the concentrated precision of a surgeon after that, his face taking on that dangerous, passionate look I’d thought it would. My mind tumbles into the memory of having all that focus on me, his devotion for my pleasure. And just as deliciously, the image of him unravels. I take it a step further and let myself imagine being laid out before him like a feast, his attention on me all over.
“Hungry?” he asks, gaze flicking up to mine.
“Starving.”
“This,” he says, sliding a shallow, wide-brimmed bowl my way, “is a carpaccio of hibiscus-poached monkfish. I use the term carpaccio loosely, but if it were on a menu, that is what I would put in the title. On top, you’ll find a mélange of market melons, compressed with lemongrass and kaffir lime. To tie it all together, a lobster vinaigrette.”
I have no idea what he just said or described. But it sure is pretty. Colorful and bright, exotic… my eyes are devouring it before I can. I take a bite, and an artless moan escapes me almost immediately. I put my hand to my lips and stare at him in shock.
His jaw flares. “Been dying to find out what else it’d take to get you to make that sound again.”
Heat sparks across my skin, gathers in the crooks of my elbows and the backs of my knees.
He changes out my wine for a different one when the next dish is up. The pasta course, he tells me.
“I actually hate working with dough, most of the time,” he admits when he passes it my way. “But this is a wild fennel pollen gnudi, with Calabrian chili and…” I black out on the rest, the morsel dancing on my tongue. Whatever this is doing in my mouth is a performance.
When I do peel my eyes away from the meal, I find him watching me and ignoring his own—something raw, vulnerable, and searching on his face. It’s almost boyish in its hopefulness, and it makes me want to grab fistfuls of the stuff and shout at him, You’re amazing, you’re amazing, you’re so damn incredible! You’re bigger and better than anyone and braver, too, and why would you ever let anyone else make you feel like you’re less?
Instead, I take a slow drink of my wine and say, “This is unequivocally the best thing I have ever tasted, Fisher. This is—” I have to cover my mouth again and let out a hysterical sound. My nervous system is truly processing something entirely foreign here.
He makes his way around the island in a few avid strides and kisses me in a slow, bone-melting embrace. “I’m glad,” he says, and again, the desire to have him stop and take me now wars with the part of me that cannot wait to experience whatever he’s prepared next. Dessert might be a medical event.
The third course is a phenomenon of a beef tenderloin, and he’s done something rapturous with fucking asparagus, of all things. It’s almost too much for my senses. He was right in keeping portions small, because I would, without a doubt, be in some sort of coma if I were full of all of this.
Rather than being lulled, though, I feel as if all my nerve endings have been whipped into something frothy, like a featherlight touch could sweep me apart. The flavors and smells, the sight of him and the rise and shift of his forearms, sinews and veins working beneath his skin. That stubborn lock of his hair that keeps sliding forward. He ruffles it behind an ear, and I’m up, the legs of the stool scraping against the floor beneath me.
He sees me coming for him, and the dire want must be blatant in my expression because he asks, “Dessert?”
“Later.”
“Thank god,” he grinds out, tossing a dish towel away somewhere and meeting me the rest of the way. His hands wrap around my waist before he props me up onto the counter and steps between my legs, diving for the column of my neck like a man starved. The metal of his belt buckle is cool against the overheated skin of my thigh, my hands scraping everywhere they can touch. His teeth slide against my collarbone, and the fine grit of his stubble skims the top of my breast. I search for his mouth with mine and wriggle my hands between us to get at his buttons.
A brief moment of consciousness slips through the haze when I spot the Andersens’ robot vacuum out of the corner of my eye. “Fisher,” I rasp, the last syllable ending on a whimper when I feel his tongue on the hollow of my throat. “Fisher, let’s go to my house,” I get out quickly.
“What?” he says.
“I don’t want to have sex in the Andersens’ house.” I laugh. I’ll never be able to look Nina in the eye.
He growls into the valley of my chest, scoops me down off the counter, and pulls me for the door by my hand in a half jog, falling back upon me with a wild look in his eyes before he opens it. Our lips press smiles together, and our tongues taste each other—small, matching laughs popping out of us like bubbles of champagne. Fresh lust laps through me when he adjusts himself before he leads us through the door.
The sky breaks open the moment we hit the porch. Great, heavy raindrops that sparkle like a shower of light in the sun. We look at one another in surprise, then break into a run.
We screech and laugh our way across the field, only stopping to taste the rain off each other’s skin. He tugs the tip of a breast from my top and makes me gasp, face to the sky. I ruck up my skirt so he can grab me by the backs of my thighs and carry me the remaining way.
When we get into the sunroom, Sable barks a happy sound and promptly makes herself scarce. I roll out the mattress pad I keep in here before I close us in, my entire body trembling when I turn back to face him.
“You’re shaking,” he says, running his palms along my face and limbs. Probably wiping away the makeup smeared under my eyes. “Are you okay?” His face cinches in concern. I lean into his palm, holding his wrist, fingertips on his pulse, and try to steady my breathing.
“Yes.” I nod. I just know I’ll never be the same, and want to keep going nonetheless.
He continues touching my face as I work at the rest of his buttons, hands spreading wide and high to push it off his shoulders. I raise my arms up so he can quickly dispose of my top and bra in return, flicking it away to join his shirt in a wet heap. He struggles to swallow, and my own mouth goes dry at his look of appreciation.
I reach for his belt next, and the button of his jeans over the hard swell of him beneath. He toes off his boots in an enthusiastic way that eases my nerves and makes me laugh.
“I love your smile,” he abruptly states, like the words were pulled from him. I love so many parts of him. His lopsided smile, his sort-of-big ears, his unruly hair, the ego that asserts itself now and then. I love the way he tries. How he tried to understand and see me from the moment we met, even when he was still trying to buy his own assumptions, how he’s been trying to get better, how he always tries for honesty and to do what he says he will. How he owns it when he hasn’t or can’t.
“I love so many parts of you,” I decide to say. It comes out like a whisper and I’m unsure if he hears me over the rain.
“Just can’t think of any specifics?” he tries to joke.
I shake my head. “Too many,” I admit.
He inhales sharply and nods, like he gets it, like it’s the same for him, too.
I press my lips to his warm chest, my nipples tightening when they graze the skin over his ribs. He snakes his palms down the back of my skirt and kneads, then glides it gently, slowly, off. He keeps me close and corrals me to the bedroll, holding my eyes as I lie down at his feet. He shirks his jeans and briefs together, then smirks knowingly when I choke on nothing at the sight of his naked form.
When he lies by my side, he becomes singularly focused on my body. I can see him watching the blush spread across my skin. We both watch his hand circle my navel, then as it ghosts a path down to toy with the strap of my thong.
“Can I?” he asks.
“Please.”
His eyes flutter closed when he touches me where I’m the neediest, his forehead falling to my shoulder when I let out a strained, keening sound. It overwhelms my senses: the sight of his hand shifting under the scrap of cotton, the way he thrusts himself against my hip like he’s helpless against it, his hair tickling my chin and his breath warm on my chest, the rain clattering and blurring against the glass above us. Everything coils impossibly tight and fast, sweeping me toward the edge. But then he brings his hand back up, fingers glistening, and paints them in lazy swirls around my nipples before he licks me off my skin. I start to break into a series of moans—his name, and please, and thank you, and yes, and yes, and yes. He brings me further and further until I’m mindlessly writhing, grinding myself into his palm and holding his head to my chest, thrashing and winded.
“That’s it, Sage. Let it come, sweetheart. Don’t fight it.”
His words undo me. I completely fall apart, the release rushing through my limbs and unraveling in blinding light. A joyful sob bursts up from my chest. I keep falling, over and over, spinning through pleasure until I’m wrung out and spent, until I see him use that same brilliant hand on himself with a rough tug. My still-recovering heart hiccups violently in my chest.
“We don’t have to do anything else,” he says, like he’s not throbbing painfully or like I can’t feel the evident bead of moisture he’s left against my leg.
“Yes, we do,” I say huskily, reaching for him. “I don’t think I’ll be able to again, but I want to—I want to take care of you, too.” I suddenly feel shy again for some inexplicable reason. I’ve been with a whopping three people, and not even in the five years I was with one of them was it ever as staggering as anything with Fisher has been.
“You can again,” he deeply grates, staying my hand. “I can make you ready again.”
The words alone kick up my urgency. I chase his mouth, tongue and teeth and rapid breaths. “I’m on birth control,” I say.
“I haven’t been with anyone in a long time. I’ve got nothing to report,” he replies, smiling softly. I feel myself mirror the expression, grateful for this trust and comfort.
He levers up to sit, propping himself against the side of the yellow chair and gathering me back into his lap, my knees flanking his sides. His utter lack of shame—his parted, muscular thighs and the flex of him against his stomach—make me shiver. He catches it and swipes a throw blanket from a nearby basket, wraps it lovingly around my lower back before he smooths his hands down my arms. He kisses my palms before he pulls them around his neck.
He clasps my hips and slides my panties to the side with a hitched, encouraging murmur, tilts and drags me up the length of him. I bite my lip to catch a gasp, a shock of warmth flashing through me again, leaving a dull ache in its wake. I hiss a curse when he does it a second time, and his mouth tips in a crooked grin. Arrogant man. He continues to lift and squeeze in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. The way he’s using me without being inside me—it’s unpolished and visceral and so fucking hungry, his eyes trained on where we’re slipping against each other. Another knot starts to stir and pull from somewhere deep, and I instinctively seek out more, arching at the height of another grind so that the broad head of him glides just inside and makes me gasp. Just the tip of him stretching me deliciously. A rough noise wrenches out of him, and his fingers grip me tighter, holding me still. I worry I’ve hurt him or done something wrong and search his face in worry.
“I’m sorry I—”
“No, I mean—yes, but no, don’t. Don’t apologize,” he pants, pecs rising and falling. His gaze is heavy-lidded. I mark the sheen of sweat misting across his temples and chest. “I just don’t want it to end,” he says. “It’s too good. I just want to put off the end.”
Emotion twists in my throat, because I don’t want any of this to end, either. Not this summer, not this hour, not this minute. “Just be here now,” I whisper, seeding kisses across all the angles of his face, along the shell of his ear, down his neck. “Let me enjoy you now,” I say.
He answers me by guiding me down farther. My breath catches, and I have to stop, letting myself adjust. When I sink deeper, he buries a groan in my skin. I rise slowly before I take him completely, deep into someplace that feels essential and new.
I couldn’t guess how much time passes, our movements slow and rocking and lingering together. I don’t know that I’ve ever smiled so much during sex, if I’ve ever enjoyed myself this much. A disturbing sort of bliss takes over when I realize I’m going to come apart again, with him inside me and under me and around me. He talks me up to it once more, tells me he can feel me when everything pulls taut, tells me how beautiful I look and how good I feel.
“It’s never been like this,” I say, a truth ripped from me before I can stop it.
“I know. Never,” he quickly agrees with a tortured groan, leaning forward to kiss me. “I can feel you pulling me tight. You’re going to come again for me, aren’t you?”
I’ve never been with someone who talks to me during this, who manages to stay inside my head just as much as he’s in everywhere else. He reaches down and toys with me in tight circles, his eyes watching with carnal focus as I piston against him. We start to writhe more quickly, our sounds getting more broken and movements more desperate. My palm slaps and slips against the fogged-up glass when it finally takes over—this one hard and fast and incendiary. I hold on as tight as my sated limbs will allow when he folds us over and takes me beneath him.
“Sage,” he grits when he tumbles over the edge, then collapses into the cradle of my hips, heavy and spent and ecstatic, his chest rumbling happily against mine.
He leaves briefly to grab a damp towel, then cleans me off with devoted care. When I return from the bathroom, he peppers me with sweet kisses across my face and a final hot, wet one against each of my breasts before he says, “I can think of only one thing that would make this moment better.”
“What?” I ask, though I instantly know what he’s going to say.
“Dessert.”
“Let’s go get it,” I say, barely suppressing a squeal.
I throw another blanket at him, wrap myself in mine, and we rush back out into the rain.