Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
Alex
Could you fit enough love to last a lifetime into one night?
No. But I’m going to try.
She gave me an out. Ahead of schedule, no less. But it wouldn’t stick, not like that. And now, we were getting one last night. To pretend. To savor the end. To try and pack as much good into the last few hours as possible.
“I love you more than anything,” I whisper to her as I grind down. I watch the sadness leak from her eyes at the words. The tears run, turning her blonde hair dark at her temples.
I want to hear her say it. One more time. One last time. Please, baby.
She ignores my silent plea, instead keeping her hands in constant motion. She’s strategically surveying me.
I’m telling her the truth, knowing she won’t believe it. Knowing she’s taking this all with a grain of salt, but still needing to say it. Needing to speak it for all the times I won’t be able to in the future.
I’ll tell her how perfect she is. How perfect we fit. I’ll praise and worship every last inch of her body. Her amazing and perfect body that’s gone through so much at the hands of me.
I won’t ask her to return the favor even if I’m already being selfish. Blanks was right that I’m a selfish son of a bitch. I know I’m a fucking monster, but I won’t force her to do something she doesn’t want to. Doesn’t really want to.
“Perfect, baby.” I’m already missing her. I missed her all week. I hadn’t slept, I drank every night, and I lied straight to her face day in and day out. It had been the worst week of my entire fucking life.
All I want is to just be present in this moment, but my mind keeps drifting. And I want to ask questions. Where would she go? Does she want to go back to California? She could have the house. She could empty our bank accounts. Fuck, she could take our dog, though that would probably kill me.
I don’t care what she does, but I wanted to know.
Not knowing how she would be was already killing me, and she was still with me.
Physically, she’s here, but I feel the vacancy.
I feel her holding back. For once, she isn’t giving.
She’s done, and that’s good. I don’t want her giving so freely to anyone else in the future.
Fuck. Her with someone else.
I pinch my eyes closed when the burn of oncoming tears is too much to bear. She’s too busy tracing the scar on my abdomen from an exit wound to notice. It’s one of those scars that’s always just a little sensitive. It never healed right, so I shudder when she passes across it one last time.
“No one will ever see the scars you left on me…” she says quietly, “but they’ll be there.” I close my eyes again.
Like I said, I’m a fucking monster.
I can’t do this. I can’t do this slow-motion car crash again. I slam my mouth down on top of hers. If she wants hard, I’ll fucking give it to her. If she wants me to fuck her like all the rest, I will. And because she’s fucking perfect, she’ll probably love it.
When I ease off for air, I tell her, “Get up.” Her eyes widen at the complete 180 shift in my tone. But she does as she’s told, sliding out from underneath me to stand beside the bed. I follow behind, pulling her in tight, my front to her back. “Now bend over.”
“What if I don’t want to?” Her bratty tone has me wanting to take her over my knees instead of impaling her from behind.
I wrap a hand around her neck and ask, “Are you mine?” I want to pretend she is.
With far less certainty, she replies, “Y-yes.” It almost sounds like a question at the end.
“Then bend the fuck over.”
This time, she complies, placing her elbows down on the mattress. My fingers trace her back, down into the swell of her spine, then out to her hips, where my hands settle in their spot. My spot.
I’m the only one who’s ever had her like this, and as far as I’m concerned, every spot is mine. That isn’t bound to last, but I feel pretty fucking sure this is always going to be mine. No one else’s hands would mold around her this way. No one else would fit together this perfectly.
I slam into her from behind, feeling her tight cunt sheath me. It fucking pulls me in. It practically fucking vibrates with the word, mine.
I think it over and over in my head. Mine. Mine. Mine.
I watch with each thrust as her hands clutch onto the sheets. I look at her left hand, knowing it was wrong that I hadn’t given her wedding ring back, and hating myself for it all over again.
Mine. Mine. Mine. It runs through my mind again, like if I think it enough times, it will somehow come true. And then another thought zips back and forth. Ours. Ours. Ours. Another hopeless manifestation.
Our family. Our life. Our child. I kiss the thoughts goodbye, banishing them.
I slide out of her slowly and leave her standing with her ass in the air. She watches me walk to my duffle and pull out a condom before coming back to finish her off. If I didn’t know better, I would think she almost looks disappointed.
“Can’t be too careful, can you?” she whispers bitterly into the empty bed.
I don’t want to wear a fucking condom. It’s the opposite.
I want to fuck her so full of my cum, she leaks me for days.
I want to finger it back in place with a prayer while I lick her into another orgasm.
I want to watch her grow and know that we did that together.
We are going to do it together. I would look at her and know we both wanted this.
A fucking fantasy.
I’m putting on a fucking condom to protect her from that future. A future shackled to a monster who will hurt her over and over again. I’ve already been reckless and selfish by fucking her bare, but I had to know the feeling. I need to know what I’ll be missing. What isn’t mine.
When I slide back in, I wrap my body around hers, bending at the waist so I can massage her clit.
“Come apart, baby.”
I plant one hand down on the mattress, and she wraps her hand around my wrist as she pushes back against me with a moan. The second my finger lands on her hood, the sound is practically ripped out of her throat.
“Alexander!” she screams as I rut against her from behind.
“Emma,” I whisper back into her ear. “Don’t stop,” I plead, her walls fluttering around me, feeling her tense. I can almost sense her tears that are half ecstasy, half misery.
“Keep coming, baby.” I massage and stroke her from one orgasm into the next as my own builds to the point of no return.
“I love you, baby,” I say one final time.
As my fingers begin to ease, she places a hand over mine and pushes, helping coax a third orgasm for her as the lightning strikes from within me, my finish nearly bringing me to my knees.
That’s what this was for me. Lightning. It never strikes in the same place twice.
This feeling with her is like nothing before and will likely best anything after.
This was my once. If I thought I had it before, I was wrong. It was this. No earthly words could ever describe how I feel towards her, how I feel at this moment.
They simply didn’t exist.
A sound somewhere between a moan and grunt, a feral growl slips from me as my final punishing thrusts work her. In turn, her pussy pulls from me every ounce of cum I have. She’s still pushing my fingers down when she comes again, her pulsing turning to a lulling constant.
“Alex…” she whispers, the sound a mixture of exhaustion, bliss, and pain.
At this moment, I feel with absolute clarity that this was where I was meant to be. That this is where I belong. Where I have always belonged.
It’s not hard when it’s right.
She was my home, but more than that, she was my shelter. She was my best friend and the only person I trusted wholly.
Emma,
Wherever you are, is where I’d want to be.
Wherever you go, I’d happily follow.
Whatever you do, I’d be right behind you.
I sigh.
Never done.
Emma
When he stopped to get a condom, that’s when I knew. As stupid as it sounds, it’s the truth. My heart sank with realization. He couldn’t risk being stuck with me.
And yet, once he was done fucking me like I was the other half of his soul, he had no qualms about keeping me in his bed all night. It was a wordless command, just a hand holding my hip tightly all night.
I always thought when my person was fucking me, claiming me, it would be violent, rough. Desperate. It would be a clawing and clamoring to consume the other. Maybe, in the end, it was a little.
But what had happened was him fucking me like I was truly the other half. He had been tender, like I was the better half of his whole, and he wanted to take care. He wanted to treat me better than he would treat himself. He gave me everything he thought he’d never be.
Silly, really, because he was more. So much more, and I saw it the first time I laid eyes on him, from the very first moment.
Our story wasn’t one of love at first sight. Though maybe it was a little for me.
No, it was recognition at first sight.
I saw him. And he saw me. Not as I was. Not as some diner waitress, but as me. He saw Emmaline with the gentle soul, and she saw Alexander, the warrior. The good man. It was yin and yang finding each other after years of loneliness and despair.
And so our lives merged in the same fashion. It wasn’t violent and fast. It was a melding. A slow transition to be reacquainted with the other half of you. There was a push and pull to our story, highs and lows, ins and outs, but I always thought it was us in the end.
But it wasn’t.
He held my body tight against his until sunrise, when I felt our spell break.
We were this tangible living thing one moment, and then it was all gone in the next. Nothing changed aside from time moving forward. But for Alex, we passed some invisible threshold, and he released me. Literally and figuratively.
I could feel his body still near mine. He was still lying on the bed beside me, even though he was no longer curled around me. Somehow, I knew he was staring at the ceiling.
It took everything in me not to roll over and face him. To not face this head-on.