This Is Love - Chapter 10 #2
She momentarily lost her breath as her hands wrapped around his biceps.
Bastian laughed as he held her body against his. "It's quite alright. It's just Nut."
It only took Oriana a moment to realize that she was clinging to a man she didn't even know. She immediately took a step back. "Nut? It has a name?"
"Of course he has a name." Bastian squatted down and held his hand out toward the squirrel. "Don't you, boy?" The squirrel jumped up onto his shoulder.
"That...that animal almost got me killed!"
Bastian patted the squirrel's head as he stood up. "He also saved you." Bastian pulled a grape out of his pocket and handed it to the squirrel. Nut grabbed it with his greedy little paws and nibbled away at the outside of the grape.
"I wouldn't have needed saving if...wait a second. You made that rodent attack."
Nut stopped nibbling mid-bite.
"Rodent?" Bastian said. "That's a little harsh. Although he is in desperate need of a good bath."
Nut threw the remaining piece of grape at Bastian's cheek.
Bastian laughed. "You know I'm just kidding with you," he said and patted the squirrel's head again. "Besides, Nut's distraction also allowed me to get you this." He pulled out the golden fabric that the merchant had been trying to sell her.
"But I...I didn't pay for that."
Bastian winked. "It can be our little secret." He pushed the fabric into her hands. "It really does match your hair perfectly."
The dark room suddenly felt stifling. Their eyes locked. No one had ever looked at Oriana the way Bastian was staring at her. It made her heart race. And her palms felt sweaty. This was how she desired for Rixin to look at her.
"I should probably get back," Oriana said. She pressed her lips together, wondering why she had broken the spell. Bastian was making her incredibly nervous.
He took a step back from her, pushed a tattered curtain to the side, and looked out the window.
Oriana smoothed out her skirt while his eyes weren't trained on her.
"It appears everything has settled down. You should be safe to go." He turned back toward her and gave her another charming smile.
"I don't know how to thank you." She looked down at the cloth in her hands, unsure whether a thank you truly was in order. He was a thief. A thief who had saved her life. With a smile that could light up this dark room.
"No need to thank me. It was my pleasure, my lady." He winked again and jumped onto the window sill.
"But..." began Oriana. But before she could say another word, he was gone.
The push and pull in Scarlett’s favorite story reminded me of my relationship with Penny. In our case though, it truly felt like she had saved me. Not the other way around. I smiled as I watched the two of them. The two women in my life that had saved me from the hell I had been living.
Penny was great at reading to Scarlett. She changed her voices depending on the characters, which always made Scarlett giggle. But tonight, it had just put Scarlett fast asleep.
“You’re better at that than I am,” I said.
She looked up. “At reading? I highly doubt that.” She closed the book but still continued to stroke Scarlett’s hair.
“At reading out loud. The voices you make.”
For a moment she looked embarrassed. “What, you like my suave thief voice?” she said deeply.
I laughed. “Not as much as your princess voice.”
She smiled. “Well that’s good. Or else I’d be worried about what kind of kinky things you were into.”
“Nothing quite that kinky.” I walked into the room and pulled my shirt off over my head.
I forced myself not to smile when I caught her staring at me undressing.
Such a simple act seemed so normal a few weeks ago.
And now there was a newness to it. She wasn’t used to seeing me like this.
It would take time for us to find our normal routine again.
Time for us to remember what normalcy even felt like.
I was okay with that. I paused before pulling off my jeans.
If there was even a part of her that still wanted to take things slowly, I wanted to respect that.
Even if we had already sped things up quite a bit earlier tonight.
I grabbed a pair of pajama pants from the closet and gestured to the bathroom. “I’m going to finish getting ready for bed. Feel free to keep reading if you’d like.”
She didn’t look up at me. Instead, she buried her face in the book.
And a few minutes later when I reemerged her body was curled around Scarlett’s and her eyes were tightly closed.
I wasn’t sure if she was trying to look like she was asleep or if she was just so happy to be back in Scarlett’s good graces.
I climbed into bed, trying not to disturb her. It had been a long day for both of us. I understood if she didn’t want to talk anymore. But as soon as the covers shifted she opened her beautiful blue eyes. “I really am sorry, James. For everything.”
I stared down at the two of them. A smile was stretched across Scarlett’s face, but my dear wife looked full of apprehension.
“Baby, how many times do I have to tell you that you have nothing to be sorry for.” I reached out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear and her face melted into my touch.
“When I couldn’t remember our past, it felt like a bolt of electricity shocked me every time we touched,” she said. “Like my body was trying to tell me how perfect we were together.”
I smiled. “And you don’t feel it any longer?”
“No, I do.” Her cheeks were rosy, like she was embarrassed by her admission. “But it’s different. Familiar, I guess I mean. In a good way.”
In a good way. “I still feel it too.” I rested my head down on my pillow. “Like my body is the negative end of a magnet and you’re the positive end.”
“Why do you always do that? Make yourself the bad part of an equation?”
“There’s no bad part of a magnet.” She was right though. I automatically made myself the negative end. Why did I do that?
Penny just stared at me.
“I don’t know why I do it,” I said.
“I’ve never met a better man in my entire life. There’s no reason on earth that you of all people should be self-deprecating, James. You’re perfect.”
I laughed at that. “Hardly. You should have seen your face when I told you I was an addict.”
“Which time?”
“The second one. You were much kinder the first time I told you.”
“I remember the first time. It was raining. Our relationship had felt so strained. Because you were hiding a part of your past from me. But your past doesn’t define you, James.
You can be perfect even if you’ve had a hard life.
The difference between that time and this time was that I loved you then.
And when you told me the second time you were a stranger.
It’s easier to judge a stranger when you don’t know how pure their heart is. ”
“I didn’t know that you never told anyone. About my problems. Melissa didn’t know. I just assumed that she did.”
“It wasn’t my place to tell anyone. It’s your story to share with whomever you choose. Not mine.”
“It wasn’t because you were embarrassed by me?”
“James.” She removed her arms from around Scarlett. “How could you even think that?” She climbed over Scarlett’s sleeping body and then over me to try to close the distance between us.
I resisted grabbing her hips and pulling her on top of me. Our daughter was sleeping peacefully beside us. I didn’t want to disrupt her sleep, no matter how badly my body was calling for Penny’s.
She fell onto the other side of me with a quiet “oomph” before nestling herself between my arms. “Never in my life have I been embarrassed by you. I’ve always been the embarrassing one. I’m from a lower class,” she said in an accent that sounded far too similar to my mother’s.
I laughed. “I’ve never been embarrassed by you. I love you. I’ve loved you since the first moment we met and you took my breath away.”
“And I love you.” She yawned and closed her eyes, like the only thing keeping her from sleep before was the lack of my arms around her. “We were both wrong, you know,” she said into my chest with another yawn. “Love isn’t light or dark or a whirlwind of color.”
“If it isn’t those things, then how would you describe it?” I pulled her a little closer to my chest, savoring the feeling of her breath against my skin.
“This.” She sighed like she had never been more content in her entire life. “This is love.”
She fell asleep in my arms, her breath slowly becoming more shallow. I wanted to stay up forever watching her. For a few weeks I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to have another one of these moments. And now that it was here, I was terrified it would slip away again.
I stared at her luscious lips and the delicate curve of her jaw. Her long eyelashes cast shadows on her cheeks. And her red hair shimmered even without a light source. She was perfection in every sense of the word.
Her chest slowly rose and fell, outlining her perfect breasts through one of my old t-shirts.
It was the sexiest thing I had ever seen.
She moaned in her sleep, a sound I was all too familiar with when I was deep inside of her.
I bit back a groan of my own. If my daughter wasn’t asleep behind me, I’d wake up Penny and make love to her.
Again and again until neither one of us had enough energy to continue.
All I wanted to do was catch up on lost time between us.
I wanted to show her how much I loved her.
Penny was right. Love couldn’t really be defined.
It wasn’t a balance of light and darkness or a whirlwind of color.
It was a feeling. This feeling. And I’d spend the rest of my life making sure she felt this too.