Happy After All

Chapter Fourteen

Slow Burn—a term used in discourse, generally around romance novels, to describe a relationship that takes a very, very long time to go from spark to ignition.

I’m stunned by this admission, and yet I’m not.

I knew it.

I feel the same way.

But hearing him actually say it has me feeling overheated.

I don’t know how I’d write this, and I hate that. Because I have nothing to distance me from it. I have no way to save myself by imagining some fictional blueprint.

“I don’t treat you nicely because I don’t have anything to give you that you could possibly want, Amelia,” he says, his voice rough, using my name often and easy now, like he’s proving to me how well he knows it. “I am a hollowed-out human being. I would never lie to you. But what I can offer you isn’t something you’d want. I was doing you a favor.”

I’m desperate for him to say more. Craving it now like cake or cocaine. I’ve never had cocaine, but I imagine wanting it feels like this. Yearning, desperately. Even knowing it won’t end well.

He turns like he’s going to walk away from me, like he’s going to leave me standing there in the courtyard like he’s done before. I’m not going to allow it.

“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t say something like that and then turn away from me. Don’t say something like that and then wander off. You have no idea who I am or what I want. Once upon a time I wanted marriage, but that’s ... over.” My voice is hoarse, my whole body tortured from the pain of saying it, reliving it, admitting it. “That’s who I was then. I came out here, and there hasn’t been anyone since Christopher. No one. I’ve been by myself. All I’ve done is stare at you like some ... horny teenager who doesn’t know how to behave. You’re right, a hookup, that wasn’t what I wanted. Years ago. When I thought my life would look different by now. When I thought I would be different. We don’t get to control everything, do we? What if that’s the lesson of this place? I moved here to get away. I’m not sure that I did. My past is quite literally following me. But I’m different. For the last three years I have wanted something different. I have been happy with something different. I had nobody, not you, not anybody, protecting me these past three years.” I take a deep breath, my lungs aching, my head pounding.

“Whatever you want, or whatever you don’t want, own it. Just don’t put it on me. Don’t hold yourself back from me under the guise of protecting me, when you have no idea what I’ve protected myself from. I’m strong enough. The idea that you think you could break me with, what ... your penis? That’s hilarious. If you don’t want to sleep with me, that’s fine. Don’t pretend it’s an act of chivalry.”

“I’m telling you that I think you deserve more,” he says.

“Based on what? I didn’t even think you knew my name.”

“I have known your name from the first moment I saw you,” he says, something in his expression shifting, getting leaner, hungrier. It awakens something inside me. “Just like I’ve known that if I ever let myself touch you, it would ruin us both.”

“You have a lot of confidence in your prowess,” I say, feeling brittle and more fragile than I would like to admit. Feeling hungrier than I would like to admit.

“Is it what you want?” His eyes are intent on mine, and I don’t know how to respond to that. Do I want to be broken? No. But do I want him? Absolutely.

There is no question about that.

It’s even more clear to me now that I’ve looked Chris in his eyes. Now that I looked back at my past and realized I don’t want it anymore. It makes it even more clear that Nathan is what I want.

I’ve had plenty of opportunities to build fantasies around other men. There are a lot of men who travel by themselves and stay in my motel. There are a lot of men who are by themselves and have a drink at the tiki bar in town and who would definitely take the offer of a night of companionship.

Granted, many of those men are gay. However, the fact remains that if I wanted to, I could scratch a sexual itch with someone who isn’t Nathan.

I want Nathan.

He is my Everest. A mountain I feel I need to climb. Like I have to do it to get to the view I’m actually supposed to see.

He is the summit.

I don’t know why. I wish I did.

It would be easier if I wanted a man who isn’t quite so ... whatever he is. But I want him.

I’m tired of not having what I want.

“Break me,” I say. It is a sensual demand. I’m not sure I know what it means. But I mean it. I feel it. Deep in the lowest part of me.

“Don’t ask for that,” he says, looking like he wants nothing more than to honor my unhinged request.

“Please,” I whisper. “I want you. I want you to take me. I want you ...”

I think about my room. With the bright-pink Christmas tree partly assembled, and I’m quite certain with my pajama pants lying on the floor.

I haven’t been back since this morning.

I’m writing a sensual check my inexperienced ass probably can’t cash.

He looks like he knows what to do. With his hands, with his mouth. I haven’t even kissed him, and I’m sure of this.

I haven’t even kissed him, and I am all but begging him to take me to bed. I realize the absurdity of this.

I also recognize that whatever he thinks about me, and it sounds like he has thought about me, I might not be what he’s hoping for.

Maybe that’s the real issue.

Maybe he doesn’t want to spend the evening instructing a woman on how to properly handle him.

I nearly shiver at the thought. I really would like to learn.

Maybe this is some unhinged mixture of grief and rage.

Maybe I’m being fueled by only unhealthy things.

I don’t care.

Right now, I really don’t care.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says.

The joke’s on him. I can’t be hurt any more than I already have been. I’m not worried.

My heart has been shattered in just so many pieces that what I managed to do when I moved to Rancho Encanto was take those pieces and put them back together. Like a stained-glass suncatcher you might find in any of the gift shops around town. Beautiful, but not in its original condition.

It made me feel strong then. Even more confident. I wanted to shake my fist at the sky. The world could do its worst. The world already had. What did I have to be afraid of?

This is a turning point. In my healing, in my progress.

I have been here licking my wounds all this time. Suddenly it’s like I’m okay with them. I don’t need to protect them anymore.

I don’t need to protect me .

“You could hurt me if you wanted,” I say, taking a step toward him.

He makes a noise in the back of his throat that sounds pained. Like I’m the one doing the hurting.

He wants me. He could stand there making proclamations about how he’s worried about me, how he’s dangerous and bad for me and whatever else, but he wants me.

The man looks like he’s in pain for wanting me.

I can’t remember the last time that happened. I’m not sure it ever has.

I know for a fact that I’ve never wanted anyone like this before. It’s not just sex. It’s something more. Like now that I’ve found this well of sexual desire, of confidence, it’s changed me. Turned me into the kind of sexual being I’ve never been.

Maybe this is who I was destined to be. A wild woman out in the desert.

Free and unfettered.

The kind of woman who might stand naked underneath the moon. Who would have one-night stands if it suited her.

I feel giddy at the thought.

But only if he doesn’t reject me.

I don’t think he will, though.

I don’t think he’s strong enough.

That makes me feel powerful.

“Kiss me,” I say. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for nearly three years. I thought you were going to do it when you grabbed that stupid power strip from me. So kiss me now. You’ve already waited too long.”

I don’t expect him to move so quickly.

Fluid and without warning. He wraps his arm around my waist, and I can’t breathe.

I’m held flush against the hard muscles of his body, and I never want him to let go of me. He hasn’t even kissed me yet. But he’s going to.

It’s not in my head, and I don’t think it ever was.

When he closes the distance between us, I’m undone. I curl my fingers around the fabric of his shirt, hoping that’s enough to hold me up. It isn’t. Thankfully, his arms are strong around me as his mouth makes contact with mine. As he kisses me, firm and sure, it’s definitely the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.

His tongue sweeps over my bottom lip, and I gasp, opening for him. His tongue slides against mine, and I wonder if I’m going to set a record. Because suddenly, I feel everything, everywhere. My breasts are heavy, my nipples tight, I’m wet between my legs, and I feel close, so close to coming I can barely believe it.

I’m not fast. Historically.

Pleasure, for me, is a complex mechanism. I need time and space, and the chance to get my mind in the right place. He’s in charge. Of everything. Of what I feel and how intensely I feel it. Of where my mind goes. It’s him. Everything. My every thought, my every fantasy, right in this moment—everything is him.

He kisses me like there is nothing else he would rather do. Maybe like there’s nothing else he even knows how to do.

He kisses me like it’s his job. I kiss him back like I’ll die if I don’t.

Maybe I will.

Maybe I need this to live.

He cups my face, his hand large and rough, and he makes me feel small and fragile in a way that makes me feel special, not reduced, not like less. I’m somehow infinitely more. Free to melt against him, free to feel, more than I ever have been.

When we part, he’s breathing hard, tortured, ragged breaths that assure me I’m not alone in this insanity.

“Your room,” he says.

I feel that’s best. It feels wrong to have sex with a guest in his room.

And we’re going to have sex.

I have no doubt about that.

He takes my hand, and I lean against him as we skirt the edge of the courtyard, heading toward my room, which sits on the edge of the motel. We’re in the shadows, and everyone seems to be away for the night anyway. Still, my heart is thundering, the thought of being caught ...

It only fuels my excitement, actually. If I’m honest, everything about it excites me.

The little fizz of naughtiness I feel makes it all the better.

As if anything could make it less.

We walk, careful to avoid the light, and when we stop in front of my door, I reach into my purse and produce my keys.

We move inside, and I click on the lights a split second after I close the door, locking it firmly.

It is a mess. I didn’t plan on having anyone come visit. I was right earlier when I wondered if I had left my pajama pants on the floor.

If he notices these things, he seems completely unbothered by them. He doesn’t say anything about the room. He isn’t looking around—he’s hungrily taking in details about me. He claims my mouth with his.

He kisses deep, intense. He kisses like he doesn’t care if it becomes more.

He kisses like the kiss is the destination. Slow and thorough. Perfect.

I begin to tremble as he moves his lips along the edge of my jaw, down my neck.

Then he stops. “Do you have condoms?”

I feel a flush of color work its way up my neck. “I do.” I need to explain them, since I told him already that I’ve been celibate for a while. “I keep them behind the desk. You know, customer service. I have a few boxes in the closet in here. I keep some of my extra things here because it isn’t like I have security.”

He looks at me like I’m strange, but also wonderful, and I feel like that glance is one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever been given.

I move away from him, and I go to the closet. Open it. There are dryer sheets, some small boxes of detergent. There are travel packs of aspirin, small hand sanitizers, stacks and stacks of brochures.

And boxes of condoms.

I take out one of the large boxes. “Bulk protection,” I say.

“Wow,” he says. “People take these a lot?”

“Enough.”

“They just come ask you for emergency late-night condoms?”

I nod. “Yes.”

“You must see interesting things here.”

“Oh yes,” I say. “I get all the people-watching a person could possibly want.”

I’m standing there holding a giant box of condoms, and I don’t tell him that he has been my favorite people-watching for the past couple of years.

I set the box on the small round dining table in the room, and I don’t even bother to try to tear it open delicately. Instead, I ravage it, then pull out a strip of condoms wrapped in blue and tear one off the strip.

Somehow, I don’t die.

Of embarrassment or anything else. Because that’s how much I want him. This positive conversation, the pause to hunt for protection, hasn’t killed my excitement, hasn’t dimmed the tension.

He’s a stranger, but he’s also a man I’ve seen, a man I’ve felt desire build for all these years. He is the perfect combination of things.

A mysterious lover, but someone I trust.

I didn’t know such a thing could be possible.

He moves to me, cradling my face again as he leans down for a kiss. He’s so much taller than me. He makes me feel so small and delicate.

I move my hands up his chest, around his broad shoulders, up the back of his neck. I push my fingers through his hair.

He kisses me deep. I’m still holding on to the condom, clinging to it for all I’m worth.

Clinging to him.

The kiss becomes feral, and he moves his hands down my waist, to my hips. He holds me hard and pulls me against the incontrovertible evidence of his arousal.

I nearly swoon.

He moves his hands down farther, along my thighs, and squeezes me tight, lifting me off the floor and urging my legs around his waist.

This is the kind of acrobatic sex I didn’t think was actually real, but I can’t say that, because he’s still kissing me. He takes us both to the bed, exerting perfect control as he lays me down slowly onto the mattress, pressing me into the softness, trapping me against his hardness in the most delicious way.

With one hand, he grabs the back of his collar and strips his shirt off, revealing the body that has left me speechless on more than one occasion.

Perfectly defined muscles covered with just the right amount of hair. I breathe out, watching as I press my hand to his rock-solid pec and move my fingertips down his abs.

This is like a love scene I would write. I want to capture every detail, every moment. The way my skin looks against his. The way I’m soft, the way he’s hard. The way I’m smooth, the way he’s rough.

How his whiskers scrape across my skin when he kisses me. Leave the whisper of a burn behind.

The guttural sounds he makes as he tastes me, as he kisses down my neck, my collarbone.

The rustle of fabric as he takes my shirt off, the rush of relief as he unhooks my bra with one practiced hand, proving me right about his prowess with one easy motion.

He looks at me like he’s a man who’s been crawling through the desert outside our door and I’m an oasis. I have never felt so proud to be naked in front of a man before.

I had gotten to a place in my long-term relationship where I knew Chris appreciated my body and I didn’t have to be self-conscious.

The way Nathan Hart looks at me makes me feel like I’m a gift.

I’ve never felt anything like that before.

I’ve made myself into nothing. I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt sexy or like my body should feel good. But I feel it now.

I’ve never felt like this.

I have felt—in the deepest part of myself—like something broken for the past three years. A failure. Empty.

He looks at me like my body is precious. He looks at me like my body is perfect.

I can’t look at my body that way.

I barely look at it. I don’t look in the mirror when I get out of the shower. I don’t examine my figure to see how my bathing suit fits. I ignore my body, if I’m honest.

It’s probably why I’ve been celibate.

Because I pretend it isn’t there.

I withhold joy from it. I withhold satisfaction.

And he looks at me like this .

I don’t want to cry, because even though I’m not super experienced with passionate sex-only interludes, I know that men don’t want women crying in the middle of them.

So I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him. He growls, all wild, and I love it, and then he kisses a line down my neck, straight to my breast, sucking one nipple deep in his mouth. I arch up off the mattress, my pleasure too great to be contained. I cry out, and I’m not even embarrassed. I don’t care if anyone can hear me through the walls. I don’t think they can. If so, I probably would have heard my fair share of sexual encounters on the other side of that wall over the years, and I haven’t.

But I don’t care either way.

He blazes a trail down my body with expert kisses and pushes his hands into the waistband of my pants and underwear, drawing them down my thighs. I lift my ass off the bed and help him get it off—all of it—because I need to be naked with him. Against him.

Then he’s pushing my legs apart and his mouth is on me. He feasts on me like he’s starving, but I’m the one who’s ravenous. Desperate for more. For everything. His mouth plays havoc with me, his fingers stroking me, taking me higher, further than I’ve ever been.

When I shatter, it isn’t with a rush of completion. It’s like a wave that crashes over me and doesn’t stop. I am shaking, and it’s relentless. It is both the most satisfied I have ever been and the most desperate for more I’ve ever felt in my life. As I’m riding out the last vestiges of my orgasm, he moves up my body and kisses me. Then he moves away, just for a moment, and is undoing his belt buckle, taking off his jeans and underwear faster than I’ve ever seen any man move. He is ...

I give thanks.

He is the most beautiful naked man I have ever seen. Thick and long. Undoubtedly the most incredible specimen I’ve ever beheld.

I know a moment of trepidation because it has been a long time, but the little wicked part of myself that has risen up aggressively since he first kissed me in the courtyard is thrilled. She wants to feel it. She maybe even wants to hurt. So that she knows. That she’s claimed. That it’s real.

My breath catches as he tears the condom open and rolls it down his impressive length. Then he’s back, kissing my mouth, sliding his hand around to cup my ass as he lifts me from the bed and presses the head of his cock to my slick entrance. He goes slow. I want to beg him to go faster.

He whispers things against my mouth, and I can’t understand them. It’s like he’s praying, or saying a spell that keeps me held in thrall.

I take him, inch by glorious inch.

It’s everything. So is he.

When he’s inside me, all the way to the hilt, he presses his forehead to mine and rests just for a moment. I’m strung out.

Desire is building deep, and I’m desperate to come again.

He begins to move, withdrawing slightly before thrusting home.

Again and again.

I never want it to end. I want to live in this moment for as long as I possibly can.

His movements become more erratic. He becomes less careful.

I encourage him. I beg him for more. My fingernails turn into claws I scrape down his bare back, over the sculpted muscles and that gorgeous skin.

He fucks me into the mattress like I’m unbreakable and precious, and I want to be both. For him. For me.

I have never felt stronger. I have never felt more beautiful.

I bite his lip, and he growls. He grabs my wrists, holding them fast in one hand as he moves them roughly over my head, pinning me down as he continues to take me.

“Nathan,” I say.

The tendons in his neck stand out, his teeth clenched tight. I can see that he is fighting to hang on to control.

Good. I want him to lose it.

“Yes,” I say. “Fuck me just like that.”

“Brat,” he grits out.

“Please.”

“Not yet,” he says.

He rolls his hips forward, and I feel myself getting closer to the edge.

I didn’t think I was going to be able to come again, but now ... Now I don’t think I’m going to be able to hold myself back from it.

He slides his hand between our bodies and moves his thumb over my clit, pinching lightly, and I’m done. I fly over the edge. This time when I shatter, it’s complete, and he takes it as permission to let go.

He comes on a growl, his mouth against mine, and he trembles.

Just a bit.

I rejoice in the reality that I made this mountain of a man shake.

He moves away from me, and I’m dimly aware of him going into the bathroom. I fling my arm over my face.

Part of me can’t believe we actually did that.

Another part of me can’t believe it took so long.

As I lie there looking at the texture on the ceiling, I can admit to myself that this had a feeling of inevitability to it.

A necessary step in my development. Maybe in his. But I don’t let myself wonder about that. I want to revel in what it means for me. At least, right now.

When he emerges from the bathroom a moment later, he stands there, naked and perfect, and maybe a little bit uncomfortable. Like he doesn’t know if he’s supposed to come back to the bed or get dressed and leave.

“If you’re looking for guidance on the protocol for all of this, I’m afraid I’m not the person,” I say. “It’s not really my area of expertise. Hookups, I mean.”

“Mine either,” he says.

I have trouble believing that. He is an outrageously skilled lover, and I feel like maybe it’s that thing decent men do when they downplay their prowess and body count because they don’t have anything to prove.

“You really should write more sex scenes,” I say. “Or enjoy writing them more because ... goddamn.”

I let out a ragged breath.

“I needed that,” I say. “I want you to know, you don’t need to feel bad for me or obligated to me in any way. I am not going to have a breakdown about it or go chasing you through the yard with a boiled bunny.”

“Jackrabbits everywhere just breathed a sigh of relief,” he says.

I didn’t expect him to be amusing.

I find myself smiling. “I just mean it doesn’t have to be weird. You don’t have to avoid me. You don’t have to ... walk by me tomorrow and pretend it didn’t happen.”

He moves to the bed and sits down, though he leaves a bit of space between us. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“You’ve done it before, though,” I say. “Like I said, I thought you were going to kiss me when you got the power strip from me.”

“Yeah. I thought I might too,” he says. “I didn’t because I was trying to avoid this. I’m very aware of what I can’t give you, and we’ve been through that already. You said not to worry about it. So I won’t.”

“Well. Maybe we can . . .”

“I promise I’m not going to act like I don’t know you,” he says. “But tonight I’m going to go back to my room.”

“Oh,” I say, feeling a little bit blindsided.

“I think it’s best for tonight,” he says.

“Okay.”

“We don’t need to decide what it is,” he says.

I nod. I agree , because if we try right now, maybe he’ll say it can only be once. If we try right now, maybe I’ll beg for more.

I don’t really want either of those things to happen.

I watch him get dressed, and I try to cling to all the good, empowering feelings I had just a few minutes ago.

“Good night,” he says before he slips out the door. I flop back onto the bed, my heart thundering.

I slept with Nathan Hart. I gave myself that gift. Though as I lie here, I am acutely aware that I don’t know any more about him now, other than how he looks naked, than I did before.

But I feel beautiful. I choose to focus on that.

At least when Chris comes to town I’ll be able to walk around with this feeling inside me.

It might not have changed everything, but it definitely changed some things.

I have to figure out how to be happy with that.