10. Emily #2
He walks me back toward the bed, our mouths never breaking, and we go down onto it in a tangle.
His weight settles over me, warm and solid and right.
He takes his time getting the rest of it off, mine and then his, pausing to look at me in the thin moonlight from the window, and under that look I don’t feel exposed, I feel wanted in a way I’d forgotten was even possible.
His hands move over me slow even when his mouth is anything but, and everywhere he touches goes hot and tight, my whole body waking up to him.
He kisses a line down my throat, my collarbone, lower, talking against my skin the whole way down.
“So soft,” he says, mouth at the curve of my breast. “Knew you’d be like this.
” He drags my bra off and groans when he sees me, palming my breasts, dropping his head to take one nipple into his mouth until I’m arching off the mattress and swearing at the ceiling.
“God, look at you,” he breathes. His hand works the rest of my clothes down my legs.
“Gorgeous.” Then his fingers are between my thighs, and I gasp his name into the dark.
He goes slow, unbearably slow, watching my face the whole time, learning exactly what makes my breath stutter and then doing it again until I’m soaked and shaking and yanking him up by the hair.
I get my hand around him, hard and hot against my palm, and the noise he makes is worth every second of the last ten years.
He fumbles a condom out of his jeans and rolls it on, and then he’s notching against me, dragging it out, looking at me like he wants to remember this forever.
“Tell me you want me,” he says, rough. “Say it.”
“I want you. God, Richard, please.” That’s all it takes. The first slow push of him into me drags a sound out of us both, and after that there’s nothing slow left in either of us.
I stop thinking about lawyers and my mother and the wreck of my old life completely.
There’s only this. Only his mouth and his hands and the heat building low and relentless, only his voice ragged in my ear.
He sets a rhythm that takes me apart bit by bit, one hand braced by my head, the other gripping my hip hard enough to bruise, and he keeps his eyes on mine the whole time like he can’t stand to look anywhere else.
I rake my nails down his back and he hisses out a curse and drives in harder, deeper, until I’m clutching at him and chanting his name.
He gets a hand between us, thumb working exactly where I need it.
“That’s it,” he says against my jaw, wrecked.
“I’ve got you. Come on, Em, let go.” And lower, rougher, when I do: “There she is. God, what are you doing to me?” The little cabin fills up with the sounds of us, and I have never in my life felt less invisible.
When it tips over, it tips over for both of us, my fingers digging into his shoulders, his forehead dropping to mine, both of us wrecked and breathless and laughing a little in the dark.
After, I lie tucked against his side, his heartbeat slowing under my ear, his fingers tracing idle patterns up and down my spine. I should feel guilty. I keep waiting for the guilt, the panic, the certainty that I’ve made a terrible reckless mistake.
It doesn’t come. What comes instead, lying in the dark in a stranger’s cabin with a man I’ve wanted since I was a teenager, is this clear, settled feeling of being exactly where I’m supposed to be.
My whole life I’ve second-guessed every choice, run every decision past Henry, past my mother, past everyone whose approval I was scared to lose.
Right now there’s none of that. There’s just me, and what I wanted, and the fact that I reached out and took it for once.
It’s the freest I’ve felt in years. Maybe ever.
“Hey,” Richard says quietly into my hair.
“Hey.”
“For the record? Best decision I ever made, walking to that window.”
I smile against his chest. “Don’t get cocky, Reed.”
“Too late, sunshine,” he says, and I feel the rumble of it under my cheek, warm and certain. I close my eyes and let myself, for the first time in longer than I can remember, just be happy.
I’ll worry tomorrow. About the bus ride, the staring, the divorce, the new job, the new room, the enormous question of what exactly this is and whether I’m a fool for diving into it three days out of a marriage. Tomorrow I’ll have all of that to untangle.
Tonight I have his arms around me and his heartbeat under my ear and nowhere I have to be. No phone going off, no Henry, no mother keeping score, no list of everything I owe somebody. Tonight, for once, that’s enough.
I’m almost asleep when he shifts, presses a kiss to the top of my head, and murmurs something I don’t quite catch. I tilt my face up. “What?”
“I said don’t take the couch.” His thumb strokes along my hip, easy, like he’s already decided. “Come home with me tomorrow. Right off the bus. See the place before you say no to the room.”
And the thing is, lying here like this, I already know I’m going to say yes, which should scare me a whole lot more than it does.