Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Cupping the poultice at my pussy, nude, stretched out on my couch, pillow behind my head, a blanket strewn haphazardly over my legs, I melt into the softness of the cushions or try to as I wait for my body to stop swelling down there, where Sunshine left his mark.
I’ve been here for hours.
Resting.
Lounging.
Both rejoicing and regretting what happened last night at Anthony’s house in his bathroom. I took it too far. My poor, poor lady bits have never been so sore. Then again, I haven’t been able to keep the stupid smile from my face since I woke up next to a naked Sunshine wrapped around me like the perfect weighted blanket.
He made me breakfast—waffles and bacon. Yum. We ate it in bed. Naked. Touching and kissing nonstop like teenagers with raging hormones, despite the niggle down under. We showered after, and I’ve been a lazy bum ever since .
He’s wearing a pair of those ridiculously sexy gray sweats that outline the you-know-what as he paces through the house, talking to everyone under the sun to resolve this Anthony business.
I’ve seen him clean up messes plenty of times before. Getting rid of bodies and making people disappear is his specialty. But this is different. Anthony’s associated with us. Well, me. Should it get out that he just up and disappeared, I'll be a suspect. So, they’re creating a paper trail and listing his house for sale—fake sale. From what I’ve gathered with my epic eavesdropping skills, the club is buying it under one of their shell companies to look like some big investor paid Anthony a bunch of money for his house. It inflates the property value and gives him a solid reason to leave. It also makes sense why he placed an ad online and in the local paper for a new dentist to buy out his practice and took a one-way flight to some foreign country nobody can trace.
They’ve thought of everything.
Literally.
I’m impressed.
Heaving a sigh, Sunshine ends a call and throws his phone onto the chair before kneeling beside the couch and kissing my forehead, cheek, and lips. I smile against his mouth, unable to help myself. He smiles back, chuckling, and rolls my nipple between his fingers. I suck in a sharp breath, and he chuckles harder.
“Colton,” I gasp, fake offended, and swat his pervy fingers away.
“Yes, Sweets?” He grins wide, acting all cute and innocent .
“You’re naughty.”
“With you. Always.” To prove his point, the menace kisses my closest nipple.
Playfully shoving his head away, I snort at his ridiculousness, but I still can’t wipe the silly smile from my lips, nor the raven-sized butterflies from going haywire in my stomach. They’re crazy today. Any second now, I expect them to burst through my skin and take flight. It’s intense but welcome. I can’t remember the last time, if ever, I’ve felt like this.
It’s him.
The electrical undercurrent between us has always lingered. Even the day we met at the nursing home before my mother died, I felt something. As a teenager, I couldn’t tell you what it was other than it was different. For someone grieving the loss of the only person they ever had in this world, you don’t have time to think about anything besides loss and survival. Thanks to them, the fear of what I’d do, where I’d live, and where I would get my next meal was fleeting.
It’s hard to think about where I’d be if not here.
Sure, Dark is… Dark. We’ve had our issues—lots of them. But I don’t regret any of it—not a single second. The pain sucks. The betrayal. All the stuff you already know about. But I got my sons out of everything. I got Lily. And… I got him… the man currently peeling the blanket back and removing the herbal, Epsom salt poultice from my pussy to see how she’s doing. I widen my legs to give him better access.
An adorable, frustrated sound rumbles in Sunshine’s throat as his lips press together and his eyebrows knit in the center. “I’m sorry,” he grumbles, head shaking as if he’s angry with himself. I know his self-loathing well. For a man who discards dead bodies, he feels a lot more than you’d expect someone in his profession would.
I poke his tattooed shoulder playfully in the middle of a skull-centered rose. “It’s fine. We went a little hard.”
“We went a lot hard,” Sunshine mumbles more to himself than me as he adjusts my legs further apart to get a better view. Not that there’s much to see. It’s a pussy. The anatomy is always the same. But I don’t stop him from staring if that’s what he wants to do. I’m surprisingly not self-conscious about it. It’s not every day a hot man stares intently at your most sensitive bits. “Everything’s swollen.” He raises a finger like he wants to touch the puffy lips but changes his mind at the last second, not wanting to inflict pain.
“Well, if we keep this up. This won’t be the first or the last time.” Which is fine by me. Truly. I have no regrets.
“It will be the last,” he growls.
“Colton—”
The firm shake of his head cuts me off. “Don’t, Sweets. I don’t fuckin’ like this. I knew we should’ve stopped.”
“But I wanted you to get off.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, Sunshine shakes his head again, and his eyes squeeze shut for a beat. Expelling a heavy breath, he gets to his feet, taking my homemade bundle with him. In the kitchen, I overhear the trash bin open and close. The water runs. Then he returns with a fresh poultice. I made a bunch of them and put them in a bowl on the counter, knowing I’d need one most of the day.
Letting Sunshine do whatever he pleases, I drop my legs open again, and he places the cotton bundle against my pussy lips and snuggles it against my ass.
“Thank you.” I trace my fingertips down his bare arm to his wrist, where I squeeze to convey how grateful I am for him every day.
“Anything for you.” He draws the blanket back up my legs and tucks the edges around my waist, leaving my upper half exposed.
Lacing my fingers across the skull and ravens on my belly, I focus my inner energy down below to aid in the healing. The quicker I get better, the quicker we can have sex again. “What do you have planned for the rest of the day?” I ask when Sunshine moves from the floor to perch on the edge of the coffee table.
“Besides being here with you?” He rests his hands on his knees.
“Yeah.”
“Nothing. Except spend time with you.”
“I don’t want to keep you. If you’ve got other things you gotta do.”
“Kali.” Sunshine drawls out my name as if I’m being silly. “I love you. You’re the most important person in my life. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
My silly heart skips a beat. “Well… I… I love you, too. But I’m fine. Really. If you’re worried about me because of the Anthony stuff, don’t be.” I wave that notion off.
“I’m glad he’s dead.” More than glad he’s dead, if I’m honest. Sure, I feel like an idiot for not seeing the writing on the wall. I slept with that man in his home. The same home he kept a shrine to me in. That’s… unsettling. Sure, I feel even dumber that my ex and his father were the ones to figure it out, but I can’t change it now, and I’m happy the stalkers are done for real this time. After a decade of waiting for the next one to crop up, it’s a relief to be free of them. At least now I know it wasn’t me causing this. It was Dark’s wife.
Damn.
His wife.
Say that five times.
Dark’s wife. A woman who’s not me and not the woman two houses down.
Sunshine strokes his beard. “He had an entire room with pictures of you, Sweets. You can say you’re fine all you damn well please, but I know better. You fucked that piece of shit. It wasn’t a job. You weren’t working him to then end his life. At one point, you liked the bastard.”
“I did,” I agree. Todd was beige wallpaper, and some of us need beige wallpaper in our lives now and again without the stalker element.
“Exactly. So, there’s gonna be a moment, I don’t know when, but you’re gonna let go of that iron grip on your fuckin’ anger, and when you do, you’re gonna hurt. So, I’m not leavin’. The brothers already got me covered, and Till’s got you covered.”
I don’t deserve that woman. For all she meddles, she’s always got my back.
“I should have texted her,” I groan, letting the guilt sink in.
“I already did. ”
“She’s gonna be pissed at me.”
Smirking, Sunshine rolls his eyes as if I’m being dramatic. “No. She’s just happy we’ve made up.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” Now I’m the one rolling my eyes. “Fuckin’ Till and her romantics. She’s always been on your side.” Which is another reason I thought they were an item.
“Rightfully, so. ’Cause I’ve always been on your side. We’re allies.”
“ Allies ,” I repeat. “And here I thought something was going on between you two at one point.”
Rearing back at the news, Sunshine snorts like that’s the dumbest shit he’s ever heard. “Sweets, I’ve never touched Till.”
“I know that now.” Now that she told me.
“I’ve only had eyes for you. I haven’t even gotten my dick sucked in eight… nine years. Somethin’ like that.” The man shrugs as if that’s no skin off his back, but that’s a long damn time. A long, long, long damn time in the biker world.
“That’s insane,” I admit, hoping I don’t offend him. “Is it because of me or because of…” I gesture to his crotch, not wanting to cross any lines. It’s clear he stays erect for as long as he’s needed, but orgasms are hard to come by. No pun intended. I don’t want to insult him by talking about his dysfunction. It doesn’t bother me. It would never sway me from caring about him or us being together if that’s what we decide. I need him to understand that. Because whether he comes or not doesn’t change my feelings. It just makes me wanna try harder. To go longer. To give him more. Evidenced by last night’s ba throom fuck and my subsequent vag state.
Lifting my legs to make room to sit, Sunshine drapes them over his lap and draws circles across my knees. “You wanna talk about this?”
I nod. “Yes. If that’s okay.” Since we’re doing this, whatever this is, it’s something we should probably discuss. Sex is a big part of any relationship. Ignoring the elephant in the room doesn’t make the elephant disappear.
Sunshine squeezes my big toe. “I’ll talk to you about anythin’, Sweets. You know that.”
“Eh. Sorta. I mean, you did leave out that your son was married to another woman and had been cheating on me for years.” I arch a brow and wait for him to defend himself.
The man blows out a breath, and his shoulders hunch forward. “Okay. That’s fair. I’m sorry. That won’t happen again.”
I nudge his leg with my foot. “It better not.” This is Sunshine’s single pass. One and done. If he lies to me again, there is no coming back from it. I’m not willing to forgive what he did, but I’m willing to look past it. We all make choices to protect ourselves and our family. I get it, even though I may not like it, and I may disagree. But he’s always had my back in his own way. Having to choose between me and Dark is a slippery slope I wouldn’t wish upon anybody. It'd be hard to do that for one of my boys or Lily.
“It won’t,” Sunshine vows and crosses a finger over his heart. A short silence descends before he speaks again. “Sooo… About my dick...” He drops his head against the ba ck of the couch. “Fuck. I can’t believe we’re talkin’ about this.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yeah. I do…It’s been this way since I hit my forties.” Staring up at the ceiling, he laughs without humor. “After a long night cleanin’ up messes, the brothers always wanted to drop by whatever Sacred Sinner clubhouse was closest to get our dicks wet. It used to be fun. Fuckin’ available pussy. No strings. It was easy. I didn’t know their names. They didn’t give a fuck about mine.” Sunshine trails his fingertips down my calves and massages my feet.
“You sure you wanna hear this?” he checks by lolling his head to the side, and I nod, not wanting to interrupt his story.
Sunshine continues to nod twice as if convincing himself this is what he should do. “At some point, it stopped bein’ fun, and I stopped gettin’ off. If I did, which took fuckin’ forever, it didn’t feel like much. So, I didn’t bother with quick hookups anymore. There was this woman. Brunette. Younger. She liked me just fine. We’d fool around whenever I was close by. It never mattered much, but she didn’t care if I came. We had a good time, and she helped me come to terms with this issue.”
A companionable silence settles between us as the hot man rubbing my feet gathers his thoughts. I’m happy to wait. It doesn’t take all that long before he clears his throat and powers through. “It feels good when we fuck, Sweets. Don’t think I don’t enjoy it. I do. It’s just… some wires are crossed down there.” He gestures to his crotch. “I get right there, on the edge, and can’t finish. ”
“Is there something I can do to help?” I ask, willing to do whatever it takes.
“Be you. That’s about it. I can’t get hard when you’re not around, and when I get home, I’m fuckin’ hard all the goddamn time.”
I chuckle.
“What?” He stares at me, a small, naughty smile ticking up at the corner of his lips. “It’s true. You’ve felt him rubbin’ your ass every morning for years. He’s like a dog sniffin’ out his owner.”
A laugh bubbles out of my throat. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Maybe. But it’s true. Me. The man, loves you.” Sunshine points to his mouthwatering chest. “And he does, too.” His gaze flicks down to the other part of him I’m very fond of. “If I had it my way, I’d be comin’ in ya ten times a day.”
Another laugh bursts free, and I nudge his leg with my heel. “Colton.”
“What? You think I’m lyin’?” To prove his point, the naughty man pulls the top of his sweats down and shows me his fully erect cock with a pearl of precum coming from the slit. I lick my lips, and he shoves his dick back into his pants. “You aren’t touchin’ him today.”
What? That’s not fair. You don’t get to show me that and take it away.
“Why not?” I pout, jutting out my bottom lip for show. “You’re not sore. I have other holes than my pussy and ass.”
Groaning as if he equally loves and hates the idea, Sunshine squeezes my ankle. “Kali. Stop. No. ”
“Please. Maybe he’ll like it better if I suck him. Maybe that’s what he needs. How do you know if you don’t try?”
“I see what you’re doin’. It’s not gonna work.”
“Right. Like me beggin’ you to keep fuckin’ me last night until you came didn’t work?” I arch a brow.
“That was a lapse in judgment. That resulted in you bein’ outta commission.”
“Not my mouth.” I grin and point to said mouth, bouncing my eyebrows suggestively.
“Stop it.” He presses a hand down on his crotch, and I lick my lips slowly, making him watch. “I mean it,” Sunshine growls and turns his head to the side to stop looking at me.
“What if my mouth is the magical cure?” It could be. He doesn’t know if we don’t try.
“Too damn bad.” He speaks to the wall, but those hands continue to work on my feet. “We’re talkin’ about what’s wrong with him. Not tryin’ to solve his dysfunction.”
“Maybe we could. I saw you grab your balls last night. They were turning purple. Does pain work for you? Is that it? Is that what you need?” Masochism is a very real kink. There’s no shame in liking what you like. He, of all people, should know that.
“Kali. Drop it.”
“No. Have you tried?” I press.
“What?”
“Letting someone give you pain. Duh.”
“When could I have done that?” he asks, continuing to speak to the wall. “I haven’t been with anyone but you in nine years. ”
“Is that what you do to yourself to get off?” You can’t tell me he doesn’t masturbate. Almost all men do. Hell, most women do, too.
“Sweets.” Sunshine sighs my name like he’s already tired of this awkward conversation. Too bad I’m not. We’re just getting started. “Please drop it.”
“No. I won’t drop it. If I had an issue getting off, you would be there, ready to try anything to make it easier for me.”
“You don’t have an issue, though. So that doesn’t count.”
This damn adorable pain-in-the-ass man.
I nudge his hip with my toes. “Colton.”
“Fine.” He throws both hands in the air, exasperated. “Yeah. I hurt him a little.”
“Then let me hurt him for you. We can experiment. See what works.” Nobody knows what the other person likes until they try. I didn’t wake up one morning knowing I could climax multiple times. It happened with research and learning my body. That’s part of the fun. The unknown. The trial and error. It’s exciting.
This is exciting.
We may have known each other for more than two decades, but we’ve never gotten to do this.
“Why?” Sunshine looks at me suspiciously out of the corner of his eye like he doesn’t know what to make of our conversation.
“Because we’re together.”
Those same suspicious eyes round in surprise. “Are we?”
“You asked me to marry you, Colton. You told Dark about us and the proposal.” Without talking to me about it beforehand, I might add. But I won’t because it solves nothing, and it’s water under the bridge. Dark has already given his blessing for whatever insane reason, which still doesn’t make a lick of sense to me. But I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. What’s done is done.
“I know,” he replies. “Because I’m all in. I’ve been all in. But you didn’t agree to marry me. I don’t know where we stand after I fucked up and then the shit with Anthony.”
“I want to hurt your balls to get you off. What do you think that means?”
Sunshine shrugs. “How should I know?”
“Do you love me?”
On a singular nod, he rubs the center of his chest. “With everything I am.”
“Do I love you?”
“Yes,” he responds without hesitation.
“Then we’re together. You’re mine. I’m yours.”
Sunshine swallows thickly, staring straight ahead like he’s still afraid to look at me. “Sweets,” he croaks, cheeks flushed as unshed tears matte his thick lashes.
Swallowing the sudden lump in my throat, I rub the top of his thigh with my foot. “I’m in no rush to get married, but there’s nobody else but you.” And there never will be. To you, this might be odd, even fucked up, considering I was married to his son. To me, it feels as natural as breathing.
All those years ago, when Dark never returned, Sunshine met me at this very house with the realtor—Sandie—a bubbly, young blonde eager to help me find a place. We’d visited at least a dozen homes over the course of two weeks. None of them felt right until this one. If you’ve been house shopping before, you know what I mean. It’s a feeling deep in your soul. Something clicks. The moment we walked through the front door onto the hardwood, we looked at each other, and within minutes, without even looking at the upstairs, I put an offer on the house.
Two days later, we were in escrow.
A month later, we moved in with the help of Sunshine. After a long day of carrying furniture and getting most of the boxes inside, we passed out on the couch together—my head on his lap, his fingers combing my hair. It’s been us ever since. This home is our home. Just as this couch is our couch. My pussy is his pussy. My heart is his heart.
It’s that simple.
I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.
Giving him a moment to let my words sink in, I watch him and don’t try to hide it. There’s no need to. The subtle tremble of his bottom lip. The stroke of his beard, out of habit more than necessity. It always looks nice. The quick dash under his eyes to catch any fallen tears and rapid blinks to keep them at bay. A shiver and subsequent goosebumps sprouting across his intricately tattooed pecs and abs. Every second is beautiful.
Out of nowhere, the doorbell rings twice, followed by a double knock.
“I’ll get that.” Without sparing me a glance, Sunshine unfolds himself from the couch and gently returns my legs to the cushions to see who’s at the door. The blinds rattle as it opens, and then it closes without him speaking to a soul.
I lean up on the couch, trying to see what he’s doing or if some marketer left one of those silly fliers on my doorknob.
All I see is his back muscles and the firm globes of his ass in those sweats as he shuts the door and rounds the couch to set whatever he’s holding on the coffee table.
“What the hell is that?” I fling my entire hand at the massive basket of everything imaginable. From expensive self-care products to luxury chocolates, a small bouquet of wildflowers, and a beautiful goth sun catcher. I point to a taxidermy raven and a bundle of bow-wrapped smudge sticks. “Are those what I think they are?” I ask as Sunshine unties the top of the cellophane bag, rolls it down, and plucks a white envelope with my name scrawled on the front from the sea of goodies. He hands it to me and touches the raven.
“It’s real,” he explains, and I shake my head at how on the nose this basket is. Eerily so. Only someone who knows me intimately would know I use these things—someone like Till, who would never buy something so lavish. Someone like Dark, but he’s too angry to put this much effort into a gift. It could be Sunshine, but he looks just as perplexed by the delivery as I am.
Digging through the content, Sunshine takes everything out and lays each piece on the coffee table. “Open the note, Sweets. I don’t have a good feelin’ about this.” He eyes the sealed chocolate bars like they’re poison.
If I wanted to kill someone, which I have, I’d poison the food and make it appear factory-sealed. Hell, I’ve done that before—more times than I can count. That’s one of the perks of owning Dark Delicacies.
Opening the envelope, I’m careful not to touch the seal, just in case it’s been tampered with.
Inside, there’s a small white card. Sliding it free, I flip it open, and the name Penelope leaps from the page, scrawled across the bottom.
“It’s from Dark’s wife,” I announce, rolling my eyes.
Dearest Kali,
Please accept this gift as a peace offering. I’m sorry my jealousy got the better of me and for any pain I may have caused you. I must admit the stalkers were a bit much. In another life, I believe we could’ve been friends. I wish you and Sunshine the happiest life together.
Best wishes,
Penelope Drake.
Once I’m done, I hand the note to Sunshine to read.
“She’s a piece of work,” he growls and chucks the note into the pile of expensive goodies. Then he marches to the chair, grabs his phone, and jams his fingers onto the screen.
“What are you—” I barely get the words out when Dark’s voice connects on the line.
“Pops.”
“Why’s your wife sendin’ Kali fuckin’ gifts?” he snarls at his kid .
“What?” Dark sounds genuinely confused. That makes three of us.
“You heard me. Why is—” Sunshine’s words cut off when his phone beeps with Dark trying to FaceTime.
My ex-husband's face fills the screen a moment later, and I tug the blanket up to cover my chest. Sunshine doesn’t even notice when he shoves the camera at the pile of items on the coffee table.
“Fuck,” Dark grumbles.
“My thoughts exactly.” Sunshine nods, sorting through the gifts to show Dark all that was sent.
“She knew I was pissed. This is her way of apologizing,” my ex explains as if that’s the only logical reason for this complete breach of privacy. Not that Penelope cared before. If she did, she wouldn’t have hired Anthony. By the looks of it, she knows a whole lot about me. Down to the exact kind of sugar body scrub I love but rarely purchase because it’s too damn expensive, as it should be, for its clean ingredients. Plus, it’s made by hand with essential oils and not owned by a billionaire corporation.
“You dumbasses are fuckin’ perfect for each other. Thinkin’ a basket of expensive shit makes up for what she did. If she wasn’t your wife, I’d put her to ground,” Sunshine growls. It’s low, menacing, potent, and makes me shiver despite the balmy temperature. I haven’t seen him this heated in years.
“I know.”
Cheeks flushed in anger, jaw ticking, Sunshine points to his son. “I still wanna.”
Sighing, Dark keeps his tone neutral, trying not to make this any worse. “Look. I get it. I feel the same. But she’s tryin’. Gifts are her love language or whatever she calls it. She only gives ‘em to people who deserve ‘em. Take it for what you will, but her intentions here are genuine.”
“I don’t give a fuck.” Sunshine shoots to his feet and wears a path across our hardwood floor with long, angry strides. His bare heels crash against the ground. Two of my potted plants on the floor rattle, their sides clinking together.
Holding the blanket to my chest, I sit up, ready to intervene should he go off the deep end. “Colton?—”
“No,” he barks, cutting me off. “Some cunt doesn’t get to stalk you for a decade and think a basket of dumb shit is gonna make up for it.” Nostrils flaring, upper lip curling in disgust, Sunshine juts his chin at the gifts as if asking me if I think a basket of dumb shit makes up for her conduct.
“It doesn’t,” I agree.
Listen, I understand his anger, but I wish he didn’t waste it on this. It’s not worth it. I’m safe. He’s safe. Anthony’s dead, and Penelope’s not worth the ire. Truly. How many women have been charmed by Dark? Plenty. More than any of us know. It makes sense you’d marry a man and want to keep him for yourself. As misguided as it is, I respect that. I was a threat in her mind. She wanted to keep tabs on me and let her jealousy get the best of her. It's not an excuse, but there’s nothing to forgive here. To forgive someone, you’d have to give enough of a shit to care to begin with. I don’t. She’s just another woman Dark played games with, and that’s not my problem anymore. Our boys are grown. The papers have been signed. I’m with Sunshine now. It’s done.
“Tell your bitch, if she sends another thing to Kali, I’ll cut her fingers off and mail ‘em to her father,” Sunshine snarls at his son, jamming a finger at the screen to get his point across.
Dragging a palm down my face, I sigh. “Colton.”
Ignoring me, he lays into his kid, and I tune out the ensuing argument. Tossing off the blanket, I hold my poultice in place and get up. Waddling bowlegged through my bedroom to the bathroom, I set the cotton on the vanity and rifle through my selenite bowl for fourteen crystals—one for each chakra, times two.
Not bothering to dress, I return to the living room with seven crystals in each hand. Dark and Sunshine are still having it out. I walk straight up to my guy and push the red button to hang up on Dark.
“Kali,” Sunshine admonishes as I feed my elbow through his and escort him through the backdoor into the greenhouse, not caring if the neighbors see all my T&A. In the same spot Lily and I meditated, I gesture to our yoga mats. Sunshine takes my silent cue and rolls them onto the gravel beside the koi pond.
Nodding firmly toward his mat, harnessing my best mom stare, I arch my brows to see if he wants to fight with me, too. “Lay,” I order.
Not uttering a single word, Sunshine does as I instruct and sprawls out flat on his back. His chest pistons for air as he tries to calm down.
Setting my crystals on the center of my mat, I move over to his and repeat calming affirmations as I place an amethyst on his, touching the top of his head for his crown chakra. Lapis Lazuli on his forehead for his third eye. Turquoise at his throat. Rose Quartz over his heart. Citrine, where the ribs end and the abdomen begins, for the solar plexus chakra. Carnelian on his belly button for the sacral chakra. Then, finally, I lift the band of his sweats and set a bloodstone on the light dusting of gray hair at his pubis for his root chakra.
Sunshine doesn’t move. His eyes are closed as he tries to breathe slowly with intention and focus. He needs this, and so do I. It’s been far too long.
Pulling his phone from his pocket, careful not to disturb him or the crystals, I unlock the screen with his password and select a low-frequency playlist we’ve listened to hundreds of times. I turn up the volume and rest the phone face up on the ledge of the pond as I lay down beside him, inches apart, and place my stones in their respective places as sunlight filters through the greenhouse, charging the crystals and us with its magical presence.
Reality bleeds into nothingness as the pressures, pains, and thoughts of life disappear, replaced with tranquility, surrounded by nature.
I am one with the universe. My lips move, but the words don’t come out.
Each affirmation is spoken in the unified language of the universe. Quiet. With conviction. Truth.
My thoughts are clear, I mouth, lips barely moving.
I speak my truth clearly.
I forgive myself and others.
I use my power for good .
My emotions are free and balanced.
I am supported by Mother Earth.
Warm knuckles brush the back of my hand, and a pinkie sneaks around and hooks with mine, connecting us as we become one with ourselves and each other. Accepting what is and what was.
For a moment, I’m Kali, the Goddess my mother always hoped I’d be—not only a woman but something else, not only here but there. I can almost hear her words of encouragement and love's warmth. They fill me, heating the quartz on my chest.
“You will be so much more than me. Give so much more than me. You’re my greatest gift to this earth.” Her affection wraps around my soul—a cocoon—a safe space, a place of rebirth.
Time bleeds as we linger, unmoving, unspeaking, basking in the gifts of the universe until it’s time to return to the now. Something only we can decide.
Once I open my eyes, Sunshine’s right beside me. His beautiful grays glisten in the sunlight as I roll onto my side, and the crystals tumble off me onto the gravel. Dropping his head my way, he smiles. It’s soft and relaxed, a far cry from his former fury.
“Better?” I grin.
“You always know what I need.”
Wanting to be closer to the man who fits me like a puzzle piece, I remove the crystals from his form and set them on the gravel before sliding my body on his. He welcomes me with a smile and a kiss and instinctively cups my bottom as I rest my cheek on his pec to listen to the soothing cadence of his heart .
Featherlight touches trace up my spine to the base of my head and back.
“I’m sorry for…everything.” His words are soft.
I kiss his pec. “There’s nothing to apologize for. It’s time to let it go.”
“It’s easy for you.”
“Sometimes. It is.” Because you give me strength. “Penelope is Dark’s problem now. Not ours. The stalkers are gone. Anthony’s dead. It’s a clean slate,” I reason, hoping he joins me on my path. To the future, not the past.
“Not yet, it isn’t. Not ‘til I burn the pictures.”
“Then burn the pictures. Burn the house down. Do whatever. But that doesn’t change anything.” I rub my cheek across the softness of his chest like a needy kitten.
Sunshine doesn’t disappoint when he groans a warm, gushy, satisfied sound and sifts his fingers through the base of my hair to scratch my scalp. “I don’t know how you can be so calm sometimes.”
“You’re usually just as calm,” I remind, so he doesn’t forget who he is.
“Yeah. When it doesn’t involve you.”
Snuggling my nose to the center of his chest, I inhale spice and all man, delicious man, and sigh dreamily, content. “Yeah. I suppose that’s true.” A small smile curves at the corner of my lips as his cock thickens between us. We pretend it doesn’t exist, but I feel it there. Throbbing. Persistent. Ready to say hello. Biting my bottom lip, I stave off a giggle at how cute this is. It’s like something out of a romantic movie. Till would swoon right off her feet if she saw us. Well, maybe if I was dressed. I don’t think my best friend would like to get a front-row view of my bare ass.
Sunshine cuffs the back of my neck, and we fall silent. It’s companionable. So companionable and cozy that the sturdy lub-lub of his heart lulls me into a peaceful dreamland where ravens fly and we dance nude under the stars.