Chapter 9 #2
He sat up, stripped the gray t-shirt over his head, dropped it on the rug.
He undid the fly of her jeans, drew them down her legs, tossed them aside, then stripped his own and came back down to her in nothing but his shorts — the lean line of him over her in the firelight, the small scar under his collarbone, where she had put her mouth the night before, catching the orange of the hearth.
She did not let him cover her this time.
She put her palm flat in the center of his bare chest and pushed, and he went over onto his back on the cream Persian wool without any resistance at all, his head landing two inches from his late father's desk.
He looked up at her with both eyebrows raised and a slow, careful half-smile — the first real smile she had seen on him in fifteen years.
"Aurora."
"My turn."
She straddled his thighs in nothing but the gold ring and her grandmother's cross.
His hands stayed flat on the rug at his sides, palms up, the small white scar on his right one open to the warm light of the room — he was letting her have him, holding himself still by sheer will, and she could see exactly what it was costing him.
She hooked her thumbs in his shorts and dragged them down his hips. He was already hard against his stomach. She closed her fist around him and stroked, once, root to tip.
Halston exhaled like he had been hit. "Aurora — baby, you have to go easy on me. It has been a minute."
"Has it?"
"It has been a goddamn minute."
She stroked him again, faster, watching his head go back and the cords stand up on his throat.
She had not made a man look like that in years.
Had not wanted to. Watching her husband come apart under her hand made something tear open in her chest, she could not name it, but it felt so good — and she was done being patient too.
She rose up on her knees, took him in her hand, and sank down onto him in one stroke, all of him at once, her thighs flush to his, and neither of them breathed.
Then she moved.
No experiment in it now. She rode him hard, both hands braced on his chest, her curls swinging forward around her face, and his hands came off the rug and clamped onto her hips — not to guide her, just to hold on.
Firelight on his beard. The scar on his palm at her hip.
The ring catching the room. She watched him the whole time and would not let him shut his eyes — watched her husband break apart under her, here, on the dead man's rug in the dead man's library, his cock buried deep in her and her name coming out of him over and over like it was the only word he had left.
"Aurora — Aurora — Christ, baby —"
"I know."
"I am not going to last."
"Then don't."
She dropped forward over him, the angle changed, and he hit something that turned her next breath into a sound with no words in it.
His hands locked at her hips. She rode him faster, greedier, the rhythm gone tight and frantic, his head crushed back into the rug and his whole body straining up into her.
It broke for both of them at once — a hard, overlapping crash.
She went first by half a second, thighs locking around his hips, a sob tearing out of the center of her chest, and he felt her go.
He drove up off the rug into her with his face buried in her neck and spilled into her on a long ragged groan with her name somewhere inside it.
She collapsed onto his chest. He wrapped both arms around her and held her there, tight, her cheek against his collarbone and the thin pale scar, his heart slamming against her ear. He smelled of cedar and bourbon.
"Aurora," he said into her hair, still breathing like he had been for a run.
"Mm."
"I want it on the record that I am keeping you."
She laughed into his chest — wet, breathless, undone — he laughed once with her, low and warm, and slid his hand up the long line of her back to rest at the nape of her neck under her curls.
They lay there a while. He kissed her temple, her forehead, the bridge of her nose, then laid his cheek against hers and held her. The fire crackled. The watercolor of the little girl and the paper crane watched them from the wall.
After a long time he gathered her up against him, pulled the soft wool throw off the back of the leather couch, and tucked it around the two of them. She laid her head on his chest and listened to his heart.
"Halston."
"Mm."
"I called my father from the car on the way home."
"What did he say."
"He told me he loved me. He told me he needed a few days."
"Aurora…"
"And I'm going to give them to him."
"That is the right thing."
"I know."
They lay there a long time. The fire burned low. The bay outside was very dark.
"Aurora," he said softly into the top of her hair.
"Yes."
"I do not know how to do this. I have never done it before.
I have not loved a woman properly in my life.
I am worried I am going to do this badly that I am going to mishandle things.
Lose my temper at people who do not deserve it, be late to dinners, and forget anniversaries, because I am a man who has been single his entire adult life and I do not know yet how to be married.
I am asking you to be patient with me. I am asking you not to leave me again.
I refuse to lose you twice. I will not survive it. "
He had not used the words I am afraid or the word please. But Aurora, lying on her husband's chest, heard every word he had not said.
"Halston Iverson," she whispered. "You are not losing me. You hear me. Not now. Not ever."
He held her tighter and did not say anything for a long time. Neither did she.
She fell asleep on his chest with the soft, slow rise and fall of his ribcage under her cheek. Somewhere very far away in the back of her mind she thought, I have to call Daddy in the morning, and somewhere a little closer, he needs time — and then she stopped thinking entirely.
The library went very quiet around them. The watercolor on the wall watched the two of them sleep.
*****
In the morning Aurora woke up in her own bed.
She did not remember being carried upstairs. Halston had carried her. The cardigan, her t-shirt and her jeans were folded on the chair by the window.
The library rug, she thought woozily, was probably going to need a professional clean before Yvette saw it, but then again she had probably already seen it.
She got up, showered, and put on a loose linen dress. Then she called her father.
He picked up on the third ring. "Hi, baby."
"Daddy."
"How are you?"
"I'm all right, Daddy. How are you?"
There was a pause. Errol was somewhere in his workshop — she recognized the acoustics. He had not gone in to work this morning. He was sitting in the doorway on the wooden chair he kept there, looking at the back of the house.
"I am working through it, baby," he said softly. "I love you. I love your mother. I need a few days."
"I know, Daddy."
"I'll call you."
"Okay, Daddy."
"Aurora."
"Yes."
"I love you."
"I love you too, Daddy."
He hung up and held the phone for a long time before she set it down.
She was not ready to call her mother. Not yet.
Not calling was not the same thing as not forgiving — that not yet was not the same thing as never. She would get there. They would get there.
For now she had a child waking up who needed waffles, a husband downstairs already pretending he had not held her on a library rug all night, and a custody hearing in five weeks.
She put on her shoes and went down to start the day.