Chapter 30 #2
“To the Bears!” someone shouts, and the echo comes. “To the Bears!”
After a polite amount of time, Aleks stands, “You going home?”
“Yes.”
He nods. “Good, let’s roll.”
I walk through the front door, the house is quiet and the lights are low. Lucy’s backpack leaning against the wall and it’s so quiet I’m pretty sure I hear the shower upstairs, so I head that way.
I stop at the bottom of the stairs when I see her coming down, hair is still damp, and she’s wearing one of my hoodies and a pair of sweats.
She looks tired, but in a sexy way.
“You won,” she says softly.
“We did,” I say, stepping back. “You came and brought Lucy.”
She smiles a little. “Erin leaves tomorrow and wanted to see a game.”
We stand there for a second just looking at each other, before she closes the distance and kisses me, unrushed, soft, the kind that says, this isn’t going to turn into her naked under or over me. Which is oddly okay with me.
She breaks the kiss, “I found something.”
My hand moves automatically to her stomach as I squat down and press my lips to it, and stand. “What did you find out?”
“Your family.”
I glance down at her. “You were digging again.”
“I was researching.”
“That’s a nicer word for it.”
She nudges me lightly and heads toward the kitchen, “I need ice cream and—”
“Pickles?” I ask while following.
“Eww, no. I was going to say as we talk.”
She opens the freezer and pulls out the container of chocolate hazelnut.
She grabs two spoons and pops the lid off, taking the first bite before handing it to me.
“How did you know my favorite?” I lean against the counter and take a scoop myself.
She pints the spoon toward her belly, “My second craving.”
“What was your first?” I ask.
She grabs a jar of honey and holds it up, then makes grabby hands, and I hand her the carton.
“What’s the honey for?” I ask.
“I was reading something earlier,” she says casually, drizzling a little over the ice cream, and heads toward the couch. “Apparently, honey shows up everywhere in Jewish cooking and tradition.”
My brow lifts slightly, wondering where this is going.
Worried she’s found something about the war, a war in which I refuse to look into, not wanting confirmation for the haters that, from time to time, come for me.
Worried, she is concerned that our children will have to deal with the same treatment. “And?”
She sits, “And it made something in the records make a lot more sense.” Then she looks up at me. “That’s where your family comes in.” She pats the spot next to her. “Sit?”
I do.
“I followed the records back further than anyone ever bothered to.”
“Should I be worried?”
“No.” She tilts her head to look at me. “Your family hid things.”
I nod once. “From the war?”
Silence stretches between us.
“Jewish roots,” she continues quietly. “Buried under name changes and relocations and paperwork that was meant to erase it.”
For a moment, I am at a loss for words. Surely, they wouldn’t have hidden something like that. Something that would have stopped the name-calling I endured from time to time.
“There’s more,” she adds. “Anna’s family, too.”
I look down at her again. “You did Anna’s lineage?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“Same thing.”
She hands me the pint, and I take it, setting it on the end table. When she sinks back against the cushion, I notice the way her hair tumbles over her shoulder and catches the soft, warm light from the stairway and the kitchen. She looks exhausted, in the most comfortable way.
“I didn’t tell her,” she says.
“Why?” I ask, even though the answer seems obvious. There’s a lightness in her tone I haven’t seen since that night in September.
She slides her hand up my ribs and dials in on my eyes, green to brown. “Because that’s not my place.” Her thumb rests over my sternum, as if she’s grounding me like a circuit. “And I thought you should decide what to do with the information.”
There is a long moment where the room contracts around us.
The heater clicks on, the fridge hums, but all the ambient noise gets filtered out by the attention in her gaze.
I exhale, slow and unblocked for the first time today.
Her palm flattens against my chest, right over the spot where my heart beats beneath my shirt.
I glance down at her hand, then back up. “What… would you like me to do with it?”
She shakes her head, a little amused, a little sad.
“I don’t care if your family was Jewish, Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or something no one has even named yet.
None of that changes who you are here.” Her nails trace a faint pattern over my shirt, a gentle, absentminded graze that somehow makes the words land harder.
I slide my arm around her, pulling her close enough that her head settles into the hollow of my shoulder, and for a minute neither of us moves.
“I love you, Schatz,” I tell her, because it’s the only thing that feels urgent enough to say aloud.
She sighs gently. “I know.”
I want to keep her here, held in the suspended warmth of our home, away from custody battles or family secrets and inheritance I do not have the energy to untangle right now, I wish I didn’t have to, ever. She tips her head back and studies me, and then her eyes darken.
She wriggles, and with one nimble hand snags the honey jar off the sofa table, twists the honey dipper, and twirls it once. I watch as she licks her thumb and forefinger and then dabs a trace of honey onto my lower lip.
I don’t move, not even to breathe.
She leans in, kisses it off, and then says, “That’s for being amazing.” Her eyes are as bright as the honey. “And I wanted to answer your question about my first craving.”
She straddles me and wiggles her sweet little ass, “You.”
I bite back a laugh, and I can see in her face that she’s pleased with the effect.
“I swear these babies,” she shakes her head. “Never mind.”
“Tell me.”
She shakes her head slowly as her head dips, covering her face, like she’s embarrassed. I thrust my hips a bit, dick now fully hard.
She smears another tiny bit of honey on my cheekbone, just below the line of my eye, and then chases it with her tongue.
“You’re making a mess,” I say.
“That’s the point,” she whispers.
I consider, for a moment, all the ways I could answer, but I decide to let her win this round. I reach behind her and slide her backwards onto the couch, so she’s sprawled across the cushions with her head resting on my thigh. She squeals, but not in protest.
I take the honey dipper and roll it in my palm. There’s enough honey for a hundred small rebellions. I trail the tip along the inside of her wrist, where the skin is softer and almost translucent, and watch the shiver climb her arm.
She eyes me, daring me to keep going.
I swirl the dipper around the rim, run my hand up her stomach and push the sweatshirt up a bit, collect more, and hover it over her belly, quirking an eyebrow, “I’d like some more honey.”
She hikes up her shirt, just enough to offer a strip of bare stomach. “Only if you promise to clean up after yourself.”
I plant a kiss just above her navel, gentle and deliberate, and taste the salt of her skin before licking the sweet honey, “Delicious.”
She quivers—literally quivers—eyes going wide, mouth soft with surprise. “That…” her words turn into a soft moan.
I lower my head and lick a single slow stripe, pushing her panties and sweats lower, exposing the soft curl to the very edge of my forever happy endings.
With my tongue flat to collect every drop.
She shivers and inhales, but doesn’t say anything—not aloud, anyway.
Her hands go to my hair, fingers combing through in a way that’s half possessive, half prayer.
I pause, let her anticipation build, then drag my tongue over the spiral again, this time with more pressure. She arches a little, and her hips lift just a little.
I work my way around the spiral with deliberate slowness, chasing flecks of gold down to the lowest point, then flick my tongue into her navel. She makes a sound, half-gasp, half-growl, and tugs me closer. The honey now gone, but fuck if I’ll stop licking her.
I move lower, following the natural trajectory, pressing kisses down the slope of her stomach to the edge of her waistband.
She’s vibrating now, all nerves, and when I look up, her face is flushed, eyes fever-bright and defiant.
Her hand cradles the back of my head, guiding but not forcing.
She wants to see where I’ll go without her direction.
I hook my thumbs at the hem of her underpants and sweats, pause for consent, and she lifts her hips in one smooth gesture. I slide them down, grazing the newly exposed skin with my teeth, drawing a line from hipbone to hipbone.
“Need to find out if you taste even sweeter down here?”
She says my name, just once. That’s not an answer.
I kiss the inside of her thigh while grabbing the honey dipper and paint a sticky question mark.
The honey beads, slow and lazy, and I chase it with my mouth until she’s laughing and cursing, hands twisted in the throw pillow, body arched toward me like the answer’s already yes.
When I finally bring my lips between her legs, she’s so ready it’s almost violent—the taste, the heat, the way her hips rise to meet me.
I go slow, then fast, then slower still, always listening for the hitch in her breath that says, there, right there.
She’s loud now, not shy about what she wants or how she wants it, and I memorize every sound, every plea.
I keep at it until her thighs clamp around my head and her heel digs into my shoulder, and then, only then, do I let her unravel.
Even with the honey gone, her skin, her cum is still sweet, and when I surface, she yanks me up by the shirt and kisses me hard, tasting herself on my lips.
“Pretty damn good, yeah?”
“I wanna know how you taste,” she says.
And what happens next…I stop her?