Chapter 35 Luca
I don’t think I’ve ever slept this late in my life, but when I wake up next to a naked Emery, I can’t imagine getting out of bed.
I carried her in here around midnight; she was sweet and sleepy, too lazy to walk herself down the short hall to the bedroom.
But I had a cramp in my calf and a sore neck and wasn’t going to sleep on the couch all night when we could stretch out together in our bed.
Emery happily clambered in, eyes droopy, and rolled over with her back to me in invitation.
She melted into the curve of my body when I followed her between the sheets.
For a few minutes I felt the pressing desire to roll her over and make love.
I remembered the videos of us together and wanted to re-create every one of them.
I wanted to lose myself inside her, to forget everything and every person outside of our house.
But soon her warmth and softness pulled me under, too. I slept like a fucking rock.
It’s nearly nine and she’s still out cold, on her stomach, with a pillow clutched in her arms. Her hair is soft and loose, fanned around her face, down past her shoulders.
I wonder if it’s always been this long. If she’s ever had bangs or a haircut she regrets.
I study her in a way I haven’t been able to do yet—the bare skin on her back, arms, sides—tracing the gentle slope of her neck, the strong line of her back, the luscious curve of her waist, knowing that, once upon a time, her body was as familiar to me as my own.
After the intimacy of last night on the couch, I feel something inside me uncoiling.
I might not remember our past, but I know we have a future.
Emery has a scar on her right elbow. It’s just above the joint—a crescent moon about half an inch long. I dig around in my memory for some echo of how she got it.
Nothing.
Bending, I kiss her shoulder, and she hums in her sleep, pressing back into me.
“Morning,” I murmur into her skin.
She grunts, burrowing deeper into the pillow.
Honey nudges my arm, and I look over her shoulder to meet her hopeful brown eyes. She stares at me in stark betrayal. Clearly she’s never been fed a day in her life.
“Morning, sweet girl.” I push to sit up at the side of the bed and, with a hand under her chin, I gently turn her head, searching to make sure she’s really okay.
Had she been in the yard the whole time?
It’s hard to imagine she wouldn’t have come when we’d called her…
unless she’d found a rabbit to hunt or more dead worms for Emery and couldn’t be distracted.
“Where’d you go, huh?” I whisper. “Were you hunting? Or did you get out?”
She whines, pleading with me to focus on what matters: potty, then food.
“Okay, okay.” I’m sore for all the best reasons as I stand and grab a pair of boxers from the dresser and step into them. Leaning over the bed, I kiss the bare skin of Emery’s shoulder again.
“Feeding Honey,” I say to her, smiling when she mumbles something inaudible in response.
Emery never could function before coffee.
I’m on my way to the kitchen when the realization stops me in my tracks.
Emery has always been a beast to get out of bed in the morning and needs at least two cups of coffee before approaching anything close to functional.
Obviously, I’ve picked up on that in the last week, but this is different.
I don’t just know, I remember. I can imagine instances of tickling her, kissing her awake, wafting the scent of ground coffee beans near her sleeping face.
I start to turn back and tell her, but don’t want the train of memories to slip away again. Instead, I walk to the kitchen and follow Honey out the back door.
While she does her business, I think back to how I used to wonder if Emery’s reliance on caffeine was just the way she was wired, or because she had so many late nights.
I’d often wondered why she was always up so late.
It’s not something I’ve seen her do since she brought me back, and now I’m wondering if I’m truly remembering, or if my brain is just filling in the blanks again where I know memories should be.
It’s a gorgeous morning, and by the time Honey is done, neither of us is in any rush to go inside. Instead, I dig a few of her toys out of a basket on the patio and sit down in one of the Adirondack chairs.
I throw the ball a handful of times for Honey to race across the lawn to retrieve it before she’s distracted by a pair of birds perched on a nearby bush.
The morning sun streaks through the trees and light splinters around the thick leaves of the hedges like shards of sunshine cutting through the lush green.
I’ve always loved the way our yard looks this time of day.
It’s why I never wanted to plant trees around the full perimeter; I didn’t want to block the morning sun.
Emery never had many opinions about the landscaping, so she—
I bend at the waist, almost lightheaded with another rush of memories. I wonder if this is what I can expect, just random images and fragments of conversations as my brain rewires.
Honey must hear something in the house, because she forgets the birds and races to the back door, tail wagging frantically.
We head inside to feed her, and find Emery awake in the kitchen, her hair a mess and eyes glued to the brewing coffee maker like it holds the answers to all of life’s questions.
She’s all legs in only a T-shirt and looks up with a sleepy smile when she hears us.
I realize she’s wearing my shirt, and it sends heat spiraling down my torso into my groin. Walking over, I cup my hands around her hips, pressing into her, leaning down to take a deep inhale. She smells like my deodorant and her lotion, and the scent of it makes me fucking feral.
“You’ll be happy I remembered that half your blood volume is coffee,” I say into the soft skin of her neck.
Emery tilts her head back to give me better access, and she laughs hoarsely. “Yes, caffeine is my toxic boyfriend.” Her voice is scratchy with sleep, and I coax her to turn to face me, but Honey lets out an impatient woof, ready to be fed.
Once I’ve got her situated, I return to Emery, who sets her mug down to slide her arms around my neck so I can band my arms around her waist.
“I need a hug more than I need coffee,” she says.
The words make me feel warm all over, and it feels so good to hold her like this. I’m not sure how I managed to keep my hands to myself for so long.
“Do you remember anything else?” she asks.
I take one last huff and then step back, letting her pick up her mug, cradle it in her hands, and inhale deeply.
“Just flashes of working in our yard,” I say. “I was thinking about the angle of the sun coming through the yard in the morning, and remembered not wanting to block the view.”
She stretches one leg out, rubbing her foot over mine. “God, Luca, that makes me so fucking happy.” She lifts the mug to her lips, taking a tiny sip. “How does it feel?”
“Honestly, a little intense. It’s like I get a rush of certainty and then try to search for more and there’s nothing there.”
“Disorienting,” she says quietly, and I hum, nodding as I bend to kiss her, pressing my smile to her lips. “I wonder if we should go somewhere we’ve been together,” she says into the kiss, and I straighten. “Somewhere meaningful. You know? While your memory seems to be sparking?”
“We could go to Vegas?” I suggest.
Emery’s eyes light up with another idea. “Or we could drive to Yosemite? It was your favorite trip we ever took.” She pauses, her shoulders tightening. “It was, like, one of the only trips we ever took. A weekend in Santa Barbara, but—”
I appreciate her honesty, but I told her yesterday: I’m ready to let go of all that.
She’s here now. That’s what I care about.
I think about the photos of pine trees in one of the vacation albums on my phone and can somehow remember the smell of the park.
It’s a visceral memory that feels tangible. “Yosemite sounds perfect.”
“I’ll see if I can book us at Tenaya. That’s where we stayed last time. It’s our favorite hotel in the park and, if I remember correctly, it’s pet-friendly, so we can take Honey.”
“I love it.”
I watch her sip her coffee, noticing how her eyes seem to come to life with energy, curiosity, determination.
She slept like a log last night; coffee isn’t her coping mechanism from staying up too late, it’s just her routine.
The realization that it’s just who she is and not dictated by the career she’s been so tied to is such an odd relief that I step forward and hold her again.
With a laugh, she sets the mug back on the counter behind her and winds her arms around me, stretching for a kiss. “Well, hello.”
“You just look so fucking fine in my shirt.”
She laughs again. “It smells like you.”
“You like that?”
Emery nods. “Sometimes you smell so good I want to bite you.”
“Be my guest.”
Grinning, she stretches, mouth open like a vampire, and gently sinks her teeth into my collarbone. It sets off a spark of need in my gut that immediately travels south.
There’s a heat to her skin, a greediness to her touch that reads as insatiable to me.
Thinking back on yesterday, I get hard just remembering how she looked kneeling between my legs with her hand and mouth on me.
I had to keep looking away, tilting my face to the ceiling so that I wouldn’t come too fast, and even then, I finished faster than I’d wanted.
I suspect there’s no savoring with Emery; she’s unrelentingly sexy.
She’d climbed back onto my lap with a look of such victory, I’d nearly flipped her face down and lifted her hips to press my face between her legs.
But I wanted to see her expression the first time she came again with me too much to do it, and, honestly, getting her off with only my hand was worth it just for that expression of euphoria alone.
But right now, there’s nothing stopping me from getting something else.
Lowering myself to the kitchen floor, I grin at her, reaching for her hand to coax her down with me, guiding her when she moves to straddle my hips.
“Up here,” I say, and when I gesture with my finger for her to turn around, she grins knowingly and does, kneeling with her knees on either side of my shoulders, her perfect peach of an ass in my face.
“You remember,” she whispers, bending to kiss my thigh.
And I do. I don’t know why I know this, but I want to hold on to her ass while I do this, and she likes the angle better; my tongue flicking down against her clit rather than up.
The sweet heat of her comes over my lips and she gasps, pulling away, teasing me, making me lift my head to get back to the intoxicating taste of her, until with a giggle she settles over my face, taking no time before she’s gently rocking, digging her hand into my boxers to pull me loose.
Whatever she’s doing feels good, but my focus is all on her: on the slick sweetness of her need, her tiny gasps and cries, the increasing weight of her on my mouth as she gets closer and closer before she’s bracing her hands on my abdomen and riding my face in earnest, so wet and warm and coming with the sexiest hoarse cry I’ve ever heard.
Slumping forward onto her forearms with an exhaled “Holy shit,” Emery goes ass up in the air and I give it a good slap, scooting back a little to sit up and stare at her. The view makes me feel lightheaded.
“Woman, you’d better get that pussy out of my face if we’re going to Yosemite anytime in the near future.”
She gives a little ass wiggle, looking coyly at me over her shoulder before she pushes to stand and, turning, reaches down to give me a hand.
“Tenaya, you said?” I ask, standing and staring down at her sated, disheveled self.
She nods. “Tenaya.”
“I tell you what: They’d better have thick walls.”