Chapter 38 Emery
Luca is suddenly in a rush to get back to the room, and with the dizzying distraction of his warm, wet body beneath mine in the hot tub, I am more than happy to move this night to the next phase.
My nerves have evaporated; like always, just being with Luca—his silliness, his openness, his willingness to be whatever I need—has pulled me out of my head.
We walk Honey before heading back to the room for the night, give her plenty of kisses, and send her to her bed by the window before turning to look at each other.
“I’m just going to…” I motion to the bathroom. “I’ll be right back.”
Luca presses a kiss to my forehead and taps my behind as I sprint quickly across the room.
With the door closed behind me, I take a quick shower and then reach for my overnight bag.
I run some leave-in conditioner through my wet hair so I don’t wake up with a haystack on top of my head in the morning.
I shuck off my suit and hang it up to dry, and I moisturize everywhere before adding a touch of lip gloss.
With a towel wrapped around my body, I flip off the light and head out of the bathroom.
Luca is standing by the bed. He’s closed the curtains and lowered the lights and looks up at the sound of the door. He’s turned down the blankets.
“That was fast,” he says with a grin.
I cross the room and stop in front of him, reaching for the waistband of his shorts to pull him closer. “It’s possible I was in a hurry.”
“Good.” He draws a fingertip across my collarbone. “You have the most beautiful skin I’ve ever seen.”
As he leans forward, his mouth follows the path, first on one side and then the other.
My head falls back, and he continues up my neck, tasting, sucking.
We’ve stood like this a hundred times, breaths quickened, sounds filling the air, the promise of what’s about to happen crackling between us, but it’s never felt like this.
His lips find mine in kisses that start off like banter and grow bigger, deeper with each one.
We undress each other—my towel in a puddle on the floor and his board shorts a pool at his feet—capably moving around limbs without drifting apart.
Some of this must be instinct for him, the way he kisses and likes to be kissed, in soft sucks and the slow slide of his tongue, but some of it isn’t.
It’s wild to me as we touch and taste and stumble to the mattress, that memories don’t return to us in any linear way.
He remembers the story about Crash and the bike chain but is surprised when he tugs at my earlobe with his teeth and I cry out.
He knows why he planted trees on one side of the yard and not the other but swears in disbelief when I wrap my fingers around the base of him and squeeze.
He likes it, and breathlessly asks me to do it again.
It’s fascinating, really, what breadcrumbs will lead his mind to—
Stop, I whisper gently in my own thoughts. Stop and focus and savor this.
Stop analyzing.
Stop observing.
Stop working.
Just feel.
Because the first time we had sex, I didn’t stop to savor.
It was rushed and fast. Amazing, yes, but a blur.
We’ve had too many nights where we fumble in the dark, where it’s rushed, hard and fast. Fevered, but not intimate like this.
I would feel him the next day but not remember the specifics.
We loved each other, but we haven’t experienced each other in so long, haven’t explored and sipped and devoured and languished in this heavy, magnetic pull between us.
I want to slow down and relish the way his big hands feel: rough and tender, hungry and reverent when they open my legs and pull me toward him, when he grips himself, wraps my smaller hands next to his, and guides himself inside and out, teasing.
I want to experience the slow, seductive kisses while he fucks me, when his tongue mirrors what his cock is doing, and he fills me everywhere.
I want to get lost in him for what feels like hours.
The exploration of his fingers—feeling, learning, remembering—and the way he teases me with a toy before using it to bring me waves and waves of screaming pleasure.
I want to pace myself, but it’s so hard when it feels like everything and not enough at the same time.
With the lamplight making his tan skin glow, I see the way he swallows when I wrap my palm around him, the instinctive thrust of his hips up into my hand, the way his stomach spasms as I kiss my way down his torso.
He groans, deep and rough, when I take him in my mouth.
His fingers dance over my jaw, to my hair, guiding me as his hips find a rhythm.
Heat floods me when he exhales a gusting breath and whispers, “Feels so good.” His warm skin, steel-hard length, the praise given in his deep, pleasure-soaked voice…
it’s everything I need in this world. It’s the intimacy and comfort and pleasure that have always tied us to each other, no matter what life and responsibilities and daylight…
and my addiction to work… did to separate us.
I was lucky to love him a first time; I’ll never take for granted this chance to love him again.
Emotion claws its way up my chest, and I moan around him, wanting him to feel my love and apology and desire any way I can.
He’s so close, right at the edge against my lips and tongue that with an almost impatient gasp he pulls me up and over him.
Sweat glistens on his chest; his hair is messy and damp at the temples from the exertion of resisting release.
Between my thighs, he’s hard and urgent and wet.
“Show me,” he says through kiss-swollen lips. “Show me how we were.”
“You’re not getting the idea?” I ask, looking down at him, lightly scratching my nails over his abdomen.
“I mean,” he says, smiling up at me as he tucks a fallen strand of hair behind my ear, “I want to watch how you get off on me.”
And as I sink down onto him, I kick my thoughts back to the surface—away from the intensity of sensation, the obliterating relief of being filled with him again—so I can watch the wonder and lust and adoration play across his features.
And this, this is instinct, the way our synchrony in lovemaking comes so naturally, so immediately.
But as we move together and chase the shattering relief of pleasure; as he watches where we’re joined; as his hands explore and grab and tease and please; as we whisper love and praise and begging into the diffuse light of our hotel room, I become aware of something much more profound: Our bodies have long known each other in a way that our minds haven’t, at least not until recently.
They were simply holding this secret for us, keeping it safe and sacred, waiting for our minds to catch up to the depth of what we have.
Just like before, Luca seems to know I’m going to come before I do.
“Oh, fuck yes, Em. Yes. Like that.” He reaches up to press one hand against the headboard and grips my hip with the other. The feeling builds low in my belly, and I brace both of my hands on his chest, shifting where I need to until I’m moving over him in just… the right…
There…
There…
Luca sits up, tilts my mouth toward him, and at the taste of my name on his lips, the feel of his body tensing beneath me, I come apart.
“I love you,” he says into my mouth, and I am obliterated and put back together again in the familiar embrace of my husband’s arms.
In the car the next morning, I’m not sure who’s more excited about our hike: Honey, who is practically vibrating in the back seat; Luca, who has his head out the window taking everything in; or me, wanting to catalog his every reaction.
I have the benefit of my memories, but Luca is seeing one of his favorite places again for the first time.
I would never dream of saying that what happened to him was a good thing, but there’s something undeniably magical about it. How many people get a second chance?
Our hike starts in a quiet forest corridor.
I’d been happily surprised when I checked online and saw that a bunch of the trails had been updated, and Luca barely limps as we move from raised boardwalks and paved paths to dirt trails cut into the brush by the footfalls of hundreds of people before us.
The hike to the bottom of the falls is about a mile.
Honey is pretty much walking us as she tugs on her leash and leads the way, sniffing everything we pass, including trees, people, and one very large bumblebee with whom she has a close encounter.
As we walk deeper, the sky is swallowed by shade, only fingertips of sunlight threading through pines and managing to reach the forest floor.
Luca holds my hand the entire way. He points out wildflowers and whitebark pine.
He rattles off facts about the different lichens covering a cliff wall or a tree.
This one is used as an indicator of pollution levels.
Don’t touch the black one, it’s poisonous.
This one needs water to live, but that yellow one thrives in the heat of an exposed rock face.
“Where did you learn all this?” When I’m stable again, my feet on higher ground, our faces level, I tap his forehead.
“Just hardwired in there?” Luca is one of the smartest, most knowledgeable people I know.
I paid a fortune for my degrees. That Luca learned so much without sitting in a classroom will never not impress me.
Looking up, he grins when he notices our position. “Must be,” he says, and presses his mouth to mine.
“You’re amazing,” I tell him, smiling into the kiss. “An actual miracle.” My miracle.
The forest is quiet enough for us to hear birds in the branches overhead, the crunch of our shoes over pine needles and damp earth as we continue.
I have the benefit of my memories, but as we near the bottom, even I’m taken by surprise.
The gentle murmur of water is replaced by a sound that gets louder with every step until it’s a roar, impossible to ignore.
The trees part, mist spinning in circles and cooling the air.
Luca stares wide-eyed at the crashing water in front of us.
People buy postcards with this view, paintings and photo prints to hang in their homes, T-shirts, and even commemorative coins to capture this place and keep it with them.
But when Luca grins at me and takes me in his arms, his whispered love you swallowed by the sound of the roaring falls, I know I’ll only remember this.
Later that night, exhausted and giddy and slightly sunburned, we make our way back to the hotel.
Finally in our room, Honey nose-dives into her bed, but we aren’t quite ready to settle in.
Deciding a glass of wine is in order, we head to the lobby bar.
A cover band is playing on a small stage in the corner, and when they strum the opening notes of “First Day of My Life,” Luca takes my hand and leads me out to the empty dance floor.
There in his arms, I realize I’m still someone who dances. But only with him.
If it wasn’t for Honey, who has been a saint this entire trip but has clearly had enough, we would never leave the enormous, feather-filled perfection that is our hotel bed.
After a lot of dramatic sighing, we disentangle ourselves from the sheets on Monday morning, dress in the softest clothes we have, pick up coffee in the lobby, and take our girl outside.
There may be some who don’t find it romantic to kiss as the sky brightens over the forest while your dog does her business a short fifteen feet away, but I promise it is.
Everything with Luca is romantic, and while part of me never wants to leave this place, I’m excited to explore this new life. Together.
It’s a long drive, but we leave early enough to make it home in record time. Luca carries our bags into the house while I let Honey outside to terrorize the squirrels. I find Luca in the bedroom and immediately groan at the mess of clothes already on the bed.
“I hate unpacking,” I tell him. “The only benefit of never going anywhere is that you never have to unpack.”
Not ready to return to real life, I push him down and climb over him.
“Hello there,” he says, smiling up at me.
“Hi.” Bending, I set my mouth on his, feeling victory in the way he pushes up to deepen the kiss, the low growl in his throat. From somewhere beneath him, a phone vibrates.
“Ignore it,” I say, already breathless at the feel of his fingers moving under my shirt.
“Fine by me.”
The vibration stops for a moment before starting up again. I sigh. “Okay, hold that thought.” I kiss him again before searching the bed. “That could be Annie, and I promised to keep her updated.” Finding it, I turn it over and stare down at the screen.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” Climbing off the bed, I straighten and bring the phone to my ear. “This is Dr. Martín.”
“Emery, this is Shandra.” I glance over at Luca, who is watching me, surely trying to figure out why my entire body suddenly feels rigid.
“Oh. Hi, Shandra,” I say, and mouth the words my boss’s assistant his way. “How are you?”
“I’m well, thank you. I’m calling because Leonard has asked for you to come in as soon as possible,” she says. “He is aware that you are out of town but says it’s quite urgent.”
“I just got back in town,” I tell her, “so I could come in tomorrow morning—”
“Actually, if you’re back, he’d like you to come in now.”
“Now?” I look at Luca again, certain that all the color has drained from my face. He doesn’t look so hot, either.
“Now,” she confirms, her voice stony.
“Of course. I’ll be right there,” I say. “Thank you, Shandra.”
Ending the call, I reach up to rub my face.
“What’s happening?” he asks.
“I’m not sure.” My eyes move to our bags on the bed. “Can I unpack when I’m back? I don’t know why, but they need me to come in right now.”
Standing, Luca brushes back a strand of my hair. “Is this look of dread because of work, or worry about my reaction?”
“Definitely the first one, but maybe a little of both.”
“I don’t expect you to completely change who you are, Em,” he says. “Just to include me in it more. Go. I can take care of all this. Do whatever you need to do. I’ll be here.”
“Okay. Hopefully it’s nothing major and I’ll be back soon.”
Nodding, he kisses my forehead. “Just keep me updated.”
I stretch to kiss him for real before reluctantly heading toward the bedroom door.
“Em,” he says, and I look back. “I love you.”
Tears prick at my eyes. I will never get over hearing him say that. “I love you, too,” I say, and walk out the door.