32. Nora
NORA
Daniel's hand lifts to my cheek. He touches me like I am something breakable and something he wants to ruin his life over at the same time. Then he kisses me.
Soft at first. Too soft. I make a frustrated sound against his mouth, and his whole body shudders.
"Kiss me like you missed me."
That does it. His control snaps, not all the way, but enough. He takes my face in both hands and kisses me hard. Deep. Like he has been dying and I am the only air left.
And then it's him. My husband. Not fixed. Not forgiven. Mine in the worst, oldest, most dangerous part of me.
He kisses me until I cannot remember how to be angry.
"I missed your mouth."
I pull at his shirt instead. "Take this off."
He does. Fast. Buttons first, then he drags the shirt off his shoulders and drops it on the floor.
His undershirt follows. He is broader than I remember, leaner in some places, like Singapore worked him down to edges and stress.
There is a faint line of muscle down his stomach, dark hair disappearing under his waistband, and I hate that my mouth actually waters.
"You look at me like that and expect me to be calm?" he asks.
"I don't expect you to be calm."
"Good."
I touch him. Just my palm to his chest. His heart is pounding.
"You're nervous," I say.
He gives a strained laugh. "I haven't touched my wife in almost two years, and she may hate me tomorrow. Yes, Nora. I'm a little nervous."
"I don't hate you. Not right now."
"I'll take it."
I untie the belt myself. He goes still.
"Nora."
"I'm not fragile. Look at me."
I let the robe fall open. I am naked under it. Daniel stops breathing. That is not an exaggeration. His chest freezes under my hand.
Terrified and exposed, I remember all the ways my body is different now. Softer stomach. Wider hips. Faint silver stretch marks low on my belly. The body that carried his child while he was gone. I almost pull the robe closed.
Daniel catches my wrist. Not hard. Just enough.
"Don't," he says. His voice is wrecked. He looks at me like I have broken something inside him. "Don't hide from me."
"I'm different."
"I know."
Then he drops to his knees. Just drops. Right there on the cheap rug, Daniel Welling on his knees in front of me with his hands hovering at my hips like he is afraid to assume even that.
"You had our daughter," he says, and his voice is so low I almost do not hear it.
"You made her with your body while I was gone.
If I get to touch you tonight, I need you to understand there is no part of you I don't want.
" His thumb brushes one stretch mark. "I want every inch of the woman I should have been coming home to. "
That is when I cry. Just one tear at first. Rude and uninvited.
"Tell me what you want."
"Use your mouth," I say before I can lose nerve.
Daniel's eyes close. He looks like that hurt him in the best possible way. "Yes."
Then he leans forward and kisses my stomach. The soft part below my navel. The stretched skin. He kisses them like they are something he has been denied.
I put a hand in his hair.
"Bed?" he asks against my skin.
I nod.
"Do you want me to carry you?"
"Yes."
He lifts me like I weigh nothing and carries me to the bedroom, not graceful because the apartment is tiny and he bangs his shin on a storage box near the door.
"Ow," he says.
"I am overwhelmed by my naked wife," he says, and that shuts me up.
He lays me on the bed and kneels at the end of it, pulling me closer by the backs of my knees. Then he lowers his mouth to my inner thigh and I forget every clever thing I've ever said.
He takes his time. Actually takes it. Not like before, when we were always hungry and busy and half the time he had one eye on the clock even when his mouth was on me.
He kisses my thighs, one side and then the other, slow enough that my skin starts to feel too sensitive before he ever gets where I need him.
The bare skin beside my sex, so close that I lift my hips without meaning to.
His hands slide under my thighs and spread me open. Just open enough that there is nowhere to hide from him. He looks. Really looks. At my wetness. At how swollen I already am for him.
His breath leaves him hard. "God," he says.
"Don't stare."
"I've been thinking about this for years." He looks up at me. "I'm going to stare."
Then his mouth is on me.
I gasp. A full, humiliating gasp. Daniel groans like he loves it, like that sound out of me went straight to his blood. His tongue slides flat through me, from my opening up to my clit, slow and wet and filthy enough that my thighs try to close around his head.
"There she is," he says against me.
My whole body jerks. "Don't be smug."
He looks up with his mouth wet and his eyes burning. "I'm on my knees with my face between my wife's legs. Let me have one thing."
He wraps an arm over my stomach to hold me close and licks me again, tongue right on my clit now, circling, dragging side to side until my hands twist in the sheets.
"There?" he asks against me.
"Yes. Like that."
He stays there, changing only when I push at his shoulder or say harder in a voice I barely recognize.
"That's it," he murmurs. "Take what you want."
Then he slides two fingers into me while his mouth closes over my clit. I cry out. Actually cry out. The apartment is empty. Nobody needs me. Nobody is going to call from Singapore and make me pretend my body is fine with being forgotten.
His fingers curl inside me, slow and firm, while his lips seal around my clit and his tongue moves over it in steady strokes.
"Tell me," he murmurs.
"Don't stop."
He doesn't stop. He works me with his mouth and fingers until I lose the shape of the room, his free hand spread over my stomach like he is holding me together while he takes me apart.
"Daniel. Daniel, I'm--"
"I know," he says against me. "I've got you."
That breaks me. I come with his mouth on my clit and his fingers inside me, hard enough that my whole body locks. He keeps going through it, softer now, licking me through every pulse, until I push weakly at his head because I can't take any more.
He kisses my thigh. Then the skin under my navel again, like he cannot stop coming back to the places that prove he was gone. I lie there breathing like I have run stairs.
Then I say, "You're still wearing pants."
His laugh is low and wrecked. "I am painfully aware."
"Take them off."
He stands and undoes his belt. I watch. I should maybe pretend not to be desperate. I do not. He pushes his pants and underwear down together. His cock springs free, thick and hard and already leaking at the tip.
My mouth goes dry. I remember him. My body remembers him better than my brain does. But I still look. At the dark hair on his chest. At his cock in his hand, hard and heavy and beautiful in a way that makes my thighs press together.
He sees me looking. His breath catches.
"You look at me like that, and I'm not going to make it."
"I want to look."
His grip tightens at the base of his cock. "Then look."
He is the man who left. He is the man who came back. He is the body I used to know in the dark better than my own. And I still want him.
"Don't touch yourself," I say. "Come here."
He climbs onto the bed carefully, his body covering mine but not pressing down until I pull him closer. The first full touch of him against me steals my breath. Skin to skin. His cock hard against my wetness.
He drops his forehead to my shoulder. "I need a second." He laughs into my skin, rough and helpless. "I am trying very hard not to come on your stomach like I'm twenty-six and you just wore that yellow dress again."
"You remember the yellow dress?"
"Nora." He lifts his head. His eyes are dark and wrecked. "I remember everything."
Then he kisses me. I taste myself on his mouth, and the intimacy of it makes me moan. He shudders.
"Careful," he says.
"I don't want careful."
"I know." He kisses my jaw. My throat. "But I need slow. Because if I go fast right now, this is going to be humiliating for both of us."
I laugh, and it turns into a gasp when the head of his cock nudges against me.
"What do you want?" he asks.
"You. Inside me. Slow first."
He reaches down and lines himself up. Then he stops. Just enough that the head of his cock rests hot and heavy against me, and both of us know exactly what is about to happen.
"Are you on birth control?" he asks.
The question lands between us, strange and not strange at all. Responsible. Late. Married. His jaw is tight like asking costs him, because once he would have assumed my body was still exactly where he left it. My chest aches.
There never was protection with us, not after we got married. We tried for a baby for a while, back when trying still felt hopeful. Then we stopped tracking days because he was always gone.
"Nothing changed," I say.
His eyes search mine. "No birth control?"
"I never even considered it."
Something flashes across his face. Pain first. Then want so sharp it almost looks like pain too.
"I can pull out," he says.
"No."
The word comes fast. Too fast. His whole body goes still.
"No?"
Heat burns up my throat, but I make myself look at him. "I want you to come inside me."
His eyes flash. Possessive for one dangerous second, then checked so hard I can see him drag himself back.
"Nora."
"It's hot." The words come out softer than I mean them to. They still destroy him.
"I need you to be sure."
"I am sure."
He kisses me once, hard and shaking. Then he pushes into me. Slow. So slow I almost cannot bear it. My body stretches around him, taking him inch by inch, and the feeling is so familiar and so new that tears rush to my eyes again.
He stops the second he sees them. "Hurt?"
"No. I missed you."
It slips out before I can stop it. Daniel's face breaks. He drops his forehead to mine and breathes like he has been hit.
"I missed you too," he says. "God, Nora, I missed you every day. I was just too stupid to understand that missing you meant coming home."
I pull him closer. "Move."