Chapter 25
Chastity
It feelslike I’ve forgotten how to breathe, even as I’m dragging out Hank’s name with way too many vowels. Goosebumps are all over me, and I feel dewy and hot and damp as I have the most powerful orgasm I’ve ever experienced.
There isn’t a vibrator in the world that can make me feel like Hank does. I’m barely aware of what I’m doing as I ride him, the waves of pleasure wracking my body from head to toe. The orgasm seems to shoot out in all directions from my core, and while I understood before why it’s called the cowgirl position, there’s nothing like experiencing it for yourself to grasp the concept fully.
I am grasping him fully.
When I finally return to reality, dropping both of my palms onto his chest as my whole body seems to go limp, I stare down at him in shock.
“That was…”
“Exactly what you needed.” Hank maintains his tight grip on my thighs. “Hang on,” he says. “I’m going hard.”
I’m not sure how he can go any harder, but then I realize what he means when he smoothly flips me onto my back. I barely have time to refocus on him before he is pounding into me. Another first, comprehension going from conceptual to a full understanding. I’m being pounded with a ferocity that hadn’t entered the picture on our one and only night together all those years ago. That had been lazy and slow and delicious.
This is possessive and demanding and fierce. Like I make him lose control of himself.
Which makes me lose control. My head is almost hitting the headboard. The crown of my hair just brushes against the wood with each of his thrusts into me, and I don’t even care. It’s sexy, it’s powerful. His tattoo-covered arms are taut, his pale eyes narrowed with concentration, his shoulders tense.
“Do you like that?” I ask, because it makes me excited to see that he clearly does. I want him to say it.
“I fucking love it, baby. Damn, you feel so good. You’re everything, Chastity. Everything.”
I’m not even sure what that means exactly, but the words, paired with his intense expression and the way he’s filling my pussy completely and totally, all my nerve endings firing, has me grabbing his shoulders. I need him to ground me, because I’m shattering again. This time, it literally feels like flying. Like I’ve left the earth and am zinging through space and time as a cry careens out from between my lips.
It’s so profound that when I breathe through the final notes of ecstasy, I just stare up at him. I’m done. I’m ruined. There is no way I can do this with another man. This is just me with Hank. It’s the way it is. It’s reality. My body, my heart, were made for him.
I desperately want to tell him how I feel. The words hover on my lips, but I don’t want to ruin his pleasure.
But then, to my utter shock, he slows his rhythm down and pulls nearly all the way out of me. “I love you,” he says. “You need to know that.”
Then he buries himself to the hilt with one aggressive thrust, exploding inside of me. I hang on, shocked with the intensity of his orgasm and how I can actually feel it throbbing along my inner walls. “I love you too.”
Because I do.
I think I’ve loved Hank my entire adult life. No man ever compares to him. I haven’t even bothered to try. I’ve been waiting for Hank to reenter my world.
And here he is. Inside of me.
And he loves me.
I’ve never felt a more profound sense of completion.
It isn’t until he pulls out that I realize it’s just him. Smooth flesh.
The condom seems to be missing.
I instinctively push on him, trying to sit up. There’s a hot rush of warmth between my legs, and when he shifts off of me with a sigh, I see it’s his come leaking back out of me. “Where’s the condom?” I ask in a high-pitched voice, feeling around on the bed between my legs.
“What?” Hank asks, sounding satisfied and without a single care in the entire world.
“The condom!” I grope between us, seeking out his cock. I feel all over it, not concerned at all what he might think of me manhandling his junk. This is no time for dignity. It’s just sticky skin. “Oh my God!” I wail. “It’s gone. It must have come off when we rolled over.”
“I didn’t even notice.” He’s staring at his dick like it”s lying to him. “Is it still inside of you?”
“I don’t know! But look at this.” I gesture to his stuff just hanging around between my thighs. “Hank! This is how women get pregnant!”
“I kind of figured,” he says. “I did take middle school health class.”
He looks amused. Fucking amused. I smack him on the chest. Hard.
I leap out of bed, wanting to get vertical.
“Where are you going?”
“I want it all out of me. I’m trying to invoke gravity.”
He should look upset. He should be panicking, like I am. The fact that he isn’t makes me angry.
“Get it out of me!” The condom is definitely in there. Now that I’m standing and friction isn’t causing a mild numbness, I can feel it. Latex.
“Babe, I can’t get my come out of you. It just has to come out on its own, I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s going to be fine. What are the odds, right? One in thirty.”
Those odds actually send a cold chill through me. “The condom. I want you to get the condom out.”
“Oh.” He makes a face. “You sure you don’t want to do that yourself?”
“Get. It. Out. Now.”
“Okay, okay.” He holds his hands out in surrender. He sits up and scoots to the edge of the bed. “Here we go. Just spread your legs a little. Put your hands on my shoulders.”
I close my eyes, mortified, as he fishes around in there.
Hank pulls the condom out a few seconds later, displaying it like it’s hidden treasure. “Ah ha! Got it.”
I stare at him silently, breathing frantically through my nostrils.
He makes a face. “I just want to say I accept full responsibility for this.”
I continue to stare at him. I can’t believe this is happening. Hank tells me he loves me, and I can’t even enjoy it.
“This is why I’m cursed,” I tell him. “I bet you ten dollars one of your little sperm is wiggling its way into an egg right now as we speak. I’m not even allowed to enjoy one night of perfect sex? I’m not even allowed to experience what it feels like to have a man say he loves me without it getting ruined?” My last words choke out on a sob. I’m crying, shoulders heaving.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Hank scrambles to his feet. “It’s not ruined. Nothing is ruined.” He wraps his arms around me and pulls me into a hug.
“And it’s not your fault. It’s my fault. I’m the one who told you just to move the condom down a little. That was stupid. That was so stupid.” I’m hysterically sobbing now, and Hank is running his big, warm hands up and down my back.
“Like I said, one in thirty odds.”
“Six in twenty-eight. Women have twenty-eight-day cycles with six fertile days.”
“Right. Of course. But the odds are small.” He kisses my temple. “Did you hear what I said? I love you. I don’t want to be just friends, I want to be a couple. If we made a baby, I’ll be the happiest man in Porte French. We’ll get a house, have a baby. Life will be fantastic.”
I appreciate what he’s saying, but I’m terrified. “You said you like to sample different flavors.”
“What are you talking about? Different flavors of what?” He sounds bewildered.
His chest is damp from my tears. I swipe at it in a half-hearted attempt to dry his skin. “Women. You told me that’s why you haven’t settled down. You can’t just suddenly stop craving variety.”
Hank pulls my head away from his chest. He cups my cheeks and gives me a little shake. “Yes, I can. The reason I was looking all over was because none of them were you. Do you understand, Chas? All along, I just wanted you. Even when I didn’t know it.”
My heart swells. “That sounds like a line.”
“It’s not a line. You don’t really think it’s all coincidence, do you?” he asks. “That we keep running into each other, and we keep wanting each other?”
No. I don’t think it”s a coincidence at all. I think that there is something that pushes me toward him, then pulls me away. He’s the man I love, but he also seems to be a lesson I’m supposed to learn over and over. “You can’t accept that running into each other is fate, but not also accept that it also comes with a curse.”
I’m protesting, but only out of fear. My panic is already subsiding. My IUD is already in place, thanks to Nevaeh’s advice. The odds of getting pregnant are small.
“Uh, yes, I can, and I have. We are not cursed. You are not cursed. No one is cursed to destroy the world with sex. That was a lie you were told to keep you from having fun. Or, as my mother says, ‘to explore each other’s bodies.’”
That phrasing makes me laugh in spite of my panic. “Your mother said that to you too? I thought I was the only lucky one.”
“Oh, God, she said that to you?” Hank looks horrified.
I nod. “When she told me that I should throw myself at you. I’m paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it.”
“She told me I should put a baby in you.” He gives me a slow smile. “I have to say, this proves her own theory that my mama has never been wrong.”
My jaw drops. “Hank Williams Young,” I say. “I swear to God, you’re asking for it. By the way, I had an IUD put in.”
Now his jaw drops. “Then what the hell are you worried about? Fuck these condoms. I strangled my dick for nothing?”
“Better to be safe than sorry.”
“Whatever you need, baby.” He gives me a soft kiss. “Why ten dollars, by the way?” he asks, nuzzling into my neck. “Mm, you taste good.”
“That’s all I have in my bank account. I just paid my rent and my car payment.”
He pulls back and looks at me. “I thought that was the value you were putting on my sperm.” He gives a chuckle.
Then we’re laughing.
We’re laughing and hugging and kissing. Hank sweeps me up in his arms. I give a startled shriek. He throws me on the bed, and as he climbs back onto the mattress, all intensity and strong arms and loving eyes, I want everything to be like this forever.
Hank
I study Chastity as she’s sleeping beside me. Nevaeh called and asked to keep Josiah overnight in Baton Rouge. I think under normal circumstances, Chastity would have said no. But to my surprise, she readily agreed, and after a hot shower, she fell asleep almost immediately.
It feels like she’s finally grasping it’s okay to live for herself. That she deserves happiness.
Sleep is eluding me. Not because I’m panicking over a pregnancy.
But because I’m in awe of the twists of fate that have brought me to this moment. With her.
Her mattress is garbage. It’s killing my back, but not even that can ruin my mood. I’m actually sitting up, back against her headboard, her head in my lap as she sleeps. I’m stroking her hair and admiring the perfect little button nose she has.
I can imagine that nose on a baby.
Scrolling through my phone, I flip through photo after photo that Cash has sent of little Nelson. My brother looks over the moon in the ones where he’s holding his son. Sera looks exhausted, but she is, in fact, glowing. The cliché exists for a reason. New mothers have a special look to them that is probably rooted in science, but I’m enough of a romantic to want it to be just the pure joy of creating a new human.
There are photos of Sera’s older children with the new little guy. They look just as in-awe as their mother and stepfather.
The role of stepfather is intimidating. My brother makes it look easy, but at least I have him to go to for advice. He took on three kids, including two teenagers. One four-year-old should be a breeze. But if Chastity isn’t pregnant, which she isn’t if she has an IUD, we don’t have to rush anything. We can take our time dating, and I can get to know Josiah better.
Naked still, the sheet is pulled lightly over us, Chastity has turned so that she’s twisted in it, and my thighs are mostly exposed. The room is cool, but I don’t want to disturb her.
I want her to be pregnant. I can’t say that out loud because she might actually kill me in my sleep later, but this is what I want. Her and me and a couple of kids. My restaurant. Her nursing career. Family coming out of our ears to help us.
Well, my family anyway. Which is more than enough. I don’t understand what the deal is with her parents, but I don’t care. What I care about is that it hurts Chastity. But I can’t change that. I can only try to make it up to her. To be more than enough. To have my family be hers.
She stirs a little in her sleep. I stroke her hair, wanting to reassure her.
I’ll be here for her.
No one is cursed. Curses don’t exist.
“I love you,” I murmur to her, hoping it causes me to enter into her dreams where we live happily ever after.
I’ve gotten to be a sappy motherfucker all of a sudden. I don’t even mind.
If I’m going to fall, might as well fall hard.
I don’t like to do anything half-assed.