Chapter Thirty-Two
DESPITE MY EARLIER bravado, my heart thuds ominously following Sid into his bedroom.
I’ve lived with him since the wedding, but never set foot inside.
It isn’t big. Most of the space is taken up by the bed, which is large for one person, but necessary, considering his height.
Aside from that, there’s a cedar chest that holds his clothes and doubles as a bench, and a window that lets in a cloudy beam of moonlight.
It isn’t late, but the sun sets so early in November, night has already set in.
But at least it has a bed. I was frankly starting to wonder if he owned anything. “Why haven’t you decorated your house?”
Sid bends down to open the cedar chest. “What?”
“They’ve got so much stuff at the exchange! Pictures, rugs, couches. I saw a big red couch I liked today.” Had a good breakdown on it too, but let’s skip that part. “You could do anything with this place.”
He looks up at the naked walls. “Yeah… I guess.”
“So why haven’t you?”
“I’m not sure I know how. I bought a table once, but I got rid of it a few days later.
It feels make-believe most of the time. Like…
moving toys around in a dollhouse.” His response startles me.
After twelve years, I would have thought he was settled here.
As if sensing my thoughts, he adds, “At least I’m not still living out of a knapsack. ”
“Hiking pack,” I say.
“Is there a difference?” He draws up so that he’s standing in front of me. The air between us is charged with heat, but we don’t reach out. Not yet.
“Hiking packs are bigger. Fancier. Like the king-sized bed of backpacks.” Everything I’m saying is so stupid, but I can’t stop smiling. Even as Sid’s face takes on its usual, serious bent, I can’t stop beaming at him like a firefly.
“Kayla.” He places a hand on my arm, and I let my hands travel up his chest. His pulse races against my palms. “I made you a promise when you came here.”
“You seriously didn’t bring me all the way up here to not take me to bed, did you?”
“No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying…” As he struggles for words, I realize this is one of those rare moments when his guards are down. If I ever want to see him clearly, I have to listen.
I try to be tender instead of hungry as I reach up and touch his face. “Saying what?”
“I don’t want you to regret me. If you wake up tomorrow and come to your senses, and it turns out that I’ve hurt you by doing this…”
It’s too awful to let him go on. “Sid.” I take him into my arms, pressing him close. “I know I don’t deserve it, but please. Please have faith in me. I want to be with you. Please don’t punish me for making mistakes.”
“Punish you?” he says disbelievingly.
“I… I know you don’t want someone as messed up as me, but—”
His face contorts with confusion. “When did I ever say—”
“Same night you promised not to sleep with me. You said I came from a weird sex cult and you didn’t want anything to do with that.”
A dark shadow passes over his face. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, I deserved it. And it’s true. But if you give me a chance—”
“Kayla, I know this is a shitty excuse, but I said that because I was trying to convince myself it didn’t matter that you didn’t want me.
I was asking you to marry me without telling you I was ex-TNS.
I knew I would never deserve to touch you.
I was trying to talk myself into thinking it was okay that you wanted nothing to do with me, even though I was falling for you. ”
His words stun me for half a second. Then I burst forth like a breaking damn. “But I treated you like shit!”
“I never said I had good taste.”
I slam an angry fist into his chest, but that only makes the grin wider on his face. He wraps a hand around each of mine.
“You shot me with that rock and I was done. I’d never met someone so fearless.” He weaves his fingers into my curls. As his thumbs press against the nape of my neck, I slide my hands up his chest to rest on his shoulders. “And it would kill me if I became the one thing you were afraid of.”
“I’m afraid of a lot of things, Sid.” That much must be obvious after today. “But not you. Never you.”
His mouth meets mine and I let the taste of him take over me.
For the first time, we go slowly. Desperate as I am to be with him, I also don’t want to miss a single sensation.
I take my time rolling up the hem of his shirt, revealing his stomach, the thin trail of pale hair leading downward from his navel to his jeans.
His chest shudders as I reach it, and I’m stunned for a moment by the breadth of his ribs heaving under my hands.
Our lips break apart and I teeter backward until he catches the small of my back, my fists still clutching his shirt.
“If we do this…” His eyes don’t look like themselves, blue swallowed up by the dark of his pupils. “If we do this, there’s no going back. No… whatever our deal used to be. If we do this—”
“It becomes real. I know.” And it’s a bad idea.
At this point, I’ve known him for a little over two months.
It’s not enough to build a marriage on. But that’s what we’ll be if we go through with this—legally bound, physically consummated.
Husband and wife. Married, in every conventional sense of the word.
I should not be sleeping with him. But I can’t take the longing or the loneliness anymore.
He must agree this is insane. The cold, logical part of him must be driving all these questions. But he kisses my forehead, drawing my eyes up to him. “Do you trust me?”
A smile breaks over my face as I recognize that question. “Yes.”
He kisses the side of my neck. My eyes close.
“Do you want me?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He helps me peel his shirt over his shoulders.
His hands slide into the few buttons on my blouse that are still fastened.
It drops to the floor behind me and cold air pricks my skin, driving me forward into the warm mass of his body.
It’s happening. It’s actually happening.
Belatedly, it hits me how long it’s been since I did any of this.
Should I be worried about screwing it up?
Curtis and I weren’t exactly discerning lovers.
We only had each other. What if Sid is expecting something more sophisticated than I know how to give?
But then his hand threads beneath the clasp of my bra and it’s so wonderful to be touched there again, the worry melts away.
It’s been too long since I let myself be close with someone like this—yet I can’t think of anyone I would have wanted to share myself with in those empty years other than him. If I have any regrets, it’s only that we didn’t do this sooner.
I pull away so that I can back up and seat myself on the foot of his bed, finally getting a good look at him.
All I can think is holy hell, I’m a lucky girl.
His chest is even paler than the rest of him, which shouldn’t surprise me, but it still amazes me how brown my tanned skin looks against his.
His pecs are well defined, with fine, blonde hair spread across them.
It’s soft against my palms when he bends close to me.
I press my hands against his clavicle. Even when he’s trying to be slow and gentle, the sheer force of his body is intense, and I lie back on the bed, grateful for the support of the mattress. I scootch back, making room as he climbs over me, and then we’re hooking fingers into each other’s jeans.
He takes a moment to simply look at me, lying exposed with my back against his pillows. “How are you even real?” he murmurs—and if I could find the strength to speak, I would return the compliment.
But he doesn’t seem to mind my breathless silence. His smile is so wide, it pulls at the scar near his ear. “There isn’t a single inch of you I haven’t thought about touching.”
“Oh. Then I guess you better get to work.”
“Gladly.” He kisses my stomach. Then his hands slide down my side, scooping around my breasts, caressing my stomach, tickling the inside of my thigh.
His hand lingers there, sending a shuddering wave through me.
No part of me wants for attention. I pull one of his hands close to me—the one that still bears the scar from my slingshot—and kiss it.
It’s the best way I know how to say thank you.
But he’s not done with me yet. Far from it.
“You ready?” he murmurs, and I nod, as certain as I can be.
To my amazement, he has a lambskin condom in the cedar chest. It makes me recklessly giddy. As soon as he’s ready, I pull him toward me, eager to finally feel the weight of his body against mine.
We meet, and my breath catches. This might not be my first time, but it’s been so long since anyone has touched me like this.
Light pulses through me as he takes me in his arms; presses his mouth against my cheek, my neck, my breast. As he skates lower down my stomach, his name comes tumbling out of my lips. “Sid.”
“Yes?” His voice rasps against my ear.
I don’t actually have anything to say. There are no words for this feeling coursing through me.
Despite the cold night, everything is on fire.
The press of his hand over my wrist. The way his mouth traces the curve of my neck.
We find a rhythm together, our bodies rocking, causing a squeak in his mattress as we dig into each other.
All I want is to dive deeper into the swell of this feeling.
No matter how long we go or how my body tightens around him, I want more.
And then, all at once, I’m drowning. I gasp for air as wave after wave breaks over me.
His breath is hot against my shoulder. My fingers dig into his hips as I try to steady myself, stay grounded to this moment that is at once too much and the only thing that could ever be enough.
Soon, I’m crying out his name and he’s gasping mine, until we both unfurl together, like sails bound for a foreign land.
Finally, we come apart, though we never stop touching. He rolls to my side, and I wrap my arm over his shoulder, keeping him close. His hair sticks up at odd angles thanks to my roving hands, but it’s so much softer than mine, I can’t stop playing with it.
Once we’ve both caught our breath, he pulls me close again, so that our stomachs press together. “Hey,” he whispers.
I burrow my face in his neck, deliriously happy.
“Did you want to go back to your room with April tonight? Or did you want to stay—”
“You had better not be kicking me out, Sid Charles.”
“I’m not.” He laughs. “But she will notice if you don’t come back. I wanted to let you know I’ll be okay, either way.”
“Okay? What would you prefer?” I ask, more anxious than I dare admit. If this was a one and done thing for him, I’ll be furious, heartbroken, and will push him out the second storey window.
His grip tightens against my back. “I would have thought you could guess.”
I grin, then plant a kiss on his mouth. “I think I’ll stay. But on one condition.”
“Oh, we’re back to putting conditions on our relationship, are we?”
“Definitely this one.”
“And what is it?”
“You have to go down to the kitchens and get us some food. I am not missing Carlos’s huevos rancheros again because of you.”
He rolls away, laughing so hard it shakes the bed and me and it seems, in my eyes, the whole world. Because he is the world. All my hope and happiness are wrapped up in him.
It isn’t smart. It isn’t safe.
I can’t help it.