Chapter Two #3
“Sorry!” she says, backing away. “Did I hurt you?”
“Yes,” I say in a voice I don’t recognize. “Keep doing it.”
Something flashes in her eyes as she moves back to the same spot and continues biting and sucking the flesh.
The pleasure builds quickly, intensely, and I can feel her squeezing my length as her breath becomes ragged.
“This time,” I whisper against her ear. “We’ll come together. Let go, Maddy. I’ve got you.”
She does. Her body tightens around mine, her back bows, and she gasps my name.
That’s all it takes. I follow her over the edge, spasming and filling her on a groan that comes from the center of my soul.
For a long moment, we don’t move. Just lie tangled together, breathing hard, her head resting on my chest. I didn’t know it could feel like this. I didn’t know anything could feel like this. Whatever I thought I was saving or waiting for—I understand now it was always going to be her, and only her.
“I must get back,” she says quietly, and I feel my chest begin to knot.
“Right. Let me get you a cloth.” I force my disappointment down as I stand, looking for a cloth to clean her, only to find none.
“In my pocket, you’ll find a handkerchief,” she says softly.
I reach for her dress and retrieve the delicate blue cloth. I see the MW stitched into the corner, and I trace my thumb over the letters. Returning to her, I gently swat her hand away as she reaches for the cloth.
“A creature this beautiful I’m eager to care for,” I state firmly.
She deserves more than a man of my station, but she deserves far more than the Lord’s selfishness.
As I take my time cleaning her, I find myself compelled to press my lips against her heated center. She gasps, and I have to fight a near growl from escaping me.
This is what she tastes like?
What we taste like together?
I need more.
I drop the cloth and grip both her strong thighs in my arms as I force my tongue inside her.
“Tommy!” she cries out as I look up, watching her roll her head back.
My tongue moves from her center to her bud, and when I run the flat of my tongue over it …
“Fuck!”
Her vulgarity takes us both by surprise, but I don’t stop. I continue to lick the sensitive flesh faster. Her legs shake around my ears before tensing as she lets out another scream, reaching her peak for a third time.
I lick her clean before crawling up to her bewildered face.
“How,” she pants, eyes wide, “did you do that?”
“A proper man should know how to take care of a gift this precious,” I say reverently.
“I love you,” she whispers. “Help me, I love you.”
I press a kiss to her hair, my hand stroking her back.
“I love you too,” I say. “So much that it terrifies me.”
“Then we don’t think about tomorrow.” She lifts her head to look at me, her eyes serious.
I want to argue. I want to tell her that one day will never be enough, that I’d give everything to have more. But I don’t want to waste what little time we have on words.
Instead, I kiss her again, desperately, trying to pour everything I feel into that one kiss. Trying to make this moment last forever.
Willing myself to forget that forever is something we’ll never have.
Maddy hums softly, our bodies breathing in a tandem rhythm. It feels so natural, lying here with her, so right.
Her golden hair spills across my skin.
“That was …”
“Transformative,” I rumble, the sound escaping from a primal place inside me.
“I was going to say nice.”
A single breathy laugh escapes me. “A well-cooked steak is nice. A game of cards with friends is nice. What we just did has changed me permanently. There are two versions of me now. The man before and the man after this night.”
“Tommy, you’re being dramatic.” She slaps my chest lightly as she tries to stand to get dressed.
“Maddy, I’m being honest.” I tighten my arm around her, not ready to lose this.
“If I could choose one moment in life to live in for eternity, I would choose this one. Right now. Nothing this wonderful has ever come before, and I doubt any moment of this lifetime that follows will ever be this pure again.”
“Making love has awakened the poet in you,” Maddy jokes, playfully fingering the hairs on my chest. Her hand travels across my collarbone and down my bicep, where she finds the raised flesh on my outer arm. She traces the scarred skin delicately, eyes locking with mine in silent question.
“A scar.” I tell her the half-truth.
“Where did it come from?”
Maddy has never let me get away with much. She can always tell when there is more I’ve left unsaid.
“My own hand.”
She sits up and looks at the horseshoe-shaped scar running along my upper left arm. The skin has healed a whitish-pink, stretched and raised, angry and shiny.
“Why?” she asks. “Why would you inflict such harm upon yourself?”
“I was curious, if I’m being honest. If it was good enough for the horses in the stables I tended, I felt certain it was good enough for me. I wanted to know what they felt.”
“Did it hurt?” she asks, eyes wide open.
I laugh at the silliness of her question. “Of course it did, love. But I liked it.”
“You found satisfaction in suffering?”
“Yes. For that very reason—the pain. A single point to make real what I feel, but cannot name. A source for so much that feels sourceless.”
“That is profoundly sad, Tommy.”
“Why sad? It was a moment of connection, of release. I loved the hurt. But more than that, I love that it has remained. Every time I see it, feel it, or touch it, I’m reminded.”
“Of what, precisely?”
“That life hurts, but I should stay. Not in spite of the pain, but because of it.”
“I should very much prefer that you experience pleasure, Tommy.”
“With you, I do.” I lean down and brush my nose along her rounded cheek and kiss her neck tenderly. I whisper, “The pleasure,” as I nip the lobe of her ear with my teeth. Then I press my hand over hers, which is still resting atop my scarred skin. I press our hands into my arm. “And the pain.”
Understanding dawns in her eyes. That pleasure and pain aren’t opposites, but partners. Both proof that you’re alive. Both necessary and beautiful in their own way.
“Oh, Tommy, whatever will we do now?”
The question breaks the spell, and reality crashes back in. The world outside of this moment is still waiting for us.
“Shh, Maddy dear. Let us not trouble ourselves with that. Let us hold fast to this bliss for a breath longer.”
The OtherWorld
It felt like we had an eternity in that moment. I believed it with every fiber of my being.
I was so naive.
The memory fades, and I’m back in the OtherWorld, staring at the silver moon, my chest tightening in the phantom grip of her memory.
Our love died before it ever truly lived. No, that’s not right. Not exactly.
Our love continued to bloom despite the most unforgiving circumstances.
Our feelings took root in separate gardens, like alien plants growing in foreign soil.
And, like those invasive species, once our love took shape in gardens where it did not belong, it choked out and destroyed everything in its path.
A tingling sensation behind the bridge of my nose demands attention. I pinch the flesh and will the memories—and the ensuing pain—to go away.
But nothing is working.
After unknown stretches of time when I have been able to drown out the sounds, smells, and feel of Madeleine Whitcomb, her memory comes rushing back, taking on a distinct shape.
I cannot allow that memory to fully form. I can’t let her become real in my mind again because if I do, if I let myself remember what it felt like to be loved by her, I’ll drop my blade and take the room next to Kane. I would be unable to do my job or function in any capacity.
Letting her memory flourish again in my mind awakens hope, and hope is a luxury that has no place in the OtherWorld. It’s a forgotten emotion, abandoned in a box no one cares about or feels the need for anymore.
Hope is for the living.