Chapter 9 New Beginnings #3
My breathing gets ragged. I pull his face to mine and kiss him hard.
Harder than before. I want him closer. I want more of him.
I push against his hand and he gives me what I'm asking for and the pleasure builds steadily until it breaks and I shudder against him with my mouth open against his jaw and my fingers digging into his shoulders.
He holds me through it. Doesn't rush. Doesn't move on. Just holds me and lets it happen and presses his lips against my forehead.
When I open my eyes he's looking at me. His expression is open and awed and hungry all at once.
"Come here," I say. I pull him over me and wrap my legs around his waist.
He lowers himself between my thighs and pauses. His forehead rests against mine. I can feel him against me. Ready. Waiting.
"I want this," I tell him. "I want you."
He pushes inside me slowly. The fullness takes my breath.
I grip his back and he holds still for a moment letting me adjust. Then he starts to move.
Slow. Deep. Deliberate. Each stroke is a complete thought.
He braces himself on one forearm and uses the other hand to hold my hip.
My leg tightens around him and he groans against my neck.
We find a rhythm together. Not complicated.
Not choreographed. Just the honest natural rhythm of two bodies learning each other.
He speeds up when I pull him closer. He slows down when I press my hand flat against his chest. We communicate with touch and breath and sound.
My nails on his back. His teeth on my shoulder.
The noise I make when he changes his angle and everything gets sharper and brighter.
He says my name. Low and rough and close to my ear.
"Brook." Just that. Just my name. And something about the way he says it undoes me completely.
The second wave hits harder than the first and I pull him as deep as he'll go and hold him there.
He follows a few seconds later. His whole body tenses and then releases and he exhales a long shaking breath against my neck.
We stay tangled together for a while. Neither of us moves. Neither of us speaks. The room is warm and the lamp casts soft shadows on the ceiling and I can feel his heartbeat slowing down against my chest. Gradually returning to steady.
He rolls to the side and pulls me with him. My head ends up on his chest and his arm wraps around my back. My leg hooks over his thigh. We're sweaty and breathless and I can feel the satisfied heaviness settling into my muscles. The good kind of tired. The kind you earn.
"That was wonderful," I say.
"It was." He runs his fingers through my hair. His touch is gentle now. Lazy. Unhurried. "I don't want to leave."
"Then don't."
He stays. We fall asleep together in my bed and when I wake up in the middle of the night he's still there. Still warm. Still close. His arm tightens around me when I shift and I settle back against him and close my eyes.
In the morning I wake up to the sound of someone making coffee in my kitchen. I put on a t-shirt and shorts and walk out to find Ross standing at the counter in his slacks and unbuttoned shirt pouring two mugs of coffee.
"I used the good coffee," he says. "The bag on the top shelf."
"That's the only coffee I buy."
"Then you have excellent taste."
He hands me a mug. Black. He remembered. I take a sip and lean against the counter and look at him standing in my kitchen on a Saturday morning with his shirt open and his hair messy and two mugs of coffee on the counter.
"Good morning," I say.
"Good morning, Brook."
"How long have you been up?"
"About twenty minutes. I tried not to wake you. You looked peaceful."
"I was peaceful. For the first time in a long time."
He smiles and takes a sip of his coffee. We stand in the kitchen together and the silence between us isn't empty or awkward. It's full. Full of the fact that last night happened and it was good and neither of us is pretending it wasn't.
"I need to ask you something," he says.
"Okay."
"Are we doing this? You and me? Because I want to be clear about what I want.
I want this. I want mornings in your kitchen and evenings on your porch and weekends working on projects together.
I want to know what you're thinking and what you need and what makes you happy.
I want all of it. But only if you want it too. "
I set my coffee down. Kirk never asked me what I wanted. In nine years he never once stopped and said what do you want and then actually listened to the answer. He assumed. He decided. He told me what our plan was and I went along with it because I thought that was how relationships worked.
"I want this too," I say. "All of it."
"Good. Then we're doing this."
"We're doing this."
We take our coffee to the back patio and sit on the garden bench together. The oak is warm in the morning sun. The tomato plants are heavy with fruit. The garden is green and alive and mine.
"I could get used to this," he says.
"Me too."
We sit there for a long time. Drinking coffee. Not talking. Not needing to. Just sitting together on a bench we built in a garden I planted in a life that is finally starting to feel like mine.