Chapter 18 #2
We talk. We talk about her sister in Reno who she has not seen in nine years and who calls her on her birthday.
We talk about the year she spent in Pittsburgh in 2008 working a department where the chief was a man Val sent her to in order to do a thing Val could not get done in this state, and we do not talk about the thing, and I do not ask.
We talk about the woman she went to the academy with whose name she gave to Val in the chair Wednesday morning, who is named Rachel Doyle, who lives in Oregon, who has two children, who would cover for Max if Max called her at five in the morning.
We talk about the firefighter named Dani who watches her at the station.
We talk about the probie whose first call out was Monday night.
We talk about coffee. We talk about the bread my grandmother taught me and the rice her mother made.
We do not talk about Val any more.
We get up.
She makes us a real breakfast. She makes me eggs and bacon and bread and tomatoes. We eat at the kitchen table. It is delicious.
After breakfast she stands at the sink doing the dishes.
I stand behind her.
I put my arms around her ribs from behind. I press my forehead between her shoulder blades. She is warm and her shirt is soft and she smells of coffee. She does not stop washing the dish.
"Evangeline."
"Yes."
"I enjoyed talking to you.”
“So did I,” I say, kissing her neck.
Then I let her wash.
---
We do not solve our situation. We have delayed dealing with it, but it is still there, hanging over us.
We do not solve it because there is no solving of it, and we do not pretend.
We sit on the sofa under a quilt in the afternoon and we read.
She reads a thriller from the second shelf.
I read the biography I had open on the porch last night.
We do not speak for an hour. She has her feet in my lap.
I have my hand on her shin. The fire is going.
The rain has come in the afternoon and it is on the cedar shingles and it is on the windows and the cabin is the warmest it has been since I have been in it.
At three she falls asleep on the sofa.
She has not slept since I do not know when. She falls asleep with her book open on her chest and her mouth a little open, and I take the book out of her hand and I put a quilt over her, and I sit on the floor by the sofa and I read with my back against it, and I let her sleep.
She sleeps two hours.
When she wakes the rain has stopped and the sun is low. She blinks at me. I bend and I kiss her forehead. She closes her eyes again a count. She reaches and she finds my hand and she holds it.
"Evangeline."
"Yes."
"Stay with me tonight."
"I am with you tonight."
"I mean….”
"I know what you mean."
"All right."
"I am with you tonight."
She lets out a long breath.
"All right."
---
We make supper at seven.
She makes pasta with the canned tomatoes and the dried herbs from the cabinet over the stove.
I make a salad with what we have. We eat at the kitchen table with the brass lamp on.
She drinks a small glass of wine. I drink water.
We do not talk much. We do not have to. The silence at the table is not the silence of a thing we are not saying.
It is the silence of two women who have said the day's saying.
She does the dishes.
I put the kettle on for tea.
She turns and she looks at me in a way that means only one thing.
"Bed," she says.
"Yes."
"You go up. I will come in five minutes."
"What are you doing?” I ask.
"Locking the door. Putting the porch light off. Putting the truck keys on the hook."
"All right."
She goes to the front of the cabin.
I go to the bedroom.
I take my clothes off and I am naked in her bed under the quilt when she comes in. The lamp is on low.
She undresses at the foot of the bed.
She unbuttons. She drops the trousers. She steps out of the boots.
She pulls the undershirt over her head. She is bare-breasted in the lamplight her small breasts firm and high and her nipples prominent and the small surgical scar low on her right side, and she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
Masculine. Feminine. And everything in between.
She comes to the bed.
She lifts the quilt. She gets in. She lies on her back beside me. I put my hand on her stomach and I let the hand sit a count.
"Max."
"Yes."
"Put it on. The strap.”
She turns her head on the pillow.
"Evangeline,” she looks at me with hunger in her eyes.
"I am asking, please.”
"What are you asking?”
"I want to put my mouth on you."
She is quiet a count.
"Evangeline."
"I have been thinking about it for two days. I thought about it last night while you were asleep. I want to. I want to put it in my mouth and I want you to come from it. That is the thing I am asking for."
"You do not have to."
"I know I do not have to."
"You do not have to give me anything."
"Max. I know I do not have to. I am asking. I want to. I am asking."
She looks at me a count.
She gets up.
She gets up without speaking. She goes to the bathroom.
She comes back carrying the leather harness and the dildo.
She steps into it standing at the chair.
She tightens the buckles to the worn notch on her side, the notch that fits her.
She tightens the strap up at the back. The silicone hangs forward, dark in the lamplight.
She stands at the chair a count adjusting where the front of the leather sits on her, where the back base of it sits in her, and I watch her settle into it, and I watch the breath she takes when it is set right.
She comes back to the bed.
"All right," she says.
"All right."
I sit up.
I push the quilt off. I move down the bed on my knees. She sits at the head of the bed against the headboard with her hands flat on the quilt on either side of her hips, and her knees apart, and the silicone in the lamplight between her thighs.
"Slow," she says.
"Yes. Let me give you pleasure,” I say.
"Tell me if your jaw hurts, if it is too much.”
"Yes."
"Hand on me if you need to stop. Tap me.”
"Yes."
"Look at me."
I look at her.
I have done this for a man I did not love for eleven years and the doing of it was the doing of a task, and I have never done this for a person I love and really wanted to and I want to now.
I bend.
I put my mouth on her strap.
The silicone is warm from her body. The taste is the taste of the leather she keeps it on and the small clean of her own scent through it. I take the head in. I close my mouth on it a count. I look up at her.
She is watching me.
Her mouth is open just at the corner. Her hands have come off the quilt and are at her sides, and her fingers are flexing at the cloth, and her chest is moving a little fast.
I move down.
I take in another inch. I take in another.
I find the rhythm I will go at. The rhythm is slow.
The rhythm is the rhythm she does for me.
I press my tongue along the underside as I come down.
I draw back. I come down further. I take her until the silicone is at the back of my throat, and I hold a count, and I draw back.
"Evangeline."
"Mm."
"That is."
"Yes."
I do it again.
I do it slow. The base of the leather is set against her, flat, snug at the worn notch, and I have learned in the last six days how the harness presses on her when she rocks, and I rock my head a count and I see her hips lift in answer to the rock, and I know now what I am doing.
I am doing this for her body and her body is going to come on the leather while I take the silicone in my mouth, and the doing is for her and the silicone is the line between, and I am the woman on the line.
I take her deeper.
She makes a sound.
The sound is a sound I have not heard her make. The sound is the small unguarded sound of a woman who is being given a thing she did not ask for. I take her deeper. I hold a count. I draw back. I look up at her.
"Look at me," I say.
She is looking.
"Don't close your eyes."
"No."
"Watch me."
"Yes."
I take her down.
I take her as far as I can take her and my eyes are wet at the corner from the take and my throat is open and I hold and I draw back and I take her again, and her hand has come up and is in the back of my hair, not pressing, only there, and the press of her hand is the press of a woman who is letting me lead and is touching me to let me know she is here.
I work her.
I work her at the rhythm I have set. I rock my mouth.
I rock the harness against her. I press my left palm flat against her pussy where the leather sits on her between her legs, and I feel her wetness.
My palm presses there. The strap presses there.
My mouth works the silicone. Her hips lift at my mouth and her body lifts at my hand.
Her breath has gone short.
"Evangeline."
I do not stop.
"Evangeline. Up here."
I draw off.
I sit up. I stay on my knees between her knees with my mouth wet and my hand still flat at the front of her thigh.
"What."
"Up here."
I climb up. I straddle her thighs. The strap slides long and deep into my pussy and I moan at the feel of it.
She puts her hand at my jaw. She kisses me.
She kisses me with her tongue in my mouth.
She kisses me wet and long. She has not kissed me on the mouth while she has been wearing this harness before.
She kisses me until I am breathing into her mouth whilst riding the strap.
"Evangeline."
"Yes."
“Back down now.”
"Yes."
I obediently move off the strap and go back down. The dildo smells of sex now. It is covered in my juices.
I take it back into my mouth tasting myself.
She has shifted forward a little on the bed against the headboard, and I take her in with her hand in my hair now in a different way, with her fingers spread at the back of my skull, holding me but not pressing me.
I take her down all the way. I work her.
I rock the strap. I press my palm against the leather against her pussy.
She is breathing quicker now. Quicker and ragged. I think she likes watching me taste myself on it. Her hand grips tightly in my hair.
She comes.
She comes at my mouth with her hand in my hair and her hips lifted off the bed against the silicone and her mouth open against the headboard, and the sound she makes is a sound out of her chest that goes up the wall of the cabin and is held a count there, and I keep my mouth on her through it, and I keep the press of my palm through it, and I draw off only when her hand on my skull eases.
She lies back.
I sit up between her knees.
I am breathing hard.
She is breathing hard.
The lamp is on low and the strap is wet at the silicone and her hand has fallen open on the quilt beside her hip, and she has her eyes closed, and the corner of her mouth is doing the small thing it does at the kitchen counter in the morning.
"Evangeline."
"Yes."
"Come here."
I crawl up. I lie down on her. The strap is between us and I do not care. She wraps both arms around me. She holds me to her chest. She kisses the top of my head. I put my face into the side of her neck.
"Thank you," she says.
"Max."
"Yes."
"That was for me too. I wanted it so much. I got so much pleasure out of doing that for you.”
She is quiet a count.
"I know," she says.
"I have not done that for a person I love."
"I know."
"Max."
"Yes."
"I love you."
The cabin is very quiet.
The fire in the front room is low. The rain has not come back. The wind has not come up. The woman who pulled me out of a fire is under me.
She does not answer for a count.
Then she puts her hand on the back of my neck and she pulls my mouth up to hers, and she kisses me once, soft.
"Evangeline."
"Yes."
"I have known I love you since the first time I saw you. I love you.”
I close my eyes.
I close my eyes against the side of her neck and I lie on her chest with the strap warm and wet between us, and I lie still on her, and she puts her hand on the back of my head, and she keeps it there.
I do not move.
I close my eyes and I sleep.