1. Erika #2
“The one with the ninety-year-old chef who didn’t speak any English?”
“That’s the one.”
“You tried to order in Japanese and asked for the toilet instead of the tuna.”
He groans. “I was close.”
“You were not close. He laughed so hard he had to sit down.”
“Okay, but in my defense, those words sound very similar.”
“They do not.”
“Agree to disagree.” He reaches across the table, takes my hand. “Best two weeks of my life, though. Even with the linguistic failures.”
I squeeze his fingers. “Mine too.”
We eat in comfortable silence for a while, the silence that only comes from years of knowing someone, with no need to fill the space.
“Dora would love this,” I say, watching him wrestle with a particularly slippery piece of sashimi. “The way you’re massacring that fish.”
“My grandmother would have my head if she saw my chopstick form.” He finally captures the fish, triumphant. “She spent years trying to teach me. I was a disappointment.”
“You’re the least disappointing person I know.”
“You’re contractually obligated to say that. We’re married.”
“The contract says nothing about lying. I checked.”
He laughs, and I watch his eyes crinkle at the corners and his whole face transform the way it only does when he’s really happy, not polite-happy or work-happy.
“Tell me something,” he says, refilling my sake. “If you could have anything right now. Anything in the world. What would it be?”
I consider the question. We’re sitting in a house worth more than most small towns, wearing clothes that cost more than most people’s cars, eating food that was literally flown across the Pacific Ocean just for us.
What could I possibly want that I don’t already have?
“This,” I say finally. “Just this. You, me, no phones, no meetings, no…”
His phone lights up on the table.
We both look at it.
“Don’t,” I say.
“I won’t.” He flips it face-down without checking the screen. “Tonight is yours. Ours. Nothing else matters.”
I want to believe him, and I do.
After dinner, we end up in the pool.
He peels off my dress with careful hands and the silk puddles at my feet, and then I’m naked under the stars with him looking at me like I’m precious, like I’m worth protecting.
“Get in the water,” I tell him, suddenly shy under the weight of his gaze.
“I’m enjoying the view.”
“Kai.”
“Fine, fine.” He drops his towel, and I take my time about it, the long lines of him against the city lights, the way he stands there and lets me look because he likes being looked at by me, and then we’re both naked with the city glittering below us, and I think this might be what happiness looks like when you’re lucky enough to catch it.
The water is warm, perfectly heated, and I float on my back while he slides in beside me and pulls me against him by the waist, and I let my head fall back against his chest.
“I’ve been distracted lately,” he says quietly. “I know that.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not.” His chin rests on my shoulder. “There’s a thing at work I’ve been chasing for a while now. It’s been eating up more of my time than it should.”
I know about the work thing. I see his hours, the way he leaves before dawn and comes home after midnight, and the tension in his shoulders that never quite goes away, and I know what it is, because he told me once at two in the morning with his head in my lap: the land next to the first building his father ever put his name on, downtown, two lots the old man wanted so badly he drew the rest of the block anyway, on the chance.
The family that owns it wouldn’t sell to his father in ten years of asking. Kai wants to finish the drawing.
“My dad tried to make this happen for years,” Kai says. “Before the accident. If I can finally get them to sell…”
He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to.
Everything Kai does is for them, every late night and every sacrifice, because he’s trying to build a legacy worthy of the one they left him and prove that their trust wasn’t misplaced when they left everything they’d built to a grieving teenager.
I understand that. I’ve always understood that.
“Tonight was perfect,” I tell him, because it’s true. “Whatever’s happening with work, we’re okay. You know that, right? We’re okay.”
“Yeah.” He pulls me closer, and his voice is rough. “We’re okay.”
He turns me in his arms, and I wrap my legs around his waist so we’re chest to chest in the water, and he doesn’t rush this one.
He kisses me first, soft, then deeper, tongue stroking mine in lazy passes while his hands slide up and down my back, over the curve of my ass, up to cup my breasts under the surface, thumbs brushing my nipples until I moan into him and he swallows it.
“I’ve been thinking about touching you like this all night,” he murmurs. “Every time you smiled at me across that table I was imagining how wet you’d be by now.”
He proves it, one hand sliding between us to cup me, two fingers stroking through my folds, slow and deliberate, and I’m slick for him even in the water, and I put my hand on his jaw and hold his face where I can see it, because I want to watch him find that out.
“Fuck, Erika. So soft. So ready.”
I rock against his hand, chasing it. He kisses down my throat, sucking at the place that always makes me shiver, one finger circling my clit and then dipping lower to tease without pushing in.
“Tell me what you want.”
“You. Inside me. Slow.”
He makes a low approving sound and finally pushes one finger into me, then two, fucking me with them, unhurried, his thumb on my clit, kissing me the whole time, deep open-mouthed kisses that make the city lights swim.
When I’m trembling and clenching around his fingers he pulls them out and lines up, and instead of thrusting he drags himself against my clit, back and forth, letting me feel every inch of him first.
“Stay right here with me,” he whispers.
I do. His eyes are on mine as he pushes inside, slow and steady, stretching me open until there’s nowhere left to go, and we both let out the same breath.
He doesn’t move. He stays deep and kisses me, long, sweet, filthy kisses while we drift together in the warm water, his hands on my ass, holding me exactly where he wants me.
“I love you,” he says between kisses. “So much it scares me sometimes.”
“I love you too,” I breathe. “Always.”
Only then does he start to move, long deep rolls of his hips that rock me against him, water lapping around us with every stroke, one hand on my ass and the other between us on my clit, tight circles in time with him, and in the water like this I can feel every muscle in his back work under my hands, and I can watch the concentration on his face, the little furrow he gets when he’s holding himself back for me, and it’s the sexiest thing about him, that he holds back, that a man like him waits.
“You take me so well.” It’s against my mouth. “This pussy was made for me. Feel how deep I am?”
I can only moan. He kisses me harder, tongue moving with his thrusts, and every time he bottoms out he holds there for a second and grinds against my clit before he pulls back.
I come first, quiet but total, a wave through my whole body that curls my toes in the water, and he groans into my mouth when he feels me flutter around him.
“That’s it, baby. Let me feel it.”
He keeps moving through it, slow and deliberate, kissing me through every aftershock, and only when I start to come down does he let himself go, and I feel it before I see it, the change in his rhythm, and then I see it, his jaw going slack and his eyes squeezing shut and opening again on mine like he can’t stand not to look, one last deep thrust and then he’s pulsing inside me with my name broken in half in his mouth, and I hold him through it the way he held me.
We stay wrapped around each other after, floating, trading soft kisses and softer words while the stars come out.
Afterward, wrapped in towels on the pool lounger, I trace the tattoo over his heart.
It’s his parents’ initials, intertwined in elegant script, and he got it the year they died, when he was still a kid trying to make sense of a grief too big to hold, and I fall asleep with my head on his chest and his heartbeat steady in my ear.
I’m the luckiest woman alive, and I know it.
I wake up alone.
The bed is cold beside me, which means he’s been gone for a while, and the clock on the nightstand reads 2:47 a.m. in red numbers glowing in the dark.
Moonlight slants through the windows and paints silver stripes across our bedroom floor, and there on the edge of the mattress is Kai, back to me, shoulders tense, phone in hand. The screen lights his face, his jaw tight and his brow furrowed, and his thumb moves across the glass, typing.
“Kai?” My voice is thick with sleep.
He startles and sets the phone face-down on the nightstand, too quickly.
“Hey.” He slides back under the covers, pulling me against him. His skin is cold. He’s been up for a while. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Just work stuff. Go back to sleep.”
I nestle into his chest, letting his heartbeat anchor me. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I’m almost asleep again when the phone buzzes once more against the wood.
He doesn’t reach for it.
But I feel him tense beside me, feel his breath catch just slightly, and a chill runs down my spine.
In the morning, while he’s in the shower singing off-key to a song I don’t recognize, I see the notification on his lock screen. It’s just a name.
Isabella Lockhart.