6. Erika
— ? —
Erika
I tell him over breakfast, when the morning light is streaming through our kitchen windows and his phone is face-down on the table for once and he’s actually looking at me instead of through me.
“I have news,” I say, and my voice only trembles a little. “About my writing.”
He looks up from his coffee, curious and present in a way he hasn’t been in weeks. “What kind of news?”
“My book. The one I’ve been working on.” I take a breath, steeling myself, half-expecting the words to evaporate before I can get them out. “It’s a finalist for an award.”
For a moment he just stares at me, processing, and I hold my breath waiting for his reaction, because this is when I’ll know if he actually cares about my dreams or if they’re just background noise under his own ambitions.
Then his face breaks into a grin, wide and so much like the Kai I fell in love with that my heart clenches in my chest.
“Holy shit.” He’s out of his chair before I can react, pulling me up into his arms, kissing my face everywhere he can reach. “Are you serious? Baby, that’s incredible! I’m so proud of you.”
The relief that floods through me is almost embarrassing, and I feel tears pricking at my eyes because he’s happy for me, actually happy for me, and I didn’t realize how scared I was that he wouldn’t be until this moment.
“It’s a small award,” I say, trying to temper expectations even as hope blooms wild in my chest. “Indie publishing stuff. Not the New York Times or anything.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” He pulls back, hands on my shoulders, looking at me like I just told him I won the Nobel Prize.
“Erika, you wrote a book, a whole goddamn book, while working full-time and putting up with my bullshit and running our entire household, and it’s good enough to be nominated for an award. That’s not small. That’s everything.”
My eyes are burning now, tears threatening to spill over, and I blink fast to keep them contained because I don’t want to dilute this moment with crying.
“When’s the ceremony?” he asks.
“Two weeks. It’s a Friday night, downtown, nothing fancy, but…”
“I’ll be there.”
“Kai, you don’t have to rearrange your whole schedule, I know how busy you’ve been…”
“I’ll be there.” He frames my face with his hands, thumbs stroking my cheekbones, and his eyes are steady and certain.
“I know I’ve been shit lately, distracted and absent, and you’ve been picking up all my slack.
But this is your dream, this is what you’ve been working toward for years, and I’m not missing it. ”
“You promise?”
“I promise.” He kisses me, deep and sure, a kiss that makes my toes curl and my brain go fuzzy.
“Now. You’re taking the day off. No work.
Go get pampered, get your nails done, whatever you want.
I’m sending you to my stylist.” He grins, that crooked devastating grin I fell in love with.
“My wife is going to be the best-dressed woman in that room.”
For a moment, just a moment, I let myself believe that everything is going to be okay, that this is a turning point, the beginning of a version of our marriage where he sees me and shows up for the things that matter. I let myself hope.
The stylists arrive that afternoon, a whole team of them descending on our house like a particularly well-dressed SWAT team, hair first, then nails, then makeup trials that leave me looking like a stranger in the best possible way, someone I’ve forgotten how to be, someone who matters.
They bring gowns in garment bags, each one more beautiful than the last, and I try them on one by one in our bedroom while the stylist takes notes and makes sounds of approval or disapproval, too conservative, too flashy, wrong color for her skin tone, perfect length but the neckline is all wrong.
And then I try on the one, champagne silk, floor-length with a subtle slit that shows just enough leg when I walk, a neckline that’s elegant without being boring, fabric that catches the light and shimmers when I move.
I stare at myself in the mirror and barely recognize the woman looking back at me. She looks confident and poised, beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with the dress and everything to do with how she’s holding herself, shoulders back, chin up, like she knows she deserves to be seen.
“Jesus.” Kai’s voice comes from the doorway, rough in a way that makes my stomach flip. “You’re fucking gorgeous.”
“Language.” But I’m smiling, unable to help myself.
“I’ll show you language.” He crosses the room in three strides and takes my hips, and I can feel the heat of his palms through the silk, can hear his breath catch when he looks at me. “We should celebrate.”
“I thought that’s what the ceremony is for.”
“This is a private celebration.” He kisses my neck, teeth grazing the place that makes me forget my own name. “A preview celebration. An appetizer celebration.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It is now.”
I should protest, point out that the stylist is still in the other room and the hair person is packing up in the bathroom and we’re not exactly alone, but he’s sliding his hands around to my back, finding the zipper, and I can’t remember why any of that matters when he’s touching me like this, looking at me like this.
“Kai, the dress…”
“I’ll buy you another one.” The zipper slides down, slow and deliberate. “I’ll buy you ten. A hundred. Whatever you want.”
“That seems excessive.”
“You deserve excessive.” He turns me toward the mirror, and I watch him peel the silk from my shoulders, revealing skin that’s flushed and wanting. “You deserve everything. Look at yourself. Look at what you did. Do you understand how incredible you are?”
My eyes are burning again, and this time I let the tears fall, because he’s saying all the things I’ve been desperate to hear, the things I’d started to believe he’d never say.
“I’ve missed you,” I whisper.
“I’ve missed you too.” His reflection meets my eyes in the mirror, dark and intense. “After the ceremony. Things are going to change. I swear.”
I want to believe him. God, I want to believe him so badly it hurts.
The dress pools at my feet, and I’m standing there in nothing but my underwear, exposed and vulnerable and more seen than I’ve felt in months.
“Take me to bed,” I tell him. “Please.”
He doesn’t make me ask twice.
He lifts me like I weigh nothing, carries me to the bed, and lays me down like I’m breakable and precious at once, and the afternoon light slants through the windows, painting golden stripes across the sheets while he strips off his clothes with an efficiency that makes me smile, and when he catches me looking he slows down on purpose, the bastard, and I’ve been married to this man four years and I still forget how to swallow.
“Someone’s eager.”
“Someone’s been waiting weeks to have his wife’s full attention.” He climbs over me, bracketing my body with his arms, and I can feel the heat of him everywhere, even though we’re barely touching. “Someone’s been an idiot and is trying to make up for it.”
“You’re going to need to do a lot of making up.”
“I know.” He kisses me, soft and sweet, then pulls back to look at me. “So let me start.”
He kisses my forehead, both cheeks, the tip of my nose, and comes back to my mouth like he can’t stay away, and then he goes down my throat, open and wet, sucking at my pulse until I tilt my head to give him more, along my collarbones, over the tops of my breasts.
He palms one, thumb brushing my nipple through the lace until it’s tight, does the same to the other, then reaches behind me and unclasps the bra one-handed and it goes somewhere over his shoulder, and he takes a nipple into his mouth and sucks slow and deep, tongue flicking, while his hand kneads the other and rolls the peak between his fingers.
“God, I’ve missed these.” He switches sides and sucks harder, bites gently, soothes it with his tongue. “Love how they feel in my mouth. Love the way you arch when I do this.”
I arch. I can’t help it. He stays there a long time, worshiping them with his mouth and hands until they’re swollen and sensitive and every pull sends sparks straight between my legs, and I get my hands in his hair and hold his head there, and I’m squirming under him and wet enough that he can feel it against his thigh, and he slides his fingers down and into me without ever taking his mouth off my breast, two of them, curling, and I come like that, his mouth on my nipple and his hand between my legs and his name in my teeth.
“I need you,” I manage when I can talk. “But first…”
I push at his shoulder. He rolls onto his back without argument, and now he’s the one laid out in the light, and I take a second, because this is my favorite view in the house and I don’t get it enough, and then I crawl down him, kissing his chest, his stomach, the ridge of his hip, lower.
He’s hard and heavy against his abs, and I wrap my hand around the base and stroke once, slow.
“Erika…”
I lick the head, tasting the salt of him, then take him into my mouth, sucking the tip while my hand works the rest, letting my tongue swirl before I sink lower, and he groans, one hand sliding into my hair and not pushing.
“Fuck, baby. Your mouth.”
I take him deeper, hollow my cheeks, cup his balls and roll them while I bob my head, pull off to lick the underside, take him back in with my throat relaxed so I can have more of him, thick and hot and heavy on my tongue.
“Jesus Christ. Look at you. Taking my cock so deep. Such a good girl for me.”
I’m looking at him. That’s the point. His head is back and his throat is working and one hand is fisted in the sheet and the other is shaking in my hair, and I do a thing with my tongue and watch his whole body flinch, and I have never in my life felt as powerful as I do with this man’s cock in my mouth and his eyes squeezed shut like he can’t survive it.
I hum around him and he curses. I keep going, harder, hand and mouth together, wet and messy, and pull off just long enough to look up at him.
“Want to come in my mouth?”
He shakes his head, eyes wild. “Not this time. Need to be inside you.”
I climb back up his body and he kisses me the second I’m close enough, tasting himself, hands on my hips as I reach between us and line him up and sink down slow, inch by inch, until he’s buried all the way in.
We both groan. He stays still and lets me adjust, hands sliding up to my breasts again, thumbs on my nipples while I start to move, rolling my hips.
“Ride me,” he says. “Take what you need.”
I do. I rise and fall on him, slow, then faster, and he meets every stroke, hands on my ass now, guiding me, and he sits up to get his mouth on my breast again while I fuck him, sucking hard.
“Fuck, you feel good,” he says into my breast. “So tight. All mine.”
“Only yours,” I gasp, and he takes my chin in his hand and tips my face down to his, and his eyes are wrecked and dark and absolutely certain. “Then keep your eyes on me while you ride me,” he says, low, and I do.
He flips us suddenly, still inside me, hooks my legs over his arms and drives in deeper, and the angle is perfect, every thrust hitting the spot inside me, and he kisses me through it, messy and desperate.
“Come again for me,” he orders, ragged. “Want to feel you go while I fill you up.”
His hand slips between us to my clit and it takes nothing, I come hard, crying out his name, clenching around him, and he follows a beat later, thrusting deep and shaking through it with a low groan into my throat, and I want to do it again already.
He stays buried in me, kissing my neck, my jaw, my mouth, until our breathing slows, and his weight on top of me is grounding, and I run my fingers through his hair and listen to his heartbeat slow.
“Two weeks,” I say eventually.
He lifts his head, looks at me with those dark eyes that still make my stomach flip after all these years. “I’ll be there. Front row. I promise.”
I let myself believe him, and I fall asleep in his arms, feeling safe and seen for the first time in months.
At dawn, his phone rings.
I feel him tense beside me and reach for it automatically, and I keep my eyes closed because I don’t want to see his face when he looks at whoever’s calling, don’t want to watch him leave again.
“Shit.” His voice is low, barely above a whisper. “Yeah, I’m here. What’s the situation?”
Pause.
“No, I understand. I’ll be there in an hour.”
The bed shifts as he gets up, and I hear him moving around the room, getting dressed, gathering his things.
I should open my eyes, say a word, ask what’s wrong and if I can help and when he’ll be home, but I’m so tired of having the same conversation over and over, so tired of watching him choose work over everything else, that I just lie there with my eyes closed and pretend to be asleep.
His lips brush my forehead. “Love you,” he whispers. “I’ll make this up to you.”
The bedroom door closes behind him, and I’m alone in the morning light with the memory of last night and the weight of another broken promise pressing down on my chest.
Two weeks, I tell myself, just two more weeks.
He promised.