17. Delphine #2
“Please.” The word came out broken, desperate.
“Please what?”
And the part of me that had spent three months being polite about it simply gave out.
“Touch my cunt, Heath.” My voice did not sound like mine.
It sounded like a voice that had been kept in a box for a season.
“That’s what I’m asking you for. I’ve been lying next to you for three months with my back turned, wanting exactly this, too proud to say one word about it. So put your fucking hand on me.”
He made a sound like I had hit him.
He hooked his fingers in my waistband and pulled, sliding my sweats and underwear down my legs in one smooth motion. Then his hand was between my thighs, and I felt his fingers slide through the wetness there, and I gasped at the contact.
I heard it. That was the thing that finished me, that I heard it, the sound of his fingers going through how wet I was, obscene and wet and loud in a room with nothing in it but a fire and a storm.
“Christ.” He pressed his forehead against mine, his breath hot on my face. His voice had gone to pieces. “Del. What have you been doing to yourself for three months?”
“Nothing.” My hips came off the bed of their own accord, chasing his hand. “That’s the entire problem, Heath. Nothing.”
His fingers found the place that undid me and stayed there, unbearably light, drawing it out with a patience that made me want to bite him.
I grabbed his wrist and tried to make him go faster and he let me move his hand about an inch and then went right back to what he had been doing, which is the single most infuriating thing my husband does, and he does it because he knows exactly what it costs me.
“Let me take care of you.” He kissed my jaw, my cheek, the corner of my mouth. “Let me make you feel good. I’ve missed this. I’ve missed you so much.”
He slid one finger inside me, then two, curling them in a way that made my whole body clench. His thumb kept up its slow, devastating work, and I felt the tension building, building, my muscles tightening as I climbed toward release.
“Look at you.” His voice was reverent and completely wrecked.
“God, look at you. I never stopped, Del. Do you understand me? Not one day. Not one hour. Whatever you thought was happening in that house, whatever you decided about me across that table, I’ve wanted you every single second I’ve been alive since I was twenty-four years old, and it’s the most frightening thing about my entire life, how much, it’s never once gotten smaller, it just gets worse. ”
I was close. So close. I could feel the edge approaching, could feel my body coiling tighter and tighter.
And then he pulled his hand away.
“No.” The word came out as a whine. “Heath, please, I was so close...”
“I know.” He kissed me softly, maddeningly calm. “I want to taste you first.”
He slid down my body, his mouth leaving a trail of fire across my skin, until his shoulders were between my thighs and his breath was hot against my center.
“Hold on to the headboard,” he said. “You’re going to need it.”
I barely had time to comply before his mouth was on me.
He licked a long, slow stroke through my folds, and I cried out, my hands gripping the headboard so hard my knuckles went white. He did it again, and again, his tongue exploring every inch of me with a thoroughness that bordered on worship.
“You taste so good.” He groaned against me, the vibration rolling straight through me. “I could do this forever.”
He focused his attention on the spot that made me shake, his tongue circling and flicking while his fingers slid back inside me. The dual sensation was overwhelming. I felt myself climbing again, felt the tension coiling in my belly, felt the edge rushing toward me.
“That’s it.” His voice was muffled against my thigh. “Come for me, Del. Let go.”
But just as I was about to fall, he pulled back again.
“No, no, no...” I was almost sobbing now, my body trembling with frustrated need. “Please, Heath, please, I can’t...”
“Yes, you can.” He kissed the inside of my thigh, gentle and infuriating. “One more time. I want you so ready for me that you come the second I’m inside you.”
He lowered his mouth to me again, and this time he didn’t tease. He focused on the spot that mattered, his tongue relentless, his fingers pumping inside me, and I felt the wave building, building, cresting.
“Now,” he said. “Come now.”
I broke apart with a sound I did not recognize as mine, everything in me clamping down at once, my whole body bowing up off the bed while he held me open and did not let up until I was pushing at his wrist, oversensitive and gasping and laughing and half crying all at once.
Before I could come down, before the aftershocks had even faded, he was climbing back up my body, pushing his boxers down, positioning himself at my entrance.
“I need you.” His voice cracked. “I need to be inside you, Del. I need it so much I can’t breathe.”
“Yes.” I wrapped my legs around his hips. “Yes, please, yes.”
He pushed inside me in one long stroke, and we both gasped. He was big, stretching me in a way that was almost painful but not quite, filling me so completely that I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began.
“God.” He dropped his forehead to mine, his whole body trembling with the effort of staying still. “You feel so good. You feel like home.”
Then he started to move.
It was slow at first, a gentle rocking that let my body adjust to him. But I didn’t want gentle. I didn’t want slow. I wanted the desperate, consuming passion that had always defined us, the hunger that had never faded no matter how much distance came between us.
“Harder,” I gasped. “I need more.”
He groaned and gave me what I asked for, his hips snapping against mine, driving deeper with every thrust. I met him stroke for stroke, my nails raking down his back, my mouth finding his in a kiss that was more teeth than tenderness.
“So good.” He was panting now, his rhythm becoming erratic. “You’re so good for me, Del. So perfect. My perfect wife.”
The words sent another wave of pleasure through me, and I felt myself climbing again, impossibly, another orgasm building in the wake of the first.
“I’m close,” I gasped. “Heath, I’m going to...”
“Me too.” His hand slid between us, finding that sensitive spot, pressing hard. “Come with me. I want to feel you come around me.”
The second one caught me completely off guard, rolling in right behind the first before I had finished with it, and I clenched around him so hard he swore and lost his rhythm entirely, and then he was gone too, pouring into me with his face jammed into my neck and my name coming out of him like it hurt.
We lay there for a long time afterward, tangled together, our breathing slowly returning to normal. The fire had burned low, casting the room in a warm amber glow. The storm still raged outside, but in here it was quiet. Peaceful.
His hand moved to my stomach, resting gently over the place where our baby was growing.
“I love you,” he said softly.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. There were too many feelings tangled up inside me, too many things I didn’t know how to say.
We lay there in the darkness, his body warm against mine, and I let myself feel everything I had been trying not to feel for weeks. The love. The anger. The grief. The hope.
“Heath,” I said finally.
“Hmm?”
“This wasn’t forgiveness.”
He went still beside me. Then, slowly, he nodded.
“I know.”
“I mean it. This doesn’t change anything. This was just... this was just tonight.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
He turned his head to look at me, and in the dim light I saw the pain in his eyes, the acceptance, the quiet determination.
“Yes,” he said. “I understand. And I’m still going to keep trying, Del. Every single day. Until you believe me.”
I closed my eyes and let the exhaustion pull me under.
That was not forgiveness.