Chapter Nineteen
Ihate when men sweat. I did my best to ignore the feel of it as I splayed my fingers wide in the thick patch of hair at the center of my husband’s chest. My thighs were beginning to burn as I circled my hips against his. I think I’d done the alphabet twice already, and he still hadn’t come.
He was waiting on me, and I knew it. I don’t know why I didn’t just fake it—I’d done it plenty of times. But I felt a strange anger in me that night at the entirety of the male race that wouldn’t allow me to simply arch my back and let out a loud moan just to get it over with.
“Come for me,” he pleaded, breathless. He dug his thumbs into the supple skin that folded over my hip bones, where they used to have a deep indentation, but child bearing and living off soul food for five years had taken that from me.
I was beginning to lose momentum, and I knew my knees would hate me for my stubborn behavior tomorrow. He gripped my hips tighter, pulling me back and forth against him, suddenly doing the work for me.
My husband was handsome. Incredibly so, if you asked the ladies at bible study—which I hadn’t but they’d told me so anyway. So I don’t know what prompted me to close my eyes, and picture August.
Maybe if it had been his younger face, with the scruff he used to get if he skipped shaving a few days; or even the way his body looked back then: not overtly muscular the way Andy’s had been, but lean and toned; it wouldn’t have made me feel guilty for the heat that suddenly pooled between my husband and I.
But instead it was his face as it had been in that damn video. Blonde curls, and laugh lines present at the corners of his mouth and eyes. Those brilliant green eyes. And those god-damned cheeks blushing coral.
A guttural sound escaped me. I can’t imagine what it must have sounded like to my husband—like some wild beast had possessed his wife.
It was nothing like the high pitched breathy sounds I had perfected over the years.
My vision began to swim, and my chest felt tight as the pleasure wracked through me.
My husband groaned, a near pain-filled sound as he lurched forward, his hands flying up to wrap around the backs of my shoulders, forcing my body to press against his. His hips jerked upward a few times as he came inside me, his breath hot and panting against my neck.
“Fuck,” he breathed out, ragged. “I haven’t seen you come like that in ages,” he smiled widely, so proud of himself.
By the time I got out of the shower, he was asleep. I padded softly out of the bedroom across the hall to the tiny office. I open my laptop, having a flood of fresh thoughts I’d gathered while in the shower that I was begging to be added to the manuscript I’d started earlier.
But when I opened the document I was not met with the story I had been cultivating, but a thick passage repeating the same phrase over and over:
I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest. I want you honest.
It went on for pages, sometimes breaking up formation between single lines, in and out of quotes, and varying lengths of paragraphs. I stared at it for a long time, tracing my fingertip over the screen like I might be able to reach inside and feel the scratch of the words.
It might’ve been the best thing I’d ever written.