Chapter 29 Monique
Monique heard him walk the length of the room at least four times before he sat down. She laughed to herself and scrubbed her face clean of makeup and tears, leaving behind puffy eyes and kiss-swollen lips.
The woman in the mirror looked wrecked and wired. The color in her face had nothing to do with any makeup. It came from somewhere within her. She brushed her fingers along the apples of her cheeks. The red-brown there was pretty. It had been missed.
Her body pulsed in a way that she thought she’d lost and had stopped waiting for.
Somewhere between surgeries and treatments and the years of just getting by, she’d made peace with that part of her not being there anymore.
She didn’t know when she’d stopped grieving it—this loss of sexuality—and flowed with the quiet.
The first knock in Puerto Rico got her curious, but Maurice was why she opened the door.
With a grunt, she reached behind her and pulled her dress zipper down a few measly inches. She wanted it off. All of it. The remnants of other people’s perfumes, of candle wax, of solemnity. It needed to go. Now.
When she showed him her lingerie in Puerto Rico, he’d been speechless. Although she had on a full slip and granny panties, she was sure he’d have the same reaction if only she could get out of this damn dress.
The simple black dress was appropriate for the day, but her wardrobe now felt like it belonged to another person, another life.
Her mind tried to tell her that being here with Maurice in this way was wrong. Her friend had just died. They’d said their last goodbyes at the mausoleum hours before. Yet, she had never felt more alive, arousal thrumming through her body. She was wrung out by the tears and confusion.
We’ve only got one life, Chickie had told her mere days ago. The girl who had smiled through a lifetime of pain would be pissed that she was locked in the bathroom, denying herself something good because of her. That damn group had rewired her brain.
“Stop it,” she said to her reflection and tugged the zipper down a little bit more. Doctors and therapists had told her that extreme feelings, including desire, were common post-surgery and treatments. Tedrow would tell her having feelings meant she was alive and that she should explore them.
“Ugh.” The zipper wouldn’t budge any farther. She worked herself out of the sleeves, fabric straining, and managed to turn the dress around and unzip it all the way.
When she opened the bathroom door, Maurice was standing at the window, looking out at the airport.
He turned at the sound, his face a mix of reverence and open desire as his eyes roved over her in her simple slip and bare feet.
The afternoon sun silhouetted him, nearly stealing her breath.
She fought the urge to run across the thin carpet and into his arms.
“You’re so beautiful.” The words sounded like a prayer to her ears, but he didn’t move.
“Then why are you all the way over there?”
He took a few steps and was standing in front of her. Her hands went to his shirt to finish working the buttons free. His firm chest undulated under her touch. “Monique—”
That thrill she had talked about missing was ratcheting up the track. She shook her head. “Don’t.” She walked them backward until his legs bumped into the bed. She pushed him down. She joined him on the bed, straddling him.
Maurice let out a strained groan, eyes wrenched shut.
“Touch me, please.” She’d spent days—years—being supportive and in control, holding it all together. A tear slid down her cheek, and Maurice reached up to cradle her face.
“Why are you crying?” He sat up and drew her to him, this position trapping an inferno between them.
“I don’t know. I’m in my head and outside of my body one minute, then I’m inside my body and not in my head the next. I don’t wanna think. I just wanna feel for once.” She pressed her hips down on his, her body remembering the delicious euphoria that grinding on him had brought.
Her hips explored, seeking. “I’m so tired, Mo.”
His arms were around her, but his hands, calloused but tender, were somewhere else.
“Baby, please, I need more—something other than what has been. I need you.”
His breath trembled against her neck, raising gooseflesh along her spine.
His lips stayed there, pressed against her pulse.
He kissed her there. “I love you, Monique. I don’t want to disappoint you.
” His mouth moved down her shoulder, pulling her straps down on one side.
His other hand dragged the other strap down, pressing her now bare breasts against his chest. He squeezed her tighter, still kissing along her neck. His hips rocked under her.
“Oh God, I need…”
“What do you need, my love? Tell me.”
No lover had ever asked her that and meant it. “Make me feel good, Mo. Will you do that for me, please?”
“Yes.” His voice was gruff. Lust-addled. “I’d do anything for you.”
“Then make love to me.”
His breathing stopped and so did his movements. “Are you sure?”
“Come on, it’s not like we haven’t done everything but the deed. Don’t put on your chastity belt now, Reverend.” His control and discipline made her want to be open and wild. “Stop being careful with me. I promise I won’t break.”
“But I might,” he said, crashing his lips against hers, tongue hot, wet, and wild. His hands were everywhere, but not giving nearly enough. “Take this off,” he said, tugging on her slip. “Lemme see you.”
She stood from the bed and stepped out of her slip and underwear.
His eyes were more thorough than the TSA body scan.
Insecurity tried to enter the chat. “You’re staring,” she said.
“I’m memorizing.”
Something shifted inside her. Not confidence, exactly. More like acceptance. This was her body. Battle-scarred and middle-aged and alive.
“Teach me how to love you,” he said, his finger tracing the scar along her lower belly that ran from hip to hip.
Monique hissed at the contact.
He leaned forward and kissed her hysterectomy scar, radiation burns, and stretch marks.
His mouth, moist and warm, was so different than the persistent itching she’d been living with.
His fingers pressed into her soft belly as he explored the tapestry of her body.
A tingling began somewhere deep inside her, right there where he touched her.
“You are so beautiful here.” He kissed her belly again, and then her heart.
One hand slid over the swell of her hip, and the other cupped her breast.
The overwhelm buckled her knees, and she grabbed onto his shoulders. The solidness of him. The warmth. The realness of his strong, steadfast, healthy body.
“Stop thinking so much, Monique.” The scrape of his teeth against the underside of her breast made her squeak in surprise, and arousal built between her legs.
“You have too many clothes on.”
“I can fix that,” he said as he stood.
She pushed the shirt off his shoulders and watched it float to the floor.
Her hands mapped his chest, enjoying the ridges and planes beneath her fingers.
Brown, white, and pink scars littered his body.
She recognized cigarette burns and cuts that didn’t heal correctly.
Her fingers went to a ridge on his side.
He stilled her hand. “I got stabbed during a riot my first year inside.” He took her hand and placed it on a mark at his right shoulder. It looked like a lightning bolt, bright and jagged. “And here at about year fifteen, and I’d just been ordained.”
He led her fingers to his right collarbone and brought them around to the back of his neck. Multiple comet-shaped scars. “When I was fifteen, and he was choking me.”
Monique shuddered, and his eyes closed. For a long moment, she just rested her head there against his wounds.
He’d been just a little bit younger than her kids when she was first diagnosed.
So similar. Children who’d been forced to make a choice and be strong.
She hadn’t understood a thing until now.
Her mouth went to every scar she found, and there were many. Each one a vivid story. Proof of survival.
She sat back and looked at him—really looked at him in that way she examined something worth keeping, even if she couldn’t understand why she couldn’t let it go. “You have no idea how beautiful you are, do you?”
She didn’t wait for him to answer. Her mouth swallowed whatever he meant to say—his moans, his yes, every bit of it.
Her hands went to his belt and worked it loose, and he let her, because she knew the way and he had asked her to show him.
His erection bobbed between them, thick, heavy, and leaking.
She gripped him and watched his eyes roll.
“Come here,” she said, moving to the bed.
He followed, and when they came together, skin on skin, he was warmth. He was presence. He was relief. He was somebody who wanted her without reservation.
She pushed him onto his back and straddled him.
His length pressed between them. She’d been wet since she saw him.
If she was being honest, since the elevator.
The first slip of her sex against his wasn’t intentional.
Just clumsy. They both grunted as their bodies caught the beat together.
Her body had known what it wanted way before her mind caught up.
“Monique…” He moaned her name as she aligned him with her entrance and sank down.
She gasped at the completion. A surrender to this desire, to this moment, this life with him.
“Let me see you,” Maurice said.
She took him into herself slowly. Ten years out of practice, but her body still knew what to do. Where they were joined stretched, making her breath catch. Too much and not enough. When their hips met, she went still. Assessing. Adjusting. He was still too.
“I… this feels…” he started.
Her insides rippled. “Yeah,” she said on a breath. “I know.”
She started to move. Slow at first. Part to savor this experience and part to learn. To find the rhythm to a song that was just theirs.
Maurice’s hands were on her hips, her waist, her breasts, her neck, drifting over her like something delicate.
“Harder,” she moaned as she rolled her hips.
His hold on her changed as he took control. The pace changed. Deliberate. She could feel him so deep inside her.
His eyes never left hers. That’s what did it. The watching, like she was the only thing worth his attention.
“Are you gonna come for me?”
The words surprised her, and she laughed.
He meant it.
He sat up and took her nipple into his mouth. She stopped laughing.
Pressure built fast after that. On instinct, her hand moved between them.
Maurice watched it all. Attentive. Learning.
Adjusting. She felt the shift before she understood it.
His stroke changed as he continued to pump into her.
When he increased the suction on her nipple, she cried out, “Holy fuck…”
The orgasm rushed her. No warning. She screamed more words, maybe his name. Her body clenched and shuddered as she collapsed onto his chest, hips still jerking.
His movements slowed.
“No,” she said, “don’t stop, please.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and turned them over, still connected.
“You’re the loveliest when you come,” he said, kissing her deep and languid.
His movements were slow. An excruciating ecstasy, extending her orgasm.
He pulled nearly all the way out and slammed into her again and again until she was a boneless, whimpering mess.
When she thought she’d lose her mind, he swelled and pulsed inside her, releasing his own string of incoherent sounds.
He kissed her suddenly, their hearts hammering, breaths gone. Faces wet. They weren’t only her tears.
“Hey,” she said, taking his face in her hands, his beautiful eyes bright with wetness. “What’s going on? I’m supposed to be the weepy one.”
The look in his eyes. The eyes of someone awakening from terror, she recognized it. She was awakening too. Gathering him to her, she whispered, “I gotchu,” until he calmed.
Outside, Chicago kept doing what it always did. In here, they didn’t have to.