18. Az #2
He’s grinning again, hat pushed back, and in the amber light filtering through the plastic he looks like something out of a memory.
Like the guy I met at that bar in Silver Lake, all awkward jokes and too-long pauses and a voice that made me forget how to speak.
Like the guy who paced outside my door the first morning until I invited him back to cook eggs.
Like my husband.
He is my husband. Still. Despite everything.
I stand, using the propagation bench for leverage, and he’s there immediately, not touching, just there, close enough to catch me if I need it. I don’t need it. But I also don’t step away.
“Eli.” His name is barely a breath.
“Yeah?”
“I’m still mad at you.”
“I know.” He doesn’t move an inch.
“I’m still-” I stop, because the next word is hurt and I can’t say it, not yet, not when I can feel the heat of him through the thick air. “This doesn’t mean I forgive you.”
“I know,” he says again, quieter.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yes ma’am.”
That should irritate me. The ma’am, the easy agreement, the way he waits now even when I can see him wanting to.
But it doesn’t irritate me. It cracks open the grief I’ve been holding tight for six weeks, for longer than that, since the birthday dinner, since Brynn and her roses and her lies, since I walked into our bedroom and saw his side of the bed still perfectly made because he hadn’t come home again.
I kiss him.
It’s not a decision. It’s a collapse, gravity giving up, common sense checking out, my hands fisting in the sweat-damp fabric of nothing because he’s not wearing a shirt and my palms are suddenly flat against his chest and oh, that’s what his heartbeat feels like, fast and hard under my fingers like he’s just as terrified as I am.
He doesn’t move at first. Doesn’t breathe, I think. Just stands there with my mouth on his like I might break if he responds.
Then his hands come up, slow, so slow, giving me time to pull away, and cup my face like I’m something precious, something he’s been waiting his whole life to hold.
“Az,” he says against my lips.
“Don’t talk.”
“But-”
“Don’t.”
I kiss him again harder, angry at my own mouth for needing his, and shove him backward until his hips hit the propagation bench.
Seed trays rattle. A dahlia start tips, rights itself, sheds a crumb of soil onto the boards.
The greenhouse plastic glows amber around us like a held breath, and somewhere outside a cicada screams like it knows what we’re about to do.
“This still doesn’t mean I forgive you,” I snarl against his teeth.
“Yes ma’am.” His hands stay at his sides until I grab them and slap them onto my waist hard enough to sting. “Az, Lupe’s in the barn. Mateo could come back early-”
“Then you’d better be quiet, and you’d better be fast, and you’d better brace my belly, because if you make me fall into the potting mix I will end you with a trowel and tell the sheriff it was an agricultural accident.”
Something wild flickers through his eyes, relief and hunger and the particular insanity of a man who has been starving for permission for six weeks. “Tell me the rules. All of them. I’ll follow every filthy one.”
“Hand over my mouth when I get loud. Don’t you dare finish inside me without asking.
Don’t say you love me. Don’t make this gentle like I’m fragile glass.
I’m twenty-eight weeks pregnant, not porcelain, and I still know how to take a cock without breaking.
” I yank his belt. “And if you call me Flower right now I will walk out and take the water jar with me.”
“No Flower, got it. No love declarations, no glass treatment.” He’s already hard against my stomach, and he looks briefly terrified by the geography of that. “I don’t want to put pressure on you-”
“She’s fine. She’s asleep. She’s going to have a father who learns to hydrate and a mother who makes terrible decisions against propagation benches.
” I yank at the button of his work jeans hard enough that it pops free.
“Off enough. Don’t strip. We don’t have time for naked poetry or interpretive shirt removal. ”
He laughs once, sharp as a snapped stake, then goes quiet when I shove his jeans and boxers down just far enough. His cock springs free, thick and flushed and glistening at the tip, and I take him in hand without ceremony. He presses his forehead to mine with a hissed curse against my lips.
“Fuck, Az, your hand. Tighter-”
“My hand is busy setting the tempo. Yours should be under my dress finding out how angry-wet I am.”
He obeys like it’s religion and apology braided together.
Fingers slide up my thigh, past the soft swell where June lives, find me already soaked through cotton, and he makes a sound that is half groan half prayer.
“You’re dripping. You’ve been watching me haul fifty-pound flats and getting soaked about it while telling yourself the only emotion allowed is fury. ”
“I am only furious.” I stroke him harder, twist on the upstroke just to watch his jaw go slack. “Mad and wet is a valid ecosystem. It has its own weather patterns. Finger me before I change my mind and go inventory the seed packets instead.”
Two fingers push into me, careful of the angle, thumb brushing my clit in maddening circles.
I rock onto his hand and hate how good it is, hate the way my body sings for him while my chest still holds the bruise of everything he broke.
The bench edge digs into the backs of my thighs.
Soil scent and sweat and green things thicken the air until I can barely think past more and mine and still not yours the way you want.
“Quiet,” he reminds me, voice sandpaper, and then his free hand covers my mouth, broad palm, guitar-calluses against my lips, and the restraint of it sends a filthy jolt straight through my spine. I moan into his skin. His eyes go black as greenhouse shade.
“Yeah,” he breathes. “Like that. Scream into my hand. Let the dahlias hear what you won’t put in a text. Let Café au Lait know how wet you get for the husband you’re still punishing.”
I shove his fingers deeper by grinding down, then pull them out, spit into my palm, crude, fast, unhinged, and stroke him once with the slick. “Inside, now. Condom. If you say you forgot one I will end this marriage with horticulture.”
“Wallet. Back pocket. Always, since the night I almost fell off your bed looking for one.” He digs it out one-handed, tears the packet with his teeth, rolls it on with shaking efficiency while I watch, chest heaving. “Still not forgiveness?”
“Still not. Still going to use you like a tool I haven’t returned to the shed.
” I spin myself before he can ask, plant my palms on the propagation bench among the labeled stakes, Café au Lait, Cornel Bronze, Ferncliff Illusion, and shove my ass back into him.
“Turned. Braced. Now put it in me before I remember dignity.”
He lifts my dress to my waist with reverence he isn’t allowed to name. One huge arm bands under my belly, supporting my weight. The other guides himself to my entrance, the blunt head of him nudging, teasing, waiting.
“Last chance to walk back to your lukewarm decaf,” he murmurs at my ear.
“Last chance to shut up and fuck your angry wife against the dahlias she actually likes.”
He pushes in slow because of the pregnancy, because of the angle, because even unhinged he won’t risk us, and the stretch still punches a whimper out of me that his palm catches when it flies back over my mouth.
He seats himself deep and holds, trembling, forehead pressed between my shoulder blades.
“Okay?” The word is scraped raw.
I nod hard against his hand. Then I reach back, rake my nails down his bare hip, and yank him into a thrust that makes the seed trays chatter.
He takes the hint like a man handed a map out of hell.
The pace he finds is quick and quiet and devastating, measured enough to stay comfortable, deep enough to make my eyes roll, his forearm a steady shelf under my belly, his other hand sealed over my lips so every filthy sound stays trapped between his skin and my teeth.
“You feel insane,” he pants into my hair. “Hot and tight and furious. Using my cock like equipment. God, Az, use me. Hate-fuck me until the shade cloth falls down and Mateo finds us and I have to explain agricultural husbandry.”
I bite the meat of his palm hard enough to leave crescents.
He hisses and thrusts harder, still controlled, still bracing me, and the bench creaks a complaint into the thick air.
Somewhere outside the goat bleats like he’s filing a formal comment with the county.
I would laugh if my mouth weren’t occupied with the taste of his restraint.
“Touch yourself,” Eli orders, soft and wrecked and bossy in a way he only gets when I’ve given him the reins for three minutes. “I can’t… I’ve got the belly and your mouth. Rub your clit and come on my cock while you’re still mad at me. Give me that much. Please. Weaponize it.”
I shove my hand between my legs and rub in frantic circles, fingers slipping, finding the exact pressure that makes my knees threaten mutiny.
The orgasm builds mean and fast, spiked with adrenaline and stupid heat and the knowledge that Lupe is fifty yards away sorting seed trays loud enough to wake the dead on purpose.
When it hits I scream into his palm, thighs shaking, cunt clenching around him in angry rhythmic pulses that drag a broken sound out of his chest.
“That’s it, fuck, that’s my girl, still mad, still coming, still-” He cuts himself off before the forbidden words, hips stuttering. “Can I, Az, can I finish-”