38. I Want it With You
I Want it With You
ELLIE
Despite my protests that it was too late for Henry, Mom said she wasn’t going to be back until ten-thirty, when the fireworks were over. “He can sleep in the stroller,” she assured me. I stopped arguing as the three of them whistled their way out the door.
We now had three and a half hours of precious alone time. I was tempted to drag Sam directly into bed.
But I wanted to savor it. And I also had things to say.
After we’d said goodbye to the crew, I’d instructed Sam to wait for me out on the balcony while I got us some refreshments.
Now, on my way out there, I took in his knee, bouncing wildly as he looked out over the river, where the sun was starting its descent into the hills.
At the sound of me stepping out onto the balcony, he smiled.
“Hey,” he said, jumping up to help me with the bottle of wine and glasses I’d brought out.
“I’m okay,” I said, but he was already taking them from me, setting them on the table in front of the outdoor couch.
As he fussed to push the cushions back to make room for me, I laughed. “You sure you didn’t bring a red carpet?”
“Should I have?” He looked serious.
I laughed again, shaking my head.
Sam waited until I was sitting comfortably before he sat again. Down on the street, happy conversations and laughter sounded over the noise of cars and patio music. It was lively down there, the sounds of the town excited about a night of celebration contagious, even from up here.
Sam looked out at the pinkening sky. “It’s a nice night for fireworks.” His knee started to bounce again, his fingers tight on the arm of the couch.
“It is.” I was nervous, but apparently not nearly as much as Sam.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly.
“I’m uh…” He met my eyes. “No, actually. I feel kind of sick.”
“Oh. Do you want some water? I can—”
“Not that kind of sick, El.” His lips tilted just a little. “You said you wanted to talk, and I want to too, I just…” He perked up. “Maybe I should tell you about the other things I got?”
I reached over and took his hand. His palm was damp and he cursed under his breath, wiping his hands on his knees. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I feel like a fucking teenager. You’re the sexy older woman, by the way.”
I laughed. “Mrs. Higgenbottom.”
He gave me a sheepish grin.
“Sam,” I said. “What I wanted to talk to you about isn’t bad.”
He looked at me, his eyes intense, like he was willing me to say Psych!
But when I smiled, he visibly relaxed, sinking into the couch. “Oh thank Fuck, Ellie. I was about to shit my pants.”
I laughed, covering my eyes with my hand. “Sam. Ew.”
“Not really.”
I lowered my hand. This guy.
He waited patiently.
“Well,” I began, “I just wanted to say, Sam, that I wasn’t being fair before.”
A line formed between his brows. “What do you mean?”
“When I told you last week… before…” I swallowed again. I was going to get a strained neck at this point. “When I told you I didn’t know what I could give you. The truth is, I do know what I can give you. I’m just…well, I’m fucking terrified.”
Sam’s brow smoothed. For the first time since I’d sat down, he looked more like the calm one. “Ellie. Trust me. Nothing you say will scare me.”
I think I knew that. But I’d spent my whole life holding back. Keeping my heart on ice, even as I tried to open up to people. But I was done now. This was the big thaw. “Sam,” I said. “I told you I made a rule about dating after what happened with my ex.”
“Yes, and it makes sense.”
“To me it does. It did. But it wasn’t fair to tell you that and then turn around and—” I hand-waved. “You know.”
“Blow my mind with hot sex?” Sam offered.
My cheeks heated, but I laughed. “Yeah, that.” My smile fell. “But it’s not just about sex for me, Sam. And… I don’t think it is for you, either.” My heart pounded. “Right?”
I was still holding his hand, but now, Sam shifted them so he was holding mine.
“Ellie. We had sex the first night we met. Even knowing how incredible it was with you, that’s not what I think about when I remember that night.
Not anymore, anyway.” He grinned a little sheepishly.
Then he started massaging my hand, right where it always ached.
“What do you think about?” I whispered.
“I think about how I probably knew, in some way, that I was a goner for you when you laughed at whatever it was I said down in the bar that night. That laugh, it was genuine. Like you didn’t have an agenda.
Actually, like you didn’t trust me, but you still…
” He laughed a little ruefully. “You still liked me.”
“I’ve always liked you, Sam,” I said. “That’s never been the problem. The problem is I didn’t know how to let myself have more. I still don’t know. But what I wanted to tell you was… I’m willing to give it a try.”
Sam’s hands stilled on mine. “What are you saying, Ellie?”
“I’m saying I want to sleep with you again, Sam.”
He didn’t laugh.
I looked down, my heart jackhammering in my chest. “I’m saying I want to let you in, Sam. I want to be more than friends. I want to let myself—” I looked up, meeting his eyes. “I want to let myself dream of the future again, only the one I truly want. One where you’re with me, too.”
Sam let out a long breath. He held my palm over his, closing his other hand on top. “Well, that’s great.”
“Great?” My heart beat sideways.
“Yeah, great. Because I’m in love with you, Ellie. Head over fucking heels.”
My chest felt like it was exploding. Like the fireworks that were supposed to be tonight were going off right behind my ribcage.
“Well that’s great,” I whispered, repeating his bland adjective. I shifted my hand to his chest, feeling the thump of his heart under my palm. I slid my other hand around the back of his shoulders, shifting closer to him on the couch. “Because I think I love you too, Sam.”
Sam’s hands gripped my face, his eyes wide. “Ellie. Tell me you’re not just saying that.”
I laughed, my eyes growing wet. “Sam, do I seem like the kind of person who’d make that up?”
He shook his head. “No. I know you wouldn’t. It’s just all my fucking dreams are coming true so you know, I need to kick the tires a little to make sure—”
“Be sure,” I whispered. “I’m handing you my heart on a silver platter. So be sure, Sam. Please.”
He nodded. “Right. Yes. I…uh… I’m going to kiss you now.”
“Is that all?”
He shook his head. “Nope. We have three hours and”—he squinted at the clock inside—“sixteen minutes. I’m going to use every single one making you remember who loves you, El.”
I laughed. But then it was gone, swept away in the biggest, sappiest, softest, most sparks-filled kiss of my life.
I was in love. I could admit that now. I could also admit that what I felt before for anyone else paled compared to this.
What I’d felt before was attachment. Fear.
A desperate desire to be loved back. But this?
Having Sam love me back was a gift. A brilliant, incredible, breathtaking gift to be sure.
But it was me loving him completely that felt like the real gift.
To love someone all the way, knowing you’d survive no matter the outcome—that was how I knew I was the biggest winner here.
Sam pulled away, looking into my eyes.
“I love you,” I whispered, trying it out. Seeing how it felt. I laughed, my tears flowing freely now. It felt like everything.
Sam crushed me against him, the kiss deeper now, more insistent. His hands travelled to my hair, where he tilted my head sideways, which intensified the kiss. It was sweet before. Precious and good. Now it was hungry. Needy and possessive.
I moaned as Sam’s tongue met mine, teasing, toying, dancing against me. He shifted so his hands slipped down under my arms, gliding down my ribs so he could pull me, gasping, on top of him.
He was already hard for me. I could feel him through the thin gusset of my underwear.
“Fuck, Ellie,” Sam said against my lips, his face dipping down to my throat. “I want to be inside of you so bad.” He kissed my throat, my collarbone, the top of my breast emerging from the neckline of my dress. “But I want to taste every part of you too. What’s a man to do?”
“We have time,” I whispered, laughing.
But heat was blossoming between my legs, and as his mouth dipped lower on my chest, his hands discovered my dress stretched.
He made an animalistic kind of sound as he tugged the neckline down as far as it would give without my breasts popping out.
Support had been cleverly built into this garment for people with bigger girls like me, so when he discovered there was nothing under the dress itself, he went a little mad.
“Ellie, the whole river walkway is going to see your tits in a minute if we don’t go downstairs. Actually, they’re going to see me devouring your tits and then I’ll get arrested.”
I laughed. My back was to the street, and there were barriers between this place and the neighbors. But still, I lived here.
“I like how you dressed up,” I said, tugging gently at his tie.
Sam reached up, kissing my jaw as he loosened the knot. “I wanted to look good for you. But also I have to confess something.”
I frowned. “What’s that?”
“I’ve been buying things I shouldn’t have.”
I had no idea what that meant. “Like ties?”
He chuckled. Then he pulled the tie out from his collar and tossed it aside. “Something else. It’s becoming a problem.”
“You’re starting to freak me out.”
“It’s not bad. I don’t think. But—”
He cleared his throat, and began unbuttoning his shirt.
He was wearing another one underneath. A t-shirt, with something written on it.
Impatient, I helped him open the rest of the buttons. Then I pulled his button-down shirt aside.
And clapped my hand over my mouth.
“Oh, Sam.”
“I keep seeing them and I keep buying them. I got some for you, too. Like, a lot of them.”
He was wearing a dad shirt. One of those corny ones they sold in gift shops. This one said, “Dad in the streets, Daddy in the sheets.”
“I would never wear it outside, I promise!”
I nearly fell off of him I was laughing so hard. “What do the mom ones say?”
“My favorite one has a bunch of raisins on it and it says ‘Mom: she’s raisin us right.’”
I laughed in the way one does with a terrible dad joke. Which I guess these kind of were for him.
I went slightly gooey inside. “They’re very sweet Sam. Just like you.”
He stroked my hair back from my face. “I got something else too. For me, but for you. For us.”
He looked suddenly nervous.
“I wasn’t going to tell you tonight. It felt kind of presumptuous. Only later, if things went well.”
I frowned, totally confused. “What is it?”
“It’s not a thing. It’s um, a date. An appointment, I mean.”
I quirked my head, still lost. “STI testing?” I asked, half-joking.
“No. I got that done before the last time I met you. And haven’t been with anyone since.”
Of course. He’d told me all of that. Just like I’d told him that first night we were together.
“Though I did get tested again. Just to be triple sure. But it’s not that.”
“Tell me already!”
He smiled. “It’s a vasectomy, Ellie. So you don’t ever have to worry again.”
For a moment, I didn’t say anything.
Sam’s expression went from hopeful to confused. “Ellie. That’s a good thing, right?”
I swallowed, backing off of his lap. “Yeah.”
But my voice didn’t match the word. Neither did the way I was sitting on the couch next to him, my body suddenly in turmoil.
“Ellie, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I just…don’t know if I want you to do that.”
Sam was frozen. But it only lasted a moment before his pupils began to flare slightly. “Ellie. What are you saying?”
I didn’t know what I was saying. I didn’t think this would come up. Ever.
“I just um… I…”
“Ellie,” His voice was low. Serious, like he didn’t trust himself to speak. “Would you be open to having more babies? With me?”
His tone was so loaded, my heart thumped hard and fast in my chest.
I took a shaky breath. “I think maybe there’s a possibility I am.
I um… I love my kids. I’m happy right now.
But I never got the chance to anticipate them, you know?
Like to try for a baby. To feel that joy and excitement and anticipation.
To see a positive pregnancy test and not freak out. I think I want…”
I met Sam’s eyes. “I could want to do it again, Sam. With you. Not now I mean, but—”
I cut myself off. Because Sam looked like he was going to combust. I expected his hands to shake as he reached for me again, but they were strong and steady and firm as iron. “Ellie. If you’re telling me I get to put another baby in you, on purpose, I might fucking die.”
The way he phrased that had heat roaring back into me ten times hotter than before. It screamed through me.
“I think in the future, yes, that’s a possibility.”
“Why not now, Ellie?” Sam asked, standing. He looked wild. Ravenous. “What if”—he gripped my hands, practically making me fly in the air as he pulled me up. “What if I fuck you bare right now? What would you say to that?”
He pulled me against him, his hands bunching my dress up behind my thighs. This time I forgot about propriety. I was liquid fire inside. I couldn’t care less if the whole town saw me naked right now.
“What if,” Sam said, taking a predatory step toward the house with me attached, “I fill that pussy up right now and don’t let a single drop escape. How would you feel about that?”
My breath had left me. I was dripping now, I knew. I’d have to throw these underwear away.
“You mean you want to see your cum running down my thighs, is that it?” I asked, breathless.
Non-fiction books were my favorite, but I’d borrowed a few of Winona’s romance books. I knew some things.
“Oh, I’m not going to let it run down your thighs, sweetheart.” Sam helped me step backward over the threshold into the house. “I’m going to make sure we don’t lose a single drop.”
I swear to God I nearly fainted. But I didn’t. I stepped out of his arms, whirling on my heel without another word.
Then I paused at the top of the hallway and reached up under my dress. I tugged my underwear down and threw it at him. “You’ll have to catch me first.”