6. All You Can Eat #5
"Je t'aime depuis le premier jour," I said, low, against her lips. I have loved you since the first day. "Il n'y a jamais eu personne d'autre. Il n'y aura jamais personne d'autre." There was never anyone else. There will never be anyone else.
She laughed and sobbed in the same breath, her hands coming up to my face, thumbs at my jaw.
"Je t'aime, Dillion." Her voice shook and held. "Je suis là. Je ne pars plus." I love you. I'm here. I'm not leaving again.
I picked her up and set her on the edge of the counter, the candles still burning on a table set for somebody else.
I stepped between her knees without breaking the kiss, one hand braced flat beside her hip, the other finding the curve of her jaw like I'd done it a thousand times in my head and was only now getting to do it for real.
She wrapped her legs around me and pulled me in, both of us fighting for breath between kisses like the air in the room had gone thin, and there wasn't enough to go around and neither of us cared to share.
Thunder cracked close, but neither of us flinched but, I had more important matters to address.
I should've been slow about it. Should've peeled that nightgown off her like unwrapping something I intended to keep instead of ripping the top of it open.
But seven years doesn't leave a patient man standing, and my hands finally moved the way they'd been begging to move all my life, no ration, no portion control, no inspection before the reach.
And it hit me, right there, with her heartbeat going against my mouth.
This is what Madeline had been begging for.
This exact man, the one with his hands unlocked, the one who doesn't measure first. He'd been in the building the whole time.
She'd knocked on every door of me trying to find him, three nights lying next to a man who held her like inventory, and I'd told her slow was a philosophy.
It was never a philosophy. It was a reservation.
Held under another name for seven years.
The guilt came up my throat with a face on it, silk the color of late honey, a spoon pointed at me across candlelight, you better back it up.
And then Aurelia pulled my bottom lip through her teeth and said my name into my mouth, not Chef, not Dilly Duck, my name, the way only she had ever said it.
Her hands slid up under my shirt flat against my spine like she was checking that I was real, and the face at the top of my throat went under.
Drowned out by the roar of the only voice my body had ever actually been listening for.
I got both hands in the damp weight of her hair and tipped her head back and took her mouth. A glass went over somewhere behind her, rolled, broke on the floor and neither of us so much as turned our heads.
“Si je touche ta pêche, à quel point sera-t-elle juteuse pour moi en ce moment?” I asked her.
How juicy is this peach gonna be right now if I touch it Ru?
Tellement juteux... ?a dégouline. ?a n'attend que toi pour être dégusté, Dillion. Dépêche-toi, s'il te pla?t.
So juicy...it's dripping. Waiting for you to eat it Dillion. Please hurry.
I pulled back and looked at her chest moving fast. Eyes half-lidded and glassy in the candlelight.
The nightgown off one shoulder, curls damp and wild the way they were the first day, and she made a sound low in her throat that was pure protest, a customer watching her plate get carried back toward the kitchen.
"Dillion." Half whine.
"Show it to me." I said.
"You've seen me."
"I've seen you the way a man sees things he's not allowed to keep." I crossed my arms, leaned back against the far counter, like my hands weren't shaking for her. "Seven years of looking at you in portions, Ru, because the whole thing at once would've taken me off my feet in public."
My eyes went down her slow, and I let her watch me do it.
"So no. I ain't rushing the best part. I inspect everything before I eat it. You know that about me."
"It's always good," she said, low. "And you know it. You been knowing it."
"That right?"
"Since that night you made love to me last summer, you been knowing it."
I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth. "I’ve always wanted you the way you want something through glass. It was bad, but it was manageable. I didn't know what I was missing. I could live like that. I built a whole life living like that."
I slowly pushed off the counter and closed one step of the distance.
"Then you came to my door with your whole life in a bag and I held you, 'cause that's what I do, that was the job. And you kissed me."
"Dillion — "
"You kissed me. You put your mouth on me first and told me you'd been starving for it, and then you fed me, Ru.
One night. A single plate. You told me you loved me with my sheets in your fists, you told me this is what it was supposed to feel like, and I believed you, because I'm the one who taught you what a true thing tastes like and that was the truest thing that ever happened in that penthouse.
" Another step. "And then the sun came up and his name lit up your phone, and you left me a text.
Called the best night of my life a mistake. "
She didn't look away from me.
"You know what you did that night?" I stopped close enough that she had to tip her chin up to hold my eyes as she sat up straighter, and my voice came down to almost nothing.
"You opened an appetite in me and then you starved it.
Before you, I didn't know what I was hungry for, it was an idea, a maybe, a someday.
After you, I knew exactly. Weight, temperature, sound, the way you say my name.
You gave a starving man one meal and a photographic memory, and then you sat across from me at dinners asking me why I looked tired. "
"I was starving too." A tear slipped from her right eye.
"I know that now." I reached up and took her chin between my fingers and tilted her face like the last inspection. "That's the only reason you're still on this counter. 'Cause you didn't leave me hungry out of cruelty. You left us both at the table with the food right there, too scared to eat."
I bent close, my mouth at the line of her jaw, and felt her shiver run all the way to where her legs were still bracketing me.
"But the fast is over, Ru. Both of ours. And I need you to understand what you're about to feed."
"Tell me." she whispered.
"A beast." I damn near growled as lightning and thunder showed up on top of one another.
"One you’ve been starving since the night you gave me a taste of what we could be and then took your heart back off the table.
Put me right back on the best friend shelf like I hadn't already tasted something I'd always had a hunger for.
Seven years of loving you. Months now of eating around the edges of anything that looked like you, anybody that sounded like you…
smelled like you…so I wouldn't have to admit what I actually wanted.
I built a whole house just to keep this thing locked up and he wouldn't stay silent. "
I licked my lips in anticipation, a phantom taste of her from the night at my place still there.
"So tonight," I began, "you're gonna feed me this peach 'til you're hoarse, Ru. 'Til I can't remember what anything else ever tasted like. I want it dripping down to my elbows. I want to be full and still going back for more. You understand me?"
She nodded, since words wouldn't come out.
"Nah. Say it. Say yes, Dillon."
"Yes, Dillon." She managed after a gulp.
I didn't move. Stood right where I was with my arms folded and let the storm do the talking before I dropped my first command.
"Take it off."
She smiled and scooted back on the counter, pulled what was left of the nightgown over her head. I'd buy her a new one.
"Keep going."
She laid back, worked her panties off and threw them at me. I caught them one-handed and didn't laugh, even though I wanted to.
"You in a hurry, Ru?"
She shook her head, no.
"Didn't think so." I still hadn't come any closer. "Open up for me."
She let her knees fall open, and there it was. My favorite stone fruit. My peach. In season, on my counter, after all this time. Only then did I cross the kitchen. Put a hand on each thigh, kissed one, then the other, and looked up the whole length of her while I did it.
“J'ai raté mon plat préféré.” I whispered.
I missed my favorite meal.
“C'est à volonté, papa.” she smiled
It’s all you can eat, Daddy.
I smiled back and then laid down a slap on her clit causing her to gasp.
“Tu as mis trop de temps à revenir vers moi.” I growled
It took you too long to come back to me.
“Dépêchez-vous!” she begged in a sob.
“Hurry?” I titled my head looking at her laying there, “You rushing me? Got a lot of nerve right now.”
“Please Dillion.” she begged.
Another smack. Then another. Each one precise, each one followed by my thumb circling the sting, watching her face crumple and reform. She screamed my name and tried to close her legs.
"Hold them open, Aurelia." My voice was rough.
I needed her to follow my directions because if I had to hold them myself I would lose the last of my control and fuck her raw on this counter before she was ready, before I'd tasted her and could prove with my mouth what I couldn't say without choking on it - that I had never stopped loving her.
She whimpered and obeyed me. I dove in and her back immediately arched like a bow.
My eyes rolled at the first taste of her and my dick instantly bricked up so hard it began to hurt, pressing against my boxers like it could find it was trying to find its way home.
Her thighs shook against my grip but she kept them open as I reached down and freed myself, jerking my length in rough, desperate pulls trying to find some relief, as I listened to the wet sounds of my mouth on her.
“Je t'aime.” she moaned and groaned over and over as I went to work on her and myself.
I love you.
"I know, baby." I spoke against her, the vibration making her cry out.