30. Ramona #2
“Are you seriously acting shy right now?” I tug his shirt again, smiling against his mouth. “With your own wife. In your own bedroom.”
“I’m trying to be careful.” His mouth twitches, and he still hasn’t moved us anywhere.
“I didn’t ask you to.” That does it.
He kisses me harder, no more of that careful nonsense, and walks me backward until my calves hit cardboard instead of the bed. He almost goes over the box. I grab him and laugh into his mouth while he swears and kicks the thing out of the way with the side of his boot.
“You’ve been home ten minutes.” He gets me moving again, still kissing me, and this time we make it to the mattress. “And you’re already trying to kill me.”
“The boxes were your idea.” I push him back until he’s sitting against the headboard. “You packed my socks in three different boxes.”
I climb onto his lap before he can stand back up. His hands go to my thighs. I’m still in the shirt I wore to haul boxes, and he’s still in his, and I can feel him getting hard under me through his jeans.
I roll my hips once, slow, and watch his jaw go tight.
He tries to pull me closer. I put my hand on his chest and keep him sitting.
“Ramona, come here.” He says it into my mouth.
“You waited months.” I drag against him and don’t give him more than that. “You can wait another minute.”
“You’re evil.” His hand flexes on my thigh, not pushing, only holding on.
“You knew who you married.” I get his belt open while I say it.
“I keep forgetting.” He nearly grins, and I kiss him to shut him up.
I reach between us and get his zipper down. He helps with my shirt, then stops to look at the pile of my clothes on the chair, the open boxes, the half of the closet that isn’t empty anymore.
“You’re expensive.” He says it against my throat, and I can feel him smiling.
“You’re rich.” I wrap my hand around him and stroke him once, slow, watching his face.
“Not after you finish that barn.” His laugh breaks when I do it again.
I shove my jeans down far enough to get a knee free and then I sink onto him in one long drop, still half dressed, until my thighs meet his and neither of us has a joke left. I have to put my hand on the headboard and wait.
“Ramona.” His forehead drops against mine. “Give me a second.”
I give him one, and not a second longer.
I roll my hips and watch his face. This is the part that isn’t new. I know how he likes it when I come down slow. He knows what happens if he gets a hand under my shirt and finds my breast with his thumb. We don’t have to ask. I missed that more than I planned to admit.
His shirt is still on. I get it off him without leaving his lap, and then there’s skin under my palm, and my ring sits right over his heart while I move.
He goes quiet, and I follow his eyes. He isn’t looking at my mouth. He’s looking at my hand.
“What are you staring at?” I keep moving, because if I stop I’ll turn this into a conversation.
“Your hand.” He covers it with his.
I know why. This bed, and both rings where we can see them. I feel it too, and I refuse to let him make a speech out of it.
“I missed seeing it.” His voice goes quiet around the words.
“Don’t you dare make me cry. I’ve only just unpacked.” I say it against his mouth so it comes out softer than it sounds.
“No promises.” His thumb finds the band and stays there.
“Then behave.”
“You told me not to be careful.” He almost gets the smile back.
Then I take him deeper and the smile is gone, because he remembers this too, and so do I.
He sits up into me and gets his arm around my back, and the angle changes enough that I have to grab the headboard with my other hand.
He doesn’t ask if that’s good. He already knows.
His hand slides between us and finds me, no guessing, no searching, and I swear into his neck when he gets it right on the first try.
“Fuck. Julius.”
“I know.” He keeps that rhythm and doesn’t speed up to show off. “I know. Come on.”
I come with my mouth on his shoulder and my ring caught under his hand. He watches my face through it, and I let him, because hiding now would be a lie I’m done telling. I keep moving after, sloppy and wet, until his breath goes uneven and his hands tighten on my hips.
“I love you.” He says it against my mouth, simple, nothing extra stuck to it.
“I know.” I kiss him so he can’t add a promise I didn’t ask for.
He makes a noise of protest anyway, hips still working under me.
“That’s it?” His hand is in my hair.
“I moved all my crap back in here.” I nod at the boxes on the floor and take him to the end of it, watching his mouth fall open. “Use context clues.”
He comes with my name in his mouth and both hands on my waist, looking at me the whole time. I stay on him until it’s over and his grip goes gentle, and we’re only breathing in a room that finally has my clothes in it again.
I feel him wait for me to roll off. I used to, some nights, when we were already leaving without packing. I don’t. I climb onto his chest as I used to and put my face in his neck, one leg thrown over him, claiming that spot.
“You’re stealing my pillow again.” His hand settles on my back, warm.
“Our pillow.” I say it into his skin.
He goes still. I feel it in his chest, that held-still thing he does when he doesn’t trust his voice yet.
“Don’t make it weird.” I hook my arm across him and close my eyes.
He pulls me tighter instead. I fall asleep on him in our bed.
***
The bench is still where he put it, under the kitchen window, facing the pasture. The paint has gone gray on the arms.
I bring two mugs out the next morning and sit at one end. Julius comes out with his boots unlaced and no phone on him. He sits at the other end, looks at the gap between us, then moves over until his knee touches mine.
“You kept it.” I hand him his coffee.
“You asked me to sit on it.” He leans back against the siding. “I’m sitting on it.”
“Took you a while.”
“I was busy being an idiot.”
We don’t talk about the ranch or the lawyer or her. June is at the fence line with her nose in the grass. A hand drives past in the feed truck and lifts two fingers off the wheel, and Julius lifts two back and doesn’t get up.
I put my feet up on the rail and drink my coffee. It goes cold before I finish it, because I keep forgetting to.
“Did you ever get your Monday?” I ask it without looking at him.
“Which Monday?”
“The one your dad wouldn’t give you. Fishing.”
He’s quiet long enough that I turn my head.