Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
BANANA brEAD BARRISTER
LOUISA
The bananas that I’ve had on hospice have finally crossed over to the side of brown and spotty that is perfect for banana bread. I love banana bread for that reason. It’s the reminder that things sometimes have to get worse before they become what they were always supposed to be.
“What are you baking?” He comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist, tighter than the ‘Cheesy Briesy Bluetiful, Cheddar Girl’ apron I have on. A squeeze that pulls me off my feet momentarily as he presses his lips against the curve of my neck, before setting me back down.
“Banana bread.”
He spins me to face him, and his face is fresh with sleep and it feels like something few have seen.
His hand comes up to cup my cheek as his thumb drags across my lips, still swollen from all the nights before.
I rise on my toes to reach him, and he cradles my head with a morning-filled kiss, like it was a natural thing to have done in the first place.
“Coffee or tea this morning?” he asks, as he pulls down two random mugs.
“Hmm…” I muse.
“While you decide,” he says as he reaches past me. He drags a finger along the inside of the bowl and sucks it into his mouth. It's offensive in all the ways you'd imagine it to be. I can’t look away and he knows it.
The smile that broadens starts in his eyes before his mouth catches up with it, the subtle amber always seems to wave at me before the darkness swallows it whole.
I’m pretty sure my jaw hangs open, and he knows that, too.
“That's—” I start.
“That’s very good.” Reaching for another dip, I swat his hand away before he can get it.
“Don’t put your hands in the batter!”
“Fine,” he says. Stepping closer to me he reaches for my wrist, wraps his hand around mine, shaping it so only my index finger remains extended.
He dips my finger into the batter, and it’s like it all happens in slow motion.
He draws my hand out, and sucks the batter off my finger with a decadence that far exceeds the chocolate chunks in the mixing bowl.
My entire body tightens at the idea of him, at how much closer I want him.
“I said,” I breathe (heavily), “no hands in the batter.”
“No, you said not to put my hands in the batter.” His face has a wickedness to it that I’ve only dreamed about. “So I borrowed yours.” I yank my arm from him, and wipe it on the apron.
“You can’t lawyer your way out of this,” I snap.
“For your banana bread?” he says. “Watch me.” I turn back to the tins, pouring the batter. Trying to concentrate very hard on the pouring. (Failing.)
“Then I’ll make it more often,” I say. To the tins, to the batter, to me in the future buying bananas in varying degrees of decay so I can always have one waiting. “Since you like it.”
“I love it.” And I want to imagine he's not looking at the banana bread.
My arms twine around his neck and our lips crash with the taste of sweet batter on his tongue.
His hands untying the apron at my waist and pulling it over my neck.
Leaving just the large sleep shirt between us.
He slides his hand under the hem as his mouth takes mine, voraciously, and I can feel the rise and fall of his chest as his hand palms my breast.
“You don’t know how much I— fuckkk.” His sentence falls off as I reach my hand under the band of his briefs and wrap my fingers tightly around him.
He’s thick and hard, everything I remember from hours ago.
His knees almost buckle, but he straightens himself.
Pulling me closer, my thigh held in his palm, pinned to his side, as he lifts me away from the counter.
Carrying me the short distance to my bedroom.
It’s not like the night after the gala, where we violently crashed into each other.
Now, we’re desperate for each other but with less to prove.
I know because he lays me in the bed we’ve shared, the bed he made for me, surrounded by pillows, and takes a moment to appreciate how far we’ve come. (And how much we’re about to.)
I scoot back on my elbows so I’m against the cream, tufted headboard, and he crawls to me, stripped naked, the look on his face says he wants to devour me. The way our bodies crave each other is unnatural, even if it's the most animalistic thing in the world. But somehow, they always have.
He pulls my underwear from my body, the middle soaked through, as he drags a long finger up the split of me to collect the wetness himself. For the second time, I see him suck his finger into his mouth, and the smile that follows is devilish in every way.
He reaches to pull the shirt over my head but I beat him to it.
“Eager.” His voice is thick, like the rest of him.
He drags another finger through my core.
“I can take my time,” he says. “I’ve been so patient, Louisa.
” As his long finger teases my core. The slightest touch from him sets me on fire, and the way he says my name, now, ripples across my skin. “Can you?”
He lies next to me and gathers my hands into one of his.
Taking my underwear and wrapping my wrists together, binding them, and pinning them above my head.
All without breaking our stare. They're begging for him, giving him the consent he needs, and he watches it, watches me, like there’s nothing more important than this moment.
I let out a whimper as he slides a finger inside me.
His hand holding my arms above us, pressing them deep into the pile of pillows.
His body is pressed against mine, and I can feel the hardness of him, begging, pulsing, to be had.
But he’s exercising control as his fingers pulse within me.
Curling against the deepest parts that have me crying out, for him.
Crying out his name.
My body writhes from the bed, eager for the stretch of him,close to pushing me over the edge, as he drags his length out slowly.
“Do you know how hard it was for me to have you just across the hall?” His voice is worn, and the heat of his breath sinks deep into my skin.
“To hear you calling out names of people from pages of fiction, and for me, to be jealous of someone that could never touch you.”
“I was thinking of you,” I say, it escapes me, desperate for him to know.
“I’ve been thinking of you, every time.” He releases my hands from where they've been pinned and I loop them around his neck, pulling his face to me.
“Every time I read a character,” I say into his mouth.
“And every time I laid right here and imagined you were inside of me.”
We move, together, relentlessly charging towards a cliff neither of us are prepared for, but I’m ready to dive head first.