He notices, but he doesn’t stop fucking me.Of course he doesn’t.I don’t want him too.I need him inside me like I need the air in the room.
His thumb finds one tear and chases it away like he’s got time to hunt every sorrow down as he pounds.
“Hey.”
“I don’t want to be someone I’m not,” I say, widening my thighs to let him grind deeper.“I don’t want to be… Her.The other woman.”
“You’re not,” he says, no hesitation, like he can will it true.“You’re the only thing in my world that makes sense anymore.Feels like the closest I’ve ever come to feeling peaceful,” he says, and the raw honesty in it lands in my ribs and lodges there.“Look at me.”
I do.He looks wrecked and holy at the same time.He looks like winter and a warm shelter.He looks like a cliff I’m about to fall off of.And I can see he’s close to coming too.
“Be careful,” I say suddenly.“You’re not wearing anything on that.”
“On what?”
“On your big sleigh,” I pant out.I can’t help it.
“Nothing on my big cock?You’re telling me not to come in you?Like I did last time?”
“Yeah, I was leaking all day long.”
Humbug bites his lip.“This is not the way to get me to pull out.But I will.I’ll never do anything to hurt you, Carol.”
It’s a small promise.
But it’s an earthquake.
Something shifts inside me, and I know the truth before I can stop it.This isn’t just lust, and it never was.Lust would’ve burned out.Lust wouldn’t make me feel quiet.Lust wouldn’t make me hum.
I slide my palm up his chest, over the thud that keeps time with mine.“I’m falling,” I say, because if I don’t say it, I’ll drown in it.
His eyes close like he’s taking a hit he knows he deserves.“Me too,” he says, giving one last thrust.
With that confession, we come undone as one, as he tugs out.Hot goo lands on my stomach.
We lie there and let the unspoken words sit with us, the way you sit with a friend who just told you their darkest thing and didn’t run.After a while, he gets up to get me a tissue and wipes my stomach clean.The wind changes again as he settles back beside me.It’s scratching softly at the bay doors like a polite stray.
“It’ll be bad,” I say into the warm place between his collarbone and his throat.“When this blows back.”
“Already is,” he says.“Let it.Storms pass.We don’t.”
“You’re awfully sure.”My voice is small and a little scared.It’s honest.
He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses my knuckles one by one like he’s counting them for proof.“About you?”he says.“For once.”
We drift.Not sleep, not yet.Something else, half-dream, half-keeping watch as we hold each other.Then when we feel safe, we explore each other more.I see if I can fit his big sleigh in my mouth.I succeed.Humbug tries to break the couch, again.
When I finally doze, it’s to the sound of his breath and a hymn I used to sing for other reasons.
I wake to silence that’s not absolute, plows in the distance, the building sighing as it releases the night.Pale light edges the window.The storm did what storms do, threw a fit, made a mess, moved on.
Humbug is up dressing.He checks the door, the drift outside.“We’re dug in a bit,” he says.“Give it an hour.”
“Okay.”
I sit up, hoodie sagging off one shoulder, hair a lost cause, and catch him looking like a man who just found water after a long walk through a desert and is trying not to scare it away.Heat rises all over again, not the bruising kind, the kind that says stay.
“You hungry?”he asks, smiling.
