I started to shift my hand away from my clit, but she gripped my wrist and held me in place. “More of this?”
She bobbed her head before reading again. “‘I couldn't tear my eyes off him as he stared down at where I was spread around him, as a gulp moved through his throat. “I think I'm watching you kill me with your cunt.”’—oh, god, Beck, yes. Please. Just like that.”
“You’re definitely killing me,” I said through a groan. “Get there, Sunny. Get the fuck there.”
Her words turned watery then, all broken sounds and hoarse gasps as the first wave of her release fluttered around me. “‘—as the orgasm unfurled from behind my clit and wrapped my center in a brutal throb. As he speared up into me again, again. As he shook with me. As he held me.’”
I lashed both arms around her torso, clinging to her as I chased the explosion waiting for me. Her hand was inside my chest again, her fingers pulsing around my heart with every beat, though I didn’t worry about her ripping it out anymore. My lips on her throat, I said, “I fucking love you.”
She looped an arm around my neck, nodding in that disconnected way of hers when she was only partially tethered to this world. Her fingers patted my cheek. “Love you too.”
My muscles were jelly and I was going to crush Sunny if we didn’t move soon. I managed to roll to the side, taking her with me. “And to think,” I said, a breath gusting out of me, “I almost let you read that in the bath.”
A silly, sated laugh had her vibrating against me. “That would’ve gotten messy.”
Sunny in the bath with a book was one of the absolute best parts of my new life here in Friendship. There was nowhere else I wanted to be than sitting on the bathroom floor and simply observing—and helping, when the moment called for it—while she took my world apart and then put it back together in a perfect, secret way that only we knew.
Though it would’ve been nice to share that bath with her, we’d tried that and those experiments had failed sensationally. The first time, we’d miscalculated everything and flooded the entire bathroom while slipping and sliding against each other in the tub like a pair of wayward sea lions, desperate to find our way out. The next time, we’d planned everything yet failed to recognize that we didn’t actually fit in there together until it was too late and we were those lost sea lions all over again. Not a fun time. No sexy stories read. No orgasms for anyone. We’d ended up wet, naked, and exhausted from the struggle of getting out of there in one piece.
I gave her ass a light slap. “At least I can still have you in the shower.”
She shifted to peer up at me, her apple-round cheeks pink as her smile bloomed. “Would you like to have me in there this morning?”
I bounced a shoulder. “Would you like to marry me?”
She snapped her fingers and pointed to the door. “Go home.”
We didn’t live together.
We also didn’t not live together.
Most of my clothes were in Sunny’s closet and I kept my contact solution in her bathroom, and I spent nearly every night with her. I couldn’t remember the last time I hadn’t spent the night with her. But I did not live here. I attempted to renegotiate last summer’s agreement at least once a day and though I knew she wouldn’t admit it, she was starting to waver.
If I was being honest, I’d admit that I’d expected her to cave sooner. I’d figured we’d play this game for a few months, but that we’d agree it made more sense to live together than for me to straddle two homes indefinitely. Especially after months of straddling two continents. Sunny, however, was steadfast. She wasn’t in any rush, as she often reminded me, and I hadn’t proven that I’d want to stay in Friendship once the shine of a new relationship had worn off.
If there had ever been a time for the shine to wear off, it was the holiday season when Lance visited. He managed to short-circuit himself every time I touched Sunny—which was often. He didn’t say anything but he looked like he was being plucked to death by very small, very vengeful fairies. It only got worse when their mother went a little heavy on the wine and started in on him about why couldn’t he meet someone nice the way his sister had? He’d flown back to California a day early and blamed it on an emergency at work.
On his way out the door, he’d pulled us aside and sworn up and down that he wasn’t upset about me and Sunny, but that he had a lot of things on his mind. I’d thought he was full of shit, but Sunny insisted we forgive and forget. She wasn’t dragging icebergs around these days and neither should I.
Lance and I didn’t talk any more or less now that I lived in Friendship and routinely begged his sister to marry me, but it was different between us. He still couldn’t believe that I’d chosen a place we’d long-agreed was the worst, and I couldn’t believe that he found it necessary to be a moody child so often.
More importantly, I couldn’t believe it had been almost a year since meeting Sunny all over again. Of all the things I’d expected to encounter coming back here, the woman who’d change my entire life hadn’t been on my list.
I was really fucking thankful for those flowerpots. And her general ability to put me in my place.
Once we’d said goodbye to Sunny’s second rainbow cast—the original wasn’t stable enough after the beating she’d served Joey—we went to Singapore for ten days. Naked had been under construction and the conversation I’d needed to have with the managing partners at my firm was a face-to-face one. In the end, their desire to keep me on staff outstripped the value of sending me to new corners of the globe every year.
We spent the whole time in Singapore eating, exploring, and enjoying my huge bed. The party-sized shower I’d barely noticed before then too. We’d packed up the last of my suits and the few personal items I’d kept from my travels, and I’d said goodbye to the part of my life that had been all wings and no roots.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss elements of it. The shower that was slightly larger than a coffin like the one in Sunny’s house came to mind. The huge bed that wasn’t shoehorned into the room. But I could deal with the quirks of her 1930s-era hand-me-down home. Just so long as we gave ourselves permission to imagine a future in a place with a bathroom from this century.
There were times when I missed the anonymity of living in big, vibrant cities too, although that was mostly a product of the entire town of Friendship incessantly asking when I was going to propose to Sunny. As if I needed everyone to witness my complete inability to close this deal.
I slapped her ass again. She liked it when I didn’t treat her like she was breakable. She was very breakable, I’d seen that firsthand, but I could play along if it made her happy. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t do if it made her happy. “Instead of going home, why don’t I lick your pussy in the shower?”
“Since it’s not like I can turn that down,” she said, “you might as well start the water.”
* * *
