Our eyes locked, but neither of us reached out. It was killing me inside.
“I trust you,” I whispered. “I know she’s lying.”
His eyes said he agreed, but that didn’t mean what she claimed happened didn’t. She could, very well, be pregnant with my husband’s child. I couldn’t keep thinking about it, but I couldn’t stop. I needed to run, while at the same time, I needed to sleep—find sleep so deeply, nothing could penetrate my thoughts.
Sighing, I sat on my ass and stared out the floor-to-ceiling glass window. A view like I’d never seen before spread out before me like a peaceful scene in a winter wonderland movie. Snow twirled in front of the pane, almost putting on a ballet.
“Tell me now, my wife,” he said. “If my lack of action has caused you to turn from me, to be indifferent about me and other women…tell me now if I shall die. I was once cut in this town. I will reopen the wound and take my last breath in your arms in this same town.”
“No,” I whispered, stepping off the bed, taking small steps toward him. “No,” I repeated, looking up into his sea-green eyes that had turned stormy with the black and silver mood of the room. “If you shall die, I shall die, and I love you too much to let that happen. Not now, when we have so much worth fighting for.” I touched my stomach. “The physical proof of our love. Our truth in physical form.”
He picked me up, brought me back to bed, setting me down gently. He stared down at my face, and when I nodded, he began to undress me, slowly, reverently, as he had done onour wedding night. I did the same for him. My eyes absorbing his body, every valley and peak, scar, my heart through my fingertips attempting to get to what lay beneath his flesh.
My mind kept reminding me of all the words…what she had accused my husband of, and what my father-in-law said thereafter, but I forced the accusations and the possibility out of my mind.
Only my husband and I would be in this moment—a moment made whole by the truth in the covenant we shared.
The truth.
It would set us free.
And in that moment, it did.
We were as ravenous for each other as we were the first time, but…there was an ease between us, a comfort in knowing without a doubt that we were made for each other. This—what lived and breathed between us—was the reason I refused anyone less than Rocco Piero Fausti. I would have never been able to allow anyone else to touch me this way, do all the things he was doing to me with his hands, his tongue, his cock.
If it didn’t feel completely right in my soul, I would have shriveled, drawn into myself, like a flower that was meant for tepid climates, but all I received was the burning sun in summer or the frigid cold in winter.
There were plenty of times my husband and I were starved for each other, and we were wild with want, only able to breathe when his mouth was on mine, mine on his, but these times, when our love moved slow, like candle wax sliding gently down the candle, each slide of the wax making an impression that could only change, but never be fully made like it was at the start…
This.
What existed between us.
The love.
The feeling that we were complete only in each other.
“A threefold cord is not quickly broken…”
This was what it was all about. The gift after the suffering we had both endured waiting for each other.
He was starved.
I was starved.
Together, we were made whole, as only a husband and his wife can be.
He was my husband in every sense of the word.
I was his wife in every sense of the word.
His tongue searched my mouth as if he were on a journey to my soul.
Then, as his mouth ventured further down, he whispered his vows to me, only pausing when he moved over my heart—the beat of it controlled by his promises, his love.
I breathed out my vows in response to his…the same promises we’d spoken to each other in front of God and our family and friends.
Our bodies together this way….skin on skin.
