"I live across the country." Fuck. I hate that I had to say it.
"Long distance," Cecily replies, sitting up. She wraps her hand around mine. Lifts it up and down. My teeth clench.
"No annulment?"
"I've never met anybody like you, Dom, and if our first date hadn't gone so terribly wrong, we might have wound up right here, on this road trip together anyway. We probably wouldn't be married already, but that's beside the point."
She's right. "I care about you, and the idea of hitting the delete button on everything we've been through, I don't like it. I don't know what the future holds, but I'm not interested in erasing us, Cecily."
"I don't want to erase us, either, Dom."
"So we're not getting an annulment?"
Thunder smacks the suite, reverberating around the room, Mother Nature in agreement with our choice.
Cecily shakes her head. "No."
Every tether on my composure fractures. My mouth seals over hers, my exhale heavy and full of relief. The wall I had to put up between us simply for the sake of surviving the force that is Cecily has crumbled.
She rises onto her knees, nipples trawling my chest. Her fingers slide up into my hair, tugging. She bites at my lower lip, running her tongue over the indentation her teeth leave behind.
My hands splay against her lower back, holding her in place as I devour her mouth. She kisses me like she needs me, like she has needed this for so long. She pours herself into me. Physically, emotionally, mentally, Cecily brings it all. It's everything I want from her. Every last drop. I give it all back, and I hope she can taste how badly I wish we could go back in time, rewrite our history.
We can't, of course, and maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we wouldn't have ended up right here, and if that were true, I would do this all one hundred times over.
Cecily breaks our kiss. "Now, Dom. I need you now."
"Lie down," I instruct. She listens promptly, and it reminds me of the elevator when I told her to pull up her skirt and she complied.
I look down at her, beautiful and naked and mine. "Have you realized the only time you listen is when you think there might be an orgasm in it for you?"
"I can't believe it took you this long to figure out how to properly persuade me to listen." Her dark lashes drop low over her cheeks as she bats them.
I breathe into a smile and come up over her, resting a palm on one side of her rib cage. Cecily mewls as I drag myself slowly up her. "Are you going to listen?"
"Only if you make me come," she shoots back, but the retort doesn't have teeth. She's too breathless. Too needy.
I run myself through her again, as if conversation is normal while I make the motion. "Baby, you're going to come so hard every person in one of these fancy-asssuitesis going to hear you through the rain."
Her eyes sparkle with challenge. "Make me."
I glance at my bag. "I should grab a condom."
Honestly, I don't want to. I don't want a barrier between me and Cecily.
Cecily grabs my hips, fingers digging in. "I'm on birth control."
"Bare?" I have to ask. It needs to be clear.
She doesn't answer, at least not with words. She thrusts up with her hips as she holds mine in place, catching me, notching me inside her.
I grunt at the feeling. My Cecily. My wife. Of course she didn't wait for me to push inside her. She took me for herself.
Triumph burns in her eyes. Not hubris, but a quiet victory. She's not celebrating that she got me, but that she allowed me in. In more ways than one.
"Menace," I say, jaw clenched as I sink into her warmth. "My Menace."
Her arms circle my neck and she urges me down, bringing me to her mouth. "Yours," she says against my lips, trembling.
