“When I was in Afghanistan, I didn’t think too much about the end of a mission or coming in from a night watch. I had nothing to return to.” His voice catches at the end of it, and a rush of love for him like nothing I’ve ever felt courses through me like a raging tide.
“But now,” he says, “when the situation was going south …”
He pauses, and I have to stuff down a burst of emotions to wait him out.
“When it was going south,” he continues, “all I could think about was that I had to get back here to you.”
I press my mouth to his again, forcing myself not to cry. He does feel it. He’s saying so in the best way he knows how. I clasp my hands behind his head, putting my soul into the kiss. We’re so much more than a wild encounter, a flash of skin. He cares.
I feel it in his kiss, in his palms running down my sides and around my back, drawing my body to his. When things got hard, he thought of me.
When he didn’t come back with the others, my world caved in.
This is real.
He pulls back, staring into my eyes. “I didn’t expect this to happen, Marietta. Not at all. But I’m in love with you. I kept seeing you.” He pauses again, and I tighten my hands on his neck. “So vibrant and colorful, laughing and happy. Throwing your damn bra away on the pole. I honestly don’t care who else sees you, as long as I’m the one who gets to take you home.”
I nod, shaking my head so fervently that hair falls in my eyes. “I want it to be you. I love you, Merrick. I didn’t realize it until tonight. I thought it was wild fun. But it’s not just that. It’s everything.”
He jerks my body against his, his hands pressing my head to his chest. We stand there, rocking slightly, hanging on to each other like the only safe harbor in a storm.
I grip him until my fingers feel numb. We’ve made it here. We’ve done it. We figured it out.
When he finally releases me, his lips find mine again. It’s different this time, gentle, questioning, like we’ve only just really discovered who each other are.
I don’t know exactly how or when our clothes come off, but then we’re on the bed, skin to skin, him over me. “I want to feel you,” I tell him. “Just you. Inside me. Nothing in the way.”
And he enters me like that, his body as close to mine as can ever be. My back arches, tears in my eyes, overwhelmed with both the ardor of it and the emotion.
He rains kisses down the side of my face as he moves ever so slowly, in and out, one hand on my breast.
I hold on to his head, letting every sensation wash over me. Passion, pleasure, love. I never knew it could be like this.
“Come live with me at my house,” he says. “Let’s have our time.”
I nod, a tear escaping each eye. “Okay.”
“We’ll finish out this week and then take a break from living at the club. Still be a part of it, but add some distance.”
“Yes.”
He increases his pace, only slightly, but it sends me up into the next level of need. I want him fiercely, to catch that wave of ecstasy, to reach those peaks with him.
He understands me and moves faster, his breath quickening. And the energy gathers in me, building, tightening.
He watches my face, and I look into his. When the words start coming from me and the stars fill my vision, I hear him, too.
Our names, our real ones, not Prospect, not Mouse, but Merrick and Marietta, come from our lips. We’re real, actual people, not two players in some strange story.
We drift together in this airy place we find in these moments. He curls me into him, and I relax against his chest like nowhere else I’ve ever known.
“I love you, Marietta,” he says, kissing my hair.
“I love you, too, Merrick.”
And we drift to sleep, happy, sated.
And safe.
