Charlotte was the one to break eye contact, shifting her gaze to the place where our bodies joined. I followed her attention, drawing in my breath as I pressed my body into hers. Her warmth enveloped me inch by fucking glorious inch until I was buried inside her with nothing—not even a breath—separating us.
I’d heard the wordweddedused to describe joining two things together. I hadn’t understood it. Not really. Not until that moment with my body wedded to Charlotte’s. For a moment, everything simply stopped—gravity, time, world peace—everything narrowing to the point where our bodies joined. There were so many things I thought I understood before. I had no idea.
And then she rocked her hips and I pressed forward, sinking the last fraction of an inch inside her, and everything changed again. It was too much. I couldn’t hold it. It was like trying to stay still in the middle of an electric storm. I had to move. I thrust into her and she strained up to meet me, our bodies moving together, breathing in tandem. I rocked my hips, dragging my cock over the spot inside her the way I’d already learned she loved. No thought in my head but giving her pleasure any way I could for as long as she’d let me.
“Ford.” She said my name, part plea, part prayer, and I gathered her to me, sliding an arm behind her back so I could cup her head with my palm.
Her damp hair tangled in my fingers as I cradled her to my chest, curling my body around her as I moved inside her. I wanted to be the one driving us on, the one taking us to the edge and over, falling into the pleasure of Charlotte in my arms. That’s the way it should have been, the way it had always worked before. But it wasn’t the way it worked with the woman in my arms. This woman carried me as much as I carried her. I couldn’t take either of us anywhere without her. We were in this together, and for the first time I understood what all the love song stuff meant.
And for the first time I worried I might not survive it.
Her body clenching around me was all it took to shred the last vestiges of my control, sending my climax spinning out after hers. She came with a sob, her lips pressed to my chest, and I followed, my balls drawing up tight against my body as my cock pulsed, emptying myself inside her, giving everything I had to this woman who already owned me.
––––––––
I HADN’T MEANT to join Ford in the shower. I’d headed to my bedroom to grab a clean T-shirt for him to wear. I had a Tulane shirt from college I wore to sleep in that might fit him. Just barely. I stopped on the way past the bathroom to make sure he found the towels. Or that was the lie I told myself. When I saw him take his cock in his hand, everything changed. I couldn’t make myself leave. I didn’t want to.
I didn’t want to try to explain it, but I’d wanted everything that had happened with Ford. Even the emotionally sticky bits. Especially those. What we’d done was so much more than fucking: Looking into his eyes as he moved inside me. Feeling the way he cradled me against his chest like I was the most precious thing in the world to him. And then feeling him lose himself in my arms, in my body with literally no barrier between us.
It was so unexpected and pushed every boundary I thought mattered to me, including the idea that loving someone might not be completely insane. Not that I had any intention of even thinking it—not consciously, anyway—but there was something different in the way Ford held me. Something more. Something I was going to miss when our time together was over.
“You know we don’t have to stop just because we hit some arbitrary limit.” Ford stroked a hand up and down my back, his fingertips playing along my spine, his voice a rumble against my ear.
“Did I say that out loud?”
After the sex—I wasn’t calling it making love, regardless of how it felt and you couldn’t make me—he’d rolled over, cuddling me in his arms, my head resting on his chest.
“No, cher. I took a guess. It’s what I was thinking. We made the rules; we can change them.” He pressed his lips to my hair, and I tipped my face up to meet his gaze. “You’re important to me, Charlotte. I’m not ready to be done. I want to see what we could be to each other.”
It was as close to a declaration of love as either of us was likely to make. The desire to reciprocate was an ache deep in my chest, one I didn’t see how I’d ever reconcile.
“I’m afraid I’m broken. All I see is the bad in people. As evidenced by the wedding dress disaster.” I didn’t need to look at him to know he was smiling.
“You weren’t that much of an asshole. And you fixed it. Most people don’t bother with that part.”
“It’s not that easy. I see the worst remnants of love. Some clients marry too soon or for the wrong reasons. Some pick the wrong person completely. But some pick the right one. They wait until they’re sure. They go in with their eyes open, and they still get their hearts broken. Shattered. From the outside, it looks like they’re doing everything right, and it still doesn’t work. I don’t know how to trust any of that, and I don’t know if I ever will.”
That was it. My worst fear. The reason I’d built the wall around my heart, brick by brick. It was easy to understand when people made a mistake with who or how they loved. It was a lot harder to make sense of it when everything looked right, and it still fell apart. It’s the reason I was so worried for Alex and Erik.
“I know. But you know it doesn’t have to be that way. There are people who manage to make a go of things. My parents have been married for almost forty years, most of them happy.”
“I know. Mine too. I also know they’re the exception, not the rule. And I love my mother, but she had different goals than I do. She gave up everything for us.”
He was so quiet for a moment. I’d have thought he’d fallen asleep if it weren’t for his hand running over my back. It was part ongoing seduction, with a little bit of gentling a skittish horse. Almost as if he were deliberately working to keep from spooking me. I was a grown woman. I ought to be able to talk about things like love and commitment without freaking out. Ought to.
“There’s so much I don’t know about balancing family and work. The only thing I do know is that women have done much more of the heavy lifting than men.”
I pressed my lips to his chest, feeling the muscles bunch at my touch. If he was going to do the stroking thing, the least I could do was share the wealth while I waited to see if hewas just stating the obvious or if there was more he wanted to say. And I could keep my mouth shut and not argue my point for at least a few minutes.
“I don’t think it has to look like that. I mean, I know it’s still what most people do, but it doesn’t need to be some sort of 50s derivative Brady Bunch fuckery. We could baby-step our way through it.”
I scraped my teeth over his nipple, loving the way he sucked in his breath. I doubted I’d ever get tired of making him do that. That I wouldn’t get a chance to find out didn’t diminish the momentary pleasure.
“You did not just bring a baby into this, did you?” I ran the tip of my tongue around his abused nipple before blowing across it just to watch the skin pucker.
“God no. I don’t have a death wish. I’m just saying, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. We can figure it out as we go along.”
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe what he said was possible. That we could inch our way into a relationship. I just didn’t trust it was actually possible.
