I sat us up, chest to chest, her legs locked around me as I drove into her again, slow at first, letting the tension wind tight between us. Her arms wrapped around my neck, her breath hot against my jaw, and the little broken sounds she made nearly undid me.
I couldn’t stop touching her. My mouth found her breasts, sucking, teasing her swollen nipples until she gasped and arched into me. One hand slid up her spine, pressing her closer while the other cupped her breast, rolling it in my palm as I bit gently, soothing the sting with my tongue.
She rocked against me, grinding harder, faster, chasing me stroke for stroke until every sound between us blurred into one rhythm of her moans, my groans, and the collision of our bodies.
“I love you, Julian. I love you,” she breathed against my ear, shuddering when my teeth grazed her neck.
I bit down lightly, sucking her there, knowing it’d leave a mark, and whispered, “I love you more, Gorgeous. Ride me, baby.”
Her nails dug deeper into my back as she moved faster, taking me deeper, her hips rolling with a precision that made my control slip by the second. I met her thrust for thrust, driving up into her, losing myself in the way she felt, and in the way she looked, flushed, lips parted, eyes glazed over with pleasure.
I trailed my hand down, between us, finding her clit and rubbing circles in sync with her ride.
“Oh my God…” she gasped, her whole body jerking as her movements stuttered.
I groaned, thrusting up and down harder and faster, desperate to see her fall apart. “Give it to me. Let me have it. Come.”
She cried out, clutching my shoulders like she was holding on to the only solid thing left as she shattered around me, pulsing, clenching, milking every last bit of me while I kept stroking her through it.
The second I felt her start to come down, I let myself go, thrusting up, until the orgasm ripped through me, stealing my breath and leaving me completely spent beneath her.
I wrapped her in my arms, burying my face against her neck, tasting the salt on her skin, feeling the small tremors still rolling through her body.
My heart was pounding hard enough that I wondered if she could feel it. It felt like every nerve in me was still lit, stretched tight between what just happened and everything I wanted to say.
I brushed a hand up her back, slow and gentle, sliding my fingers through the damp strands of her hair. She shifted slightly, her cheek pressing to my chest, and I felt her sigh against my skin.
We lay there a while, tangled up in silence, neither of us in any hurry to be anywhere.
“I have to tell you something,” I said into the dark.
“Mm.”
“I started seeing somebody. A therapist. Dr.Matthews. I started a few days after you walked out.”
She went still against me, then lifted her head to look at me. “You did?”
“It hasn’t been easy. I’m not going to lie to you. But I’m going. And I’ve started sleeping through the night again. I can focus. I lost that for a while there — that was the thing that scared me. I’ve always been able to focus.”
“Julian.” Her hand came up flat over my heart. “That’s huge. I’m so glad.”
“He gave me an assignment.” I kept my eyes on the ceiling. It was easier to say it that way. “Something I’ve been putting off for about eighteen years. He wants me to go see my mother. At the cemetery. I haven’t been able to make myself walk up to the stone since the day we put her there. I get to the edge of the grass and I stop.”
She didn’t say anything. She just kept her hand where it was and waited, the way she’d learned to wait.
“When we get back to Lennox Falls,” I said, “will you come with me?”
“I’d be honored to go with you Julian.” She settled back down against my chest, and we held each other until morning.
49/
hi, mama.
julian
I satin the car for twenty minutes before I got out.
When I finally did, I took the flowers off the back seat — white lilies, the ones she’d kept on the windowsill over the kitchen sink my whole childhood — and Alyssa came around the car and slid her hand into mine without a word, and we walked across the grass together.
