Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“What are you looking at?” she asks.
“You.”
I pull my fingers out and paint the silky skin inside her thigh with her essence.
“Don’t look too close.” She chuckles and pulls the sheet to cover herself. “Morning light is harsh.”
“You’re as beautiful as you’ve always been.” I tug the sheet away, exposing the long, curvy, brown length of her body again.
“You do see the lumps and stretch marks, right?” She grins, and it’s the perfect mix of confidence and modesty she’s always had.
“Know what I see?” I ask, kissing between her breasts and down to her belly.
She looks at me through her lashes, cupping my head and caressing my neck. “What?”
I kiss her hip, brushing my lips over the small rings of Saturn etched into her skin by her first pregnancy. “I see Deja.”
I lick at the concentric sunburst around her belly button. “I see Kassim.”
I caress the slightly raised C-section scar stretched between her pelvic bones. “I see Henry.”
When I look up her eyes have sobered, saddened a little, but still burn hot watching me worship her.
“This body gave me my children,” I tell her, sliding down to lift her knees over my shoulders. “And it will always be beautiful to me.”
I drop my mouth to her, losing myself in her taste, her wetness on my lips and cheeks, clutching her ass to bring her closer. She’s a luxury I can’t bring myself to sip. I slurp, uncouth and uncivilized in my need for as much as I can get.
“Jesus, Si.” Her hands frame my head, urging me closer. “Baby, I already came.”
“Come again.” I chuckle, sucking her into my mouth, gripping her thighs, torn between spending the whole morning here pleasing her and pushing into her right now to satisfy myself.
When she’s limp, head scarf off and tossed across the room, I kiss my way back up her stomach and find her mouth, feeding her the taste of her own pleasure. She opens greedily, sucking my tongue into her mouth, nails digging into my ass, urging my hips between her legs, reaching between us to pull on me.
“Want you on top,” I mumble against her lips, shifting until I’m lying on the bed, pulling her up to straddle my hips.
“You just wanna watch my titties bounce.” She laughs, cupping them, pushing them together because she knows it drives me insane.
“You ain’t wrong. Now stop playing.”
She widens her legs over me, holding my eyes with hers as she guides me inside. It’s a tight, hot, slick channel. I bring my knees up to her back. She presses her palm to my chest and rolls her hips, twisting me in deeper.
“Yas,” I grit out. “Keep doing that.”
I sit up, framing her hips with my hands, kiss her breasts. She links her ankles at the base of my spine, bracing one hand behind her on the bed and hooking her elbow at my neck. Our eyes lock as a storm of lust rolls in between us. Her expression wrenches almost like she’s in pain. Moments like these feel so good they do hurt. Hurts that it’s this perfect and that it has to end; that it’s fleeting, yet indelible. That the feel of her will be tattooed onto my skin the way I hope that mine will be on hers.
That’s how it is with us.
I come, gripping her hips, pushing up into her, flooding her with a stream of heat and bliss that leaves me spent and breathing hard. Her hair is everywhere, spilling around her shoulders, strands clinging to her cheeks. She brushes her fingers over my chest, traces the muscles in my arms.
“You just keep getting better, don’t you?” she asks, a slight smile curving her lips.
“Trying.” I laugh, running my palms down the smooth plane of her back and squeezing her ass. She caresses the stubble on my chin, traces my cheekbones.
“I’ll miss you when you’re in Charlotte.”
“Don’t remind me. At least it’s a quick trip. I’ll be back Tuesday.” I pull myself up to sit straighter, resting my shoulders against the headboard with her still straddling my lap. “You sure you can’t come with me?”
We both know she can’t. The kids have school and Kassim has basketball and she has commitments for the Skyland Association.
“You and Harvey got it.” She leans forward and kisses down my cheek, down my throat. “Give Ken and Merry my best.”
“It feels full circle in a way, right? Us expanding to Charlotte the way we wanted to years ago?”
She pulls back to watch me closely, because the expansion isn’t the only thing we’ve come back to. We’ve come back to each other. Not with rings and vows and promises. Those proved to be flimsy, but we’ve come back to this. To the heat we’ve only ever found together. To the burn of our bodies. The singe of our skin. Every time I’m in bed with her it feels like I leave pieces of myself in the sheets. That’s not what this was supposed to be, but I don’t know how to resist the deep, volatile pull that always draws us inexorably together.