Brick by Brick (28 page)

Gage didn’t need the words to communicate. I read him: Glad to be there. Glad to forgo the thrill of the chase or of a new partner’s unknown delights. Glad to know how to please this one woman, fully. Glad to enter the woman he loves.

We had the world’s longest, lovingest kiss, five minutes at least without once stopping, while he slowly pumped within me. I felt him more distinctly than I ever had before, the foreskin slipping back to allow the ampallang piercing’s tiny balls to thrill me, the broad cock the color of a chocolate malt coating itself in my whipped cream, the little curve of him caressing me inside, his pubic bone pressing and massaging my clit just so.

That felt marvelous, but what overwhelmed me was the way he locked his eyes on mine while he stroked my hair, my arms, legs, anything he could reach, with such tenderness that he didn’t need to say the words
I love you
. I hoped he could feel the same warmth coming from my touch as I traced the muscles in his back, cupped his warm buttocks as they bunched and released, my pelvis matching the rhythm of his heart and his love.

But I didn’t have his control. The feel of him, in my body, on my body, and under my hands, moved the blissful heat up a degree at a time until the pleasant warmth escalated beyond need to such genuine heat that—

“Is something burning?”

“What?” He paused, the head of his penis spreading my opening. “Oh, shit! Excuse me.” He scrambled to his feet, his erection bobbing comically, and charged into the house, leaving James’s blue robe on the grass.

By the time I caught up, Gage had the oven door open and was bent, peering in, presenting bare buttocks to me. James’s brutality seemed eons ago, but Gage’s flesh remained rosy, peppered with darker dots.

“I must’ve spilled batter on the way in. The timer didn’t even ring yet.” He closed the door and turned to me. His erection had flagged, although not completely.

Under the burnt smell, chocolate? “What is it?”

“Birthday cake. It’s not often life hands you a do-over.”

“I won’t let him do over that paddling.”

“No need to. I’m not giving him the truck.”

“What are you giving him?”

“I don’t know. Will you tell me how much I can spend before he gets weird about it? I have to shop. We’ll rewrap his presents. Arrange for takeout from someplace fancy. He won’t want to go out.”

“We can’t just pretend tonight didn’t happen.”

“We won’t. We’ll tell him the basics, ending in how we’re glad to get a second shot at making it a nice birthday after all.”

“That could work.” I hoped I had enough gift wrap. And I’d need to reset the table for a whole meal, not just dessert. Oh, and take clean clothes to the hospital, and sunglasses to cover the black eyes the doctor promised. Find out where the truck had been towed and see about getting his things out and cleaning up the blood. Were the aqua towels faded enough to sacrifice? I should take rubber gloves too, and wear something old. The painting shirt, where had I seen it? I should probably wipe off the seat of the new truck too, since I hadn’t thought about my dress being drenched in back…

“Natalie?”

“Hmm? Sorry, I was thinking about all the things I have to do today.”

“Anything that gets easier or faster if money’s involved is mine, but I’ll do other stuff too.”

“I know. It’s too early to do anything, though.”

“I know something we could do. We weren’t quite done, before.” He seemed to reconsider. “Or were we?”

“I wasn’t done,” I said. Couldn’t he tell? “And I don’t think you were, either.”

“I know you were real close. Let me take you there again. When the cake’s done. I don’t want to get started and have the timer ring.”

It seemed wrong in the kitchen too, with my husband’s cake scenting the air. Never mind that James had specifically suggested this. “The timer’s going to ring soon.”

“Good. We can go back outside, or to bed. Whatever you want.”

“Outside was very nice. Or is it too chilly?”

“I think we’ll generate enough heat,” he said. “The box said something about a toothpick. Do we have any?”

We. I’d only just finished explaining testing a cake’s doneness when the timer rang and he bent to the oven again.

“I think your poor rear end is probably still radiating enough heat for us to go outside,” I said.

Both cake layers were ready, and we set them to cool. He took my hand and led me to the yard, where the black, less inky and complete, still enveloped us. “Take it off,” he said, touching the robe, and I did. He spread it, and the blue robe he’d abandoned, on the grass, then gestured for us to lie on them.

I settled onto my side, expecting him to lie on his, facing me, but Gage surprised me by going behind me, kissing my back with warm lips, going down my spine and a little ways on either side, until he was kissing my bottom, all over.

“Mmm,” I said.

“Gorgeous,” he said, so near I felt the moisture in his breath. “Roll on your stomach.”

I was happy to comply, surprised to find my cheeks as erogenous as my breasts, maybe more so. I had to move my bottom under the blanket of kisses, tipping it toward him. Gage opened his lips, the kisses wet now, and hot, nearing my anus. He set his hands on my hips, encouraging me to lift my bottom for him, and met no resistance.

He was going to kiss it. His mouth on me there. I moaned and tilted my hips, offering it. Gage spread my cheeks carefully, like an old book whose spine merited caution. I remembered opening him the same way, the night we met him.

He kissed a ring around my pucker before finding it unerringly and repeatedly. When he introduced his tongue, the skin on my buttocks shivered like a horse’s.

“You taste so good, and this is so hot, and I love you so much.” Gage paused, lapping at me. “I want to eat your ass for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I do.” He dipped his tongue the deepest yet. “And dessert.”

Now he worked one hand flat between my slick vaginal lips. “Somebody’s really, really wet. What do you want me to do about it?”

“Put it in,” I said.

“Put what in where? Say it, Natalie. And say my name.”

“Gage, I want you to put your big fat cock in my pussy, right now.”

“Perfect. Hold still, now.” He slid in as easily as if he’d been there only moments before. “Oh, I like this, taking you from the back. Nice view. Good angle for me to do this.” His finger circled my wet rosebud.

Oh, no, was he going to do what I thought he was? The thought both excited and repelled.

“You like that, don’t you? Should I put it inside, just a little?”

“I’m not sure.” God, no. Wait. Yes?

Gage was no more sure than I was. He hesitated, driving me crazy with his finger skating in the plentiful moisture from his tonguing but not entering.

“I wish,” he said softly, his voice hoarse, “that I had two cocks, this one and a littler one, but just as long and hard. I’d eat you, and eat your ass, until neither one of us can stand it another second, and I’d put them both in, the big one here”—he thrust deeply and pushed—”and the little one here.” He pressed his fingertip, which wormed through my anus and just barely beyond, where I had as many nerve endings as my clitoris, judging by the strength and suddenness of the orgasm.

“Oh, yeah, come for me, Natalie, come big, yeah.”

I rode the wave for what seemed like a long time before returning to a somewhat stunned reality. Why hadn’t James and I discovered this earlier?

Gage pulled his finger free gently. “I love every inch of you.” He pulled his hard penis from me too. I felt empty and missed him acutely.

“That was—” I shook my head, unable to find the words. “Thank you.”

“It was my pleasure. Really.” He gave my anus a chaste, closed-mouth kiss. I reached for his penis, but he moved my hand away, kissing my palm.

“But you didn’t get to—”

“Shh,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters,” I said.

“I love you is what matters. I’m content with making you happy.” He laughed. “You say it enough times, it gets in. It’s not about me. My new mantra, you think?”

Gage clambered over me to lie face-to-face. “It’s getting light out. I haven’t stayed up all night in ages, except when I was sick or jet-lagged.”

“Me, either.” My brain was lagging; I’d been up all night with James the night after his father died. Not that long ago.

“I’m glad I told you and that you’re okay with it.” He squeezed my shoulder. “You’re right, it’s good to let things out. Good stuff and bad stuff both. I feel, I don’t know, clear? Does that make sense?”

“Sort of.”

“Rowan says that she feels cleanest, like, emotionally, when she’s done crying or just came.”

“She’s getting along with Dave, then?”

“Yeah. Family curse, though. She loves him, but she’s scared to say so, since it’s not a sure thing he feels the same. She should try it anyway. Maybe he’s good with just being loved.”

“If knowing how she felt freed him to feel more strongly than he thought he should, maybe he’d love her back.”

“Maybe he would. Maybe he does and is afraid to say it.”

“Sometimes it works that way.” It was hard to pin down what made this so frightening. I wasn’t afraid of Gage or of my own emotions. Maybe I wasn’t certain?

No. I knew.

“Sometimes it does.” Gage stopped breathing and just stared, a believer hoping to witness the promised miracle.

“This is really scary,” I said.

He didn’t speak or breathe, just nodded his understanding.

“I think I love you.”

Gage hugged me so tightly that my ribs hurt. “Tomorrow, we’ll go get James, and we’ll do his birthday over again at home, and it’ll be great, because everybody loves everybody else.”

“Today.” The sky was decidedly lighter. Dawn wasn’t far off.

“And tomorrow, and the day after.” He rolled onto his back, smiling, his head nested in his arms. “You don’t usually get the best day of your life and the worst day on the same day.”

“Be glad they came in the order they did, huh?”

Neither of us spoke for a while. “I had a decent career, a ridiculous amount of money, and all the sex I wanted. My life was perfect, except for Rowan. Love, what’s the big deal? Way overrated.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Who needs it?”

“Everybody. I’m so in love, Natalie. And you both love me back. It’s fucking awesome. Literally awesome. Jesus, listen to me. No, don’t. I was fourteen before. Now I’m twelve. And in love.”

I didn’t need to say anything. I turned so we could snuggle facing east, nestled with the ease of longtime lovers. Gage spread the thin blue robe over us both.

Daylight stole into the yard. The blacks and grays of our fully adapted night vision yielded to the seeming miracle of a typical morning. The grassy patch where we lay mutated from gray to green. I smiled at the startling burst of color as my zinnias became pink, orange, and red.

“This is amazing,” Gage said softly near my ear. “Right now, everything’s…balanced.”

It was. Our bodies fit as if we’d been molded as one, then separated. He loved me, and I loved him. We both loved James. James loved both of us. Balanced.

We didn’t speak again, but he made a small pleasured noise as the sun peeped over Rincons and a single Bible-illustration ray pointed a dazzling finger toward us. After that, we lay quiet as the dawn desert for a long time. My breathing slowed as my thoughts became surreal.

I never heard the patio door rumble in its track.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

A feminine gasp brought me from what must have been a light, dreamless sleep to full wakefulness.

Cynthia’s mouth formed a comically shocked O.

At her side, James smiled sunny approval behind dark sunglasses. “It’s okay, Cyn,” he said, then to us added, “I didn’t mean outside.”

“It’s none of my business!” Cynthia hurried inside.

James went after her. I pulled the blue robe off Gage and myself. He stirred as I threw it on, flipping the robe we’d lain on over his hips. I belted mine as I followed James into the kitchen.

My husband held both of Cynthia’s hands in his. “Really, it’s fine. We didn’t stumble into something I shouldn’t know about. I told them to.”

“To do that?”

“To make love. Not to fall asleep with Gage’s ass hanging out.”

“What are you doing home?” I asked.

“The nose guy cleared me around eight. By nine they said I could go as soon as I lined up a ride.”

“Hi,” Gage said. His “bed hair” was worse than usual but adorable. He remembered to close the patio door. “Glad you’re home. Nice outfit.”

I hadn’t really looked. The T-shirt was emblazoned “TRUST ME I’M A LAWYER” and instead of pants he wore blue scrubs and flip-flops many sizes too large.

“Yours too.” James surely recognized his own robe. “The shirt’s Doug’s. His pants were hopeless, even with a belt, so they loaned me these. The sunglasses are pretty good, though. Our heads are the same size.”

“Big,” Cynthia said. “Keep them until you don’t need to hide your eyes.”

“How bad are they?” Gage asked.

“Why didn’t you call me?” I reached to hug him, then thought better of it.

His relief showed. “I did. Several times. Home phone, my cell, Gage’s cell.
Nada
. I couldn’t call a cab, since I had you take my wallet, and since you had my keys too, I couldn’t ask them to take me on credit and get paid when I got here, in case I couldn’t get in.”

“Where would I go?”

“I don’t know. The yard? Anyway, I tried Rowan, but I got voice mail. She’s probably at class. Manny, I didn’t want to pull off the job. I don’t know the other guys’ numbers. Then I thought of Cynthia.” He pulled her close and gave her a brotherly hug. “Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome. Show them your eyes,” she said. “More color than an Italian sunset.”

Without the sunglasses, James looked just awful. His swollen nose was nothing compared to the one truly black eye. The other was more a red-purple, and both were bloodshot.

“Ow,” I said in sympathy. “How do you feel?”

“Wiped out. They kept coming in all night to check for whether I had a concussion. I don’t. What I’ve got is a headache that’s going to last a week, they said, maybe two. Plus I’m dirty, and sore all over, like I’d been in a fight or started a gym membership.”