The Plan (31 page)

Move. Kiss. Slide. Farther. Further. Stretch. Again. Move…

And he’s not there yet…

That is to say, Elvis has barely entered the building.

Holy. Shit. Am I that nervous? Or were those pernicious pineapples I’ve been sneaking into his meals really GMOs laced with super-conductor growth hormones?

I mean, I have been doing Kegels like a mofo, but seriously? This fit before? Just yesterday?

“Ungh…uh…uh…a…ric. I…oh, God—” I cry out as his hips tilt and thickness presses inside me against the spot his fingers had stroked earlier. My limbs leave my control, and I wrap around him, clinging. I clutch and grasp, fingertips pressing at the contours and sinews of his back.

Legs flail, and suddenly, I find I’m around him, past waist and hip, ankles entwined above. It causes a shift, a surge. Farther in, into me, much farther.

A shift that may catch him unawares; long, moaning curses fall beside and all around me. Progress and movement still. Only tremulous movements along his limbs. Strain and hold back.

I wriggle, then writhe, then learn to make his body beg.

Hands down the small of his back, smoothing one over his hip, press thumbs into bone. Will him, plead with him to continue. My hands slide between us, to where we meet. Near scorches, humidity, heat.

Partially sheathed, consume, complete. Hands run circuits along my sides, along my waist. Palm draws my thigh up, anchors him down. Transfixed, I don’t have any idea why I note the soft webbing between his thumb and index finger as it presses against the back of my right knee. He holds fast, sounds so soft, kisses forming a line over my breastbone. They’re unsteady. Tender whisper-laced kisses. Barely audible over the pulse thrumming in my ears.

These are the secrets.

Finally.

And I hear some of what he has to say for the first time.

Furtive, so much so it almost feels like I eavesdrop. “Only you…” His mouth press to the pulse point on my throat.

“Whatever it takes…” His lips smooth along my neck, open and moist. “Mine…goddamn it all….now…” The words are hoarse and dry. I feel him swallow against my breast.

My hands fly to his face and pull him to me and kiss him and never let go. I have never felt more. My palms rub against the scruff along his cheeks. Kiss and delve and swallow any more of these clandestine curses. Then I spread my legs, strain near pain, drag the hand he held me with along the way. Hips hitch forward. Manage a great deal more poise than I would have ventured I possess. Draw his length in. To the hilt. All of him, all that remains of him, of me.

He cries out into my mouth when his hips fully meet mine. I think he might have tried to hold fast and allow me to adjust, but I am having none of it; I raise myself and grind against him. Alaric breaks from our kiss and watches the space where our bodies join. Each joining, his breathing picks up more, and then yet more. Strong fingers wrapped at my waist. The fingertips of one hand feel as though they may almost touch the other, completely encircling me in his grasp.

Full, long, deep…complete.

Steady movements. Try to force my eyes to remain open. More than can be managed. Peek through foggy slits. Shadows, silhouettes move above me, within me.

He alternates in some rhythm I can’t measure. Lips to mine. Then, watching himself in me. Slide. Disappear. Focus, gauge my reaction.

Vaguely, I register one of his hands moving from my waist, feel the drag along smooth sheets, past my body, my face, my hair, sliding until it extends over my head and, probably, latches onto the back of the mattress. Leverage. Heaving push.

I’m no scientist, but if this is what fulcrum or leverage (or, hell, thermal dynamics and industrial water technology, for all I know) do for intimacy, sign me up for the courses.

For a doctorate.

Pressure, and the hand he still uses to secure my waist tilts my pelvis up to greet his. He draws himself up on his knees slightly, slides his length into me. Slow. Rubs along my front wall, edges. All. Watching, ever watching my reactions.

I give up. Give in. Unmasked and no disguise, he sees it all. All that is me on display.

Draws back out, maneuvers me again. Forward plunge. Different path. Different point. Oh, more right there, and again, again and please. Air in throat, breath catches, soundless moan.

Moonlight glints off his smile. Finds what he’s looking for. Takes a long breath, then draws back, then enters and pounds again, again. There. Just…there.

Scream. I want to. Need to. For all I know, I might.

Force. Extreme. Hold on. Ankles dig and ache. Feel my body, my back arc up and away from the point where we join. My head is weighted, too heavy, stays touching the bed. Back bows, mimics a flesh rainbow.

Might say his name. Might blaspheme. I begin to call out all manner of sounds. Some might even be actual words. Or the recipe for tuna noodle surprise.

Clutch at the sheets, pulling, arc further, and shake. He moves his hand from the mattress and drags a flat palm down the length of my torso to join his other one in holding my waist.

Breaths that are rough. He continues to pound into me. Thoroughly. Fully.

Completely.

All around, words spill. I hear myself saying things and can’t stop. I tell him how I would think of him every day. Thrash and cool sheets and night air. Whisper nonsensical rants about cherry wood doors and white dress shirts and conference room C. How I can’t concentrate except on him.

And still he pounds into me and still I keep pouring my heart out to him.

In shallow gasps I share with him how much he means to me and it scares me that he does.

Happy and terrified. I’m sobbing about how much he means to me when Alaric suddenly stops, his eyes wide. Stops, scoops me up. Flat against him, every crevice, every space. Fine hairs and cool sweat.

His hands run through my hair. Kisses my cheeks, my lips, corners of my eyes, every part of my face as if I’ve been missing and he has just found me. He lowers us both back to the bed. Lips tease flesh inside of one of my elbows. He places it on his shoulders, wrapping around him, holding him. Encased. He resumes. Long, full.

Maybe only moments and I splinter. Fall. Tense and clench. Lungs tight with confessions and courage and cowardice. He seems near the brink. His muscles writhe and contract. His words like whispers, inaudible through my haze. Breathes more secrets into my skin, and I strain to hear the tale, and he throws his head back, shouts, pours. Heat. Spasm. Full.

He shudders and continues to spill. Runs open-mouth kisses wherever they land.

I stay silent, and he continues to whisper, to respond to the confessions I have been unable to hold back. I begin to hear and understand the hum decoded through dissipating fog. His voice a low thrum. “I do…so much already…” He kisses my eyes and smooths the dampened hair from my face. “Already and always.” He swallows thickly and runs his nose alongside my own. “Oh, God, Emma. You don’t know how much…I do.”

He wraps his arms around me and breathes his words into my hair. “I love you, too.”

Say who with the what now? Well, Merry Christmas and Ho Ho Holy Crap.

Just what the hell have I been yammering on about?

Christmas Morning

10:09 a.m.

W
ARM
. E
VERYTHING
I
S
W
ARM
, and I’m being jostled.

My eyes flutter open.

“Hey,” he says, kissing my bare shoulder. “I couldn’t wait any longer.”

His lips are wet, soft. I stretch and kiss his throat.

“There is something I have to tell you…that you should know,” he says against my skin. “I meant what I said earlier. It was not because of the heat of the moment or because I felt compelled to respond in kind. I want you to know that.”

“Hmm?” So sleepy. Content.

“I love you, Emma.” His lips brush the corner of my eye, my cheek, my own. “I love you and I know you. I know you in my soul. With everything I am, I love you for everything you are.”

In my waking haze, no act, no filter, I say the first thing that comes naturally to me.

“I probably love you, too.”

11:15 a.m.

*
Stockings
: Hung over the lampshade with care.

*
Coital
: Post.

*
Note to Self
: Find Cheesecake Factory suggestion box. Submit pineapple cheesecake.

*
Reindeer Games
: Is that what you kids are calling it these days?

S
O
M
UCH
S
EX
. I feel limp. Like I should move to a Boneless Chicken Ranch.

5:02 p.m.

*
Lather
: Rinse. Repeat.

*
Condoms
: Soon the way of the dodo.

A
N
O
DD
G
RAY
A
REA
now settles between us. Too intimate for small talk. Not intimate enough for talk of bigger concepts like relationships, futures, curtains.

How do you start a casual conversation after you’ve been fornicating like the survival of the species depended on your successful efforts?

Hey, hun, did you like the mount up I did on you last night?

Yes, yes. I’ve been stretching. Trying to keep limber.

Today is a holiday. Canon is wearing Baby Jesus’s birthday suit.

Well, at least he says it is. I recall some business about swaddling clothes and something else about men being wise. And we know that men are no such thing. But “holiday” with Alaric seems to translate to some variant of “wall sex,” so…well…who am I to quibble with trivial matters such as accuracy and facts?

We have been enjoying a little celebratory SOS—Shoes-On Sex.

They say practice makes perfect, but that doesn’t seem to apply. If so, I’d have a doctorate. An FMP PhD.

It isn’t Valentine’s Day for a couple more months, but that doesn’t stop my heels from piercing Alaric’s heart.

If by “heart,” one means “dick.”

“Are you prepping me for some sort of genital piercing? At least let’s discuss that sort of thing first.”

“Do you mean an apadravya?” I try not to snort at the idea of this stiff and proper man with such an ornamentation.

“Apadravya? Any intent to plunge a steel rod through…there…best begin with ‘Abracadabra.’” He exhales sharply, cupping himself like a baby bird fallen from the nest, and shudders.

I snicker. He looks nauseated. If I ever broached the subject again, I’d be better off to just go straight for Avada Kedavra.

A piercing like that isn’t anything I really want, but I can’t help myself when he’s like this.

“I hear it’s very pleasurable,” I say as innocently as possible, running two fingers over the sheet in slow, swirly patterns. His eyes follow their trek.

“It’s done in one quick session when they pierce the mea—”

“Emma, I swear on a stack of balanced portfolios, if you finish that sentence, we are never having intercourse again.”

Oh, dear. Instant mute. Just add threat of celibacy.

Hour: Late. Or early. A matter of perspective.

*
Snow
: Sheets.

*
Actual Sheets
: Mostly near the lamp base.

*
Condoms
: Completely exhausted.

*
Us
: See above, re: “Condoms.”

I A
WAKE
T
O
N
EAR
D
ARKNESS
, the moon’s effects shy behind murky clouds. Fat snow obscures the silent cityscape. Norman Rockwell would be proud.

The only sounds I can discern are the soft, even breaths that accompany each rise and fall of his chest beneath my cheek. If there had been an actual zombie apocalypse and we were all that remained of humanity, I would still be content. Right up until the special of the day was my brains, anyway.

We’re wrapped up in one another…finally. Not only physically—with his strong arms encircling me and holding me to his chest and my legs warm underneath the one he has draped over me—but emotionally as well. He had let me know as much in no uncertain terms.