No Quick Fix (Torus Intercession 1)

I nodded fast, a bit too choked up to speak.

“You wanted me to love you.”

“And you do,” I barely got out.

“And I do,” he declared with so much feeling that I felt it like a buzz under my skin as he hugged me tighter.

We had to clean up and go get the girls so I rolled out of bed, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do.

As I walked into my bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, I noticed that the bites he’d given me were now smears of dark wine against my skin. It was amazing. This was what being claimed was, the marks, my mauled lips, the stubble burn, my tousled hair, and the blotchy flush over my chest and throat.

That was the outside.

Inside, the changes were bigger, broader, painted on my soul like a lush, overgrown garden teeming with life and sweetness and hope. So much of that.

Under the warm water, I felt the tempest beneath my skin trying to erupt, to escape, to pierce my flesh and show the world that he and I were joined, and together there would be a whole new life built on the solid foundation of the first. I would take care of what Andrea Dodd had begun, be caregiver and lover, father and husband. I’d never felt anything but love in the house, comforted by it, enveloped and accepted. And I knew I was out of my head, vulnerable and joyful, but there was a solidness too, a weight, and even as I clutched for balance in my sudden new life, there was an engulfing peace as well.

Because he saw me.

Emery had the ability to see me as I truly was, with all the flaws, all the shortcomings and selfishness, but all the good parts too. He saw my heart and how it belonged only to him. And now there was the quiet after the storm, and so I was reverent of what had been and what would be.

Wiping the fog from the mirror, I saw myself again and I felt it, how settled I was in my skin, and I smiled back thinking this was what being crazy in love looked like.

He walked behind me, on his way to the shower, but stopped and stared.

“What?” I asked, almost breathless all over again from his unwavering attention.

He shook his head, pressing his chest to my back, brushing his lips over my ear, and spoke so I shivered from his warm breath. “I fall fast, you know,” he confided to me in a whisper. “I saw Andrea on a Friday, and it was like walking outside in the warm summer sun. I knew she was supposed to be with me, so I asked her to move in with me on the following Monday.” His sigh, like he remembered it so very clearly, made me smile. “After she died, I thought… well, a lot of things, but most of all, that I’d never feel that way again.”

I waited because the way he was staring at me, standing beside me, touching, smoothing his hands over my skin, told me there was more.

“When you walked in the front door that Saturday morning, I saw it again, and then I felt the same brightness and sense of peace.” His voice cracked on the last word as his hand slipped over my flaccid cock and lower to my balls. “I was stunned,” he said, his warm breath tickling over my damp skin. “And I thought I was wrong. That maybe it was an illusion, that I was seeing things that weren’t there. Because I was sure my life was going to be a certain way after my wife died, so I agreed to a marriage that had nothing to do with love.”

Everything felt different. Being in the house, being in his space, I was lighter, my life irrevocably complete with an outcome I could have never imagined. We were the same, he and I.

“But there you were,” he said, his voice sultry, rich, stroking me gently as I hardened slowly in his hand. “Your first instinct not to please or flatter, like everyone else tried to do, but to protect, which is what we all so desperately needed.”

I pushed into his hand, hearing my breath go raspy and ragged.

“You’ve been a confidant and a champion. You’ve become the parent both the girls needed,” he said, leaning me forward over the counter, his hand on my ass, rubbing and massaging as my eyes drifted closed. “And I saw you the whole time, and the amazing thing is, you saw me too.”

He went to his knees behind me and when he parted my cheeks, I gasped before bucking against the counter as his tongue slid into my hole.

“I’ll be so gentle,” he promised before he licked and pressed, the spearing and suction and endless laving turning my bones to liquid so, guided by his strong hands, I sank to the floor on my hands and knees.