Gorgeous Misery (Creeping Beautiful)

Nick Tate has the most amazing smile too. His teeth are so perfect. Like he had braces as a kid. And they are white. He shows them off a lot because unlike a lot of other Company men, he likes to smile. He finds reasons to smile.

The bright side.

Nick Tate is my bright side.

He tells me random things too. Mostly he’s been preparing for the honeymoon, he says. And thinking about me. He’s written it all down, he says. But that’s for later. I nod, understanding. Same, same, right?

And then we’re all caught up, the sun is setting, Merc isn’t back, and we’re settled now. We can stop thinking about risks, and plans, and how everything might blow up in our faces and just concentrate on us.

That means sex, by the way.

We get up from the table. No words. He takes my hand, gently. Then he leads me back into the bedroom and closes the door.

It’s dark in the bedroom since the curtains are pulled shut. But that’s OK. There’s enough light to see vague outlines.

He leads me over to the bed and I climb in. He never takes my clothes off before we get in bed because he thinks that would be presumptuous. And Nick Tate is a really nice guy, remember?

One day though, after I’m cured and we’re on the honeymoon, he’s gonna do it different.

He will stop being careful, he will stop wondering if he will hurt me or I will hurt him, and he will start being presumptuous. That’s what he says when I complain about all this special consideration.

One day, I will be cured and he will ravish me properly. But for now, he must be considerate.

I almost laugh out loud thinking about that particular conversation. But then we’re both in bed and Nick’s gentle fingertips are slipping under my t-shirt and sliding around on my stomach. He touches me so softly. So carefully. It sends chills through my whole body.

I stop thinking at this point. I just sigh and give in. Because having Nick Tate’s undivided attention is pretty much the best feeling in the world and even though we’re married now, we don’t spend a lot of time together. We can’t spend a lot of time together. So these moments are precious.

He always goes slow, too.

One day, he says, he’ll throw me down on the bed or fuck my brains out against a wall, but not yet.

We have to do things a certain way until I’m cured.

CHAPTER TWENTY - NICK

I caress her stomach with the tips of my fingers and her skin prickles up almost immediately with a chill. I love this part about being with Wendy. I love the intimacy. Because she is the only person in this world I can be intimate with. She is the only one who understands me.

I go slow with her for two reasons. One, she needs it to be slow. Her mind is always going so fast, slowing down is always good. But two is for me. Because time has a way of slipping through the cracks if you don’t pay attention to it. You gotta control it. You gotta be the boss of time and tell it to slow the fuck down. And the way you do that is by being careful. So every minute I spend with Wendy is careful. It’s deliberate and intentional. Because I don’t want to miss a single fucking thing. I’ve given away too much already. No one is gonna steal time from me, not even time itself.

After a few minutes of slow caresses, she is relaxed. Her eyes are closed, her breathing is even and easy, and her fingertips are beginning to find their way underneath my shirt. We angle into each other and then her eyes open and she smiles.

This is her signal.

I’m not sure if she knows she does this, but this is how she tells me she’s ready. That sad, sad smile I know to be real. It contains all of her. All her days gone by. Not just sad things, either. It’s happy things. Lots of them, really. Her life could’ve been so much worse. And I know that sounds like I’m trying to justify how it all went, but it’s true. She was born who she is the same way I was and it could’ve all gone so much worse.

I ease her shirt up her body and place my lips on the hard, taut muscles of her stomach. Her free hand finds its way to the top of my head and then she slips her fingers into my hair.

I kiss my way up her stomach, carefully pushing her t-shirt out of my way. I stop to open the front clasp of her bra and then take a moment to appreciate her full, round breasts as they spill out.