Making It Last (Camelot 4)

When you did that, and you accepted it, the ten minutes before bed became just another ten minutes. Your husband’s hands on your body became just that. Hands on your body. A mouth between your legs. A need to be filled, and even if it was your need, too, you couldn’t get excited about it. You couldn’t believe that there was enough fuel in the world, enough hope, enough love to spare.

Maybe those girls didn’t know any of that yet, and Amber did. And maybe this moment—this night where she’d let down her guard a little bit, told Tony a secret, knocked a hole in the wall and watched it transform the whole shape of the room—maybe it couldn’t change any of that.

It couldn’t. She didn’t believe it could.

But she didn’t believe it was meaningless, either. Not when she opened her eyes and looked at Tony and remembered a hundred other times he’d been inside her like this, looking for her. Seeing her.

Their first night.

Their wedding night.

This night. This moment. Now.

“Amber,” he said.

She tipped her head and kissed the bridge of his nose. “Tony.”

“You’re crying.”

She shook her head, though she could feel the tears, warm in the hollows beneath her eyes. “No, I’m not.”

He kissed one hollow. Kissed her closed eyelids. “I love you,” he said.

He kissed her mouth.

“I know. I love you, too.”

He found her hip, stroked along her thigh, caught behind her knee. Brought her leg up and seated himself deeper. The movement ground him against sore, stinging flesh, and she must have given some sign, tensed up, because he asked, “Too much?”

“A little tender,” she said.

“You want me to …”

He didn’t finish the thought, and she smiled, knowing what he felt he ought to say and that he couldn’t—literally couldn’t—make himself say it.

Stop. Pull out. Do something different.

“No, go ahead.” She brought her other knee up. “I want to watch you.”

“What about you? You think you could come again?”

“No. You just take what you need.”

“I’ll feel bad.”

“Don’t. Let’s not feel bad, tonight. Let’s just be together, okay? You and me.”

She stroked her hands up and down his back. He was sweating. His arms trembled. She was laying here, more or less replete, and Tony was dying.

He rested his forehead against hers, and her heart hurt, she loved him so much. She loved his helplessness right now, loved how avidly he’d watched her bring herself off, loved that his first reaction to hearing she masturbated had been glowering jealousy but that it had only lasted about four seconds before it was replaced with Damn, that’s hot.

Not everyone got to have this.

And no one got to have Tony but her.

“Can I tell you something, bun?” His voice was husky. Strained.

“Anything you want.”