Only Trick

He takes my foot, pressing his lips to my arch. “Never,” he whispers.

*

It takes us both a few seconds to realize the smoke and fire alarm going off is not from our steamy lovemaking.

“Shit!” Trick jumps out of bed and runs to the kitchen.

With hot pads on his hands, he takes the salmon out of the oven, naked. You don’t see that every day. I wrap a blanket around myself and tiptoe behind him. “It was supposed to be lemon-pepper, but blackened is fine too.”

He gives me a wry look, then glances up to the ceiling. As if on cue, the alarm stops. He pulls off the hot pads then tugs my blanket away. “Where was I?”

I giggle and grab the blanket. Wrapping it around my back, I hold it open in the front. Trick hugs my naked body while hoisting me up and carrying me back to bed, blanket wrapped around both of us. He lays us down, me on top of him, our faces hidden under a curtain of unruly red hair.

“I can’t believe you said yes.”

Hours later, and here it is, the first acknowledgement that what I think happened wasn’t just a dream.

I smile. “I can’t believe you asked.”

For one rare moment, there’s translucency to his emotions; right now I feel his thoughts. They’re the ones that can’t imagine why I’d agree to marry someone after only a few months—someone with a troubled, unknown past.

“I know you’re wondering why I would say yes to the dark part of your life that you don’t even understand yourself.” I kiss the corner of his mouth. “But I don’t think you have any idea how honored I feel to be invited into the parts of you that can’t be seen. And tonight…” I tear up “…you chose me. Every time I hold my breath … hoping, praying, needing you to choose me … you do. You chose me and the last time someone chose me was the day I was born … and then she died.”

Trick kisses my tear-stained cheeks while his hand cups the back of my head—the loving gesture I’ve come to know, expect, and cherish. “I’ll always choose you.”

*

It’s after nine o’clock before we manage to separate long enough to make a new dinner—cold cereal with bananas. So much for showing off my culinary skills. I think his place is going to smell like burnt salmon for the next six months.

“Can we talk about the video?” Trick nudges my leg as we eat our cereal, sitting on the sofa at opposite ends, legs in the middle.

“No.” I scowl.

“It was when you still thought I was gay.”

I spoon around the last few floating wheat squares and bobbing bananas in my bowl, keeping my head down. What I’m not doing is engaging in this conversation.

“Want to know what I thought when I saw it?”

“No.”

“I was so fucking turned on.”

I roll my eyes. Apparently he doesn’t know what “no” means.

“Because you have to know I was thinking of you. God, since the first day I met you, it’s all I could do. Seeing you, touching you, smelling you, fucking sleeping with you and your hands all over me, face in my neck. If I wasn’t touching myself fantasizing about you, I was drowning in ice water.”

I risk a timid glance up, face still red. His impish grin does nothing to help my embarrassment.

“Okay…” I sit up and start to stand “…I think that’s enough.”

He grabs my waist, pulling me back to the sofa. “But…” he waits for me to look at him “…but then I felt guilty, like a complete asshole for ever letting you believe anything but the truth, because when it was over … when you had finished …”

I shake my head and try to pull away again, but his firm hold prevents my escape. “Look at me.”

I feel more exposed than I have ever felt in my life.

“After the fact, I saw the pain in your face—the shame, the guilt, the agony of probably thinking we would never be. And a little part of me died in that moment.” He sets our bowls down on the table and kneels in front of me, nose to nose. “I’m sorry, Darby. I’m just so fucking sorry.”

I nod and he kisses me. My hands frame his stubbly face. “So you erased the video?”

His head jerks back. “No fucking way! It may be sad, but it’s still the hottest fucking porn I’ve ever seen.”

My hand makes its way to slap the shit out of him, but he intercepts and pins me to the back of the couch. “God I love your feistiness.” He attacks my neck. “And I can’t wait for you to touch yourself for me.”

I wriggle in his grasp. “That will never happen.”

He bites my nipple through my T-shirt. “Oh … mark my word … it’ll happen.”