After Dark(44)

“He won’t call it the nursery,” I said, squeezing Dad’s arm. “He calls it ‘the little room’ or ‘Seth’s room.’ I swear, he’s more put off by domesticity than I am.”

“Seth? Is that…?” Dad cleared his throat.

“Maybe. We don’t know. Too morbid?”

“No, no. So long as it doesn’t upset anyone.”

“It seems to make Matt happy. I’ve been thinking…” I watched Dad drift through the nursery, which wasn’t little at all. We’d left the walls light beige and hired a designer to paint Deco birches along one surface. Light, distressed furniture and linen curtains gave the room a bohemian feel. Matt lined a shelf with books he intended to read to the child. I placed a round crib with a pretty skirt near the window. “Um, thinking about … Seth James Sky Junior.”

Dad laughed from deep in his belly.

“You’re bringing out the big guns, huh? I’m not going to be that father, blubbering my way down the aisle.”

“Daddy.” I hugged him tight.

Matt once said to me that losing his parents was like having the authors of his story destroyed, so that no meaningful narrative could follow. I understood.

“Come on,” Dad said, offering his arm. “We’ve got a ways to go.”

The night was cool and bug-free, thanks to an early autumn frost. I could see our lights glowing in the meadow among the trees. Dad held me steady on the uneven ground. My heart thumped and fluttered, unsure whether this was the best night ever or entirely terrifying.

As we drew closer, I began to recognize guests: Aunt Ella and Uncle Rick, Mom, Jay, Nate’s wife Valerie, Pam, Laura, Kevin, Stephen. Someone gave Owen and Madison their cue; I saw their small figures moving up the aisle, Owen with a little pillow and Madison scattering petals. I smiled as I watched Nate’s children, my soon-to-be nephew and niece.

There was Mike, who’d loaded me up with intel during two intensive “marriage counseling” sessions. Matt has abandonment issues, anger-management issues, fear of static states, manic-depressive tendencies, paranoid tendencies, masochistic tendencies …

I remembered leaving his office dizzy, wondering what wasn’t wrong with Matt.

I also remembered seeing Matt at his worst, and staying.

Other aunts, uncles, cousins, and colleagues filled out our modest seating.

Nate, the best man—of course, the best man—stood by Matt.

And Matt …

I took my time in letting my gaze go to him, because I knew that once it did, I wouldn’t look away. He wore a gray slim-fitting tux with just a limning of satin on the notched lapel. A white satin tie with a Windsor knot disappeared behind his vest.

My heart can barely hold you.

The almost silver-gray of the tux, and his golden skin and fair hair, drew in the light of our lamps and candles.

Those hands of his, those long legs, that elegant frame—my eyes roamed. That chest, those shoulders, the neck and throat, his smooth jaw …

His face.

Our eyes met and I forgot the audience staring at me. His lips parted slightly, eyes widened fractionally. I wanted to run to him. Was it the surrounding darkness or the chill in the air, or maybe the presence of others? Something …

Something clicked, and I understood that no one wanted me the way he wanted me. To have and to hold, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, until death.

So I went to him.

That is the story: I went to him.

* * *

“Were we idiots to let people crash here?” I whispered.

Matt chuckled and held a finger to his lips. Right, Nate and Val were just across the hall.

For the last four hours, we’d wined and dined our wedding guests and toasted and danced. Tomorrow we left for New York—the first of many cities I needed to see, according to Matt—and then Greece. No one had dared to deface his cars with cans, which made me grin. They also spared my brand-new Mercedes, a gift from my husband.

My husband …

He ruffled his hair and stretched gloriously, opened the bedroom window but left off the light. Outside in the dark, our little wind chimes tolled.

I watched him pry off his shoes and drape his coat across the bed.

God, he still made me shy.

I went to him only when he beckoned.

“There you are,” he said softly in my ear. “Are you real? Little bird, I think we can be quiet tonight.” He kissed my mouth and spread his hand across the V of skin on my back. He found my gown’s tiny zipper and tugged it down.

The garment dropped around my feet.

“Come sit on my lap,” he said.

He settled in the armchair in the corner of our room and I—calmly as I could manage in a garter belt, heels, and sheer bra—tottered over to the vanity and removed my accessories.

Be calm, be sexy, I chanted inwardly. This is your wedding night.

I turned to Matt. My jaw dropped, and my calm and sexy soared out the window.

He had his dick in his hand, eyes on me.

“I will never get tired of that reaction,” he murmured. “Come here.”

Sit on my lap … oh, boy, that made a different kind of sense now.

I shuffled over, unclipping my garters as I went. He smiled at me, not with his usual wicked amusement, but with simple, youthful desire.

I kept on my heels and thigh-highs; I kicked off my panties.

“God”—he touched my hip—“let me make sure you’re wet enough…” He stroked himself while he swirled a finger around my folds. The whole display mesmerized me. He still wore his shirt and slacks, only the thick rod of his arousal protruding from his fly.

Because I knew it would drive him crazy, and because his teasing touch was driving me mad, I lowered my body onto his fingers … lifted and sank again.

“Ah, fuck, Hannah. Are you fucking my finger?”

I nodded and rolled my hips, biting my lip to suppress a moan.

“Turn around,” he whispered. “Sit.”

I obeyed, gripping the arms of the chair and lowering myself onto his lap. He positioned his tip at my entrance. I took it slow, loving the way his thighs trembled and tensed.

At last, with a gasp I couldn’t subdue, I sat.

He unhooked my bra and tossed it aside. He hugged my back to his chest.

The way his heart beat against my shoulder blade told me he could barely keep still and quiet, which made two of us.

We sat like that, husband and wife, locked together intimately.

“Even if they can’t hear us,” he said, “everyone knows what we’re doing.” He cupped my breasts and lifted them. I felt his cock shift deep inside me.

“You like that they know, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes. All the men present today wanted you secretly, guiltily. Probably some of the women, too. You were a vision…”

He pinched my nipples and I squirmed, my body clamping around his. Delicious.

“I think…” I panted. “I think the women were focused on you. Matt, you looked—”

He covered my mouth. So handsome, so graceful … so beautiful, brave, and strong.

“Shhh,” he whispered. “Don’t. Don’t make it about me tonight. It’s you, Hannah. It’s always you. I was proud to be on your arm tonight. I was proud…”

I wanted to look at him, but I couldn’t, the way we sat.

And that’s how we did it that evening, sitting together in our home. His hands played me and I moved on his lap. He told me how it felt. He told me many things. No book can hold them.





Epilogue

HANNAH

April 2016

Matt and Seth Junior are in the meadow.

Seth is one and walking, which has thrown Matt into a panic. Last week, I caught him crawling around the main floor of the house (my husband, not our son). I laughed for ten minutes straight. Matt didn’t crack a smile. “I read that you need to get on the child’s level,” he’d explained, “to spot potential hazards.”

Then he crawled away, glaring at walls and furniture.

I doubled over with laughter—again.

As it turned out, anything within Seth’s reach constituted a hazard. Matt stripped our house of knickknacks from the floor to a yard up. He’d already put plug covers in every outlet and gated not just the staircase, but most of the doorways. “So we can control his movements.”

My husband is a worrier, you see.

So am I.

I watch my boys from the nursery window, a smirk on my lips. I know what you’re up to, Matt. Ever since I caught him reading Dracula to Seth (and confiscated the book, which is way too dark for a one-year-old mind), Matt has taken their reading sessions outdoors.

I pull on a light jacket and stride out into the meadow.

The April sun is warm; the wind is cool. Seth’s white-blond curls, which we leave a little long, toss in the breeze. He caught the rare fair-haired gene in the Sky family pool and has his father’s deep brown eyes. From Chrissy’s side, he got the same thick curls I inherited.

I know he will look like Seth when he grows up: devastatingly handsome, tall, and kind.

“What’s going on here?” I say.

Matt, who is lying on a blanket with Seth’s pudgy hand on his knee, snaps upright.

“Bird! Hey … hi.”

I squint at the thin volume he holds: Beowulf & Other Poems.

“Beowulf? No. Okay? No.”

“Oh, come on. He likes it. He likes—”

“He likes the sound of your voice. I don’t want weird, dark ideas infiltrating his mind. Stop trying to turn him into Heathcliff.” I go to swipe the book and Seth’s bubbly laughter distracts me. I am as powerless against Seth’s charms as I am against Matt’s.