Choosing Henley(45)

“Fuck. I need to be inside you.” He’s spooning me from behind as I lie on my side when I feel him position himself at my entrance.

“Yesss,” I moan as he slowly pushes inside me.

He has one arm wrapped around my chest and the other around my waist, holding me tight against him as he starts to move. It’s the slowest he’s every gone before, which is another thing that’s different about us tonight. Turning my head, I meet his lips in a kiss. It, too, is passionately slow.

I absolutely love everything about the way we fuck, but this is something entirely different. With the only sound in the room being our labored breathing, it feels like he needs me, like he’s cherishing me… It feels like we’re making love. I really don’t know how else to put it.

I push my hips back again to meet his thrusts. I’m so close again. Reaching around, he presses down onto my clit. I come, screaming his name, and only a few moments later, he finds his own release, shouting my name. Then we lie there for a while, his cock still inside me, his arms still wrapped around my body.

“There’s nothing better in this entire world than waking up to you naked and sleeping in my bed,” he says, peppering kisses from my neck down to my shoulder.

“I don’t mind that kind of wake-up call,” I tease. “Even if it is still the middle of the night.”

“I really did try not to wake you,” he lies, and I grin into the pillow. “But I make no moves to apologize. Waking up with my cock pressed into your ass was more than I could withstand.”

I laugh. “No willpower, eh?”

“None whatsoever when it comes to you,” he whispers into my ear. “Wild horses couldn’t drag me away from you in bed.”

My heart swells. The only natural reaction to the things he says is to swoon.

When he untangles his body from mine and pulls out of me, I wince, instantly feeling empty. It’s pitch black, so I only feel the bed dip and hear the sounds of his feet padding across the room. Moments later, the bathroom light comes on, flooding the bedroom in a glow. I hear the tap running before he returns with a wet washcloth. I really can do it myself, but every time I try, he just ends up winning anyway. He likes to take care of me, and now, it doesn’t occur to me to mind.

The light from the bathroom allows me to watch him as he takes his time cleaning me, making sure I’m well taken care of. When he’s done, he gets up, depositing the cloth into a laundry bin before turning off the lights.

Jami comes back to bed, and I curl into his chest as he pulls the cover over us. His running his fingers absentmindedly through my hair, makes me sleepy again.

“Have you ever tried to go see him?” he asks.

I open my eyes, staring into the black. “My dad?”

“Yeah.”

I wrap my body tighter around his for comfort. “Yes. Once.” I sigh. “It took Mom a few years, but she had a private investigator track him down. Why? I’m not sure. She said it was in case anything ever happened—at least we’d know where he was. That’s really beside the point though.” I start to draw circles over the planes of his muscular chest even though I can’t see him in the dark. Just feeling his body around me makes me feel safe. “He lives in Seattle. I guess his new wife is American or something. I drove down there once.”

“When?” he asks, moving his hand from my hair to tickle over my back.

“I was about nineteen I guess. We were out of school and I was going through this weird phase. Mom and Hannah had offered to go with me when I mentioned it, but I wanted to do it alone… I wanted to confront him.” I don’t feel sad talking about the memory, mostly just hollow. “It took me a little over six hours to get there.”

Six hours. My dad left and he’d been living all of six hours away from us. The whole thing was just too much to wrap my brain around. Six hours and he never called, he never visited—he never even tried.

“I found the house easily enough once I got there, some massive-looking all-American home. It was a Saturday in the summer, and I wasn’t sure if they were home ,so I waited in my car. When I finally saw him with her, I knew it was done. There would never be any salvaging of our relationship. Not even a little.” I wince inwardly as I remember the look on his face. “He looked so good—a little older than I remembered, but good. He was straightening his tie in the open doorway when a limo pulled into their driveway. It was white, rows of beautifully decorated cans dragging behind it. I watched him talk with the driver for a few minutes. They were laughing about something, probably sports. My dad always loved sports.” I murmur the last bit quietly.