"This isn't about chauvinism or you being my equal, or whatever feminist shit you want to trot out. Call me a caveman, I don't give a fuck. You will never put yourself in that position again."
"Yes. I. Will." The delicate line of her jaw juts out. "If the situation calls for it."
"The situation won't call for it."
"You have a target on your back, Grip." The concern in her eyes overpowers the anger. "Don't you see that?"
"You think I don't know?" I blow out an exasperated breath. "The more I do this, the deeper I get into these issues, the bigger the target gets. I can live with it, but what I cannot live with is you jumping in front of me every time you think I'm in trouble."
"I won't even think twice."
"Bristol, no." I clutch my head in both hands and look up at the ceiling. "You don't get it."
"No, you don't get it." Some of the anger melts from her face. "You're right, this isn't about me being a feminist. It's about me being your wife, your partner. I'm not some damsel in distress, Grip. I don't need rescuing, but if I ever do, I know you'd do whatever was necessary to protect me. All I'm asking is that you expect the same from me, and not lose your shit when I do it."
I was right. This won't be resolved tonight. I'm always going to want to protect her, and she's always going to risk everything to protect me.
"You protect me all the time," she adds softly. "You saved me."
"When?" I scoff. "When have you ever sat your ass down long enough for me to save you?"
"When I was in the dark, unable to shower or eat or get out of bed . . . unable to imagine living again. That's when you saved me."
I wasn't prepared for that answer. Her honesty and the naked need in her eyes chip away at my frustration.
"We saved each other," I finally reply.
"That's my point." She pauses long enough for the words to reach my head and then my heart. "Yeah, I'm reckless. When you're threatened, I don't always think it through. I promise I'll work on that, but I will save you if I can. That's what this is: you and me spending the rest of our lives saving each other, supporting each other, loving each other. You say I'm precious to you, right?"
"The most precious thing in my life, yes." I cup her neck with one hand and wrap the other around the curve of her waist. My hands are ready to make up, finding her hips, fingers spreading over the top of her ass.
"We've been through a loss no parents should ever have to experience," she says, her voice wobbling, her eyes watering. "I know I wouldn't have survived losing Zoe if it hadn't been for you."
"I feel the same way." I drop my forehead to hers.
"I love you," she whispers, angling her head until our lips brush together. Just that contact is kindling, and after six weeks, I'm a dry bush ready to burn. The fire in my belly could quickly roar out of control.
"I need to make love to you." I dot kisses over the slant of her collarbone, lick into the well at the base of her throat, suck the gold chain and the skin beneath into my mouth.
"Yes." She licks her lips, dropping her eyes but sliding her hands up my chest and linking her wrists behind my neck. "I want that, too."
"Bris." I groan into her neck, nudging the strapless dress down to expose one breast. I circle my nose around her nipple, blowing on it but not yet taking it in my mouth. It blossoms, stiffens, straining toward my lips. "I want to be gentle, but-"
"Don't be." Need ignites in her eyes. "I've been numb for too long. My senses have been muted, I guess by depression, drugs, I don't know, but everything has been a shadow of what I felt before. This, now, us together, it feels rich. It finally feels right again."
She seizes me by the jaw, pulling me close and forcing her way into my mouth, sucking on my tongue, her cheeks hollowing with the forceful suction.
"Fuuuuuuck." I squeeze my eyes shut because I know I won't be as gentle as I mean to be. "I don't want to hurt you this first time."
"I feel like someone who cuts just to feel." Her eyes find mine. "That's how numb I've been. I don't mind if it stings a little."
"You've been numb? You want to cut to feel?" I slide her hand down to my cock, nearly poking a hole in my jeans. "Here's your knife."
She squeezes my dick, her hand sliding up and down over the jeans, her eyes entangled with mine.
"Tell me what you want," she whispers, echoing the words that have been so pivotal in our relationship, one of us always trying to out-please the other.
"I want you right here, spread on these steps." My words are rough with desperation and lust.
Wordlessly, she drops to sit on the step, elbows behind her on the step above, the motion pushing her breasts forward. One nipple is already out, the dress still half off, half on. She's obeyed every command, but I have one more.
"Panties off."
46
Bristol
Grip's smoky words heat the air, and without breaking eye contact, I reach under my dress and slide the wisp of silk off, tossing it behind me farther up the staircase. I tease the dress up my thighs and spread my legs for him.
I'm gloriously wet. Since Zoe died, I've been practically asexual. There were days I felt nothing. Even when I looked at Grip, I would feel love, but passion was elusive, like my heart, my body could only accommodate so much emotion at once, and grief consumed everything. Six weeks later, my heart is still broken. There are some places that may never quite heal, but the passion, the want, the scorching need I've always felt for this man alone is finally blazing a trail through my body again, and it starts between my legs.
"I want you wider," he says, his voice pitched low and dark and tortured. His eyes never leave my pussy as he methodically undoes his belt, unbuttons his pants, slides down his zipper, jerks his shirt over his head.
I yawn my thighs open, propping my heels on the step. I'm spread like a buffet for him. He licks his lips, a tell of his hunger.
I run a brazen finger down my slit. He drops his long body in front of me, stretching down the staircase below, elbows propped on the step. His head is between my legs. I reach down, spreading it, serving myself to him. He groans into my pussy, slurping and biting and licking and running his nose through my folds. Arms lengthened down my body as I keep the lips pulled back for him, my head drops to the step behind me. Pleasure long forgotten exults through me, winding between my toes like steam, circling the tense muscles of my calves, the quivery line of my thighs. My spine bows and my hips buck into his mouth. I lift one foot off the step, curling my leg around him, digging my heel into his back and thrusting over his face. Nothing exists for me except the starvation of his mouth against me and his thumb-dammit, his thumb in my ass, working its way into the spindled hole and finding neglected nerve endings.
"Oh, God," I scream. "Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes. Don't stop, Grip. Baby, don't stop."
Ever since that day I heard Grip's heartbeat, I've been living by proxy, leaning on his heart to beat for mine. Grief handed me a heart of iron, and I rusted it with my tears, a muscle not made of flesh, not pumping blood. Ever since that day I've been a lament in limbo, no longer in the dark but not fully in the light, but here, now, Grip's touch drags me into the light.
I pop, like an incandescent bubble. The pain, the grief, the desolation, the darkness of the last six weeks unfurls from me in a low keening moan. It hums in my throat and explodes until I'm a deranged thing, bucking and flailing and weeping, tearing at my hair, pinching my breasts, scratching Grip's back, feeling his skin beneath my nails. My body is making up for lost time, demanding satisfaction, expecting its due.
"Fuck me." The plea trips over my bitten lips. "Any way you want, I don't care."
The dark, unspoken demand of his eyes, the shiny wetness on his wicked mouth, the scent of me hanging from his lips leaves me completely willing and wanton.
"Yes, that," I gasp. "You can do that."
"Babe, I don't want to hurt you." Even as he says it, I see a hot hope, a fantasy coming to life in his eyes.
"You won't," I tell him, my voice hoarse. "I want to feel you as deep as you can go, wherever you want to be. Make me feel it, Grip."
"I have lube upstairs," he says, his eyes drifting up the staircase.
"I have lube right here." I run my fingers through my dripping slit. "Work with what we've got."
"Damn, Bris."
A shudder rolls over the muscled slope of his shoulders, tensing the ridged plane of his stomach. With my feet I coax his pants and briefs over his hips, pushing them down the carved line of his thighs. He shakes them off, his eyes fixed on my fingers at the hidden zipper in my dress. I pull it down the side until the silk falls away, leaving me completely bare and laid out for him, wearing nothing but Neruda on my shoulder and around my neck.