by Liz Durano
The twins escape their parents’ grasp and run toward their grandfather, their happy squeals filling the air. From the corner of my eye, I see Dyami excuse himself from his cousins to say hello to Granddad.
“I can’t believe you lied to me,” I whisper as Benny kisses me lightly on the mouth. “So everyone was in on this except me? Even my dad?”
He laughs. “Wouldn’t you know it? I should have known when I called him at five in the morning my time thinking he was three hours ahead of me and I woke him. Turns out, he was in Vail with buddies, skiing. You could call it Fate, I guess. If it weren’t for him, I’d still be on the road trying to make it to you right now.”
“His plane does come in handy sometimes, doesn’t it?”
“Can you believe he said he was actually working? While skiing?” Benny says, chuckling.
“That’s Dad for you. All work and no play.” For Dad, whether it’s playing golf with young upstarts in New York or skiing in Vail, it’s all part of doing business. In fact, it’s how many of his deals get started. On the golf course or on the slopes. It’s how he judges character, how they deal with a terrible swing or a Double Black Diamond. “But I’m glad it worked out.”
Benny gives me a squeeze, our noses touching. “You have no idea how happy I am that it worked out.”
I pull away, glaring at him accusingly. “By the way, that scavenger hunt… or whatever it was–”
He grins gleefully. “It drove you crazy, didn’t it?”
“You know how I like being in control of everything,” I say, pausing when he narrows his eyes at me and I lean closer to whisper in his ear. “Well, almost everything.”
“That’s a good girl,” he growls before burying his face in my hair.
Around us, everyone returns to whatever they’d been discussing before Dad and Benny walked in.
How are things? Building a new earthship over by Clover Way. I was in Vail when I heard there was something going on down here. Grandpa, how long are you staying? I almost didn’t pull it off, Tito Dax. Mom was being Mom. You want to go river rafting in March? My friends from New York are coming down to visit. I have something to ask you, nízhoní.
It takes me a moment to realize Benny just asked me a question. My mind is a jumble of words, pictures, and feelings that filled my day so far—from the disappointment of realizing I was going to be alone on Valentine’s Day for the first time since Benny and I started dating to the frustration of not being in control of every surprise that came my way. I usually planned these things for everyone else.
“What did you say?” I ask.
“I have something to ask you. It’s important.” Benny sets me down on the floor.
“What is it?”
Before I realize what’s happening, Benny gets down on one knee and all around me, everyone becomes quiet.
He pulls something from his jeans pocket, a marquis-cut turquoise gemstone set against a double platinum band and trillion diamond open ring setting. I know because I’ve seen it before, the first time I said no when he asked me to marry him. And I’ve never forgiven myself for saying no. I’d denied myself what I really wanted because I needed my family to be intact first after Mom died.
Since then, I never thought Benny would ask again. He is, after all, a very proud man. A warrior. And warriors do not take rejection kindly.
I look at Benny in surprise, the buzzing in my ears getting louder, a feeling of weightlessness coming over me as he clears his throat and says the words I’ve wanted to hear for so long, only this time he says it first in Navajo, then in English.
“Sarah Drexel, keeper of my heart, will you be my wife? My queen?”
I can barely speak. I’ve always hated being the center of attention, but today, I’m claiming that spot. Behind me, I swear Harlow just swooned.
“Yes, Benny,” my voice emerges as a croak. “My answer is yes.”
Chapter Nine
Who knew I’d make it in time? I sure didn’t. But I was going to do my darnedest to make it.
I’d been on my way to the car rental booth when Daniel’s phone call came. Not a text this time, but a phone call. And if there’s one thing about Daniel Drexel: he only calls when it’s urgent, like that time when Dyami was born and he needed updates because he was still in the air, or that day when I showed up along with tribal leaders at a controversial projected drill site on sacred land and violence broke out. Sarah had cried when she saw the two bruises on my body from the rubber bullets shot into the crowd.
I won’t ever pretend to understand your reasons for going there to support your people, Benny, and I have nothing but respect for your beliefs, he’d said in a very controlled voice. But I hope you understand that the last thing I want is to see my grandson without his father and my daughter without the man she loves.
And then there’s today, when he learns that his daughter’s longtime lover has managed to get everyone together only to find himself unable to make it to the place on time.
The pilot just submitted the new flight plan, he’d said on the phone when I answered. Can you make it to the private hangar in an hour? It’ll save you five hours of driving, at least. I’ll text you the address.
Daniel could have texted me the damn alphabet, for all I cared, I’d have gone anywhere he told me to go.
All for this, the sound of yes leaving Sarah’s lips. Yes to being mine. Yes to being my wife.
Nízhoní. My woman.
I don’t hear the applause that follows when I slip the ring around her finger. I don’t see anyone else but Sarah as she wraps her arms around my neck and I feel her lips on my mouth, soft and warm, the perfect fit. She’s always been the perfect fit for me, as if she was made only for me. I can smell the lotion on her skin mingling with the scent that’s all hers, ticking all the boxes that send my pulse racing and set my heart on fire.
“Ayóó anííníshní,” I murmur. I love you.
“And I love you right back, Benny Turner,” she says, giggling as I stand up. “I can’t believe you made me wait so long.”
“How does that saying go? Good things come to those who wait.”
She giggles, our noses touching. “Well, you’re going to have to learn your own lesson, big boy, because after all you put me through today, I’m going to make you wait.”
I gaze at her, a smirk on my lips. “You might regret that, shiʼáád.”
“I just might.” She bites her lower lip, making me want to pull her into some dark corner so I can nibble it. Then she winks. “Show me just how much I’m going to regret it later?”
“Oh, don’t worry, shiʼáád. I will.”
I let her go, watching her pull Dyami in a hug and probably threatening to ground him for not spilling the beans about the plan. When she lets him go so she can show off her ring to Harlow, Nana, and Alma, Dyami strides toward me, a proud grin on his face.
“I did it, Dad,” he says as we bump fists. “Mom sure was surprised by all this. You should have seen her face when we walked in and she saw everyone.”
“Thanks to you, my little warrior.” I wrap him in a bear hug, relief washing over me at how everything managed to fall into place at the last minute. Dax had planned most of it, with Alma copying my handwritten attempts at poetry Dax had printed out using carbon paper. And then there’s Dyami who had to hold his own against his mother’s questions. It was a long shot, but it worked. They’re all here. And thanks to Daniel, so am I.
To top it all off, she said yes.
As Daniel greets Nana with a kiss and a hug, Dax, Sawyer, Todd, and Gabe come over to congratulate me. With everyone else already hitched or getting hitched, we talk about who Gabe is dating now (no one since he’s too busy with his medical practice) and then Todd (who won’t tell).
And there’s Daniel, of course, although more than seven years after losing his wife to cancer, he doesn’t show signs of looking for love again. Sarah tells me he’s not celibate by any means. He goes out on dates back in New York and has
quite a few lady friends, but his heart belongs here, to his late wife Pearl Anaya Drexel, his children and grandchildren—and Nana’s cooking. It’s why he upgraded her kitchen so she would have all the counter space she needed. She could hold cooking classes in that house if she wanted to.
Fifteen minutes later, we file into the restaurant on the first floor where we crowd into one of the private dining rooms. What I’d planned to be an intimate affair has become a full-on family gathering complete with loud adults talking about everything under the sun and cranky children still awake way past their bedtime entertained only by bright red balloons and being passed around.
But Sarah is beaming, her face taking on an inner glow that keeps me enthralled as I gaze at her. When she catches me staring, she winks at me, biting her lower lip, a subtle reminder that there’s more to come.
And she’s right. We’ve got all night to do the things we want to do to each other—even better, a whole lifetime.
* * *
An hour and a half later, the first of the children—Tyler—falls asleep on Sawyer’s shoulder as Alma with Drea snug in her baby wrap gathers her nursery bag and gets up from the table. Then the three-year-old twins follow suit, exhausted from running around the table. DJ is resting his head on Harlow’s shoulder while Ani-Pea, her thick lashes resting on pink cheeks, is out like a light in her grandfather’s arms.
The thought hits me hard, like a kick in the gut. I want a daughter, one with Sarah’s sky-blue eyes and mouth. When I turn to look at her, my arm draped across her chair next to me, I realize she’s been watching me, too.
“Everything okay?” she asks, her gaze shifting toward her father who’s gazing at his sleeping granddaughter. Earlier, I watched Sarah calm a fussing Drea so Alma could grab a bite to eat while Ani-Pea and I had played a game where I pretended to be a hungry lion and she tried to count my teeth.
“Yup. Just a thought.”
“What thought is that?”
I point toward her niece with my chin, my voice lowering as I lean my face against her ear. “I’d like one of those.”
Sarah opens her mouth as if she’s about to say something but stops herself. She frowns, nodding as she rubs her hand against the top of my thigh.
As the servers start clearing the table, I realize she hasn’t eaten much throughout dinner, picking through her food as if she’d eaten before she got here. But as far as coffee at Zia Moon, I know she hasn’t had anything else to eat because that’s what Harlow texted me. Sarah only had a cup of coffee. Who knows? Maybe she had an energy bar on the way to the hospital, but then, maybe it’s all the excitement.
Absently, I take my phone out of my jeans pocket and pull up an app that Sarah and I used to check five years ago. She stopped using it after the novelty wore off that first year but I still keep it on my phone out of habit. It helps me with her moods and gives me a heads up when it’s the time of the month I should be giving her space. Spa days for her mean father and son time for Dyami and me. It works for us although the last two months I’ve wondered if the app was off for nothing was right. She was cranky and moody when the app indicated her cycle had been two weeks earlier.
I frown, glancing at Sarah just as Gabe gets up, reminding Dyami and his cousins that it’s still a school day tomorrow. As if on cue, other people start getting up, congratulating Sarah and me before saying good night but not before making arrangements to meet for breakfast at Nana’s house. That would mean a very noisy and busy house in the morning especially since Daniel will be staying there and he’s been looking forward to getting his fill of his mother-in-law’s cooking for the last three months. As Dyami tells Sarah that he’s changed his mind about staying the night at his cousins and that he’s riding with Daniel and Nana back to the house, Sarah gives me a knowing look, one that tells me exactly where she’s staying tonight.
But then we already knew that.
Chapter Ten
Benny and I can’t keep our hands off each other on the drive back to his condo. We barely make it through the door when he pins me against the wall, his mouth hot against mine, my fingers undoing the buttons of his shirt before his hands grip my wrists and press them against the wall above my head. My stomach clenches. This is it. This is where I relinquish all control, just beyond the front door where it’s just us. Only us.
“Fuck, I missed you, Sarah.” Benny buries his face in my neck, inhaling my scent. It’s an act that makes me press my thighs together only to feel his knee nudge them apart. “You know better than to do that, precious girl.”
I gasp as his tongue finds my earlobe. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You like this,” he growls in my ear and my nipples become hard, like pebbles pressing against his chest. “You love it.”
“I crave it. You know I do,” I whisper as he claims my mouth with his, his tongue darting between my teeth, sweeping across the roof of my mouth. I moan against him, the butterflies in my belly coming alive in earnest.
Benny pulls away, lets go of my wrists, and takes a step back. His gaze is intent now, his jaw clenched. “Show me just how much you crave it.”
His erection presses against my belly as I let my hands roam along his sides, his skin warm to the touch. I unbuckle his jeans, unbutton him, and free his hard cock from its confines. It’s hot and hard against my hand as I stroke the shaft, feeling the veined ridges along the base, the pre-cum that moistens the tip. Benny’s eyes narrow as he watches me lick my lips.
I get down on my knees. His hand rests on the top of my head, his fingers tangling in my hair. I lick the head of his cock, my tongue swirling along the tip as Benny leans his other hand against the wall. His eyes close as I run my tongue along the underside of his cock from base to tip before slipping him into my mouth.
He groans, his fingers gripping my hair but not pushing or pulling. Not yet. I haven’t taken him halfway yet. I need to take my time, adjusting to his girth, his length. And only then will he take control again. I love his smell, his taste. I love how hot he feels against my mouth.
I cup his balls, gently massaging them as I work my way down his shaft, relaxing my throat. We’d been so busy the past two weeks and I’ve missed this, kneeling before him, showing him just how much I crave this. Twelve years together, it still feels like it’s new, the push and pull of the things we do behind closed doors, the letting go of control, letting him take the reins of my heart and my body. An accidental discovery, one that changed everything between us. What I liked—letting go—and what he excelled at—the domination, the power, like the glue that kept us together through the years, both of us each other’s flames. Both of us holding the other’s key.
I take his cock into my mouth, inch by inch, hearing him gasp and groan. When I pull back to take a breath, his hand pushes me forward, taking control of my movements this time.
“Show me,” he growls and I do, letting him set the rhythm as I take him in my mouth as far as I can before I pull back, needing air. He repeats it again and I let him until I can feel him pulsing in my mouth. He’s close, I can sense it from the way his cock feels in my mouth, thickening, throbbing, his breathing becoming ragged.
But there’s also something different. It’s a feeling I picked up toward the end of the dinner tonight, after he told me without words what he wanted… another child.
Is that why he hasn’t spoken the words he always would say to me—good girl, precious girl, my kitten? Is that how the game will change for us?
Suddenly Benny pulls away and lifts me by my arms back to my feet. He brings his hand to my jaw, keeping me in place as he leans closer, his beard scratching my skin.
“Not yet,” he murmurs as I catch my breath. “Now go to the bedroom and get in position. I want you naked, and on the bed this time.”
“Yes, sir,” I whisper and do as I’m told, all thoughts of babies fading from my mind. I’m back in my body, only it’s one that’s changing, I just know it. I feel it
. It’s not just me growing older, it’s something else.
I remove my clothes and climb on the bed. I kneel in the middle of it, facing the door just as Benny likes to see me. My nipples are hard, the cleft between my legs soaked with need and desire.
I hear him make his way upstairs, the sound of the central heating turning on, a whisper of a breeze inside the room. I don’t even feel the cold. All I feel is that deep want for something only he can give me.
I catch my breath when Benny enters the room, still wearing his jeans unbuckled and unbuttoned, barefoot, his shirt half-open. I’ve always unabashedly loved Benny’s body. He’s just perfect, with broad shoulders, a chiseled chest and six-pack abs, his thighs, muscular and strong. He’s a rugged man, just the way I like it, with hard edges that make me weak in the knees and a look that has me kneeling before him with just a word, a command.
I can feel him watching me as he approaches and I shiver in anticipation, biting my lower lip as his broad frame fills my vision. Friends have long wondered how we’d managed to stay together after twelve years when not even their marriages have lasted half as long. Sometimes I wonder if it’s this, the games we play together when we’re alone, the command over my body and my heart that I’ve given him so long ago, one that ends the moment I say my safe word… but I’ve never had to.
“Shiʼáád,” he whispers as he leans his hands on the bed in front of me, his lips touching mine tenderly. My woman. “Look at me, Sarah.”
I look at him as he strokes my cheek, rough hands that have seen hard work at such a young age, the same hands I love to feel against my skin. “Yes, sir?”
“Say my name.”
“Benny. Shiką.” My man.
His lips curl along one side in a smile. “I like hearing you say it.” He kisses me softly again, taking his time as I feel myself ache with need. I want him so bad. I want him in me.