Long Shot

by Kennedy Ryan

  “August.” My hips move reflexively, seeking friction, satisfaction. “Baby, come on.”

  “What?” he mumbles around my breast, the vibration of the word tightening my nipples and causing my core to clench.

  I lift and curl my legs around his waist, thrusting slowly, deliberately. I burrow my nose through the thick curls to whisper in his ear, “Fuck me.”

  His mouth drifts to the other breast, swiping the areola lovingly with his tongue. With his hands sliding down to cup my ass, he walks us to the bed and lays me down gently. He stands there, watching me with the same protective reverence he watched my daughter, only there’s also lust in his eyes. Passion. Hunger.

  Not releasing his gaze, I tug the sweatshirt over my head and work my arms free of the sleeves. My nipples peak in the cooler air, and he fixes his eyes there, a hard swallow bobbing his Adam’s apple.

  I lift my hips an inch or so, just enough to hook my thumbs in my yoga pants and push them past my knees and over my toes. I toss them across the room and wait for his smile. He traces a finger over my purple and gold boy-short underwear.

  “You little traitor,” he says with husky humor.

  My reply is a throaty chuckle.

  We both stop laughing when he grabs the panties at my hips and jerks them off, throwing them to join my discarded yoga pants in some corner. His face sobers, and there are embers in his eyes. I want to stoke them—to blow on them. To enflame him the way he burns through me, like gasoline in my veins. A blaze in my heart.

  Slowly, I bring my knees up and dig my heels into the mattress, opening my legs wide. He bites his lip and presses me open more.

  “God, Iris. Yes, baby. Show me.”

  He palms my pussy. His huge hand covers it, possesses it. One long finger caresses me in the divide between the lips where I’m swollen and throbbing. The thickness of two fingers invades, presses, and hooks inside me. My back arches off the bed, straining against the pleasure. My hips thrust in time with his fingers fucking me. He’s a conductor, and my body sings for him, my cry of release a note sustained, held.

  I close my eyes and bunch my hands at my sides, holding onto this perfect sensation for as long as I can. When I open my eyes, August is staring at me, and the look on his face brings tears to my eyes. To have someone look at me like that and to have someone feel the way he does—it’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever had. Every time he touches me, he restores my faith and reminds me what pure love feels like.

  “I love watching you come,” he says, one finger tracing the sensitive skin inside my thigh.

  “Why?” I catch his hand and pull him toward me until he’s up on the bed between my legs, and I move to my knees, facing him.

  “You’re so vulnerable.” He tugs on a strand of my hair streaming around my arms and shoulders. “I love that you trust me with that, that you’re so unguarded.”

  “That’s because when I’m with you, I’m not unguarded.” I kiss the back of his hand, blinking at tears. “You guard me. I know you’ll always protect me.”

  “But I didn’t. I missed what was happening, what he was doing.” There’s a sheen of tears over his stormy eyes, gray skies and rain. “You’ve been through so much, Iris. You can protect yourself.”

  “But when I’m with you, I know I don’t have to.” I lick my lips and taste my own tears, but now they taste like joy.

  He traces a tiny scar on my hip that he probably never noticed before he knew about Caleb. The first time we made love after he found out, he asked about every little scar and nick he’d never thought twice about. But each scar told a story, and he wanted to know them all. He kissed all the places Caleb hurt me, and our lovemaking was my perfect revenge. Every soft, tender thing Caleb tried to deny me, I have with August.

  “I wish . . .” August gulps, swallowing the emotion alive on his face. “I wish I could take it all away.”

  I cup his chin and catch his eyes in the dim light. “We don’t get to take away the bad things, but it’s okay.” My smile is a work of triumph—a victory cry. “I survived them.”

  I reach between us and wrap my hand around him, relishing his grunt and gasp, his groan of pleasure as I stroke him long and hard, up and down. “Can we make love now?”

  August spears his fingers into my hair, resting his forehead against mine, his breath laboring more with every pull. “I love you, Iris. So much.

  I nod, lick his neck, and suck at his collarbone, one hand steadily pumping him between us, the other reaching up to skim over his nipple with my fingertips. All his air expels in one extended breath. With a growl, he grabs my ass and pulls my legs over his knees. I lock my ankles at the small of his back while he brushes my hand away between us. I sink onto him and moan. With our chests flush, his answering groan vibrates between my breasts. He pistons inside me relentlessly.

  “August, harder,” I beg, dizzy with pleasure.

  With his lip between his teeth, his dark brows furrowed, he goes harder and deeper. He goes so deep he finds the remnants of my pain and soothes them. He goes so hard his love is an undeniable force that takes me by storm. There is room for nothing else. He takes up all the space, consumes my thoughts, and for a moment, remakes our memories so there’s only ever been him for me and only ever been me for him.

  It is sublime.

  “We should have eaten this while it was hot,” I say around a bite of not-quite-warm pizza, followed by a sip of tepid root beer.

  “I wanted to eat you while you were hot,” August says, his grin cocky.

  My laugh bounces off the kitchen walls. “Such a cornball.” I turn toward him on the high stools at the counter until our knees touch.

  “And yet here you are.” He laughs, leaning over to brush our noses together in an Eskimo kiss.

  “And yet here I am.” I roll my eyes and reach for the slice of untouched pizza on his plate. “You gonna eat that?”

  He shakes his head and offers a wry smile. He only grabbed it to make me feel like I wasn’t eating alone. He’s deep in the season and eats like a Spartan solider.

  “Thanks for this, by the way.” I pop a pineapple in my mouth. “You remembered.”

  He runs a wide palm over my back, his touch warm through my silk robe. “Lakers means pizza and root beer. I told you I remember everything about you.” He lifts my hair and then watches it fall, a small frown pinching at his brows. “So, um, when I was reading to Sarai, she had a question tonight.”

  “What’s new?” I laugh and sip my root beer, eyeing him over my bottle.

  “Yeah, I know, right?” A tiny smile quirks his full lips, but his eyes are serious before he drops his gaze to the counter. “I was kind of thrown by this one, though.”

  “What’d she ask?” I push my pizza away and give him my full attention.

  “She asked if I was gonna be her new daddy.” He watches me from under long lashes, gauging my reaction.

  I cough a little, less from the bit of pizza lodged in my throat, more from the unexpected turn of conversation. Sarai had a few questions about Caleb in the weeks following his death. She barely knew him, but that word “daddy” carries significance. She only knows the man who told her he was her daddy is gone. One day, I’ll have the hard job of the truth, but for now, she’s satisfied. Or I thought she was. I sip some root beer to make way for a reply.

  “Oh. Wow.” I glance at him cautiously. “And what’d you say?”

  He clears his throat and runs a hand through his hair. “I told her that I love her more than any daddy loves a little girl,” he says slowly, not looking at me for a second before very purposely looking me right in the eyes. “And that I love you more than any daddy loves any other mommy.”

  The pizza may not be hot, but his words steam my heart.

  “And I said that we’re already a family.” He takes both my hands between his. “And that one day, when the time is right, I’ll be her daddy and I’ll be mommy’s husband.”

  I don’t know what to say for a momen
t, so I leave it to the quiet to absorb his perfect response, and then I speak.

  “That was . . . ahem . . . a good answer,” I say, studying our joined hands. “I’m not surprised she asked, considering all that’s happened. Well, and now that we’re at your place so much, it inevitably raises more questions.”

  “Our place.”

  “What?” I look up with a frown.

  “You said it’s my place, but it’s our place.”

  “Yeah.” I wave a hand. “You know what I mean.”

  “But you don’t know what I mean.” He smiles, cupping his palms around my shoulders. “I’m adding your name to the title of the condo, and when we move into a house, your name will be on that, too.”

  Surprise immobilizes me, freezes me in place. Only I’m not cold. Warmth suffuses every cell of my body until I’m on fire under his hands.

  “You don’t have to do that just to prove a point, August,” I finally manage to say.

  “It’s not to prove a point. If there’s one thing I understand, it’s team, and you and me”—he draws a line in the air between us—“we’re a team, doing everything together. And when we do marry, I want to adopt Sarai.” He holds up a staying hand. “I know it’ll take some getting used to, but she’s always felt like mine, and I love her. I want things as legal with her and me as they will be for the two of us.”

  This—what I’m feeling, what’s washing over my reservations and fears—this must be what the Mississippi feels at that very moment every thousand years when its course resets: that deltaic switch. That monumental chrysalis. My heart resets in an instant. Or maybe it’s happened in a series of patient, painstaking pivots over weeks, months. Maybe it started the moment August walked away from the greatest opportunity of his life . . . for me. When he took a chance on us. Maybe it started then, but his words show me right now.

  “I know I’ve asked you to marry me many times, but—”

  “Three,” I say, almost absently. I’m so involved with examining this new space I just stepped into. “You’ve asked me to marry you three times.”

  “Yeah.” He grimace–grins. “Thanks for the reminder. I don’t want to pressure you. You know that. I understand your hesitation. After finding out what you went through with Caleb, of course I get it.”

  I watch him, my face serene, but my heart setting a breakneck pace.

  “It’s like this,” he says. “My mom tells this story about my dad. How she’d watch him play, and he would hold the ball for the last shot. She’d scream ‘take the shot,’ but he’d watch the clock, holding the ball ’til the last possible second. Then at just the right moment, he’d take the shot. He had perfect timing.”

  August cups my face, his eyes intense and tender.

  “That’s what I want. I want to read the clock and know when the time is right for us. I don’t want to keep asking you. It’s . . .”

  Hard? Disappointing? Embarrassing?

  Who knows which word he’d use? He’s never shown me any of those things when he asked before and I wasn’t ready, but maybe he hid them. Maybe he felt them.

  I slide off my stool and step into the V of his powerful thighs, setting my arms against his chest and linking my hands behind his neck.

  “August, I love you,” I say, twining my fingers in his hair.

  “I know that.” He closes his eyes, surrendering to my hands. “I love you, too. More than anything. More than everything.”

  He said he’d play me at the five, at the very center, and he’s lived up to that promise every day that we’ve been together.

  “I trust you with my life, with my future.” Emotion scalds my throat, so I pause to steady my voice. “With my daughter.”

  He slowly opens his eyes to watch me. “I know that, too.”

  “And I want to wake up with you every morning.”

  “Youuuuuuu . . . do?” He settles his hands at my hips, splayed across my bottom, and narrows his eyes on my face, assessing.

  “Yeah, but . . .” I search for the right thing to say—to let him know I’m ready. “I want the pancakes. Okay? I want the pancakes, August.”

  “Babe, I’ll make you pancakes. Any time you want.”

  “You’re not hearing me. What I’m saying is . . .the kids! You know, bursting into our room every morning? Your kids, August. I want to have your children. Our children.”

  He frowns and blinks at me like I might have been body-snatched and replaced by some amenable stranger.

  “That makes me . . . happy.” He looks more uncertain than happy, though cautiously ecstatic might be accurate, too. “But what do you mean? Are you saying . . .”

  He watches my face with the same focus his father probably watched that game clock counting down. I’ve had reservations and fears based on the past, based on my mistakes, and on bad calls I made. But August is no mistake. He’s not a bad call, and all that he wants, I’m ready to offer. All that he has, I’m ready to receive. One step forward will take me into the future, and I’m ready.

  “What I’m saying is this, August.” I tip up on my toes and smile against his ear. “Take the shot.”

  * * *

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  * * *

  Thank you for taking this journey with Iris and August. It is at times a difficult one, but also hopeful. Most of all, it’s uniquely theirs. I know the temptation is to tell ourselves this is fiction, and it doesn’t happen this way in real life. Maybe I believed that, too, until I interviewed woman after woman whose stories sounded so much like this one. As a matter of fact, their stories, in many ways are this one. I didn’t write this book until I’d interviewed survivors, and their experiences, their triumphs, their spirit have insinuated themselves into Iris’s journey. If at times this felt real it’s because so many of the things Iris experienced, I heard from women who survived the same challenges.

  * * *

  My deepest appreciation to the survivors, the social workers and the women’s shelter staff who answered my questions and helped me understand.

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