Ask Me Again

by E. J. Noyes

  Bec’s mouth found mine again for a kiss that started as something so achingly sweet that my anguish fell away and finished as something sensual. The drumbeat of excitement between my thighs picked up. I hitched her leg over my hip until Bec straddled me, her arousal painting my stomach as she ground against my skin. She pressed forward, and I reached between us to draw my thumb over her clit in long slow strokes, delighting in the way her hips matched the movement. “You first,” I murmured. “I want to watch you come.”

  Bracing her hands on my shoulders, her nails digging in lightly, she rocked back and forth against me. Her breaths came in erratic gasps, and when I brought my other hand to her breast, teasing her nipple between my thumb and forefinger, she drew in a sharp breath then let it out with a barely audible, “Sabine…” Bec arched backward, the muscles in her legs and stomach quivering with each of my strokes. Her eyes were half-lidded, the movement of her hips becoming more frantic as she rode me. So fucking beautiful.

  I brought both hands around to her ass, slapping her lightly before pressing her forward. She took the cue, sliding up me to settle her knees on either side of my shoulders. Bec spread herself open, lowering herself onto my face until she was so close I could smell her desire. Looking up, I could see the glistening fluid of her sex, the sweat sheening her skin. I kissed the inside of her thighs, tasting the salt of her, and let my tongue glide up toward her heat.

  She fisted my hair hard, almost forcing herself into my mouth. I slicked my tongue through her valley, taking my time exploring every wet fold and couldn’t help groaning when she begged, “Lick me, please. Tongue fuck me.”

  My arousal climbed again, the heavy beat between my legs picking up tempo. Bec’s knees tightened on my shoulders, the hand in my hair pulled hard and her murmured encouragement grew loud and so fucking sexy that the pounding in my clit became almost unbearable. But I kept my hands away from my own desire, letting them focus only on drawing her pleasure out.

  I would know her cues anywhere. Every gasp, moan and pant was a marker along the path to her climax—a path she followed nearly every time. She brought her hand away from my shoulder, grasped her breast and let out an exclamation of, “Oh, God yes. Please, like that.”

  Closing my lips around her clit, I sucked gently and Bec bucked and shuddered, rewarding me with a low moan and an almost wondrous cry of, “Sabine, oh God…I’m coming.” She fell forward to grab the headboard, her arousal flooding my mouth. I didn’t dare move, except to keep lightly stroking her with my tongue and hands.

  Bec’s breathing slowed and steadied, and after a minute she unclamped her knees from my shoulders to slide back down my body. Her kiss was soft, almost chaste before she moved down to lick and suck my neck. Her explorations were new and exciting, but at the same time sweet and familiar. A hand trailed down my belly, lightly touched me and again she asked, “Is this okay?”

  “Yes…please. Yes,” I choked out, covering her hand with mine and pressing her fingers harder against my clit. Bec made a sound that was half-moan, half-desperate mewling and pushed inside me. Her exhalation was long and I had to strain to hear her when she said, “Oh, darling…”

  Bec’s thrusts were shallow but measured, hitting all the right places until I was incoherent with pleasure. When I thought I might shatter from the intensity of her ministrations, Bec withdrew to lightly circle my clit before entering me again. She kissed my breasts, taking her time to suck my nipples into hard, aching peaks before she kissed her way down my belly and settled her shoulders between my thighs. She placed a line of kisses from my belly to the top of my thigh where it dipped toward my sex, and then she paused a final time. “Can I?” Bec asked, her question needy and tentative.

  I answered her with a single, desperate, “Please.”

  The first touch of her tongue was soft, just the barest pressure sliding up and down through my labia, and it had me pressing against her to seek more. “I’ve missed this,” she murmured, kissing my thigh before burying her face back between my legs.

  The silken warmth of her mouth and knowing strokes of her tongue drew my climax ever closer until I felt the heat spreading through my body. She could have withheld her touch, teased and tortured and punished me for the way I’d withheld my body from her. But of course she didn’t. Wouldn’t. She took me exactly the way she knew I needed it.

  I raised my head, about to ask her to come back to me, to hold me as I climaxed but as though reading my thoughts, Bec pulled away and quickly climbed up to lie beside me. Before I could beg her to let me come, she reached down and cupped me, fingers gliding easily into my heat. God, she always knew just what I needed. “Bec, I—”

  “I know, baby. That’s it,” she murmured, still stroking. “Come for me, sweetheart.”

  I gasped, my lips moving feverishly against her neck as my orgasm claimed me. Waves rolled through my body, spreading from groin to stomach to limbs, carrying white-hot pleasure to every cell. Burying my face in her neck, I couldn’t help the words spilling from my mouth in a breathless rush. “I love you. I love you.” Clinging to her, I waited for the full-body tingling to disperse and when I finally managed to collect my thoughts into words, all I could think of to say was, “Bec, I need you.”

  “I’m here,” she said quietly, kissing my chin, my cheeks, my lips.

  I pressed my forehead to hers, trying to suppress the shudder building at the base of my spine, but it came anyway. I closed my eyes, hoping she’d understand what I was saying went beyond just this moment. It was more than just lust or desire. It was us. “No, Bec. I need you.”

  She stroked my back, my neck, my face. “I know, darling.” Her hands came to rest on my cheeks. “I’m here. I’ll always be here.” She kissed me again, gently possessive.

  We lay curled around one another with limbs intertwined, and there were no words, only soft caresses and sweet kisses. With my head pillowed on her breasts, her smooth warm skin under my cheek, I grew dull and drowsy. Safe with her. Always. I absently stroked her palm and the underside of her fingers. Her finger…

  Wake up, Sabine.

  I mumbled something indistinct and when Bec shifted in response, carefully extricated myself from her arms, swung from the bed and crossed the floor to our closet. When I turned around, Bec had sat up, drawing the sheet over her breasts to cover herself against the cool morning air. “Are you okay?”

  “Mhmm, very totally okay.” When both her eyebrows shot up, I laughed quietly and raised both hands. “I’m awake and totally lucid, I promise.”

  Her smile was sheepish, but still a smile. “I believe you.”

  She trusted me. She knew, even when I didn’t. When I was certain I wasn’t about to burst into tears, I crossed back to the bed and kissed her. Bec curled a hand around the back of my neck, holding me close. The kiss was soft and unhurried, the kind that made my stomach flutter with sweet pleasure rather than fierce desire. Her hand slipped gently from my neck to my jaw, and when she pulled back, she brushed her thumb over my lips. “I love you,” she whispered.

  “Love you too. Give me a minute?”

  I unlocked the safe and pulled out that small velvet box from where I’d hidden it almost two months ago. There was a choking sensation in my gut but it wasn’t fear or discomfort. It was excitement, urgency. I held the box behind my back and then when I sat on the bed, moved it to rest beside my thigh where she wouldn’t be able to see it.

  “What are you up to?” she asked, a delicate eyebrow arching.

  Instead of answering her outright, I said, “I had everything planned you know, the day I came home from Afghanistan? Then I froze and I just couldn’t get it right.”

  “Get what right, darling?” Bec asked quietly.

  I lifted the box up and cracked it open to expose a brilliant-cut sapphire set in a platinum band. When I tilted the box, the diamonds extending down the band glittered like stars on a clear winter’s night. “While I was wandering the mall that day I saw this, and it reminded me of your
eyes, so I had to buy it. And every day since then, I’ve thought about you wearing it.”

  Bec’s mouth fell open, and her intake of breath was audible. Her hand dropped away from where she was clutching the sheet and the fabric fell, exposing her body. But she made no move to pull it up again. She just stared at the ring, her eyes widening.

  I cleared my throat. “I was totally going to ask you the moment I got home. Then I turned on the light, and I saw you and how incredibly gorgeous you are, and I completely forgot what I wanted to say. So I just blurted stuff instead. And while I rambled, I thought I can’t do it like this, blathering and feeling weird and not all back together the way I was supposed to be. Not worthy of you. So I didn’t ask.” I laughed softly. “I’m blathering now. I’m sorry, babe, this is so not romantic.”

  Bec lifted her eyes to mine, her pupils expanding into the blue I loved. “Sabine…” Then her gaze moved back to the ring nestled amongst black velvet. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Mmm, yes. But not nearly as beautiful as you.” I drew my thumb over the band. “Every time after that when I tried to find the perfect moment to ask, it all seemed wrong. I felt wrong. Not about asking you, but about me. Then tonight I realized that every moment with you is the perfect moment. I know I’ve been off since The Incident, and worse these past months and I’m so sorry, but…I never feel more like myself than when I’m with you.” I had to draw in a shaky breath before I could continue in a voice tight with threatening tears, “Bec, you still feel like home to me.”

  The edge of her mouth curved upward a fraction, and she blinked rapidly but her eyes remained on the ring. It was as though she’d been hypnotized by it, and sudden irrational panic rose up to swallow me. Maybe she didn’t want this. Maybe I still wasn’t going to be fixed enough for her. Maybe I wasn’t enough for her. “I’m sorry, this is stupid. I can’t get the words right and it’s coming out all wrong.”

  “No, darling,” she whispered. “It’s coming out perfectly.”

  Her words gave me courage, certainty, and I reached for her hand, holding it tightly. Bec tore her gaze from the ring to find mine, and those loving eyes swam with her own unshed tears.

  “Bec, I love you. So much that obviously I can’t even figure out how to tell you. I’m probably going to mess up again, but I know now that I can deal with it because you’ll be there with me. Your love gives me strength and makes me weak at the knees all at the same time.” I swallowed, trying hard to push the emotion down, but the words still came out choked and hoarse when I asked the question that’d burned inside me for so long.

  “Will you marry me?”

  She smiled, shyly at first, then it grew until both dimples were showing and the edges of her eyes were creased with delight. “Ask me again. Those four words are so perfect, I want to hear you say them again.”

  An excited sob slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Really?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Mhmm.”

  After stealing a kiss, I forced away the inane grin and excited laugh trying to take me over—the ones that would make it impossible for me to say anything—and schooled my expression to earnestness. “Bec, you take all my dark places and fill them with light. I love you. Will you marry me?”

  She leaned in so our faces were an inch apart and the words I needed to hear rushed from her lips like water over a spillway. “Yes. I already told you, no matter what you have to ask me, or how many times, the answer is always yes.” Bec held out her left hand. “Now please hurry up and put that on me.”

  Laughing, I slid the ring from the box and took her hand. Unhurriedly, I kissed each one of the knuckles of her left hand before carefully sliding the band up her ring finger. I swallowed. I stared. “That…looks really good,” I finally managed to say dumbly.

  Bec stared at the engagement ring, almost as though she couldn’t quite believe it was really there. “It does, but you know what’s going to look even better?” She looked up, eyes sparkling like the gems I’d just put on her hand. “My ring on your finger.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Rebecca

  Given the elaborate engagement party Carolyn and Jana were planning for April, I half-agreed with Sabine that us going out to dinner on the two-month anniversary of our engagement was probably unnecessary. But I’d pushed, because it would be so much more than a celebration of our decision to join our lives legally. The celebration was for the way she was trying so damned hard and actually seemed to be making progress with managing her PTSD.

  Though we still had ups and downs, still battled with sporadic nightmares and occasional anxiety, as well as my omnipresent guilt, I wanted to acknowledge how we were learning to communicate our needs and how much it was helping us to heal, together. More frequently now I could see her, clear moments when she was fully herself, and the lightness in her filled me with such gratitude and love that I felt I could cry.

  A few nights ago as we’d readied for bedtime, Sabine had palmed her medication into her mouth, and spun to face me. Grinning, she’d planted a smacking kiss on my mouth then declared completely out of the blue and with an abundance of glee, “I’m rebuilding myself, babe! I estimate a ninety-seven-point-four percent success rate.”

  After I’d laughed at her typically nerdy and precise explanation, she’d pressed herself to my back, kissing my neck and running her hands up and down my belly while I tried to concentrate on my pre-bed routine. A light suck on my earlobe and a whisper of, “I know something that might add a few decimal places…” had me hastening. The moment I’d finished cleaning my contacts, she’d turned me around and hoisted me up, her hands under my ass to carry me to our bed. She’d been so attentive and receptive, so uninhibited, so Sabine that days later I still felt the flutter of arousal when I thought of our hours of lovemaking.

  I spun my watch around and checked how much time we had before the cab arrived to take us to dinner. Not much. I’d been waiting downstairs, dressed in a simple emerald-green sheath dress, for the past five minutes for Sabine.

  The sound of her on the top step made me glance up and the moment I saw her, I knew the true meaning of breathtaking. She was glorious. Watching her walk downstairs, her body healthy and strong, and her face relaxed and free of the shadows that’d been present for so many months, I knew celebration was exactly right. I wanted to celebrate her. I wanted to celebrate us.

  She wore a burgundy cowl-neck dress that clung to her body, ending just above her knees. Her dark features were set off by the silver adorning her ears, neck and wrist. Her smudged, smoky-eye makeup made her eyes appear almost black and it took everything I had not to kiss the deep red lipstick from her mouth the moment she was in reach. I settled for a light peck, having to stretch because she too wore heels. “Darling, you look incredible. When did you get that dress?”

  As a rule, Sabine hardly bought anything in a shade resembling red, because she had a long-held and inexplicable loathing of the color. A few times when she’d worn old red college tees, I’d mentioned that the color suited her, and I liked it on her, but had usually received a nose wrinkle in response. Now it seemed she’d bought this dress for no other reason than to please me.

  “Yesterday after work.” She pulled me close, bending to kiss the spot under my ear that made me shiver. “And you look absolutely ravishing.”

  “Thank you.” I drew my hand up and down her back. “Our ride should be here any minute.”

  “Mhmm.” Sabine helped me into my coat, then shrugged into hers as a horn sounded outside. She glanced at the door. “Chariot’s here.” This would be the first time we’d taken a cab since The Incident, and it’d even been Sabine who’d suggested it, jokingly saying that she’d mastered being a passenger in my car and it was time to go to the next level.

  Seated in the backseat, the only sign of her discomfort was some leg bouncing every few minutes. But her hand in mine was warm and dry, her breathing relaxed and steady. I leaned into her as she stared out the window during t
he twenty-minute ride. A few blocks from our destination, she turned to me. “Where are we going exactly?”

  “It’s a secret.” I’d booked us a table at a nice steak restaurant in the city and had told her nothing other than she should dress up a little. The driver dropped us right outside and Sabine slipped out first. While I paid, she stood on the sidewalk, facing the restaurant with both hands in her coat pockets and her breath steaming in the cold night air.

  I fumbled, almost dropping my purse as I exited the cab and realized she was wearing seamed stockings. When I thought of the curves of her ass waiting atop each of those black lines, my mouth went dry. I would certainly be asking her to keep both heels and stockings on when we got home. For a short while at least. I stepped in beside her, and Sabine turned to me, her eyes wide with delight. “Charlie Palmer Steak? Bec, this is fantastic, thank you. I’ve been wanting to come here for ages.”

  “I know, that’s why I chose it.” Her glee drew me in like a magnet, and I couldn’t help but stretch up for a kiss. “I’m courting you.”

  She threw her head back and laughed. “Honey, you’ve already caught me.” Sabine dropped her head to nuzzle my hair, and I heard her gentle inhalation as her arm stole around my waist.

  “Good,” I said against her shoulder. “I don’t intend to let you go.”

  Seated in front of a large window with a view of the Capitol, she seemed relaxed and happy, her inane chattering leading the conversation in all directions. Once we’d chosen wine and each had a glass poured, we were left alone with menus. Sabine peered at me over the top of hers. “Will you make it to watch me bowl tomorrow night?”

  She’d joined a women’s social bowling team, and a few weeks ago had attended her first games with only the barest hint of anxiety at her new activity. So many small accomplishments, but they all added up. She’d also promised she’d join my flag football league next season, and I couldn’t deny my excitement at sharing something that’d been such a big part of our lives when we’d worked together.