by E. Davies
It’s so overwhelming that tears spring to my eyes, but when Tag looks concerned, I grab his hip so he can’t pull away again.
“I love this,” I whisper, my voice faint.
He lets out a quiet breath and presses his lips to my cheek. “So do I. You’re so tight. Fuck, it feels incredible.”
I can’t help clenching around him, my body squeezing tight in answer to his words, and Tag gasps and grunts sharply. I love seeing his reactions as pleasure floods me, too.
We’re together in a way we’ve never been before.
I’m stretching out to fit him perfectly. The initial burn has faded to an ever-present warm tingle, and before long I find it easier to breathe and relax.
“There we go,” Tag whispers, kissing my throat with open-mouthed flicks of his tongue that add notes of pleasure to the symphony playing in my body.
Time ceases to matter. All that’s important is that we’re here, together, and we’re never going to be parted. I want this to last forever.
There’s no space for layers or disguises or masks. No room to hide from each other when we’re locked together, our bodies and souls becoming one.
Every thrust ignites that spot deep inside me, and before long I’m moaning and whimpering with every thrust. Every wet sound, grunt, and growled breath just drives me on. I quiver and squeeze around Tag, kneading his shoulders and dragging my nails down his back.
“My love,” Tag groans. “Oh, my love.” He presses our foreheads together, his skin shining with the exertion. Every heavy breath brings us one second closer to the end.
As hard as I’m trying to hold back, I’m just quivering on the edge of my self-control. “Yes!” is the only word in my vocabulary pretty soon, punctuated by my gasps and cries, which only spur him on.
Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop!
And he doesn’t.
Tag pounds into me hard and fast, pouring every ounce of his devotion into the rhythm. Best of all, he kisses me like the world is ending… or like the future is starting.
Then the walls seem to close in around me, and the sparks break through to my tightly held-back bliss. I come undone around and under Tag, and in his arms.
My heartbeat pounds like a drum and I part my lips as I cry out, arching off the bed and pressing into him. “Yes! Tag!”
Uncontrollable heat pours from me and I buck into Tag as my cries slip free, mingling with his. I squeeze tight around him, and moments later the rhythm of his thrusts stutters. He grunts, clutches me tight, and cries out my name.
Together we ride the surge of release, all thought disappearing in the face of pure physical pleasure.
Complete together, in each other, at last.
It seems like forever before I can catch my breath and collapse on the bed again, sweaty and exhausted and utterly satiated. The euphoria tingles through my fingertips and toes, and sinks into my bones as a lazy heat.
“Mmm,” Tag groans at last as we clutch each other tightly and offer up soft kisses in between trying to catch our breaths. “How’d I get so lucky?”
I giggle softly and stroke his hair. “By showing me the man you are.” I press my cheek against his shoulder, running my hand slowly down his back. “I’m sorry other people didn’t love you the way you deserved… but I’m glad that I get to.”
Tag swallows hard and rests his forehead on my shoulder, and my heart feels so full with this fragile moment. I hold him close as he murmurs, “I’m glad, too.”
We can be ourselves with each other, and that’s the greatest gift I could ever want.
“Tag Campbell or Titus Taylor, I don’t care what you’re called,” I tell him. “You were worth waiting for.”
He sweeps my curls away from my forehead with one quick gesture and leans in for another long, slow kiss. It’s only when we pull apart that I realize how damn tired I am.
Tag cleans us up and turns out the light, pulls back the covers and helps me underneath. Good thing. I’d probably curl up and sleep right here.
In the darkness and nestled together under the quilt, we fit together perfectly.
Just as we’re drifting to sleep, the door creaks open. I chuckle sleepily, but I’m too tired to even say anything aloud.
I don’t need to. Moments later, my legs are weighed down by the third member of our little family. I’m so happy that I could cry—or just close my eyes and drift into blissful ecstasy, so I do that instead.
I’ve found my true melody, my heart’s rhythm, and my home.
30
Caleb
Eight Months Later
A quiet yelp catches my attention. I struggle to sit up from my lazy little nest: a couple of pillows in the back of the truck with a notepad and pen.
I prop myself up on an elbow and shade my eyes against the hot July sun, peering at the bee yard. The truck’s parked a few hundred feet away, so that Queenie doesn’t get excited and try to join in as Tag checks his hives.
“You okay?” I call out. My raised voice, of course, makes Queenie bark. Tag works slowly and cautiously, so he doesn’t get stung often. When he does, I hate that there’s not much I can do besides try to kiss him better.
“It’s all right,” Tag calls out a moment later. “I just have company in here.”
I shiver and shake my head. He bought me a bee suit, so I went up close and personal—once. I saw how peaceful and gentle they are, and that was enough for me.
I’m happy to drink the proceeds. And it might not seem like it, but I’m actually hard at work on my own part in this. As he works on harvesting the honey that will go into a batch of mead, it’s my job to write a haiku that will go on the bottles.
Every batch has a limited-edition, numbered haiku on the label in small print. Some people in Burlington have gotten really into collecting them.
Queenie whines from the ground on the other side of the truck bed. I lever myself over the side to check on her. She’s holding a stick up for me to throw, so I chuckle and lean as far down as I can, just barely able to grab it from her.
She tries to hold on and play tug-of-war with a playful growl, but I yelp. “Let go,” I order her before she can pull me right over the side. She does, dancing on her toes and waiting for me to throw the stick, so I hurl it overhead as far as I can and then fold my arm on the edge of the truck, resting my chin on it to look over the meadows.
Yeah. This is the life.
Tag is like a whole different man, totally open and relaxed about his past. Nobody seemed surprised when word got around. They’d already guessed he must have money to open a meadery from scratch.
Tourists sometimes spot him and get excited, but the locals never let Tag’s ego get too big. They rib him when he plays guitar at open nights sometimes, and I think he likes it.
That’s exactly the speed he wants: no money or fame, just making people happy with music and mead.
And me? Well, I’m working as an accountant, but I just got back from a writing workshop in Maine. I was glad to get home to the house we now share, and I’m doing another poetry class online.
If Tag isn’t in front of the mic, I am. I do readings all the time, and I submit my poetry, and I shrug off everyone’s opinions with a polite smile.
It’s a beautiful life together, and when I get afraid that the happiness we’ve found in each other can’t last… well, I just have to look at the last six months.
Sure, we fight about socks on the floor and whether drinking green tea is a redeemable quality, but it’s all with love. There’s no more secrets anymore.
“Hey, come look at this.”
I shake myself out of my thoughts, put down my notebook, and slide out of the truck bed onto the ground.
Tag has flipped back the mesh hood of his beekeeper’s suit. “Is it a trick? Are you transferring your bee friend to me?” I call out with a wary look.
Tag laughs. “No,” he promises. “But if you come look at this, I’ll let you brush me off and check for bees.”
�
��Oooh.” I dance up to him with a playful grin. “That’s a deal.” Before I can start unzipping him, he laughs and pulls away, grabbing my hand.
“Come first,” he orders.
“You know I love it when you tell me that,” I tease him, bumping his hip with mine and giggling as he leads me through the long, green grasses.
The beehives are tucked up against a little patch of dappled woodland. I’ve never been into it, but he picks his way through the trees, leading me in.
I can’t help stopping to stare around at the light streaming through the soft green branches. “I should have brought my notebook,” I whisper.
“Wait until you see this.”
I look down again and then gasp. It’s a little clearing with a fairy circle—a ring of mushrooms. Right in the middle is a stump.
Tag steps over the line into the circle and I gasp, clutching at his arm. “Tag!”
“What?” Tag blinks at me.
“God.” I keep hold of his hand and step over the line, too, squinting. Nothing happens, of course. But it could have. “You need me to look after you, I swear. You’re going to get kidnapped.”
“How do you know we’re not already somewhere else?” He grins, tugging me in for a kiss.
I peck his lips and then pull back, eyeing him. I know him. He’s up to something. “If you’re coming on to me, we could have put Queenie on the leash first.”
Tag laughs and shakes his head, but something catches my eye. The stump is old and dead, hollowed out in the middle. And there’s a shape that stands out.
I pull away from Tag and bend over, my fingers closing around the little wooden box. Someone’s forgotten or hidden it here. Or I’m about to find a gift from the fairies, and I’m not sure what the protocol is on that.
“Look, I—” But the words die on my lips.
Tag is on his knee, gazing up at me with a huge smile. “Open it,” he whispers.
My hands start trembling as my throat closes up. I can barely get the catch open, but somehow I manage it.
And then I stare down at the ring set against a black pillow inside. A thin line of rose gold is set just off-center in mottled silver.
When I look at Tag again, my eyes are filling with wetness.
So are his.
“Caleb Holt,” he whispers. “You’ve already made the happiest man alive. So would you do me the biggest honor of my life, and make me an honest man at last?” He draws a breath and takes my other hand—the one that isn’t clutching the ring box and trembling like mad. “Will you marry me?”
The squeal I let out startles a flock of little birds right out of the trees. I fling my arms around Tag and throw myself at him so hard that we both collapse onto the ground, and then Tag starts laughing.
“Don’t lose the ring!”
“Shit,” I mumble, visions of metal-detecting dancing in my head. But when I fumble for the box and raise it aloft, pointing down at us, it’s still wedged tightly into its pillow. “No, it’s there!”
Tag laughs and pushes us both until we sit upright. “Is that a yes?”
I almost can’t speak. The earnest look on his face just cuts straight to my heart. He’s always this attentive every time he looks at me… but this time, I can see a whole lifetime of these looks on his face.
“It’s a deal,” I manage, my voice trembling into a little giggle. As he starts to grin, I clear my throat. “Yes. Yes, Tag, God, yes.”
Tag grabs the box and pulls out the ring, pushes it onto my finger, and hauls me down to the ground again to kiss the hell out of me.
Before I can compose myself, another tongue joins the party with a series of excited barks.
“Queenie!” I groan, but Tag laughs as she snorts in his ear.
“She can’t help it. She wants to be part of it.”
“Oh, she’ll be our ring bearer,” I promise with a grin.
Tag starts laughing. “That won’t go wrong at all.”
I grin mischievously at him. Secretly, I can’t wait to find out how wrong it goes. “No, I’m sure she’ll be good as gold.”
She’s sprawling on her back in the dirt, yelping happily at us.
“Our firstborn is dirty and needs a bath again,” I inform Tag with a shake of my head. “And you want more?” He mentioned last week, in one of his less subtle moments, that the nearby elementary school had a good music program.
He grins at me. “Well, we haven’t screwed up too badly, apart from her love of the dirt.”
“We’ll see,” I promise him with a wink.
For now, it’s just the two of us.
I like it that way.
I have to brag to everyone I know and then celebrate this development all weekend long. But first, I have to keep touching the ring, rubbing my fingertip against it.
“There’s a melody etched inside,” Tag finally murmurs as he takes my hand.
I yank my hand away. “I’m not looking. Not yet. You can take it off and show me on our wedding day, Tag.”
He just laughs that beautiful rich laugh of his and kisses me, surrendering as usual.
As Queenie explores the clearing and finds another stick to chew, we curl up together. We could spend hours this way, watching honeybees investigating the little flowers that carpet the forest floor.
It’s prettier than even a poem. I couldn’t hope to try to capture the joy of the moment—though I’m certainly going to keep trying in the years to come.
For now, words fail me. All I can do is kiss him and breathe in this simple joy: together at last, forever.
T H E
E N D
Thank you for reading Limelight by E. Davies! Did you know there’s a bonus epilogue featuring Tag and Caleb? Get your copy here.
You can get all the links to the next Vino and Veritas books right here. Or turn the page for more great recommendations for E. Davies and World of True North titles!
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E. Davies’s books include:
Splinter
The Riley Brothers Collection
Flaunt