And then I sleep.
***
“Awed by her splendor/ stars near the lovely/ moon cover their own/ bright faces/ when she/ is roundest and lights/ earth with her silver.”
Cormac’s voice is in my ears, but when I open my eyes, I don’t see the oranges and pinks of dawn. It’s still the midnight and silver of deep night, and he’s not kissing me awake for romance.
“More Sappho you remembered?” I stall, smiling at him.
“Re-learned,” he corrects, kissing me softly on the lips. “I had this weird feeling I might fuck up, leave you horny in your room, get so drunk at a bar that I’d wind up stumbling around in front of your incredibly macho brother, and would probably have to be carried to bed on his broad shoulders…I’m slightly clairvoyant when it comes to my own miserable failings. So I memorized some particularly beautiful verses…the ones that most reminded me of you. And I will shamelessly use them to win you back to my very, very marginal good side.” He kisses me again, his lips lingering a tiny bit this time. He doesn’t pull completely away when he says the rest. “By the way, I’m very sorry. And, if it makes you feel better, I feel a little like an entire tribe of obnoxious clown children on speed are kickboxing my skull and like I may have eaten a cartload of rotten fish. So, I think the gods are telling me that I was very wrong yesterday. Or earlier tonight. Or wherever we are in time. Just…yes, sorry. The point is definitely that I’m sincerely sorry.”
“I was wrong.” I sit up and pull the covers over my shoulders in the chilly night air. “I was an idiot, Cormac. And I’m ready.”
His face goes pale. “To get married?”
I feel my cheeks burn. “Is that what you want?”
He widens his eyes and blinks. “Me?”
“Not you?” My head spins like I drank.
“You want to marry me?” he asks slowly, and I can’t tell if he would rather hear a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’
“Did you not want…me?” Now I’m feeling like an ass and glad for the few hours his midnight wake-up call will give me to cry this out before I see my family.
It’s just that last time we talked he seemed so…ready.
“I want you!” He pulls me back to him, presses me under his body and kisses me, first softly, then with more aggression. “My god, I want you every second of the day, Benelli.” He runs his hands over my hair, along my shoulders, down my body. “And not just in bed. I mean, I want you here, but only for me. As mine, only, not anyone else’s. When I see you out on your dates, I want to beat the shit out of every one of those guys.”
I moan a little, loving the feral side of Cormac that he usually keeps buttoned up. “They’re just dates, Cormac. You’re the only one I want to touch me.”
“Like this?” He shoves his hand up the leg of my shorts and tears away at the fabric of my underwear, so his two fingers slide deep inside of me, deep in where I’m already wet and ready for him.
“Yes,” I choke out, my head tilted back, waiting. He draws his fingers back out and presses them in. Out an in, slow and steady, until I’m panting under him.
“You want me to touch you like this, Benelli?” His voice scratches in my ears.
“Mmmhmm.” I want to answer, to talk back, but the slide of his fingers seems to be directly connected to my vocal chords, and the thrumming, humming vibrations echoing through my body don’t allow anything more articulate.
“Where else, love? Should I suck on you too?” His voice is so calm, so soft and low in my ears. I only nod, but his free hand twists my tank top and yanks it over my head. His fingers flick the clasp of my bra open and press and pull at my suddenly exposed breasts. “You want me to suck here?”
His lips close over my nipple, and I press my hips up harder against his hand, so hard my clit rubs against his wrist and he slides even deeper into me. He sucks hard, pulling his mouth away with a pop of suction, then catches the other in his mouth and tongues it until I’m jerking my hips harder against him.
“That’s it. Come for me. C’mon, Benelli,” he whispers.
I shake my head and he nuzzles the underside of my breast again, sending a new wave of heat through me, so unbearably sweet and cruelly gorgeous, my moan fractures and sputters.
His tongue slides down, bisecting between my breasts, down my belly button, under the waistband of my shorts. He sits up and pulls them off my legs, his green eyes almost black, his mouth a flat, hungry line, his breathing so heavy it’s making his chest rise and fall visibly.
The tight stretch of his cotton boxer briefs shows the hard length of his dick, and I want it. I want him in me, over and over, all night. I want him in the morning, the entire morning, not just for that one single second before I have to watch him repel down the side of the house. I want him for the complete day. I want to have him meet the family I love, not just the one brother who can keep a secret. Because I don’t want to keep Cormac a secret anymore.
I…love him.
I do.
And I want everyone to know it.
I push him back on the bed and yank his boxers off, loving the way he lies back and smiles, looking up at me like I’m the only thing that matters to him in the world.
“I love you,” I say, my voice fierce, my hands firm on his shoulders.
His smile falters and he backs up, so I slide a few inches down his thighs.
There’s a moment of sizzling, crackling tension in the air between us.
“Pardon?” he asks, the question so dazed and proper, it almost makes me burst out laughing.
But I don’t. I pull closer on his lap, the wet, ready center of me sliding right where he’s hard and eager.
“Don’t say anything.” I lean forward and kiss his strong jaw, the perfectly kissable, witty mouth, over each dark-lashed eye, into his dark hair, which smells like the ink and paper he loves. “You’ve fought for me. You’ve challenged me. You’ve begged me and left me and come back to me, and I just want to tell you that I love you. Not for sex, not for a summer fling. I love you, all of you. And I want you. All of you. And I have no idea, not a single idea, how this is going to work, but it is. I will figure this out, because I’m not leaving you. I’m never leaving you.”
His mouth is hanging open, and there’s this solitary flash of a second where I’m sure, I’m positive, I’ve just made the biggest mistake of my life, and I’m sitting naked on the lap of a guy who doesn’t love me and decided I wasn’t worth it and went to drink my memory away this very night.
Then he drags me in his arms and crushes me against his hard chest, only pulling back to kiss me solidly on the lips. When he pulls back, his eyes are bright with determination. “I love you. If Odysseus could make it back to Penelope, we can figure this out, love. We can do this.”
I laugh at his random literary metaphor, at the way I feel so perfect, so damn me when I’m in his arms, and the kissing gets more intense until it morphs into touching, and before I know it, his hands are on my hips and his fingers are sliding against me, making my entire body ache and quake around a deep down need to feel him against me, in me, all over me.
I reach over for my bag and fumble to take out a condom and roll it on. I slide onto him, and the stretch of his dick inside me takes a few seconds to get accustomed to. After those few seconds, I rock back and forth against him, focusing on the smooth, solid length of him, the rough scratch on his hands on my arms, my breasts, up and down along my thighs. I close my eyes and bite my lip to keep a rhythm, to keep moving against him, but it’s not enough, not close enough.
I don’t have to say anything; like he can read my frustrations, Cormac sits up and pulls me tighter, wrapping my legs around his hips and thrusting into me, deeper, longer, anchoring his hands on my hips and nuzzling his mouth near my ears so he can whisper things about how he thinks about my naked body and the things he wants to do to me and the things he wants me to do back to him.
“I think about you in the shower, Benelli, how your skin would look naked and wet and sl
ippery with soap. I want to run my hands over you and in you and I want to bend you over and slide my dick inside of you over and over.” His voice catches on my gasp. “I do a thousand translations with a stiff cock, because I’m imagining what it would be like if you showed up and took it in your mouth and sucked it hard. I want to sit you on my desk and spread your legs, lick every inch of you until you come in my mouth.”
He doesn’t hold back, doesn’t attempt to soften anything, and it’s a turn on equal to his whispered poems. I love that he can be so wild and erotic and romantic and sweet all at once. He keeps whispering things that make my cheeks burn, things that make me jerk and thrust against him, and I get hotter, wetter, move faster and brush against him harder.
Every single image flickers through my brain and snaps one more thread in the chord that’s tethering me to him.
And then it’s completely broken, and I’m pressed on top of him, face buried in his shoulder, arms wrapped around his strong, muscled back, gasping out his name as he strains against me, his body completely tense for a few perfect seconds before we both topple, spent and sweaty, in a heap on the bed.
“That was…holy fucking Aprhodite’s fucking…Benelli!” He groans, then drags me on top of him and kisses my neck and breasts and face. “How will the poor, classically-deprived children of Hungary ever get their corresponding English-language translation of The Odyssey if you’re going to parade around tempting me with your perfect body?”
I giggle. “You’ll have to move me in with you.”
His face goes serious. “Would you?”
I thread my fingers through his. “Would I what?”
“Would you…move in…with me? To my stuffy one-room loft awesomely furnished with a hot plate and a single bed?” He bats his eyelashes at me.
“Did you just bat your lashes at me?” I smile and kiss his jaw.
“Yes. I’m willing to stoop to new lows for you.” He cups my face in his hands. “In all honesty, I know you’re a powerful woman from a powerful family, and I’m nothing but a strange professor educated in one of, literally, one of the least useful fields. Ever. Really. It’s awful. I’m laughably useless as a working adult human in every way except one very rare specific one. But I would do anything…anything I needed to to try this. Should we try this?”
I nod and swallow. “Yes,” I whisper. “Let’s try.”
He pulls my face down and kisses me. “So, if I pull you down next to me and we fall asleep in perfect contentment, what price will I have to pay for our one night of absolute bliss?”
I lie down close to him and melt as he snakes one muscled arm around my waist. “You’ll have to meet my parents. For breakfast.”
He goes completely still for a few seconds before he relaxes and kisses me on the forehead. “Get some rest then. We’ll need our wits about us tomorrow.” He yawns.
“We’ll just tell them. It will be like…like ripping off a band-aid,” I whisper, my heart seizing.
He yawns again and kisses my neck. “Mmm…or like facing a firing squad.”
I juggle a sudden chuckle and an icy splash of terror before I fall asleep for the second time in Cormac’s bed tonight.
Cormac 6
The sunrise is a burst of gold rosied in pinks and dappled with gorgeous oranges…and it’s igniting a napalm burn in my liquor-battered brain. I wake to the soft, sweet length of Benelli in my arms, but know we’re already running behind for a meeting with her parents…a meeting I’m half positive will end up with me bashed over the head by Hungarian goons, weighted with cement shoes, and tossed into the local lake.
I take a long moment to enjoy the view of Benelli, naked, dreaming, in my bed, before I shuffle to the bathroom and try to scrub away the worst of last night’s encounter. I can’t do much about my bloodshot eyes and overall pallor, but I clean up as best I can and shave. Nothing screams ‘hippie professor with no potential’ like sloppily tended facial hair. I’m searching through my clothes for a responsible outfit when Benelli stirs awake.
I stay still for a moment just watching her rub her feet together and stretch first one, then the other, fisted arm over her head.
Ridiculously adorable.
She blinks sleepily.
“Good morning, gorgeous,” I greet her. “Are you ready to run away with me, purchase fake passports, and herd reindeer in the northern reaches of Finland like we agreed to last night?”
She rolls her eyes and smiles. “They’re not so bad. You’re psyching yourself out, Cormac.” She gets up and walks, stark naked, to the bathroom. “They’re going to love you!” she calls over her shoulder.
“I appreciate you offering a lovely view of your rump to try to distract me and make me actually buy into that lie, but I know it’s horseshit. What parents would be happy to have their daughter dating me?” I put on a pair of trousers and shoes. Real shoes. Real shoes are important. “The last time I met the parents, they were encouraging her to use me in an elaborate jealousy plot. I have a pretty shit track record with this kind of stuff.”
She pokes her head out of the bathroom. “Her parents were idiots.” She’s using her finger to smear toothpaste on her teeth.
“You can use my toothbrush,” I suggest, and she pops her head back out, eyes wide with shock. “It that such a strange suggestion?”
She draws her mouth to the side. “It just seems…so personal. Sharing a toothbrush.”
I button my shirt and grin at her. “I hate to be crass, but when you think about what of yours I’ve had in my mouth and what of mine you’ve had in yours…”
She throws a comb at me before I can finish, but I see her pick up my toothbrush and use it.
It was my own suggestion, but now, watching her take it, it does strike me as exceedingly personal. Nina and I were planning to get married and I wouldn’t have considered lending her my toothbrush or borrowing hers. We were also together for five times longer than the time I’ve known Benelli, but, when I look back, Nina seems like an acquaintance I barely knew. Benelli is like a perfectly fitted piece of me I never knew I was missing to plug up a gaping hole in my heart I never knew existed.
“What are you thinking about?” Benelli asks, slipping her clothes back on.
“Plugging up holes,” I answer.
She narrows her eyes at me. “Is that another lame attempt at a dirty joke? Because it’s seriously pathetic.”
I just shake my head, because now, in the light of the morning, she feels even more real, and that makes this whole thing feel even more nerve-wracking. What if she slips through my fingers? What if her parents hate me? There’s a very, very good chance they will.
On the other hand, what if they love me? Embrace me? Clap me on the back and tell me I’m ready to join the ranks? Will I ever be able to do what they do? Be whatever it is she and her family expect me to be?
“What are you thinking about now?” she asks, pulling her hair in a neat ponytail. “I can tell it’s not a dirty joke. You look…you kind of look like you’re going to puke. Are you okay?”
She sits down by me and lays a cool hand over my forehead.
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to pull this particular bow back, is all,” I confess, taking her palm and kissing it.
“Are you talking about Odysseus again?” She rubs her nose on mine. “You’re Odysseus, okay? I know you are. You’re going to pull the bow back. No questions.”
“You’re just trying to get into my pants again, aren’t you?” I grab her by the hips and swing her onto my lap.
She wraps her arms around my neck and inhales a long, deep breath. “You smell so good. You look so cute, all buttoned up and freshly shaved. But I can’t have sex with you right now.” I slide a hand inside her shorts and love the way her breath gasps out. She puts a hand on my wrist and shakes her head, raising her eyebrows high. “No. I need to get back to my aunt’s. I need to change.”
So I take her back through the new dawn of the first day we’re officially together. When
we get to Abony’s house, I automatically go to the back. She tugs on my hand.
“No. Probably the front. Right?” Benelli presses her lips together and wrings her hands over and over. “Or the back is okay I guess?”
I pull her in my arms and kiss her, but she only pecks back. “Don’t worry. Listen to me, don’t worry. I’ll go down the road, right where the shrine to the Virgin is. You know the one?” She nods. “When you’ve talked with your parents and are ready, text me, and I’ll show up.”
“But…I don’t want to lie anymore about this,” she says, chewing on her lip.
“We won’t be lying,” I assure her. “I mean, we will be lying about some things, like the fact that I had crazy sex with you all night. Your parents don’t need to know that little detail. But no lies about anything important. Nothing big, okay?”
I take her hands in mind, and they’re clammy and shaky.
Not a good sign.
“Okay. Okay.” She nods and gives me one quick kiss, then slips into the house.
I wait on the bench, staring at the chipping statue of the Virgin, arms spread wide, fading bunches of silk flowers tied with tattered ribbons at her feet.
If I was a praying man, I’d pray now. And she looks like a nice goddess to pray to.
But I’m not a praying man. I’m a believer in chance and fate and whatever happens happening for reasons that have nothing to do with some all-powerful deity.
All I have to rely on is myself, and that’s not exactly the most comforting thought.
My phone buzzes with a single word:
“You”
I head to Abony’s feeling like there is a ton of stones in my gut. Benelli’s father is the overlord of this family, and I know his opinion of me will be the absolute ruling.
I feel like Odysseus facing a god. I just don’t know if it’s Zeus or Poseidon I’m about to stare down. Am I about to get a curse or a reprieve?
From the doorway, I can see Abony’s formal dining area is set up with platters of fresh breads and rolls, cheeses, deli meats, bowls of cereals with serving spoons, pots of honeys and jellies, urns of coffee, pitchers of milk, and one incredibly gorgeous, intimidating family seated around the banquet.
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