Thresholds

by Kate Canterbary

  She nodded, anchoring her hands on my shoulders as she rocked into my thrusts. This angle was good—I was deep deep deep—but I couldn't stroke her clit without wedging a hand between us and twisting my arm to hit the right spot. I couldn't do anything but sit here, watching her find her release on her own.

  It was torture. It was also hot as hell.

  "Do you know how much I love watching you?" I asked, thrusting into her hard enough to see stars. She worked for it, and I couldn't think of anything more arousing than watching my wife use me like this. "Do you know? Do you have any idea what you do to me?"

  "I—I—I," she gasped, her eyes closing, her lips parting, and her body quivering under my hands. "I'm going to—ah—going to—"

  "That's right, baby," I whispered, my hands fused to her backside. "Come for me."

  Her body spasmed, destroying the thin hold I had on my orgasm. It pumped out of me quickly, one huge pulse after another. She curled into my chest, her head on my shoulder. We were still panting from the exertion.

  "Holy hell, Tiel, anytime you want to be a fun mom, I'm fucking here for it," I said with a sigh. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I wouldn't mind visiting that lingerie shop again. I'd like to establish the ground rules before subjecting my cock to that kind of sweet agony but we can work those details out later. I don't think I can feel my legs right now. That was—"

  "Oh, no," she said, sitting up abruptly. "Oh, no, please no."

  "What's wrong?"

  She dragged her bottom lip between her teeth and cringed. "I just let down."

  She untangled her arms, and yeah, two large wet spots now dotted her dress. "Well," I started, brushing her hair back from her face, "now you don't have to pump when we get home." She laughed at that and I held my arms open to her. "Let me hold you for a minute. I'm not ready for this to be over yet."

  "I'm going to get breast milk all over you," she said.

  "I do not care." I beckoned her closer. "I want you right here, right now."

  She returned to her spot on my chest and I let my eyes drift shut. I was fucking tired. This week had been one exhausting day after another, and I wasn't used to trolling the bar scene anymore. I couldn't remember the last time I was out of the house at this hour.

  "Sorry about this," Tiel said, her words muffled as she spoke against my shoulder.

  "If you're referring to the milk, don't apologize to me about that. Don't even try," I said. "If you're referring to this wild evening, well, I'm not accepting apologies for that either. You can, however, apologize for the absolute fucking brutality of forbidding me from touching you this afternoon."

  "No, I don't think I will," she said with a laugh. "Thank you for indulging me tonight."

  "Anytime," I replied. "I mean that. Anytime you want to go out for the night or just have sex in the car, tell me. Between all five of my siblings, we should be able to rustle up a babysitter."

  "Okay. Thank you," she repeated. "We should do this again."

  "You better believe we're going to do this again. Just give me five minutes."

  Then there was a knock at the window.

  Tiel shrieked, and we both flinched at the bright light shining at us.

  "This is going to be fun," I murmured as I rolled down the window.

  The light shifted, and a police officer came into view. "Newton Police. Can I see some identification, sir?"

  "Yes, of course," I replied, giving Tiel a look what you did now glare. "Sunshine, grab my wallet for me, would you?"

  We were in the worst position for this. My trousers were in a bunched mess around my thighs, Tiel's stockings were ripped to shit, we were both covered in breast milk, and the fogged windows made it incredibly obvious that we were having more than a friendly chat back here.

  She struggled to reach my back pocket without falling off my lap. Not that I was letting that happen. Jesus. All we needed was my wet dick flopping around.

  Once Tiel found my wallet, she handed my driver's license to the officer. I didn't know where her purse was hiding but I was certain it was out of reach, and hoped we could get by without complicating this evening any further.

  The officer shined his flashlight at my identification, glancing between the card and us several times. "You took a wrong turn if you were headed for Fort Point," he said. "This is private property, Mr. Walsh."

  "It is," I replied quickly. "It's my private property."

  He gave me a dubious look and studied the darkened house for a second.

  "There's a building permit on the front window," I continued. "It's in the name of Walsh Holdings, LLC. That's me. That's my firm. Tiel, get one of my business cards. There are a few in my wallet, up front."

  He glanced at the card she presented and then pointed the flashlight at the windows in question but there was no way he could read it from here.

  "There's also a sign on the lawn, near the mailbox, announcing this as a Walsh Associates restoration. So, yes," I conceded, "this is private property. I own it."

  The officer was unimpressed. "Then you should have no trouble taking your affairs inside."

  "We are married," Tiel cried, holding up her left hand and pointing at her rings with her right hand. "Married. This isn't some kind of adulterous booty call. My license is in here somewhere, and if you just turn around for a second so I can pull myself together and save you an eyeful, you can see for yourself that I'm married. To him."

  I snorted out a laugh.

  "No need, Mrs. Walsh," the officer said, his cheeks flushing pink. "Just don't make a habit of it. This is a family neighborhood. People here are private."

  "We're heading right out," I said.

  The officer nodded as he handed my license back. "You do that," he said.

  "Happy holidays," Tiel called as he walked away.

  I rolled the window up and stayed silent until the headlights on his cruiser pointed up the street and out of sight. Eventually, I said, "I cannot believe that just happened."

  Tiel collapsed on my chest, laughing. I couldn't hold back, and laughed along with her.

  "Okay, so maybe we don't do this again," Tiel said.

  I shook my head. "I wouldn't go that far," I replied. "We just need to stick to properties with functioning garages."

  Chapter Six

  Nick

  I glanced down at the shiny floors and wondered how many times in the past year I'd stood in this exact spot. Fifteen, maybe twenty.

  Airports carried a bittersweet flavor, one that stuck with me as long as Erin was away. I couldn't shake it until she was back in my arms and even then I struggled to choke it down. It was a byproduct of too-short weekends stretched over too-long years apart. But when I did, when I got past the taste, I remembered that wasn't our life anymore.

  It was hard, Erin's travel schedule, but I wouldn't trade this life for anything. We had a place of our own, a home that was new and old all at once. She was in town more often than she wasn't, and in those moments, we were busy learning how to live together. Neither of us were particularly precious about our household habits but we'd had a few tough conversations about the right way to organize kitchen cabinets and the post-shower protocol for damp towels.

  We'd put some energy into developing our dinner party muscle, and credited ourselves with bringing Alex and Riley together in the process. With Erin out of the country for the past few weeks, we had yet to invite Stremmel over. That, and he was a bull fighting the chute, too busy grousing about the weather and bemoaning the shortage of parking in Boston for me to get a word in edgewise.

  Travelers spilled through the sliding doors, and I knew Erin would be soon to follow. I shifted, craning my neck to scan the crowd. People were busy tucking their passports away, pulling their phones out, looking around for car service signs.

  And then I spotted her hair. It stuck out like a blazing beacon in a dark, nondescript sea. She looked up. Our eyes met across the terminal, and she raised her hand in a quick wave.

  Some p
art of me always expected her to barrel through the terminal and leap into my arms. Or maybe we'd run toward each other. When we met, I'd pick her up and spin in dizzying circles. I didn't know why I thought that. Neither of us tended toward flamboyant gestures, and we weren't living through a romantic comedy film. But the thought crossed my mind every time I saw her emerge from Customs.

  Her glasses were propped on her head, and even from this distance I could tell she was dog tired. Slumped shoulders, dark circles under her eyes, sunburned nose. The reality was that she worked too damn hard. She knew no limits when it came to studying the earth, and she put those studies ahead of everything. Herself included. And her studies weren't a matter of hard thinking in an ivory tower. She climbed volcanoes, hiked deserts, traversed miles to gather data.

  Yeah, my little lovely needed a warm bed, a soft pillow, and a long rest.

  As that thought crossed my mind, my cock sent up a desperate plea. I could hear "Wait! What about my needs?" thrumming in my blood. These past weeks were the longest I could remember. The days weren't bad as I kept myself busy at the hospital, but those nights were agony. The house felt too big, too empty. I couldn't settle myself.

  It was different from the time we spent apart before…well, before. I knew what it was to wake up beside her every morning now. I knew that, for all her wandering, she was a homebody at heart.

  "There's always tomorrow," I said to my cock. "And all the tomorrows after that."

  When Erin was within feet, I stepped toward her and lifted the backpack from her shoulders.

  "Thanks for that," she said, smiling up at me.

  Her rolling luggage clattered to a halt beside her, and I knew this quiet, slightly awkward reunion was better than any melodramatic run-leap-swing combination. Quiet and slightly awkward was our way.

  I dropped the pack to the floor and folded her into my arms. "Anytime, Skip."

  She nestled her head under my chin and, at once, we sighed. The entire world could rise and fall around us and we wouldn't notice.

  "Take me home," she whispered.

  Nodding, I hooked her pack over my shoulder. "I love hearing you say that," I said, my lips pressed to the crown of her head.

  "Then let me say it again," she said with a grin. "Take me home, Nick."

  * * *

  We collected her things and headed home to Cambridge. I drove with her hand in mine because I required that connection. She talked about her research in the Solomon Islands, and her time there. I talked surgeries, and the one-hundred-mile bike ride Matt and I took last weekend. Nothing we discussed was remarkable but it felt significant.

  It was the end-of-the-day conversation I'd missed these past three weeks. The pebbles of daily life that came together to form the whole of our existence.

  "I ended up next to a chatty traveler on my last flight," Erin said.

  "Did this person survive the journey?" I asked. My wife's withering death stare was enough to stop most people in their tracks, but there were always a few who ignored the signs.

  "Yes but barely," she said, a laugh ringing in her words. "This guy wanted to know where I was going and where I'd been. He thought he had me beat at the passport stamp game."

  "Little did he know," I murmured.

  "Oh yeah," she said with a smug grin. "I whipped it out and had him on his knees within two pages."

  "You're starting to sound a lot like Shannon," I said. "I'm not sure how I feel about that."

  "Sounds like a compliment to me." She jerked a defiant shoulder, inviting me to challenge her. I knew better than that. "When I showed him the stamps from Iceland, he ignored all the evidence suggesting that I knew something about the country and its customs because he decided to school me on holiday traditions."

  "That must've been entertaining."

  "It gets better," she promised. "He went on and on about the Icelandic custom of giving books on Christmas and how it dated back to medieval times. Since that's inaccurate—it started during the second World War when luxury materials were rationed but paper was not—I corrected his misconception."

  "It's a public service you're doing, Skip."

  "Since we were on the topic of Iceland and holidays, I figured I'd add to his knowledge base and tell him about the thirteen terrifying ogres and their evil ogre-troll mother. They climb down from the mountains every holiday season to snatch up local children. They use them for soup."

  "And here I was, thinking the best part of your brain was the obscure history," I mused. "Apparently, it's Icelandic folklore."

  "That story did originate in medieval times, and the children were so afraid of Grýla and the Yule Lads, they wouldn't leave their homes around Christmas."

  "How did your chatty traveler respond to this?" I asked.

  "He remembered that he had a newspaper to read," she replied. "My dark heart has that effect on people."

  "I love you and your dark heart," I said. "Your ridiculous stories, too. Talk history to me, baby."

  "During the Reformation, Oliver Cromwell and some tribalist Puritans went hard at removing the excess, decadence, and materialism from England. They canceled Christmas in 1645. That didn't last long, and Charles the Second reclaimed his seat atop the monarchy, but the sentiment stuck with the English separatists who later carried that orthodoxy across the Atlantic. Christmas was not a holiday celebrated by most seventeenth century settlers in North America. In Boston," she continued, "there were twenty-odd years when celebrating Christmas was a crime. It didn't become a federal holiday until after the Civil War."

  "Ahhhh." I sighed, my palm on my chest. "I needed that. It's comfort food and foreplay, all at the same time."

  "You're the only person who likes it when I dredge up this information," Erin said.

  "You're the only person who can dredge up this information," I replied. "I tried to tell Hartshorn and Emmerling one of your bits of strange history, and it made no sense. You have a gift."

  "Is Alex coming to Patrick and Andy's party tomorrow night?" she asked.

  "She will be there, and she invited Stremmel to come along," I said as we exited Storrow Dive.

  "That's interesting," Erin murmured. "Based on everything you've told me about him, I didn't expect that."

  "Me neither," I said. "Hartshorn and I asked him to join us for dinner a couple of days ago. The suggestion was mildly mortifying to him."

  She rubbed her thumb over the back of my hand. "He'll fit right in."

  I jerked a shoulder as I pulled into our driveway. "Probably." The house was dark save for a light in the foyer. I kept her hand in mine and she followed me down the hall from the garage, into the kitchen. I stopped there, and turned to face Erin. "Are you hungry? Can I make you something?"

  She shook her head and ran her knuckles down my abdomen. "I've missed you so much," she said, her words little more than a whisper. "We used to go months and months apart but now"—she looked around, her palm low on my belly—"now I can barely make it through three weeks away from you."

  A breath shuddered out of me. "I know," I said. "The more of you I get, the more I want."

  We stared at each other, the shadowy kitchen and our time apart fading as each second passed.

  "How much of me do you want right now?" Erin asked.

  Her fingers drifted to my belt buckle.

  My gaze dropped to her lips.

  Her pulse jumped.

  My cock hardened.

  "All of you," I said, grabbing a fistful of her shirt.

  Tearing her clothes off the minute we walked through the door wasn't my plan, but now that I had her home, I couldn't think of anything else. I'd missed her scent, her eyes, her laugh, all of her. My lips crashed down on hers and I gathered her up in my arms.

  "Upstairs," she murmured. "Bedroom."

  I boosted Erin up and her legs tangled around my waist. "Best words ever spoken," I said between kisses.

  "I didn't think," she whispered between quick, biting kisses, "didn't think I'd have the
energy for this."

  "You don't have to do anything," I promised, slamming her against coat closet door. The leverage gave me an opportunity to squeeze her ass with one hand and reach under her bra with the other. "I'll do all the work. I swear."

  She was clawing at my shirt, tugging at the sides until her fingers met my skin, and I couldn't stop kissing her, biting her, growling as I rocked into her. I didn't have any words, only wants.

  The stairs were so close but also so, so far.

  "Upstairs," she repeated. "Bedroom. I've been roughing it for three weeks."

  I tore her shirt over her head, wrenched her bra off, and sucked her breast hard. "You're kidding yourself if you think this won't be rough, lovely."

  She gazed down at me, her eyes hooded, and she whispered, "Yes, please."

  That was it. That was all I needed to get me moving. Clothes came off in a frantic blur, leaving a trail all the way up the stairs. It was dark and I couldn't see—didn't want to see—anything but her skin. I almost walked right past our bedroom.

  "Here," Erin said, untangling her arm from around my shoulders. "This one, Nick. We don't have any furniture in the spare bedrooms yet."

  I was too busy rolling her nipple around on my tongue to respond. Once I reached the bed, I set her down with as much care as I could muster. There was a balance to this. Fuck her hard, treat her soft.

  Erin leaned back, her legs parting for me. "I want you right here," she said.

  It hit me then how much I'd missed her. Truly missed her. "The only place I want to be."

  Her heels dug into my backside in agreement, her socks warm against my bare skin as I pushed inside her. "Nick."

  "Erin," I growled, my vision hazy from the flat-out pleasure of my wife in my arms and my cock buried inside her. I didn't think I could manage another word if I tried.

  Her back arched off the bed as I drove into her again. Her eyes fluttered shut and her lips parted, and I brought my hand between her breasts. I wanted to own every beat of her heart, every breath. She layered both hands over mine while I stared down at her, her body quaking with my every thrust.