by Tamara Lush
I felt his arm, heavy on my body. He was spooning me, his arm parallel to my body and his hand on my thigh, his ankle in between my feet. Lately he’d wanted to sleep close to me, as if he needed us to be glued together. I didn’t mind, not one bit. The weight of his body made me feel secure.
With a yawn, I peeled back the Egyptian cotton sheet covering us. Caleb stirred, squeezed my leg, then caressed my side. I picked up his hand and kissed his palm, poised to climb out of bed.
“Emma doll,” he murmured.
Adrenaline shot through me, instantly waking me as if I’d mainlined espresso. Caleb hadn’t called me Emma doll since he left for Brazil. I held my breath. The pet name was so foreign to my ears I thought maybe I was dreaming.
“What?” I whispered.
“Emma doll, don’t get up yet. I need you.” His voice was rough, intimate. It was the sound of my husband.
The real one.
He reached out to rake his hands over my breasts and kneaded softly. What was different about his touch? He cupped my ass and felt between my legs.
“Are you wet enough for me?” he murmured.
“Y-yes,” I stammered.
He bent my top leg forward, and I felt him guide his cock inside of me from behind. The shock of his words made my body pliable and boneless.
I twisted my head in his direction. “Caleb?” I asked tentatively.
“Yes, baby?” he whispered, cupping my breast.
“I love you.”
“Mmm. And I love you.”
He said this like it was normal, as if he uttered the words every day. When he hadn’t.
I was conscious of him entering me, moving me any way he wanted. His hand snaked between my legs and found my clit. I felt myself swell and bloom under his fingertips and sighed a moan. His touch was unhurried, welcoming, like home.
He made little growly noises and bit my shoulder. He felt more virile this morning, more present, even. Or was that my imagination?
“You’re so hard,” I gasped as he plunged into me.
“That’s right,” he whispered, squeezing my breast. “I woke up wanting you like crazy.” He nuzzled his nose into my neck. “God, you feel so good this morning.”
Then he pulled out and flipped me on my back. He climbed on top of me, and I accommodated his big body by wrapping my legs around him. He dipped to kiss my neck, and the kisses were slow, tender. I turned my head, luxuriating under his lips. Had he really called me Emma doll or was I in some parallel dreamland, one that’d I’d longed for and had given up all hope of having? He reached down and guided his cock inside of me.
“Emma doll, I love you. I love you.”
I shuddered in a breath. He’d really said it. And it sounded like he meant it.
He trailed his nose down my cheek and kissed behind my ear. Lifting his head, my husband looked at me in the wan, blue morning light. His black-silver hair glinted, his mouth parted.
His beautiful mouth that had told me exactly what I wanted to hear, exactly when I’d needed to hear it.
“What? Why are you crying, Emma?”
“You…your memory. You called me Emma doll. It’s what you used to call me before you went away,” I stammered. “And you said you loved me.”
Still inside of me, he tilted his head and smiled a little.
With a groan, he thrust long and slow, and I drew him close, tears leaking out the corners of my eyes. Then he pulled out and sat up on his knees, his muscular shoulders and arms and chest soaking in the early morning rays coming through the curtains. His erection glistened with my wetness. I whimpered, both from the absence of his body and the blind hope that his memory of me had finally returned.
He knelt in between my legs and ran his hands up my body, pausing to cup my breasts gently. I shivered.
“It’s like I woke up from a long sleep and knew what I was supposed to remember. I feel different, Emma.”
I put my hands over his. “What else do you remember? Do you remember how we met? Where we met? Where you first told me you loved me?”
He smiled wide. “Of course I do. How could I forget?”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
A look of sadness crossed Caleb’s face. “I did forget, though, didn’t I?”
I nodded, about to cry.
“I’m sorry. That was the other thing I remembered. That I’ve never said I was sorry for what happened. For losing my memory. For forgetting.”
I cupped his face. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. It wasn’t your fault. And now you remember.”
Propping himself on his forearms, he entered me again, thrusting so slowly and sensually that I gasped.
His mouth found my ear, and his hand reached to sweep the hair out of my face. “You’re in me on a cellular level. Even if my mind didn’t remember you, something in my soul did. I believe that. I think I’ve been trying to tell you this for months, but my messed-up brain stopped me.” He pressed his lips to my forehead as he ground into me. I groaned and bent my knees, wanting him deeper inside. As deep as he could be.
“My soul finally talked to my mind. Finally told the truth, Emma. I’m going to spend the rest of my life showing you how much I love you. Making up for this past year.”
“Oh, Caleb.” My skin shimmered from his words. I dug my nails into his shoulders as he moved his hips in a certain way, with a certain circular rhythm that he hadn’t used since he’d returned from Brazil. I was on the brink.
“You feel fucking incredible this morning. I woke up feeling so much love for you, Emma doll.”
“So much love,” I whispered. The way he was positioned, just so, caused enough friction on my clit, and I writhed under him with a slow and carnal grind.
“You’re going to make me come like this, Caleb.”
“That’s what I want.” In the early morning dawn, his blue eyes pierced me.
He thrust slow and long. Primal and profound. He crushed his face into my neck, and I finally felt the old intimacy, that soul connection, with him. I repeated his name over and over, whispered it into the flesh of his neck, then released into a long, pulsing climax.
One so intense that I could only silently scream.
He came quickly after, groaning softly near my earlobe. “I love you, Emma. You and only you. You’re everything to me, forever.”
* * *
Later that afternoon, we packed the condo to celebrate Charlotte’s birthday. We’d hired a jazz band for the adults on the terrace and a magician for the kids inside. Vases of bright pink flowers were everywhere, along with matching pink helium balloons and party favors depicting Rapunzel from the Disney movie Tangled.
Charlotte had taken to that movie lately, and I’d learned most of the lines. During the party, I quoted from the movie liberally because I was giddy.
I don’t think I’d ever been so happy. With a huge smile, I circulated and talked to family and friends, babbling about everything from the wine spritzer recipe I’d discovered to the plot of a romance novel I’d been thinking about writing. Sarah pulled me aside on the terrace.
“Did something happen? Are you pregnant?”
“Why?” I beamed. “And no. Not looking to have more babies, that’s for sure. Charlotte’s enough. I have enough, all the way around.”
She shrugged. “Well, you’re glowing. Like radioactively.”
My tone dropped. “Caleb’s back.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Caleb’s…back? From where?”
“He finally told me he loved me. He finally called me Emma doll.”
She nodded slowly. I had refrained from telling her all my worries and frustrations in recent months. I’d put my head down and kept my melancholy to myself.
“I’m really happy, is all. Things are finally back to normal, I think. No, they’re better than before.”
“Wow. Well, I’m glad. I think life is back for us, too. Laura’s ready to begin the IVF process again. We made the decision last night.”
/> I laughed and threw my arms around her. “I love you.”
“Love you, too, Em.”
I wandered over to Caleb, who was talking to a group of men, mostly guys from his company.
“How did you manage to hit the jackpot with Emma?” one asked.
I stopped and sipped my wine spritzer. What would Caleb say to this question?
“Oh, have I got a story for you,” he responded. “You’ll never imagine where I met her or how.”
I looked up at him, a puzzled frown pulling my brow downward. What if he got some of the details wrong? Would I correct him?
Questions flooded me, floored me, stunned me into silence.
Was this how memory worked? Was this how marriage worked? Did you wake up one morning, in love anew, despite all of the pain and emptiness and heartache between the both of you?
I stared hard at my husband, who was talking about that night we’d met at Story Brothel, with details so vivid it might as well have been a couple of nights ago.
“I didn’t even want to be there that night,” Caleb chuckled. “But my sister Laura had a crush on this girl—who turned out to be Sarah, Emma’s best friend—and she wanted to go there after her birthday dinner. I remember rolling my eyes right before I walked in. It was a funky lounge, and I think it smelled like patchouli incense and hippies. I got a drink from a tattooed bartender with a long beard and saw this gorgeous woman standing next to me.”
I laughed. I’d forgotten the patchouli. Then I stilled, because I suddenly realized I still had no idea who he really was.
Was he the man I’d met all those years ago? Or the one who’d lost his memory in Brazil? Or the man standing next to me in our condo, in a black T-shirt and jeans, looking delicious and like every woman’s dream?
Was I the woman I used to be?
And what of the patchouli incense detail the night we’d met? How had I forgotten that? How good was my own memory?
“What did she say to you?” one guy asked Caleb with a mirthful glance. “How did she tell you she was an erotica writer? Were you shocked?"
“Well, first, Emma told me she wanted a dirty martini, and I thought that was so charming and forward. She wore this hot red dress. It was kind of tight, but didn’t show much skin. Like a sexy librarian from the 1950s. And her lips were scarlet, and Jesus, her deep dark eyes,” he groaned, to the chuckles of the others. He glanced down at me, and my cheeks flared from his flirty stare.
I giggled and sipped my wine. But my heart was stuttering, wondering what he’d say next.
“Then she led me outside to a cabana. I was like, my God, this woman is serious about seduction. I was a little intimidated. Me, intimidated.” Caleb chuckled, and some man muttered about how Caleb had once dated a top model.
“Then Emma started to read her story and I was blown away.”
I swallowed a huge lump in my throat. He truly remembered.
When I’d sat with him that night in the cabana, I’d thought love was a fairytale. And ours had certainly started out that way, telling stories under the starry Florida sky.
Maybe everyone’s relationship started as a fairytale, to a certain extent. With luck, it did, anyway. We all have fantasies about what love will become, how it will unfold. We begin fresh with someone, thinking that memory and destiny are immutable and fixed.
But they weren’t, I’d come to realize. Both were permeable and unforgiving, just like life. We thought we knew our lovers, but really, did we? I looked at Caleb telling his version of how we’d met—oddly, something I’d never heard him do in all the years we’d been together—and wondered if I’d ever really known him at all.
Whoever you marry, you’ll wake up the next day with someone else.
“I thought I’d hit the jackpot and figured she’d read me just some filthy stuff, but it was actually smart and funny. And she smelled incredible. Like—” Caleb leaned over to sniff my hair. “—like caramel candy. Like she does now. And I was in love by the time she was finished reading that night. But I waited to tell her for six months, when we went to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. I wished I hadn’t waited so long."
The corners of his eyes crinkled, and he grinned, a wide, sexy grin like the Caleb I thought I knew well, once upon a time. That Caleb was back, the one I’d fallen in love with. And I had the new Caleb, too. The man who’d become a gentle and loving father.
Tears pricked my eyes, and I stood on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “I love you,” I whispered.
“I love you, too, Emma doll.” He wrapped his arm around my waist and kissed my temple. “I couldn’t have chosen a better wife if I’d tried."
“I know I couldn’t have chosen a better husband. Want another wine?” I asked quickly, not wanting to weep in front of everyone. He nodded, and I took his empty glass and walked off, my chest churning with emotion.
Once in the kitchen, I turned my back to the group and dabbed tears from my cheeks with a napkin. I popped open a bottle of pinot grigio and poured a glass for Caleb and one for me. I pivoted and saw our daughter playing with the daughter of Jackie, the lawyer who used to work at Caleb’s company, the one he’d dated long before me. They were moving blocks around the floor, and Laura was on her knees, right there with them, making little vroom-vroom noises. My dad was watching, laughing.
I looked at my husband. He was still grinning and with the group. Colin had joined them, and Caleb clapped him on the back. Had Caleb kept his word and not said anything to Colin about our time together? I hadn’t asked and didn’t want to know. The two brothers were getting on well, closer than ever, it seemed.
Maybe Caleb was right: the past should stay firmly behind us.
I sipped my wine and, from afar, listened to Colin tell a story in his low, measured voice. Without paying attention to what he was saying, I saw Colin gesture expansively, and all the men laughed hard. Maybe he’d someday find his own happily-ever-after. I truly hoped so.
My beautiful husband caught my gaze and winked. I winked back and beamed at him, then blew him a kiss.
He blew one back, then beckoned to me with his finger.
I went to him, and he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. Colin was talking about something, but I wasn’t listening. I tilted my head up to my husband and grinned.
“Hey, beautiful,” he murmured, ignoring Colin’s story. “Kiss me.”
I did, in front of everyone. I snuggled into Caleb’s side, surrounded by his love. Love like I used to feel, plus a new, more complex emotion. Something deep and profound.
Was this what marriage was about? Moments of intense connection and stretches of hell and bouts of clarity? Did you suddenly remember all of the wonderful things and the long-buried memories about the person you loved? Did everything amazing come rushing back, right when you were at the bleakest point?
None of the questions mattered, really, as long as Caleb and I had returned.
To each other.
THE END
Keep reading for a preview of Constant Craving, a new serial novel by Tamara Lush, available in early 2017.
Constant Craving
Tengo hambre de tu boca, de tu voz, de tu pelo . . .
Those were the first words I heard Rafael say.
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair . . .
On a warm October day, he stood at the front of the University of Miami classroom, reciting Pablo Neruda’s most erotic poem in both Spanish and English.
No me sostiene el pan, el alba me desquicia . . .
Rafael was a little skinny and wore faded jeans and a plain black t-shirt. The dark stubble on his face, combined with his black eyebrows, dark eyelashes and short black hair, made him look like the devil’s best student. A flashing red hazard to my heart.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day . . .
As he spoke, Rafael stared. At me. I was sitting in the second row. His eyes were so filled with possessive desire that I longed to kneel at his feet and beg him to do anything he
wanted with my body and soul.
Busco el sonido líquido de tus pies en el día.
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
When he finished speaking, Rafael watched me, his mouth open in a half-smile, one that held the promise of pleasure.
I was breathless. Hypnotized.
“Thank you, Mr. Menendez. Justine Lavoie, you’re next,” the professor called out, startling me enough so that I hurriedly gathered my papers. One fell to the floor, and I scrambled to retrieve it, scooping it up with shaking fingers.
Stepping to the front of the room, I passed Rafael as he took his seat. I swallowed hard when our eyes met for a quick second. My mouth was uncomfortably moist and I folded my arms. I was aware of how my vintage black and rose-printed Betsey Johnson slip dress and black flip-flops rubbed against my skin and would’ve liked to strip everything off. Rafael’s gaze made me feel naked. Made me want to be naked. With him.
“Please tell us the title of the Neruda poem you’re reading,” said the professor.
“I’ve selected Sonnet Seventeen,” I replied in a shaky voice, staring at the ground.
“Uncross your arms. And you’re going to have to speak louder. Remember, this is a public speaking class. Not a public whispering class.”
The few students who bothered to pay attention laughed and I raised my eyes toward Rafael. He slouched low in his chair, his long legs sprawling and taking up space in the front row. His lips curved upward and built into a sensual smile.
With a deep breath, I began.
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
Rafael consumed me with long, slow glances as I recited the poem. His lips parted and I caught sight of his tongue in the corner of his mouth. By the time I reached the second sentence, I smiled. A secret, just for him. It was as if we were the only two people in the room.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.