by Julia Kent
“Shannon!” he says. I can’t tell if he’s scandalized or amazed. Probably both.
“Hurry up, unless you want to have sex in the hall.”
“Is that an option?”
The door clicks open and I shove him, hard, through it. “No.”
“How about,” he says, voice dropping, gesturing lower, suggesting a certain one-way sex act.
“What? You want me to do that? But it would be a waste.” I bite back a smile but fail.
“Waste? It’s never, ever a waste!” Vehemence isn’t typically one of Declan’s character traits, but it sure is now.
“Of your sperm.”
“Excuse me?” His hands are all over me, practically tearing off my shirt. I stop him and back away.
“I can’t get pregnant by swallowing, Declan. If I could, we’d have twenty-three kids by now.”
He clears his throat, the rumble low and sexy. “I think you’re lowballing that figure.”
I move closer and reach between his legs. “Speaking of lowballing...”
“Don’t make promises with your hand that your mouth won’t keep.”
I drop to the ground.
“My knees have formed an alliance with my hand and have decided to bring my mouth in, too.”
I stop talking, Dec’s low groan all the input I need. As I give him pleasure, a slow-building warmth spreads through me. We haven’t had fun with sex lately. It’s become a side job. Conceiving a baby is like moonlighting. It seems like a great idea when you embark on it, but it quickly becomes a source of exhaustion and frustration.
Time to make this refreshing and exciting again.
Giving like this is its own reward as I spend a luxurious few minutes with my hands on him. I know he wants more, but sometimes a quick–but intense–interlude, however short, where one hundred percent of my focus is on his body, his needs, is plenty. Priming the pump, so to speak, makes a difference.
And just as the, uh, well starts to work and pours forth, I realize what I’ve done.
Conception is all about calibration.
His sperm concentration is now depleted.
But oh, the feel of his hands on my head, fingers in my hair, the quick breath of a man lost in my attentions...
Babies are important, but so are marriages, and right now, I’m giving him pleasure from the same place where I said my vows, with the same hand that wears his wedding ring.
Later we’ll regroup and figure out the baby-making part.
But right now, he’s saying, “Oh, baby...”
I let out a long, hot sigh against his thigh, my breath coming back to tickle my own nose along with the peppering of hair on his skin. “When we said we’d have lots of sex on this trip, I definitely didn’t picture this.”
One hand pulls me up gently. “And yet, here we are,” he says, laughing.
I duck into the suite’s small kitchen and drink a glass of water, watching him waltz across the room with a loose gait that makes me oh, so appreciative. We’ve righted whatever imbalance we had earlier.
Dave did a fantastic job with the room, our view of the Old Port street not quite a water view, but scenic and quaint. Declan finds an ice bucket with a bottle of prosecco in it, the cork popped easily in his expert hands, a glass offered to me before I can cross the suite.
“To you.”
“To us.”
“To orgasms in stores.”
I sputter, the bubbles catching the back of my throat. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“I can’t believe you let me!”
“Dec!” I swat him.
“What? Is it my fault I have a beautiful, lush, multi-orgasmic wife with a tongue that can tie cherry stems and a face that launched a thousand ships?”
“That’s Helen of Troy.”
“I don’t remember reading about her tying cherry stems with her tongue in seventh-grade Greek classics at Milton.”
“Maybe you weren’t paying attention.”
“Oh, no, my dear. I would have definitely paid attention if that were in the curriculum.” A suggestive, full laugh booms out of him, the sound of unleashed revelry. “God, it’s good to have you all to myself.”
“And to have an assistant again.”
“And that, yes.” He toasts me. “To convergence.”
“Convergence?”
“All the pieces are finally coming together as they should.”
I take a sip, then say, “Except for us.”
He freezes. “What?”
“We didn’t come together.”
More laughter, then he pulls me to him, a quick kiss on the lips giving me a double taste of the wine. “We will remedy that.”
“I do not doubt you.”
“I am a man of my word.”
“Always.” The next kiss is deeper, so intense that I have to set down my wine glass, the room starting to spin. Dec sets down his glass, too, one hand on my ass, one cupping my breast, fingers finding their way inside my blouse, his cool, chilled fingers turning my nipple to a hard pearl in seconds.
I pull back, breathless. “Uh, you’re interested now?”
“We’re here in Portland for a two-day vacation. No work. No worries. Just us, together, for forty-eight hours. What did you think I’d want to do while we’re here? Play chess?” He grins.
“Well, no, but, you know... I, uh, just gave you something.”
“And that was wonderful. Now how about I give you something?”
“You did!” I watch his hand, wary. “We should wait.”
“Wait?”
“So you can recharge.”
“I’m recharged already. My battery is raring to go.”
“I can feel that.”
“You can feel it in other places on your body, soon.” He’s kissing my neck in that perfect way that makes me melt.
“But it’s also not days ten to twenty in my cycle,” I start to explain. “I mean, there’s a chance, and I do want you, but–” Why am I saying this? The words are lining up in my head and marching out as if someone’s holding the real me hostage and gagged.
“Screw days ten to twenty.”
“That’s what all the books say!”
“I don’t sleep with books, Shannon. I make love with you. We’re live, breathing human beings and I want to love you my way. Not because some medical professional says I should.”
“How are we going to get pregnant, then?”
“That’s what this is about? Oh, trust me. I’ll show you how. Right now.”
I pull back. “We need to talk about your sperm quality.”
His hands fly up around his face, fingertips pressing into his forehead. “My what?”
“Your sperm quality. It’s going to be lower now. Ideally, you build up for thirty-six to forty-eight hours before trying to conceive. All the swimmers are in my stomach now, being destroyed by an acidic environment.” I laugh a little, trying to diffuse the increasingly tense mood. “The wine we drank isn’t helping. Acidic to the max.”
“You’re telling me that wine is ruining my chances of making love with you?”
“Indirectly, yes.”
“I don’t do indirect, Shannon.” Moving so fast, I can barely process it, he’s on top of me on the bed, my hands pinned over my head, one strong hand on my breast, the commanding way he moves to position himself in a place of authority so breathtakingly hot, my body catches fire.
“I want you. I want sex. If you don’t want me right now, say it.” Those green eyes are hypnotic. Demanding. If the concept of boundaries took human form, it would be Declan.
“I do want you!” My legs part and one of his is between mine, his erection against my thigh, all of me wanting this more than I’ve desired anything in my life. This wanting has an edge, a long, dangerous cliff I need to give myself permission to fall off, free-floating until the abyss takes me away, into Declan, into us.
“Then why do you keep inserting biology into places where all I want to do is insert–
”
I kiss him hard, all of my being rising up to meet all of his. He’s right, so, so right, and as his hair brushes against my brow, his hand releasing my wrists and running up my skirt, I writhe under him and let myself fall back into that place where we’re most comfortable, most authentic, most sure.
My fingers find his shirt buttons, the pattern of what to do built into my memory. Behind closed eyes, I re-invent Declan’s body, his clothing, the curl of his knee as he bends it, the way his calf tightens with effort, the perfect humanity of his laid-out self.
There is a slowing down in a long-term relationship when it comes to sex. I’m not talking about frequency. I’ve heard from women’s magazines and on television talk shows and through whispers and giggles among groups of married and long-paired women that sex lives dry up over time. That won’t happen to us. Our kind of slowing down is different. Unique, maybe.
Time itself slows down when we’re naked together.
The words aren’t on the tip of my tongue to describe this. When sex begins, I touch him in ways that are intuitive. Muscle memory kicks in. I’ve spent four years learning his body, and a touch of highway hypnosis infiltrates every time we make love, my body on autopilot, but not in a bad way. This time, though, as his hand moves between my legs, I’m too sensitive for that. All I want is to be surrounded by his arms, his legs, his torso flat and sliding against mine, to pull him inside me as deep as can be so I can lose myself.
It’s still daylight, the waning sun outside shining in through the gauzy sheers at the window, and as we make love with the sheets and cover pulled back, our bodies smooth and slow against the white cotton, all I can think is that if we never conceive, I’ll still have this. The way he makes me feel is a creation of its own kind, his body and heart pushing into me, all of the barren spaces within filled by Dec.
In every way possible.
“I love you,” he whispers, lips in my hair, my hands on his broad shoulders, taking pleasure in touching his back, the curl of shoulder blade, the thick ridges that line his spine. As my hands make their way to his ass, I feel the dimples above each cheek, my mind mapping him with ever-increasing precision, for no other reason than that I can.
I didn’t think I could come again after what happened earlier but I do, the familiar quickening within as my core tightens and his thighs clench, a heady reminder that we make this space to hold us. We do. No one else, his mouth slanting across mine as we come together, my hips arching up to get the impossible, every time we make love moving me closer to him, but never enough.
It’s the coming down together that somehow, with each breath, bonds us even more. Letting go takes courage and trust, but finding yourself in a sea of shattered joy with a witness to it all is special and loving, too.
Our breath is all I hear, bouncing off the sheets, each other, hot and then cold, pushing out the energy we just spent. We relax into each other, Dec sitting up to grab the edge of the covers and blanketing our mingled bodies with warmth. Snuggling in, I find parts of me that still can’t get enough of him. They settle in around tendon and hair, kneecap and rib, each sighing deeply as they find a place to pause and ponder.
I run my fingers along the groove of his breastbone and say, “We’re not going to have this, you know. Once we have a baby.”
“Sex? Of course we’ll have sex. How do you think people have siblings? Having one child doesn’t mean you never get a chance to make another.”
“No, I don’t mean sex. I mean this.” I brush my toes against his calf, feeling my way around the honed muscle. My thighs slide along his hip until I settle in, seeking the Shannon-shaped space on him. “I mean the time to just be together.”
“We barely have that now.”
“I know. And add a baby to the mix...”
“Are you saying you want to wait? Because we can. If you want more time alone with me, I will do whatever you want, Shannon. Nothing’s set in stone. We can change our mind, take a few more months...” Trailing off, his voice goes soft. Wistful. His fingertips trace the path of the curve of my side, sweet and explorative. We’re spent. There’s nothing sexual about it. Just a friendly appreciation.
“I don’t want to wait,” I say truthfully. “Just ruminating. Thinking about what we’re about to do.”
“Maybe it’s already done.” As his palm flattens against my collarbone, it makes a slow descent under the covers, over one breast, across a hip and down to my belly. Pausing there, I expect him to continue, but he doesn’t. Cradling the round curve, he says, “Maybe he’s already here.”
“He, who?”
“Our child.”
“No way. Impossible.” I fight tears, both touched and terrified all at once. We’re only on month two, but the emotional aspect of conception is killing me. I know people go their entire lives unable to conceive, or struggle far more than we have, but the bottom line of wanting to be pregnant and not yet being pregnant is opening a whole chapter of existence in my book of life that I didn’t know was there.
“Not impossible.”
“According to charting–”
He kisses me. I know he’s doing it to shut me up, but he tastes so good. I whimper against him, moving so his hand is between my legs. Just as I’m about to ask for more sex, which feels inconceivable (pun intended), a sharp, cold wave of air hits me.
Rolling over, he bends so sharply that his ass sticks up in the air, counterbalanced by thickly muscled thighs that engage his core and keep him from falling off the bed. Returning to baseline, he clutches his pants, and pulls his phone out of one pocket.
He starts to text.
“What are you doing?”
“Cancelling dinner reservations.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve heard the room service here is great.”
“Until a few hours ago, you didn’t even have a reservation here.”
“Oh, I’m not talking about the restaurant here.”
“Then what.”
His head goes under the covers. “I’m talking about dining on you.”
I bat at his head. “Dec! Not now!”
“You said time is of the essence.” His words are all mumbly from being under the sheet.
“I did? When?”
“Just now. We have to beat the clock.”
“Beat the what?”
“The clock. We need to have all the fun sex we can now, to prepare for all the times we won’t be able to have it.” His head pops up, framed by the white sheet. He looks like a very male version of a novice nun, although comparing him to someone who took a vow of celibacy is probably a terrible idea.
Definitely a terrible idea.
“Do you think parents invented quickies?” he asks.
“What?”
He props himself up on his elbow and smiles at me. “Quickies. They make more sense in the context of parenthood.”
“You’re losing me here, Dec.” My stomach growls. “Losing my stomach, too. You seriously cancelled dinner?”
He shrugs. “Dave’s ordering us a pizza.”
“You did not tell Dave to cancel dinner reservations and order pizza so we could have sex in our hotel room!”
“It’s anchovy, pineapple, and sausage with feta.”
“You remembered?” This is my new favorite combo.
“I did. You have any idea how much I have to love you to eat a pizza like that?”
“I love you.” I bend down to kiss him.
“I guessed.”
I hit him with a pillow.
“But I also know you, and that means Dave ordered two pizzas. One I like, and one you like.”
His smirk confirms I’m right.
“We’ve been here for two hours, Declan. What are we going to do with ourselves for the next forty-six?”
Crawling up to the top of the bed, he rests on his back, hands behind his head. I snuggle into him on his chest, enjoying the feel of so much of my skin against his. Unlike sex back at home, we don’t have a
larms for work meetings facing us in the morning, or the endless run of household tasks plaguing me as I stare at my own home. Hotel rooms grant us a different kind of vacation from daily life, one a change of location alone doesn’t quite provide. When you inhabit a space you’re not responsible for cleaning and organizing, it gives you a separate freedom.
Your mind becomes your own again, unencumbered by spotting the unfolded laundry, the wall that needs to be touched up with paint, the unorganized photo album, the overflowing closet. Dec hires people to do all of that, but it still finds real estate in my mind, squatting.
In this room, we’re just us, naked bodies tangled with sheets and sweat, kisses and moans.
And soon, pizza.
“We have coffee to taste. Donuts to try. Breakfast in bed. Second breakfast in bed. Do you want an itinerary, honey? I can have Dave make one.”
“I don’t need my orgasms to be a line item in an agenda,” I reply.
“That would not be a bad idea.”
“Yes, it would! I don’t want my sexual self to be some project you manage.”
“If it were, you’d be more scrum than waterfall.”
I groan. “Really? You’re using business jargon in bed? That’s not sexy.”
“I thought CEOs were always sexy.”
“They are. You are.” I kiss him, then settle back on his shoulder. “But let’s not talk business. We work together, we live together, we’re having a baby together, conception willing. Let’s talk about something else while we wait for the pizza.”
“Like what?”
Five minutes later, we’re still trying to come up with something other than work to talk about.
“Coffee should count,” Dec says. “We both enjoy it, even if we now make it and sell it for a living.”
“What about movies?” I offer.
“What was the last movie we saw together?” he asks, genuinely trying to remember.
“How about working out? How are things at the gym?”
“Andrew is drinking some disgusting oil Vince gave him in an effort to boost his sperm count.”
I’m about to ask what the hell that means, when we both hear:
Tap tap tap.
“Pizza!”
Climbing out of bed, Dec saunters over to the door, dragging his loose pants, fishing for his wallet.