Ashes

by P. M. Briede

  It felt like Wesley was approaching me in slow motion. I thought I’d go crazy waiting for him to reach me, to feel him and know that he was real. So I erased those last few steps between us. I’m sure he opened his mouth to say something since his eyes had widened in surprise at having me practically leap into his arms, but I didn’t give him an opportunity to voice it. Instead, I pressed my lips to his, letting my tongue eagerly greet him.

  It amused me when his knees gave out and we almost fell to the ground. He dropped the flowers, though, to catch and steady himself on the wall. My arms were already wrapped around his neck, my fingers tangled in his hair, so I could pull myself as close to him as possible. Once Wesley regained the use of his knees, his arms snaked around my waist to remove whatever errant space had remained between us. Tremors were coursing through my body and my skin tingled. It really was him; I didn’t need the phrase to know. His smell, his taste, his touch, all identified him to me as they were all uniquely his.

  When the heat in my skin and the burn in my lungs could no longer be ignored, I broke the seal of our lips to gasp for the air I desperately needed to stay conscious. It took quite a while for us both to regain enough composure to breathe and speak a coherent thought. There were many starts and stops as when one began the other became too overwhelmed with desire to let them finish and we’d end up back at square one again, passionately drunk off lust and love.

  “Now this is the greeting I’ve been hoping for over the last few weeks, my love,” he exhaled proudly. It occurred to me with this statement that since I learned the truth of what had happened to Wesley, every greeting we’d shared had progressively gone from bad to dreadful. We’d never been alone, never had any privacy, always at the mercy of whatever those around us offered. Now we finally found ourselves alone and I wasn’t going to waste one single second of it. Capturing his mouth with mine, I kissed him while dragging my hands down his body to undo his pants. “Charlotte,” he gasped against my lips in astonishment, “that isn’t necessary. I didn’t arrange to have you meet me here just to have sex with you.”

  What the hell was he talking about? With both hands firmly placed on his hips I ignored his words and pushed him back towards the bedroom. “Charlotte!” Wesley exclaimed. “Stop, I don’t want this.” Alright, that got my attention. I could feel the confusion swirl with the hunger and need in my eyes as they looked into his full of questions. “God, please, that’s not quite what I meant.” His hands were now on my wrists and he brought both to his face, leaving a desperate kiss in each of my palms. “I do want this. God, how I want you! Just not this way. Not while you’re still conflicted.”

  The only thing I was conflicted about was the way his words and his body weren’t reconciled to each other. I put my lips to the hollow just below his ear. “Darling, does it feel as if I am conflicted?” His hands released my arms and I returned them to his waist. “Does it sound as if I am? Do you really want me to stop?” Almost imperceptibly Wesley shook his head. Had mine not been right there to feel it move, I probably would have missed it. Giggling, I shoved Wesley hard enough that he had to take another small step back. With my eyes locked on his, I gave him the last of his options in a deeply hungry, sensual voice. “Then it’s up to you to decide if it’s going to be on the couch or the bed but wherever it is, it needs to be now.”

  My fingers were trailing along the waistband of Wesley’s pants as I bit my bottom lip in fervent anticipation of his answer. A cloud of confusion sat in his eyes for a millisecond after I asked him where we were going to go. When it evaporated an insatiable hunger was revealed. I was thrust forcefully, but not violently, against the nearest wall. As his hands worked my skirt up past my thighs, mine worked his pants off his hips. Startled when he didn’t remove my panties before firmly lifting me off my feet, I just went with the moment and wrapped my legs around him. His desire skimmed below mine as he groaned. “You’re sure, Charlotte?”

  “Never more so of anything in my life, Wesley.” When I finished one of his hands left my waist to shift the final barrier between us as he guided himself home. That’s what it was, a homecoming for the both of us. He took his time with his entry and we threw back our heads, moaning at the ecstasy that accompanied it. Both our bodies tensed almost immediately for the bliss filled release that could only happen due to the joy we found in our reunion. However, we found some way to rein it in and hold it back to relish each other a little longer.

  Back in some semblance of control of himself, Wesley started that very pleasing rhythm. I searched out his lips to kiss him as my body clung to his for support and satisfaction. “Tell me what you need, my love.” The words came out in a breathy whisper. As I begged him to slide deeper into me the orgasm crested when his hands firmly held my hips as he plunged deeper than he’d ever done before then stayed there undulating against all my most sensitive of spots. I screamed his name as I hugged him to me. His relief that he could still elicit that response from me even after all these months and one very capable rival lover was evident.

  Wesley didn’t put me down, leaving me pinned between him and the wall. The self-loathing and disillusioned eyes he brought up to my mine trampled all over the complete delight and contentment I’d finally found for the first time in months. Instantly afraid he might be mistaking me for Abigail, I purposely didn’t use his pet name, keeping my voice calm and casual. “Wesley, what’s the matter?”

  His forehead found mine. “I wasn’t strong enough. You were too irresistible. I was already caught unaware when you called for me. I guess Paige couldn’t keep it a secret during the drive.” What the hell was Wesley getting at? He certainly wasn’t confused about my identity or the reality of what had just occurred but why wasn’t he as overjoyed as I was about it? “Then you rushed me and I was overwhelmed with how you felt, your taste, your smell. Your passion for me fed mine for you. I should have been the stronger of us and kept mine in check to keep the decision firmly in your hands. I can only assume you’ve either slipped once with Cheval and that’s why you allowed this to happen or I’ve just stolen your choice. Knowing you, it’s probably the latter since I’ve never thought you’d be able to sleep with us both. I just hope over time you’ll forgive me and learn not to regret me.”

  Stolen my choice? Regret him? Had something recently struck Wesley on the head? How could he question? How could he … I’m an idiot. I’d promised to tell Wesley immediately and hadn’t, instead embracing his ill-conceived notions that everything always had to be said in the perfect place, at the perfect time, in the perfect way. Then upon walking into the perfect setting I got so wrapped up in my desires that I let myself get swept away, forgetting I’d never actually told him. Wesley, who has to hear the words, multiple times, before he’ll fully believe them. Wesley, who has always felt my love for him was a gift he didn’t deserve. Now my selfishness may cost him the confidence in my love he’d have had if I’d told him before succumbing to my more carnal needs. I hated the idea that he may always wonder if I’d chosen him because he’d been the first to sleep with me.

  “I think you should put me down,” I said once I reined in my divergent emotions. Wesley did so with a frown. Once back on my feet I arranged my clothes back in place as he did the same. I took his hand and led him to the living room, positioning us on the couch so we were angled towards each other. Yet, I felt so guilty that I couldn’t meet Wesley’s gaze, so I kept my eyes glued on his hands which I was stroking between my own. “Wesley, I owe you a huge apology.”

  “No you don’t,” he broke in. “It won’t happen again, Charlotte. Just thank you for not letting that creature be the last woman I ever made love to. Cheval’s a lucky man and he’ll take good care of you. If you don’t want to tell him about this, I understand and I’ll never betray your trust. But I’m confident he’d understand and forgive you. If it were me, I would.” Wesley was rambling again and the meaning behind his thoughts took longer to penetrate my guilty conscious so that I could comprehend his im
plication. “Paige is staying in the main part of the resort. You can finish out your stay with her there if you’d like or I can switch with her and you two can have the cottage.”

  It frustrated me that I’d done this to Wesley and that he could still just not get it. “SHUT UP!” I had to bite my tongue to keep from yelling at him for being so obtuse. This was absolutely not how I had wanted this moment to go. With his hands in mine, I felt them tense and I heard his jaw snap shut but thankfully it remained so.

  “I need you to listen to me and not interrupt. Can you do that?” The question came out with more bite than I meant so I took a steadying breath. With fear filled eyes he nodded his head. “I chose you, Wesley, almost a month ago. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you immediately. I should have. But I know you, of all people, can understand I wanted to tell you in person. I wanted to see your reaction, see your smile light up your eyes. I wanted to see the tension and fear leave your body and free your soul, letting you be my darling Wesley again. But all of that wasn’t the only reason. I also didn’t want you to be rash and race away from the campaign to me, blowing our cover and putting you at risk. While it was a knife to my heart every day to hear the pain and sorrow in your voice when we’d talk because you thought I still hadn’t chosen or had chosen Olivier, I knew I couldn’t live without you. So I made the difficult decision to break my promise to you in order to keep you safe, to get you for whatever life we have left after all this is over.”

  “But just as you stated the shock of having me know you were here overwhelmed you, it also overwhelmed me,” I continued. “Then you appeared, like a specter from my dreams, and I forgot the real you had no idea I’d let Olivier go. I’ve told you so many times every night over these last weeks. While part of me loved Olivier and wanted to be in love with him, I couldn’t give him something I didn’t have.”

  “Your heart, your love,” Wesley interrupted in a whisper. “You couldn’t give Cheval something you no longer possessed.”

  Though I’d told him not to interrupt, I didn’t chastise him for it. “I haven’t possessed them for almost a year, Wesley. You’ve had them, even when I thought you didn’t want them anymore. Somehow I’d convinced myself there were pieces to pick up which allowed me to fool Olivier into thinking I could be in love with him. While I do love him and I always will, it’s not as a lover. He’s family. I owe him so much, and honestly so do you, so you need to understand he’s not going to just vanish now that this tug of war over my heart is resolved. You are going to have to do more than tolerate Olivier. Can you do that?”

  During the whole of my confession, our eyes remained locked together. Wesley had barely blinked, his body taut, only moving to accommodate his lungs as they inhaled and exhaled. The vein in his neck steadily pulsed out the rhythmic beat of his heart. His hands never made to intertwine our fingers, instead they sat heavy in my palms as my fingers took turns grazing over them. I’d thought the question of Olivier would be an easy one, given everything he had sacrificed for Wesley and for me. But I increasingly grew concerned as each silent minute ticked past. This was the moment I’d feared most, the one when I learned I’d demanded too much and lost Wesley.

  It wasn’t immediate that I noticed his eyes were no longer on my own but instead drawn down to our hands. The reason for the change in his attention became clear when I saw what I was doing. Holding his left hand in my right, the fingers of my left hand were fondling his ring finger, the ring finger, and only that finger. I left my gaze on our hands and enjoyed the way his felt in mine again. “Please, say it’s not too late for us.” Though I’d barely been able to say the words, I wasn’t too proud to beg Wesley not to call an end to what had truly never been given a rightful start if I had to.

  That brought his head up while his hands ensnared mine to press them to his heart. “Love, I never meant to imply it was.” With both of my hands now firmly trapped in one of his the fingers of the other found my chin to lift my eyes. “It’s just that much like you said you’ve told me in your dreams every night I get to love you, the way I want to, I’ve heard those words every night in my own. Because of it I’m having trouble believing this time it’s a reality. I’m terrified I’m going to wake in the morning next to Abigail and this will all become a nightmare because it wasn’t real. I know what it is to lose you as I’ve done it every morning when I wake.”

  Laughing at our own tragic lunacy, I couldn’t stop myself even when I saw how disturbing Wesley found it. God, we were practically star-crossed mostly from our own devices and misunderstandings. But I refused to let anything get in our way and worked to stop my hysterics. “Consider whether in dreams this moment went perfectly,” I began, “with no misunderstandings or confusion? If they were anything like mine, it did. So the fact we are having this conversation at all should serve as enough proof to us both that we are outside the realm of fantasy and fully entrenched in reality.”

  The weight of that single truth overtook him and finally the smile I’d been longing to see blossomed on his face. The tension he’d been carrying since August seeped like smoke off his shoulders, giving him back a few inches of his height. “You’re real,” Wesley reverently conceded. “This is real? You’ve chosen me, chosen us?” His fingers left my chin to trail along my jaw line to the back of my neck. I allowed him to pull my lips to meet his parted ones. This was the reunion I’d dreamt about, and while I’d never regret the urgent one we’d experienced moments before it wasn’t complete since Wesley had been unaware of the truth in it.

  I tugged on his hand to communicate my desire to move this into a more appropriate setting for our true first time back as the lovers we were always meant to be. He stood with me, but never freed my lips and we stumbled that way to the bedroom. He kicked the door closed as his hands fumbled with the zipper to my dress. He moaned gratefully against my lips as he slid it off my body, leaving me clad in just a bra and panties.

  I made quick work of his clothes, starting with his pants. As Wesley stepped out of the pool they made at his feet he grabbed my backside with both hands to keep me from retreating far and pressed his pelvis to mine as he ground himself against me. My name became a caress as he begged me to hurry with his shirt. Happy to oblige, I moved quickly from button to button. The sight of his chest alone would have been enough to make me pause. However, that was not all I found.

  “What’s that?” I got out before Wesley silenced me with a kiss. There was a chain around his neck with something dangling from it.

  Wesley ripped his own shirt off with a growl and pushed me down onto the bed. “It can wait, Charlotte. I cannot.” With that simple pronouncement, he tore my panties down my legs and I barely had enough time to spread them wide to accommodate him before he was ensconced within my depths. The immediate pleasure he brought caused me to gasp and my mind let go my earlier distraction. Wesley wasn’t forceful but he wasn’t gentle. He’d found a delicate balance between raw and tender.

  The welcome tides crested through my body as I truly lost myself in him. The only interruption to my pleasure was the pressure I felt at my back as he struggled to get underneath me to unclasp my bra. With the closure undone, he pulled it away from my body, burying his head between the newly exposed mounds, all without missing a beat below the waist. His every thought seemed to be clouded with desire, as if he was trying to make up for the six months apart all at once.

  When Wesley tired of my chest, though I knew the squirming I’d done beneath him from the intense sensations his tongue and arousal had fanned his own fire, his lips hungrily returned to mine. His touch, his taste, his strokes were all combining to drive me mad. Each time my body tensed before that ultimate release he’d confound me by slowing and pulling away, only to quickly resume where he’d left off once confident the impending orgasm had faded.

  After at least the sixth time of resigning myself to the blissful riptide he’d build within me to watch it flitter away as it left me behind, I removed my tension filled hands from his back.
Since Wesley was toying with me, and it was obvious he knew what he was about by the look in his eyes and the sly smirk on his lips, I held no guilt over the deep welts now decorating his back. Once the disappointed moans faded away, I gripped his face in my hands. “Wesley Breaux, if you know what is good for you, you will not deny me the next time it comes.”

  “Ah, and exactly what are you going to do if I do?” He knew the next opportunity was just a few thrusts away and even though I’d all but pleaded with him to let me have it I wasn’t convinced he would.

  In an effort to take back some control of my own ecstasy, I clamped one hand around his neck, kissing him in a way that hopefully stole his thoughts and any errant desire to continue torturing me. My other hand cupped his butt as I dug my nails into his fleshy cheek. Disentangling my legs from his, I planted my feet on the bed and started rewarding myself with the powerful thrusts I needed to finally climax.

  “Relax, my love,” Wesley cooed in my ear. “You’ll wear yourself out. I won’t impede your enjoyment of me any longer.” With one last thrust Wesley nestled himself deeply inside me and started a dancelike rocking of his hips. That was the last stroke I needed to get over the edge. Racked by the waves emanating from between my legs and crashing through my body, I rode the swells as they cooled my mind and soul, setting me free from the tension-filled prison I’d been in. However, this time I was aware enough to feel every throb from Wesley as his own release spilled repeatedly and it intensified my own passion.