by Cara McKenna
“Roof?” Rob asked.
Merry shook her head. “The sun’s a bit much,” she lied. The sun was fine, but the sky seemed too big a witness to this reunion. She wanted to close herself away with this man, lock them together as they’d been for those few, life-changing days the previous fall.
He led her to his little sitting area instead, and Merry stood before the windows, enjoying a sliver’s view of the sparkling River Ness beyond the neighboring rooftops.
“It must be beautiful at night, with the lights bouncing off the water.”
“It is. More beautiful than a glass of gin set before me on a bar, even.”
She turned, finding him wearing a tight, humble smile, one that told her the statement was both true and hard-won. That he wasn’t proud of it . . . and yet he was.
“Have a seat.” He motioned to the rocker and set their cups on the table beside it. He sat on the deep windowsill across from her, close. His feet framed hers, and though they were near enough to touch, his hands rested on the sill beside his hips, hers wrapped around her knee. She unlaced her fingers and extended her arm, spanning the space between them. He took her hand. One bridge now standing once more, no matter how many might still lay in ashes in Rob’s rearview.
She spoke without thought. “I’m glad you wrote to me.”
“So am I. I hope I said what you needed to hear.”
“I needed to hear that you were okay.” She squeezed his hand, met his eyes. “And I needed to see it, even more.”
For a long moment he simply held her stare, his lips tense with unreadable thoughts, thumb stroking her palm. Then he moved, letting her go to crouch before her. Merry leaned forward and let him take both her hands in his warm ones.
“Tell me,” he said quietly, “if I’m being too familiar. Or too physical.”
“You’re not.” She wanted so much more, and with an urgency she’d not dared to expect.
Rob nodded. “Good. I didn’t know it’d feel like this, seeing you again. I didn’t know how badly I’d need to just . . . touch you.”
“It’s nice,” she assured him. “I’ve needed it, too.” And I’m spending the night with you. But she wouldn’t tell him, not yet. She’d waited her whole life for a man to look at her as Rob did now. With longing and pain and fascination, a hundred fierce things at once.
“I hope whatever it is you saw in me, last autumn . . .” He trailed off a moment. “I hope that’s still part of who I am, to you. I hope maybe you can see whoever that man was, in the real me. The one who’s here in a city. A wreck.”
She nodded. “I absolutely do.” He was here, holding her hand. He was right there behind those blue eyes. She’d spurred him to flee, that awful night when she’d triggered his worst fears, but the man who’d said good-bye to her . . .
“Do you still think of me as that delirious woman who barged her way into your house on the verge of puking?”
He smiled at that. “Sometimes.”
Merry rolled her eyes.
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
“That was me at my worst. And I caught you at your worst, one hard night out of a bunch of amazing ones. You shared a lot of your goodness, Rob. Too much to ruin with one mistake.”
He leaned forward, bringing his forehead to the tops of her fingers—some strange, beguiling gesture of relief or penitence. She slipped her hands free to touch his head, his hair, to remember the warmth of him.
“I missed you,” she said.
He raised his chin. “Did you?”
“A lot.” Shy, she let her gaze drop to Nameless, curled in his bed atop a mattress of training pads. “And I missed your semi-continent dog as well.”
“I don’t think I ever told you, but that dog saved my life.”
“Did he?” She tried to picture this weird little creature dragging Rob’s unconscious body from an icy river. “How do you mean?”
Rob got to his feet and sat on the sill. “When I first came north, after my father passed and my wife left me . . . I’d said it was for a holiday, but whether I’d let myself think it or not, I was probably coming up here to die. To just let the alcohol do me in.” His gaze jumped to the hand Merry hadn’t even realized she’d put to her heart.
“Sorry,” he said.
“No, tell me. I want to hear.” She reached out and touched his knee, and he covered her hand with his.
“When I found the dog, he looked about half-dead himself. Caring for him was the only reason I stayed even remotely sober. And one day I went for a walk, through this wood. I saw a deer, way in the distance, and . . . and the oddest thing happened.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“My body went all . . . strange. My head felt clear, and all the worries dropped off me like a winter coat. I started moving, in these ways my father taught me twenty years earlier, that I’d assumed I’d forgotten. I stalked this deer in my work shoes—these stiff, uncomfortable things, but I didn’t even notice at the time. I got close enough that if I’d had a rifle, I could’ve shot it. And I held my hands and arms up, like I did have one, like I was taking aim. And they were steady.” He looked down at the hand resting on Merry’s. “So steady. When all they normally did in those days was shake.”
“Wow.”
“And I thought, I could be that man. I could live out there, with no one to disappoint. I could hunt my own food, like my father had done on occasion. I could fish, and plant a garden. It was mad, but I wanted all that, in a breath. More than I wanted to not feel anything.” Rob took her other hand, squeezing them both. “That dog saved my life, I’m sure of it. Far more than I might’ve saved his. I stopped drinking the day I moved north for good. I found a more productive way to shut the world out. I needed my time there, no doubt . . . but you gave me so much more. You brought the world back to me.”
Her heart twisted, and she felt tears rising.
These few days with you have meant more to me than years with any other woman ever could. Her memory had dipped those words in bronze, and as much doubt as she’d visited upon their affair . . . she’d still polished those words nightly, turning them around and around in her head, memorizing the shape and the weight of them, praying they were true. That someone had ever really said them to her. Meant them.
Rob looked down, shaking his head. “I don’t even know how to begin to thank you.”
He’d given her everything she’d needed to hear. What she needed now was to feel—feel proof that she hadn’t dreamed what she’d felt for this man.
She stood and led him by the hand.
His room was so different here, so sunny. Different bed. Same blankets. Same lantern, unlit. Same man, only so completely not. Would it feel different, without his secret between them? Would kissing him taste different? Would he warm her ears with the same moans and murmurs, or did those belong to someone who’d stayed behind, off in the hills?
They sat on his covers and she scooted close, her legs bent over his. Exactly like their first kiss. She touched his jaw, his cheeks, his nose and temples, his hair, traced his brows as those blue eyes shut. No difference here. He was exactly as she’d remembered. Except . . .
She could feel the hunger coming off him. See it in the way he swallowed and the lines drawn across his forehead. Feel it in the hot palms that held her calves, as much as she’d felt his uncertainty when they first met.
He’d needed coaxing so often then. She’d come to him by chance, uninvited, hurt, scared. Nothing like this reunion. And she was done coaxing.
Their eyes met and she stroked his cheek with her thumb. “If you still want me,” she whispered, “show me.”
The hands she’d bound all those months ago were strong and steady as he cupped her face. Needy, but not plaintive. His kiss was bold, forward as a hand pressed to her sex.
She could taste it all—every memory they’d made by his fire, in his bed, suspended in a cold and crystal clear lake. Every kiss he’d stolen and offered and surrendered to her, telling her good morning, goodnight, come to bed, please . . . She could smell the wood stove and twilight and sex and sweat. Rob’s skin, breath, clothes, hair. His need.
She pulled away, drunk on him. And adrift in those blue eyes, the ones that had seen her as no one else ever had, inside and out. A question burned there now. She held his gaze, and she smirked.
If you still want me, show me.
His eyes flashed and his nostrils flared. Broad hands were on her shoulders, urging her back—a pillow under her head, then the sinful weight of a man and the force of his thighs parting hers. He cradled her head in one hand and kissed her deeply, for how long she didn’t know. Until her brain was foggy and her body wound tight, until she felt the faint rhythm of his hips and the hard length of his excitement at her thigh. His lips left hers to breathe steam along her neck, her jaw, just below her ear.
“I’ve missed you. So fucking much, I can’t even tell you.”
Her nails raked his back through soft cotton. “Show me instead.”
And they were pawing at each other’s clothes, shirts and jeans and underwear gone in a blur of fumbling, greedy fingers.
She stroked his chest, neck, arms, hips. Christ, she’d missed this body. She let him cup her breasts, none of that old insecurity arriving to cool her lust. She shut her eyes and got lost in the sensation of his warm hands on her flesh, his hungry mouth on her throat. Of his cock, pressed along her lips, his hips just starting to flex. A dark, uncensored groan heated her skin, the sound of a man losing his self-control.
“I want you,” he murmured. He pushed up on straight arms to stare into her eyes, the whole of him rocked by labored breaths.
“Show me.”
His gaze slid down her body first. Then his hands, then his shadow as he moved back on the bed. She shut her eyes as his fingers parted her, sighed as his tongue took its first taste.
She’d forgotten how incredible he was at this. His noises opened her eyes, sounds that told her he enjoyed this as much as she did, that every lap of his tongue and brush of his lips stroked him in turn. She dragged her nails along his scalp and closed his hair in her fist, roused by his moan, his mouth, by the fingers tracing her seam. Her lust drew tight, spiked by so many other things—relief, affection, awe. Recognition, somehow, that this person was meant for her, in ways she could feel but never explain.
She let him bring her close—right to the edge, but not over it. Not like this, not this first day back with him. It was too one-sided, when they’d met on equal footing this time around. She let his hair go and tugged at his arm. He stole a final lap, a final taste, then moved to his knees between her legs. Dropping to his elbows, he kissed her forehead, cheeks, nose, chin, and caught his breath. Merry admired his body, rubbing his back and hips, then clasping his cock between them.
“Oh.”
“I missed you,” she whispered, and gave him a long, slow stroke.
“I missed you.” His face dropped to her throat and she heard him swallow. “But I had no idea if you’d come or not. Or if you did, that you’d still want me . . .”
“No condoms?”
He pushed up and shook his head with a sad little smile. “Not that there’s not loads we can still do. But no, sorry.”
She answered with a grin. “Let me teach you something about the importance of preparation, survival man.” She nudged him aside and padded to where she’d left her purse, coming back with a shiny plastic square.
“You’re an optimist,” he said, laughing.
“Pathologically.”
“Lucky me.” He took the condom from her and got himself ready.
In some previous life, all this daylight would have terrified Merry, but now all she felt was thankful for it—she didn’t want a single inch of this man lost to shadows. She studied him, fascinated. Braced above her, cock in hand, color along his throat and in his cheeks, lips parted as he angled himself and slid inside.
Her nails bit his arms and they moaned as one.
In time, he’d need something—an order, a look, the rasp of rope or the sting of her judgment. But for now he seemed content to simply own her body with his. His strokes were deep and steady, his motions hypnotic. His blue eyes took in her skin, hair, face, hands, everything. Everything in the world, it seemed, here in this room. In this act.
She’d been close already—she was teetering now. She could come from just this, too, just watching him fuck her as any man might. But she hadn’t come here to reunite with any man. She hadn’t fallen in love with just any man.
“Where is it?” she demanded, and he didn’t need clarification.
The rope was within arm’s reach, draped casually over one bedpost, obscured only by the pillow. She smiled as he handed it to her. “Glad to see you’ve stopped shutting yourself away in some dusty box under the bed.”
He looked to her hands, toying with the hemp. “I want you so much more than I need that, right now.”
“I believe that.” She could feel the truth of it, still beating inside her. “But I don’t want you in spite of the things you like, Rob. I want you because of who you are, and the rope’s no small part of that man.”
He nodded, expression set.
“Show me something you like. Wrap it around yourself, with something for me to hold on to.”
He obeyed without hesitation, still without leaving her body. He draped the rope around the back of his neck, crossing his chest, circling his ribs and passing her the ends, like reins. She gave them a tug, watching the way it pressed his flesh and shut his eyes, stopped his breath.
Those darker dynamics were taking over, quickening her blood. She wanted to tell him with her body in base and shameless tones, Nobody can drive you crazy like I can.
Another tug, and Rob dropped back to his palms. Already his arms were shaking, his driving hips suddenly more desperate than demanding. She gave his bindings a mean pull and his eyes squeezed shut with a gasp.
“God, fuck.”
She let the rope go slack, then drew it taut once more. She toyed and tortured until he was crazed, until she was reminded beyond all doubt how lucky they were that he’d been born with this. That with a bit of indulgence and a simple prop, she could turn mere sex into magic for this man. With this man.
She twisted the tails around her wrist until her fist was butted against his chest, the rope digging at them both. With that hand she told him, Right there, keep that up, and with the other, she touched herself.
His cock was hot and hard and thick, so perfectly male and aggressive. But his eyes were full of surrender, his every breath a plea. So much, all tied up in one man.
Under her fingertips, her clit was slick, the rope a dry burn in her fist. The orgasm was pain and pleasure, layer upon layer upon layer. She felt each and every one.
Her hand shook as she moved it to Rob’s hip, her entire body quaking. He leaned in, driving her thighs wider, and chased his own release with frantic, slapping strokes.
His forehead was on hers, and she felt his moan as much as she heard it, the sound of a man coming apart. Two hard spasms, three, and as his muscles went slack, she let the rope do the same. They fought for the same air, every possible human emotion pulsing through her body. And she saw every one reflected back in Rob’s blue eyes.
With what looked like a mighty effort, he heaved himself aside, stripping the condom, then the rope. Merry turned and propped herself on an elbow, running her fingertips along the pink stripes that lashed his chest and ribs. She waited for their bodies to cool and their breath to stop racing before she spoke.
She cleared her throat and drew her hair over her shoulder. “Well.”
He turned
. “Well.”
“I guess we got back there.”
Rob smiled, all perfect teeth and unhidden happiness, and locked her knee between his. “I guess so.”
“I think I always knew we would, deep down. After your letter.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth, stayed there for a long moment. “I’m going to tell you something. If it’s too much, just remember you’ll be shot of me in four days’ time.”
She said nothing, just ran her thumb across his stubble with her heart throbbing in her throat.
“I love you, Merry.”
For a time she could only study his eyes, lost in the blue. Blue as the ocean, blue as a loch. Blue as the sky on the heels of a storm. It ached to even breathe. “Wow.”
“I felt it before,” he said. “Before we ever left the cottage. But it seemed wrong to say it, knowing how you’d shared everything of yourself, and I’d not really told you who I was. Not all of it. But now that you know me . . . I just needed to say it.”
She nodded, blinking away tears. “I needed to hear it. More than I even realized.” And now that she had . . . “I love you, too.”
Her words affected him as physically as a wound—emotion so intense, his eyes shut tight, face so tense he could’ve been in pain. She held his head, stroked his hair, and let him feel whatever this was, be it fear or relief or gratitude or something else entirely.
With a harsh, hitching breath, his eyes opened. He kissed her, fingertips on her jaw, then lost in her hair. When he pulled away he looked delirious—drunk on feeling.
“You . . . you know I’m terrifically fucked-up, right?” he asked.
She laughed. “Yes. I’ve come to like that about you.”
“Good. Just wanted to be sure we’re clear on that . . . Now say it again.”
“I love you.” The words were as rousing to utter as they were to hear. Like sex, the giving and receiving of it equally thrilling.