Pulse

by Angel Payne

  Even if that core is just going to regrow itself.

  Because I can’t seem to figure out how to make my mental weed killer work.

  Seven months into this superhero girlfriend gig, and I’m still sprouting a garden of insecurity—sprinkled with a lot of I-don’t-belong-here dandelions.

  Especially when I watch him with perfect roses like Angelique La Salle.

  “Uck.”

  Although I mutter it into the pillows this time, the bedroom’s door creaks open. And before he even angles his head in behind the panel, I feel his complete focus on me. How he just seems to know the expression I crave on his face, intense but tender, seeking but not pushing…

  Damn it. Don’t just know this, Reece. Don’t just know me. Please. Please…

  But he enters anyway, virile and breathtaking in the track pants and T-shirt into which he’s changed. His feet are bare and his hair is mussed, an electrifying god despite the fact that no part of him is silver or blue right now.

  Shit.

  It just can’t be right that he’s so damn gorgeous all the freaking time.

  His face changes as if I’ve let that slip out too but babbled it in Klingon instead of English. Or maybe he just likes tormenting me with his mussed-and-perplexed look, which he’s rocking the crap out of right now.

  “Hey.”

  I scoot over a little, anticipating he’ll want to sit. He usually does when it’s time to laser torpedo into the truth between us. “Hey.”

  Bizarrely, he stays on his feet. Still, he leans over and squeezes my foot through the crimson throw blanket under which I’m still nestled. I have no idea where the covering came from, having stormed in here without anything but my hissy rage and my prideful confusion, too embarrassed to emerge even after I heard Angelique take off as she’d promised. It hadn’t taken long for exhaustion to set in, and then…

  “What time is it?” My eyes are grainy and my muscles stiff, so it feels like I’ve been sleeping for a few hours.

  “Almost four in the afternoon.”

  Okay, more than a few.

  “Shit.” I shoot upright, stabbing a hand through my hair. “I’ve been out for most of the day?” That’s way more than a few hours. Essential sightseeing hours. “Damn!”

  “Because you needed the sleep.” He grips my foot again, as if ordering me to believe it.

  “I slept on the plane, Reece.”

  “On the plane, Emma,” he counters. “Which only took care of the fact that you’d been up a lot of the night before that.”

  “You mean the night you didn’t sleep at all?” I hit him with a charged-by-eight-hours-of-sleep glower.

  He sucks in a full breath. Releases it. I’m not going to get pushback on my argument, for which I should be chalking up mental atta-girl points—but instinct holds me back on the celebration. An awareness I can’t attribute to any outward observations of him but know with the same certainty. There’s a difference in him now. A new cadence to his vibrations on the air. A new smell of his skin in my nostrils. A vast difference in how he holds himself, although his muscles are all still in the same place. It’s as if he’s peeled off the old containment system and replaced it with…

  What?

  “I didn’t come in here to argue sleep tables, Velvet.”

  I sit up straighter. “I know.” I don’t hide the dread from my tone. Wonky changes or not, I don’t expect his MO to be that different. The man is here to clear the air; that much is evident in the set of his jaw and the steely focus in his gaze. “Okay.” I pull the blanket up around my waist, uncaring that it’s wrinkling my skirt even more. After two eight-hour naps, the thing is beyond ready for the cleaners. “Park it, mister. Let’s do this now, because my day of touristy goodness is wrecked.”

  Yeah, it’s a little bossy, probably because I know it’s my last chance for guiding any part of this for a while. But damn it if Monsieur Richards doesn’t even let me have that concession. With that peculiar energy still changing his aura, he moves from the foot of the bed to a spot where he can extend his hand, palm up, looking for all the world like a beautiful knight asking his lady to dance with him at court. Yeah, even in his track pants and T-shirt. And yeah, even with me in all my rumples and tangles.

  “Will you come with me?”

  And yeah, flipping my heart just like that nervous medieval maiden.

  “Where are we going?” I rush it out even as I slide my fingers against his. But his only answer is to walk me out of the bedroom with slow, careful steps. His pace doesn’t change as we traverse through the living room and then into the kitchen—where one of the chairs from the dining nook has been yanked over and positioned in the middle of the floor. When he circles me around, positioning me in front of the thing, I finally grab him by the forearms. “Reece? What’s going on? Why—”

  “Will you sit here for me?”

  I oblige because I’m a little scared not to. Maybe more than a little. Though his voice is far from a monotone, I can’t help but feel like he’s in some automaton mode. What the hell happened to him while I was playing Sleeping Beauty in the bedroom? I heard Angelique leave, so I know she didn’t have anything to do with it. So did he hear back from his father? From Tyce? Or did Wade and Fershan uncover more shit about either of them off the deep web?

  From there, my mind takes off in crazier directions. Why am I on a chair in the middle of the kitchen? Did our wild episode during the flight inspire him to think up some new kinky stuff? Just because I don’t see any rope and handcuffs doesn’t mean the man hasn’t had the chance to order something up and have it delivered—and that I might be just a little tingly about it. Does stockroom.com deliver in Paris? Not that I’ve ever looked at anything on the site except out of curiosity. Yeah, curiosity…

  Which the man himself takes to DEFCON status the next moment.

  By falling to his knees in front of me.

  “R-R-Reece?” I’m unable to control the stutter. It’s not just the action of his body. It’s the totality with which he’s committed to it. The desperation in every inch of his limbs. The burden across his shoulders. The torment transforming his face into a sight worthy of some tortured angel in a painting down the road in the Louvre. “Hey.” I cup both sides of his face, curling my fingertips into his thick hair. “What’s going on?”

  But he drops his head anyway, continuing the plummet until he’s laid his face in my lap, hunching his shoulders over my knees. “Emma.”

  Hard swallow. I’m not sure what to do with this strange voice from him, his thick emotion mashing into a growl and a groan at the same time.

  “Reece?” I manage to rasp.

  “You’re the one person on this planet I can’t bear to think of hurting,” he finally utters. “Yet that’s all I seem to keep doing to you. And putting you through. And every time, I swear it’s going to be the last damn time you’re ever in pain because of me, but then…”

  As he falters into silence, I curl a hand back into his hair. Stroke my fingertips through, gifting him with the silence, knowing it’s what he needs right now. Knowing he has to claim it as the apology he’s unable to form into words.

  Just knowing.

  As only I can know about him.

  The same way he knows so many of those crazy, secret nuances about me.

  Because that’s what people in love do. What they have. What they understand, above and beyond anyone else on this earth, about each other.

  And I realize, just now, that the silence is just as much for me as for him.

  A silence I want to go on forever…but realize that he needs me to end, with whispered words only I can give him.

  “I know.”

  Words of absolution.

  “I know. And I’m sorry too.”

  Words of reciprocation.

  “We’re both trying. And then we’re both going to mess shit up. And then we’ll both just try again.”

  Words of affirmation.

  As I slip my hand down, out of
his hair and along the top of his back, I feel the sorrow dissipate from his shoulders. I welcome the weight of him against my thighs, the warmth of him against my body, the completion of him in my arms.

  But I’m still bewildered as hell as to why we’re doing this in the middle of the damn kitchen.

  Until he raises his face again, meeting my gaze once more.

  And not a shred of the desolation has drained from those dark-gray depths.

  He’s not done yet. There’s a further plan for his contrition. Some extra proof he needs to give, as if his agonized voice and humble crouch aren’t nearly enough. Doesn’t he know that they are? That I love him with everything I am and everything I will be, and that even the pain is part of that love, meaning I won’t trade any of it, no matter what has happened or how many mistakes are made or how we both have to keep fucking up…

  Because when we get it right, the pain is nothing but a blip.

  And getting it right is better than a thousand Paris sunrises.

  But I don’t tell him that right now. He won’t listen anyway. I’m already as sure of that as my own heartbeat and every breath that it gives me. Not that it matters. The same way he gives me everything I need, I need to be here to provide everything he needs. And right now, whatever the hell this is, he needs it.

  So all I do is nod. And watch him rise. And wait for him as he walks behind me, making his way to the area between the refrigerator and the sink. And order myself not to turn around to watch. Wholly trusting him, though trying to decipher the sounds I hear. The water running into some kind of a container. The clank of that container, probably against the sides of the sink.

  What the freaking…

  When he steps back around in front of me, he’s holding what looks like a roasting pan—filled two-thirds of the way with clear water. There’s a big fluffy towel over one of his shoulders, with a smaller washcloth layered atop that. I take it all in with a stare that must stretch as wide as the Pont Neuf by now, but for the first time since I woke up, Reece’s face is washed in complete serenity.

  No. Solemnity.

  And something even more.

  A minute ago, I compared him to an angel—but now I’m close to convinced that’s the spectrum to which he’s committed himself, lowering the pan in front of my feet with the reverence of someone wrapped in utter worship and selfless humility.

  “Oh.” I practically breathe it out as he lays both towels across my lap and strips the shirt away from his torso. When he kneels again, straddling the basin with the inside edges of his knees, I can’t help but flutter a hand across his back, wondering if I’m really checking for the nubs of wings beside his shoulder blades. “Oh, Reece.”

  Gently, he removes my hand from his back. Tenderly, he rolls his face around to press his lips into the center of my palm. Strangely, I grow all too aware of his energy field on the air, a phenomenon I’ve grown so used to that it rarely affects me much anymore. But here and now, the force of his feelings strings through the air around us…swirling around him and then me…binding us and completing us…

  Before striking me motionless.

  The rod for his lightning. The object of his adoration. The center of his worship.

  The woman who loves him beyond her own soul’s bounds.

  “Reece…”

  “Ssshhh.”

  He says nothing else while wrapping his long, strong fingers around the back of my ankles, pulling my feet forward. And then lifting them into the water.

  He still doesn’t say a thing as he settles them against the bottom of the pan, ensuring they’re submerged in the perfect warmth. And holy shit, do I mean perfect. After all our walking last night even in my flats, every square inch of my feet has proclaimed itself a new definition of pain, now guided to heaven via this soothing, softening bath, given with his silent, absolute adoration. The attention affects me like a drop of sun on the eddies of the Seine, spreading and growing through my entire body now slackening in the chair. The only thing keeping me from totally slipping off is my conscious effort to grip the edges of the seat, clinging all my fingers around with blissful anticipation. My lips part on a high sigh, a visceral interpretation of a desperate prayer for more.

  More…

  Heard and hearkened by the angel at my feet.

  He lowers the washcloth in, joining its soft swath with his magical fingers to wash me, caress me, revere me, adore me.

  And more.

  Yes.

  More.

  He’s always, always, my more.

  Especially now.

  Even more so now…as I crack my eyes open and take in the three-quarter profile of his face, still absorbed with attending to me. He’s so beautiful, tiny tears burn the backs of my eyes while soaking in his dark, rugged intensity…his crucial, remarkable beauty. He almost shatters the confines of this pristine white space with the potency of his presence—but at the same time, twisting his features as if he knows that and hates it. As if all his moves, so gentle and careful, are those of a fallen angel returned to paradise for the sole purpose of begging for readmission.

  I feel it too. I feel him too. Every cell in my being craves to scream to the universe in advocacy for him. Longs to reach out and wrap him in my arms exactly how he’s drenching me in his comfort.

  Listen to him.

  See him.

  Know him.

  He doesn’t know how to say all of this, but you need to see. To hear. To accept.

  And because the pleas of my soul evidently aren’t enough, soft strains of music echo across the inner courtyard of the building, sifting in through the kitchen windows facing that way. A male voice singing in French but carrying the tune of a song that was originally recorded in English by Elton John. A song of being struck by lightning but realizing it too late. Of sadness and absurdity and the hardest words to say…

  He’s sorry.

  Let him back in.

  Because if not, I’ll fall to be with him.

  Falling…

  Yes.

  Ohhhh, yes.

  The sensation takes over more and more of me as Reece works the washcloth up over my shins and calves, but as he arrives at my knees, he leans over to add another element to his special bath.

  His mouth.

  Oh, my dear hell. Or, as the case may be, heaven.

  As he nips and laves me with his lips and tongue, I have no choice but to watch…and to marvel. And to thank the Almighty, in all His grace and glory, for this perfect prism of a moment. The sight of this massive man bent over me like this, his umber waves tumbling as he licks every crevice and curve of my knees, fills me with a heady rush of emotion…

  And, in a rush I can’t control, a surge of flawless arousal.

  Ohhhh, God.

  Not here. Not now.

  But why not? Ohhhh, why the hell not?

  There’s a tiny angel on one of my shoulders. But the devil on the other? She’s already hopped down to my right knee. Then my left. Then back over to my right, depending on which side Reece chooses to focus on with the passing moments.

  I guess I really am falling. All the way to hell.

  But what an awesome ride.

  As the plaintive music echoes through the building, almost as accusing as a choir singing Bach, I struggle to keep my head in the same pure space as Reece’s. But damn it, he had to go and add his mouth to the whole process.

  Oh, God. His mouth…

  Never mind that the thing is already the cause of many—many—a wicked tremble for me merely when I look at him. Now he has to intensify the torment by subjecting my skin to all that sensuality? And I’m the one contemplating a tumble to the depths of hell?

  But maybe I can still stop the slide into Hades. If he doesn’t go any higher than my knees…

  Just don’t go…

  Any…

  “Reece!”

  “Ssshhh.”

  And I’m unable to do anything but comply. To let him become my guiding demon, spreading me wide
r as he turns his licks into kisses, forming a trail along the most sensitive path between my knee and my core. Along the inside of the other thigh, he traces the same route with the tip of a finger, sending tremors up and down my flexing, convulsing leg—

  Which he hikes up and over his shoulder—just before he moves closer in. Sloshing one of his knees into the pan. Drenching my pussy with the fan of his breath.

  I’m hot. Helpless. Plunging into hell with him. For him. Giving over to him…

  “Ahhhhh!”

  He doesn’t silence me this time, thank God. The groan he returns instead is a perfect gift of permission, allowing me to move my grip from the chair to his scalp, twisting his thick, dark strands between my fingers as he brushes his masterpiece lips over the triangle of fabric guarding my quivering center. His hands skate up my thighs, pushing back the folds of my skirt, turning the drops he’s already splashed up on me into arcs of moisture that shiver from the new kiss of cool air.

  And still, all he does with his mouth is tease. And breathe. And slide. And promise…

  “Mmmmm!” It vibrates the seam of my lips as he digs his fingers in at both sides of my other set. The lips now trembling and tantalized…needing and pulsing…

  He exhales against me there but holds his breath on the inhale.

  For one second.

  Two. Three.

  And I’m suspended there with him. Afraid to breathe. To move.

  Four. Five. Six.

  “May I, Emmalina?” His breath is now a prayer, vibrating my pussy like confessions on candles. But his fingertips are demons, razing my skin as they seek a way inside my panties. With one of them, he finally burns through the lace atop my hip. He leaves the other side intact, poised and waiting, as if anticipating I truly might say no. His fingertip traces the thin threads, but he doesn’t go any further even while repeating in a thicker rasp, “May…I?”