by Helen Hoang
“Yeah, I had my kendo kids model for us. It was so much fun,” Quan says, and he smiles at the picture like a proud parent.
“That’s not the kind of thing that I’d generally think of as ‘fun,’ ” I say with a laugh. “Isn’t it like herding cats, getting kids to listen to you?”
“Nah, I mean, I don’t bark orders at them and expect them to obey. We were just goofing around together, and the photographer snuck in some shots.”
“You’re going to be a good dad someday,” I say with absolute certainty.
I expect him to laugh or be modest about it or say something like I hope so. Instead, he stiffens, and he’s distant from me even before he gets off the couch and walks over to the balcony. I can’t fathom why he looks so lost as he stares down at the street below.
“What’s wrong?” I ask as I approach him slowly, my heart skipping with unease.
He tucks his hands into his pockets and hangs his head. For the longest time, he says nothing, and I can hardly breathe as I wait. It has to be me, what I said. It’s always me. And like always, I don’t understand why.
Without lifting his head, he asks, “Do you want kids someday?” His voice is oddly gruff, vulnerable, and it sends shivers over my skin.
“I honestly don’t know. I haven’t thought about it a lot,” I reply.
He takes a long inhalation, exhales. “I can’t. Have kids, I mean.”
I stop several paces away from him, my mind reeling as the meaning of his words hits me.
“I should have told you before now. I’m sorry,” he says, his voice even rougher now. “I tried. But the words wouldn’t come out.”
“You don’t need to apologize. You’re telling me now,” I say.
He draws in an unsteady breath and swipes a hand over his face and across his scalp before he clasps the back of his neck. There’s such defeat in his posture that it feels like part of my heart is tearing open, and I close the distance between us and reach up to rest my hand on top of his. He flinches at first, but then he pulls me close and presses his cheek to mine.
Holding him tight, the way I like to be held, I ask, “D-did it happen when you were sick?”
“Yeah.”
I don’t know what to say now, so I touch him, his back, his neck, his cheek. I kiss his lips softly, hoping to comfort him, but he doesn’t kiss me back.
He pulls away and is quiet a moment before he says, “I get it if this changes things. For you. For us. But I guess I would like to know either way, so I don’t . . .” His words trail off, and he doesn’t finish.
“So you don’t what?” I ask.
His gaze meets mine, and he says, “Anna, I’m in love with you.”
My breath catches in my lungs, and my chest expands, expands, expands.
“I’m not asking you to say it back if you don’t feel it, but I want to know if I have a chance. Or has what I told you made things impossible? I understand if that’s the case, and I’d never hold it against you,” he says, and the steadiness of his words makes them sound like a promise.
A completely unnecessary promise.
I reach up and stroke his stubbled jaw, because I feel the need to touch him. “This doesn’t change anything for me.”
A pent-up breath gusts from his chest, and he pulls me closer and presses a hard kiss to my temple, holding me like I’m precious, like I’m important.
“I love . . . being with you. You’re the one person who I can really be myself with. But I don’t know if I’m in love with you yet,” I confess.
Julian and I exchanged those words. He started it with a casual love you, babe over the phone, and it seemed like I should say it back, so I did. But it didn’t mean anything.
With Quan, I want the words to matter, like his words matter to me. I’ve tucked his I love you into my heart, where I can carry it forever, safe and treasured.
A smile slowly forms on his lips as he searches my face, and he leans down to kiss the corner of my mouth. “You said ‘yet,’ ” he whispers. “That means you think it’s going to happen.”
“I do.”
“Maybe you already do,” he says, kissing his way down my neck. He opens my robe to expose that sensitive spot where my neck meets my shoulder, and when he scrapes his teeth over my skin, I gasp and cling to him.
“I might. I’ve never felt this way with someone before.”
“You think I have?” he asks in a low voice by my ear, making me shiver.
“You’ve been with so many people. I guess I thought—”
“They weren’t you, Anna,” he says simply.
He kisses me with hungry strokes of his tongue, and I’m swept away, weak with longing. I sneak my hands under his shirt, so I can feel his hot skin against my palms. I love the way his muscles tighten and bunch as I touch him, the way he kisses me deeper.
“I want it to be tonight,” he says, running his hand up my inner thigh, cupping the flesh between my legs possessively. “Me, inside you.”
“Are you sure—” My voice breaks when his fingertips slip beneath my underclothes and touch me intimately.
I haven’t touched myself in any way over the past two months. I haven’t wanted to. But now, with Quan, my body is coming to life, soaking his fingers.
“Want you so bad,” he groans before he sucks on my neck and circles my clitoris with gentle teasing motions that are so close to being what I need.
I seek out his mouth and kiss him as I arch into his touch, rubbing against him, trying to turn the caress into something that works for me. But no matter what I do, I’m left unfulfilled and aching.
“Bed,” he says roughly. “Need to get you in bed.”
Without warning, he picks me up and carries me to my bedroom, where he lays me down on the mattress. He touches the side of my face almost reverently and kisses me, but his kisses are different all of a sudden. They lack the intensity from earlier. They’re tentative, distracted.
He goes to shut the door, shrouding us in darkness, and when he doesn’t return to me right away, I sit up in bed. I can see his silhouette in the middle of the room, standing, motionless. Something is wrong.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, but there’s undeniable tension in his voice.
After a long drawn-out pause, I hear hushed sounds as he removes his clothes, the unzipping of his pants, the soft brushing of fabric against skin, the muted thuds as his garments hit the ground, so I undress as well. I am not the kind of person who enjoys being naked, and the coldness of the air on my skin makes me anxious as I wait for him.
The mattress depresses next to me, and I sense his nearness. I feel a charge in the air in the instant before he stretches out beside me. He gathers me close, warms me with his own heat, kisses my forehead, and my mind and body unravel and relax.
I expect to feel the insistent prodding of his erection against my belly. But I don’t. He’s gone soft in the minutes since we came in here. And now that I’m paying attention, I notice the fine tremors claiming him.
“You’re shaking,” I whisper.
“Things suddenly got really noisy in my head,” he says.
“What are you thinking?”
He releases a heavy breath. “Stupid stuff.”
I edge forward and kiss the first thing I encounter—his nose. Then his mouth, his beautiful perfect mouth. “I think stupid stuff sometimes. What kind of stupid stuff is it?”
“That I have a lot to prove tonight, to you, but mostly to myself. That I need to please my woman like a man should,” he says.
My heart clenches painfully at his confession. “You do please me.”
“You know what I mean,” he says, and he grabs my hips and pulls them flush with his, where his sex remains flaccid. “How can I with this? So fucking embarrassing.” His voice is gruff with mortificatio
n, and I hate that. I never want him to feel that way with me.
“You’re not a robot. You’re a person. You have nothing to be embarrassed about,” I say firmly. “It’s not like you can dick me to orgasm anyway. I don’t work that way.”
He makes a choking sound before he breaks into laughter. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
I grin before I laugh along with him, strangely proud of myself. “Well, it’s true. You’re the one who made sex between the two of us about me. For my part, I’ve always been more interested in you liking it.”
“We have the same exact problem,” he says. “How is it that I’m only realizing that now?”
“Because we’re so different.”
He hugs me tighter and presses his cheek against mine, and for a stretch of time, that’s all we do. We breathe together.
“Where do we go from here?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Where do you want us to go?”
He kisses me on the lips, the chin, my jaw, and nips my ear. The sharp bite of his teeth, coupled with the heat of his breath, covers me in goose bumps. “I want to kiss you.”
“Just kissing?”
“Just kissing.” His mouth opens against the side of my neck, and his tongue touches my skin, making my breath catch.
“Kissing is good,” I hear myself say.
“Very good.”
His lips find mine, and he licks me, sucks on my bottom lip, before plunging his tongue deep, claiming my mouth with a drugging kiss. His hands rove over my body, squeezing my curves, palming my breasts. He teases my nipples until I’m gasping into his kiss and digging my nails into his shoulders as my body responds to him helplessly. My inner muscles tighten and clench on nothing, and I move my legs restlessly, run the soles of my feet along his calves. That’s when I feel him, hard now, between my legs. When I roll my hips, my sex strokes over his length, and he breaks the kiss as he makes a hoarse sound.
“Quan, you—”
“Just kissing,” he repeats before he takes my mouth in another deep kiss.
That works for me, so I lose myself in the moment. I stroke his tongue with mine, I revel in the taste and texture of his mouth, I glory in the feel of his body against my body, against my hands, against my sex. I arch my back, and the tip of his length dips inside me. It’s so tempting, so good, that I push into the sensation, taking more of him.
He stills my movements with a firm hand on my hip. “I should—we should—a condom.”
“You said just kissing,” I murmur before I brush my lips across his, giving him tiny teasing kisses.
“This is more than just kissing.” As if to prove the point, he flexes his hips, and we both moan as I take another inch of him.
“Do you want to stop?” I ask in a breathy voice.
“Fuck no.”
“Then don’t.” I kiss him lightly and undulate my hips, loving the feeling as my body stretches to accept him.
He makes a pained sound as he pushes in deeper, pulls out a fraction, pushes in again. “You don’t want me to use a condom?”
“I got tested after Julian . . . changed our relationship. Because I thought he might have started seeing other people before he told me,” I manage to say. It’s hard to focus when he’s just inside me like this. Instinctively, I crave a more complete joining, even though I know it won’t satisfy the ache in my body. “I don’t have anything. Do you?”
“I don’t have anything.” He kisses me, but only briefly, like he can’t help himself. “Are you sure?”
“Ye—es.” The word turns into a moan as he pushes in the rest of the way.
Breathing hard, shuddering, gripping my hip tightly, he says, “Nothing has ever felt as good as you do right now.”
His words make me light up with happiness despite the fact that I have very little responsibility for what he’s enjoying at the moment. It’s not like I dutifully practice Kegels every day to optimize my vaginal muscle tone for his maximal pleasure. For lack of anything better, I say, “Thank you.”
A rough laugh cracks from his chest. “You’re the only person who could make me laugh at a time like this.”
Smiling into the dark, I say it again, whispering in his ear, “Thank you.”
He laughs as he kisses me, and I feel his smile on my smile. I wrap my arms around him, wondering how I don’t light up the room when I glow like this.
He moves between my legs with a slow sinuous movement of his hips, pulling away and returning to me like waves on the seashore. It’s so sexy that I wish the lights were on. I want to see him moving against me. I can’t help arching into the motion, claiming as much of him as I can. I’ll never orgasm this way, but my body craves what it craves. It craves him.
Our position changes slightly as he urges me onto my back and captures one of my hands. I don’t understand what he wants until he eases it between our hips and whispers, “Make it feel good, Anna.”
Unease threads through me. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s wrong. I hide my face against his neck, saying his name in protest.
“So I’m not alone,” he says, and there’s such stark vulnerability in his voice that I can’t deny him. He matters more to me than the voices in my head.
Here in the safety of his arms, here in the dark, I touch myself. And I cry out as I tighten around him.
“Just like that,” he whispers, kissing my temple, sucking on my ear, biting my neck, licking the sting away.
I do it again, touching myself exactly the way I need, and I can’t help the sound that rises from my throat. Pleasure concentrates low and sharp, irresistible.
“More,” he encourages me, moving inside me now, retreating and returning with gaining momentum.
I can’t stop. Perhaps this is what I’ve always needed without really knowing it, to love myself without shame and without reservation.
He praises me with dark words, tells me he’s proud of me, tells me what I’m doing to him. He asks me if it’s good, when he has to know. I’m crying out nonstop as I climb higher and higher, lifting my hips to meet his every thrust, clenching down uncontrollably.
“Are you with me?” he asks in between ragged breaths. “I’m close. I don’t know if—”
I pull his head down so I can kiss him, and he groans and kisses me back. Grasping my ass with both hands, he pulls me closer as he drives into me faster. It’s that touch of desperation in his actions that ruins me.
All my muscles contract as I stiffen, arching into him. At the same time, I feel myself opening wider, getting softer, trembling. I want to tell him that I’m with him, I want to tell him what’s happening, but all I can say is his name.
I call out his name as I reach the pinnacle. I call out his name as I convulse around him, raw repleted sounds trilling from my lips. I call out his name as I’m completely undone.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Quan
There is nothing better than Anna coming apart around me, crying my name over and over again. Nothing in the whole world.
She tries to kiss me, to move with me, but her convulsions are too strong. She’s lost all coordination, and I fucking love that.
I’m right on the edge, but I hold back and slow down so I can draw this out. I’m going to be the best she’s ever had. I need that. She’s never, ever going to forget tonight.
When her tight grip on my cock relaxes and she sighs and withdraws her hand from between us, I force myself to stop. Gritting my teeth, I pull free of the warm clasp of her body and turn her around onto her knees. My name is a question on her lips, and I reassure her with kisses on her neck, her shoulder. I run my palm up and down her back before tilting her hips upward, positioning myself at her entrance, and pushing slowly into her.
The feel of her taking me inch by inch, the sound of her soft moans, is almost more than I can take, and against all odds, I harden
further. Sensation courses over my scalp and down my spine, and everything that I am concentrates low, clamors to rush into her. It’s pure desperation, pure need, but I refuse to give in. I follow her arm down to her hand and press it between her legs as I kiss her neck, silently demanding she touch herself.
“I don’t know if I can,” she says. “I already—”
“Just try it?” I whisper, smoothing my hands along her sides, massaging the curves of her perfect ass as I fight the urge to move. “If it’s too much, stop.”
The slippery sound of her fingers flickering over her clit reaches my ears at the same time that she gasps and locks down on my cock, making my abs clench and my hips jerk involuntarily. It feels so fucking good that I can’t resist drawing back and repeating the motion.
“Is it too much?” I ask. I try to hold still, but my hips move without my permission, stroking into her with a steady rhythm.
“No,” she says, her voice pitched high with urgency.
She rocks back sharply, meeting each of my thrusts, and our bodies slap together loudly as her cries come faster and faster. When she reaches for me and kisses me over her shoulder with wild sweeps of her tongue, moaning against my mouth with every breath, I know she’s close, and it gives me the deepest sense of satisfaction.
I cover her tits with my palms and tweak the tight points of her nipples, and her body tenses like she’s been struck by lightning. Her breath tears. She trembles in my arms, drawn so tight she’s a hairsbreadth from breaking. I keep kissing her, keep teasing her nipples, keep stroking my cock into her relentlessly, because that’s what you do when something’s working—you keep doing it. I keep doing it until I’m nearly delirious with the need to come.
And then it happens. She cries out. She comes hard, like she’s releasing a lifetime’s worth of tension, and it fills me with elation. I might not be whole, I might not be perfect, but I can be what Anna needs.