Built

Her fingers had her spread wide and everything was wet and warm as I felt my heart rate kick up and as pleasure almost took me to my knees. I applied even more pressure, used a firmer touch than I normally would on that sensitive little nub that was singing under my fingers, and continued to eat at her mouth like it was my last meal.

Her fingernails raked across the back of my skull and she jerked her head back so that she could scream my name. She wasn’t much of a screamer when we had sex, usually just urging me on with soft little mewls and whimpers that made me feel like I was king of the sheets. But the scream . . . God . . . the earsplitting, brain-rattling, throat-breaking scream was the prettiest sound I’d ever heard. My name never sounded better. She owned it now and I knew there was no way she could deny it after coming apart like that.

I let her go and she folded back over so that I could reclaim my maniacal hold on her hips and ride her hard. It didn’t take long, not with my name still singing in my ears and her body pulling at me with desperate tugs.

I came so hard my vision went black.

I came so hard my knees shook and I almost fell across her back.

I came so hard I felt it in my back teeth.

I came so hard that I knew that she would be feeling me for days and days after I was gone because I would be feeling her.

When my breathing regulated itself and I could see again, I ran both of my hands up either side of her spine and through her now ridiculously tangled hair and shifted so I could pull out of her and kiss her on the back of the neck.

The despair was there again when I separated our spent bodies, but this time it didn’t feel like it was going to crush me. I took a step back from the edge of the bed and hefted my pants back up as she rolled over onto her back and stared straight up at the ceiling. She was so pretty and mussed up and messy from my hands and mouth. Her chest was flushed, her breasts still had pink imprints from my hands, and where her legs were slightly spread we both glistened shiny and real as our good-bye leaked out of her body.

She lifted her hands up and wrapped them around her throat as she continued to stare at the ceiling. It was like she was trying to hold that scream in. But there was no going back. We both heard it.

“What almost happened today . . . I can’t ever be the reason that little boy loses you. I can’t be the selfish, thoughtless person my father spent my entire life trying to convince me I was.”

I blinked, a little bit stunned at her quiet revelation, and bent over so I could pick my shirt up off the floor.

“You could never be thoughtless or selfish, Sayer. You don’t have an ounce of that inside of you.” I shoved my hands through my hair and stopped to tug on it hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. “You want to be the emotionless robot you had to be to survive your father and your mother’s death, that is a choice you are consciously making when you know there are other options. That is what you are choosing when instead you could choose me, could choose us. I know it’s a risk but it’s a risk we would take together.” I sighed at her as I yanked on my shirt, not even bothering to try and find my T-shirt. “I love you and you know it. What you choose to do with it is also your choice.”

I saw her hands tighten reflexively where she was still holding her neck and I wondered if all those emotions she kept bottled up and trapped inside were rising up to choke her.

I took the step that was needed to have my knees touching hers and hunched over so that I could put my hands on either side of her head. I stared down at her as she continued to cry and gazed up at me with those liquid, thawing eyes. Parts of the iceberg were shearing off and the jagged edges were slicing her to bits.

I touched my lips to her forehead and whispered against her skin, “I choose you, Sayer. Lover, lawyer, and all the shit you are in between that, I choose it. I choose us. When you’re ready to accept that, you come find me.” I pushed up off of her and gave her a twisted grin that had no joy or humor in it. “I’ll see you in court.”

The gauntlet was thrown down, my last hand had been played. Now all I could do was love her and leave her.

I LIKED BERYL’S boyfriend. Wes was an easygoing guy and he didn’t seem put off by my sour mood or the fact I had a five-year-old Velcro’d to my side. I was surprised how shy Hyde was when the whole family got together for brunch on Sunday. It could have been the way my mother burst into tears the second she saw him and that she couldn’t stop rubbing the top of his head or bending down to hug him. Or maybe it was that after we all ate, my mom and sister presented him with an army of toys that were more than enough to make up for every Christmas and birthday we had missed with him. There was no way my condo wasn’t going to be considered kid-friendly after I hauled everything home for him.

I kept asking the little boy if everything w1as all right and he would nod at me and not say anything. Finally, after everyone was stuffed with dessert, Joss dragged him away to go watch some Disney movie with her in the living room while Wes and I tackled the dishes in the kitchen. Beryl was torn between keeping an eye on the kids and making sure I didn’t do anything to embarrass her now that she had officially brought her man home to meet the family. Around the fifth time she stuck her head in the kitchen to ask if we needed help, I made sure she caught me relaying the most embarrassing story I could think of from when she was in high school. It involved her sneaking out in the middle of winter to hook up with a neighbor, getting locked out of the house by accident, and almost getting frostbite because she was too scared to ring the doorbell to let Mom know where she was at. I told him my sister had always taken risks when it came to men and rarely did they work out. She glared at me as Wes laughed, but there was weight to my words under the humor and my meaning was clear.