No more teasing. I give her it all: my tongue, my lips, two fingers curling inside her finding the spot that makes her back arch clean off the mattress. I feel the moment she tips over, feel her clench around my fingers and her thighs lock around my head. Her whole body shaking through it while I work her through every last wave, until she’s pulling at my hair trying to get me to stop and I press one last kiss to her and let her pull me up.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and come up to kiss her again, messy and hard and lingering.
I brace above her and look at her. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Her hair spread across my pillow, lips swollen, eyes hazy and cheeks flushed.
I did that to her. The burst of smug male pride that rolls through me is pure instinct.
I roll off her and pull her in against my chest, her back to my front, the way we’ve been before, the way that already feels like ours. I reach down and drag the duvet up, tuck it around her shoulders, make sure she’s warm before the cold of the room finds her.
Outside the windows night has fallen, velvety and dark, the stars winking through hazy patches of clouds. I lie in the dark with my wife pressed against my chest and feel something I haven’t felt in a very long time.
Settled.
Like every city and every season and every night in a rental apartment in a city I didn’t choose was just the long way around the barn to this.
From down the hallway, the doggy door swings open and shut. Lucky’s claws click on the hardwood. She comes back into the bedroom and barks at us once.
I cut her a look. “Mind your business.”
She sneezes in a way that somehow manages to sound disgruntled. Looks at the general state of the bed with an expression I can only describe as judgmental.
Then she gets in her bed and puts her back to us.
“She’s deeply offended,” Lila jokes.
“She’ll be fine. She’s got her mama home.”
“And her stern daddy,” Lila adds, a smile in her voice.
“I’m not her daddy,” I say. I press my lips to the back of her neck, feel her shiver. “But I’ll happily be yours, if you’re into that.”
She bursts out laughing.
I’m smiling before I’ve decided to. Her laugh does that, makes me smile before I’ve had any say in it, like a reflex I can’t override.
The house settles around us, cool and warm. I lie there in the dark with my wife and think about tomorrow. About the trail that runs up through the back pasture to the ridge where you can see the alpine lake where all us Rhodes kid used to swim in the summer. Still do, sometimes. About the lunch and the cold beers I’m going to pack and the look on her face when she sees what’s up there.
“Ten o’clock,” I say into her hair.
“Ten o’clock,” she agrees.
I feel her go soft against me as she drifts to sleep. I stay awake a while longer, her breathing slow and even against mychest, Lucky snoring in her bed, the last of the light gone from the windows.
Somewhere deep in my head, the warning klaxons begin to sound.
Attachment is the root of all suffering.
And I’m getting extremely attached to my wife.
Chapter 35
Mud Season
LILA
Slade decides our “first date” should also coincide with the next entry on my “country education” syllabus: learning how to ride an ATV.
Now that my ankle is healed, he announced he’s taking me out on a gorgeous autumn morning to get a tour of Wild Rose on wheels.
