"I am here for both."
"You can have one."
"Which."
"Choose."
I lift my hand off the counter. I put it on her throat. Same hand. Same throat. The throat that was under my hand in the warehouse on the night I decided not to die.
Her pulse is faster than her face. It always is.
"I choose you."
"That is not a real choice."
"It is the only one I am making."
She closes the half-inch between us. She puts her hand on my wrist. Not to remove it. To hold.
"The wound," she says.
"It can wait."
She puts her mouth on mine.
It is not the alley.The alley was angry and fast — a brick wall and a gun she had just put away, and no time for anything that wasn't urgent. This is the question we did not ask in the alley.
She kisses me slowly. The way a woman kisses a man she has decided to let through. Her hands find the front of my shirt. To open. Button by button.
When she gets to the dressing on my side, she stops.
"Sit."
She walks me with one hand flat on my chest to the kitchen island. Turns me. Presses me down onto the stool. Steps between my knees and peels the shirt off my shoulders without taking her eyes off my face.
She pulls her own shirt off over her head.
No bra.
I have not seen her in full light before. The alley was dark. The cabin was dark. This is the kitchen light on a Saturday morning, and I take a moment I do not apologize for.
She lets me.
"Come here," I tell her.
She comes.
I lift her onto the island. She wraps her legs around me. I put my mouth on her collarbone. The hollow of her throat. I work my way down. Her hands go into my hair.
I get her jeans open. Get her out of them. She is wearing nothing underneath.
I put my mouth on the inside of her thigh. She grips the edge of the island. I find the center of her with my tongue, and she makes a sound I have not heard from her before. Not loud. Not performed. The sound a woman makes when she has stopped deciding whether to make it.
"Madonna mia."
Quiet. Against the inside of her own arm. She has thrown an arm across her face.
I move the arm.
