Page 47 of Wreckage and Rain

At home, I take her coat. She stands in the hallway and looks at me and something passes between us that isn't forgiveness or anger. It's need, raw and chemical, the oldest language we speak.

"Come here," I say.

She comes.

She kisses me with the anger first. Hard. Teeth on my lip. Her hand fisted in the front of my shirt like she is holding me in place. I taste her wine and her sweet tea and the back of her throat and when I try to slow it down she bites me and pulls me back into the heat.

She isn't letting me be tender tonight.

I lift her. Her legs come around my waist. I carry her up the stairs because I can't let her go for the time it would take to walk up beside her.

In the hallway upstairs I push her against the wall. Her hands are in my hair. The sound she makes against my mouth is sharp. A challenge. Prove it, the sound says. Prove you're still in here. Prove I'm not fighting for a ghost.

I press my forehead to hers. We are nose to nose.

"Summer."

"Don't talk."

"Look at me."

"I am looking at you. Talk less."

I get the zipper of her dress down at the bedroom door. The dress falls. She steps out of it without looking at it. She is looking at me, every second, and the look isn't soft. The look is find me. Find the woman you forgot last week. Look at her now. Show me you are still here with me.

I look. I don't look away.

She is in a black bra and nothing else and her chest is moving fast and her eyes are wet and not crying.

"Bed," she says.

She pushes me down on it. Climbs into my lap. Puts her hands on either side of my face and holds me there and looks at me like she is doing an inventory with her head tilted to the side. Calculating. The man she married. The version that left. The version sitting under her now. She is checking.

"Tell me you see me."

"I see you."

"Tell me you're here."

"I'm here."

"Tell me who you want."

"You. Only you. Always you."

She kisses me harder than she has ever kissed me. Her bra unhooks under my hands. She pulls it off without breaking the kiss and her bare chest is against mine and the skin contact is its own argument. This is different. Harder. Faster. Teeth.

I roll her under me. She lets me. I get my mouth on her neck and down her chest and onto her breast. She arches. I keep going. Lower. Her stomach. Her hip. The inside of her thigh. She tries to pull me back up.

"Now, Colt. Now."

"Not yet."

I put my mouth on her. She is wet and ready and angry and her hand grabs my hair and she doesn't let me take it slow. Faster, the grip says. I give her what she's asking for. Tongue on her clit. Fingers inside her. Hard. The rhythm she breaks for, and she breaks for it fast. She isn't quiet. She says my name and she says fuck and she says I missed you and the third one almost takes me apart on the spot.

I come back up and she pulls me up by my hair. Like a punishment. She kisses me and tastes herself.

"Take your pants off, Colt."