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ivorce, was the same pain that had been in their marriage.
It stuck with him, because it was absolutely true.
All the pain Allie felt, crying in his arms, was the pain that had always been there. The pain that caught in their throats as they tried to talk with each other about what they wanted.
The pain between him and his daughter over brunch at an expensive restaurant. The pain that kept Bea from picking up the phone to call Rosemary, and the pain that had kept Allie from ever saying a word against the closet light left on, that had made her brace herself to be kissed and tell herself to relax.
If he’d learned one thing from losing his life in England, and losing his way in New York, it was that it didn’t hurt more to admit how much it hurt in the first place.
It didn’t hurt more to unravel.
And once you’d unraveled, you could look around and think, a bit. Discover Netflix. Discover someone like Allie.
He smoothed his hand over her hair. “It’s going to be all right.”
“Can we…do number five?”
He squeezed her and then, with a show of reluctance, got out of bed to retrieve the list.
“It says, ‘Explain, in detail, exactly what you want done, out loud.’ I wrote this because this was something I could never do, and the times my ex would, I don’t think I attended to what she said in a way that was respectful.”
It didn’t hurt more to simply admit the hurt, than the real hurt did.
Allie nodded, running her finger over number five.
“I want you to get back between my legs. I want you to hold my thighs down, firmly. Don’t let me, like, hump too much. I mean, really, really hold me down. I want you to lick harder when I’m trying to get you to back off. I want you to…uh. I want you to make a lot of noise. Like…you know. Like you like it. Really like it. I want you to come if you feel like coming, and, um. If you want to come I want you to stop licking me and jerk yourself right in front of me, then finish me off.”
Then she squealed and pushed the pillow into her face, laughing.
He didn’t laugh.
He got back down between her legs. He held her thighs down, hard. Feeling her muscles strain, he pushed them down more firmly. He shoved his face where she was pink and he licked her, slow, hard. And she did try to scoot away, and he just held her more severely. He felt himself get hard, and harder, his thoughts drifting away as he licked her, sucked her, and her breathing got short, her hands in his hair pulled tight.
Then he wanted to come, so he kept one hand hard on her thigh and rose up on his knees, looking down at her, spread and flushed, and he jerked himself, firm and slow, closed his eyes when he started coming, listening to her breath and how it begged him to touch her while she watched him.
When he finished her, it was with a slick hand and absolute focus. She came and came, crying and moaning, and trying to push up as he held her down.
After they caught their breath, it was easy to hold her, turn her to face him, kiss her on her forehead.
He listened to her talk about Victorian mourning rings, how to grade garnets, how to check for moth damage.
Felt himself falling asleep, rather happy.
Chapter 12
“Fuck.”
Allie pulled the towel more securely around her body so the sharp edge of Winston’s slipper tub wouldn’t dig into her bare ass. She squinted at the bright phone in the dark bathroom to try to figure out what time her mom had texted.
Nine fifty-five.
Of course. Even if her midwestern mother was the kind who ran off with New York City concept artists the week before her anniversary party, she was still a midwestern mother and would never bother someone on the phone after ten P.M.
Allie had been dozing next to Winston, and some corner of her brain eventually decided to tell her that her phone had alerted a text ages ago. She’d slithered out of bed in the dark, dragging her purse with her as she crawled across the bedroom floor into the bathroom, hoping she wouldn’t wake Winston, who looked much too relaxed and content to bother.
It took her ten years to find a towel in Winston’s enormous bathroom. Talking to her mother naked was out of the question.
She took a deep breath and looked godward before dialing. The bathroom had one of those pyramid-shaped skylights she had only seen in movies. She could just see there were some plants, or maybe even a garden, on the roof.
