The Other Man (23 page)

And what the hell did it mean that he was asking me this?
 
I was scared to even contemplate it.
 
Scared to hope for any possibility.
   

“I’ve never thought about it,” I said honestly.
 
“Why do you ask?”
 

He shook his head, a short jerk of a motion, as though he was making himself stay quiet on the subject.
   

But it didn’t work.
 
Miracle of miracles, he
couldn’t
keep himself quiet.
 

He pressed his forehead to mine, still shamelessly inside of me, still pinning me to the wall.
 
“If somehow you
did
get pregnant, I just want you to know, and I understand and respect that it’s
your
choice, but if you were to wonder what I want, just know that I’d want you to keep it.
 
Us
to keep it.
 
Even if the timing is horrible, and I’m off working.
 
Even if you don’t see me for a long time.
 
That’s what I would want.
 
No question.”
   

Holy shit.
 
I had no clue what to do with that.
 
Whether to be happy or horrified.
 

“Good to know,” I finally said.
 

Lame, I know.
 

I just never thought I’d get pregnant.
       

When he finally pulled out of me, he didn’t go far, sprawling right there on the floor, on his back.

He reached up, grabbed both of my hands, and pulled me to straddle him.
   

I knew what this was.
 
He was giving me something of himself.
 
Doing something that was uncommon for him.
 
Allowing himself to be vulnerable.
 
For me.
   

“Can I . . . ?”

He swallowed hard and nodded, putting my hands on his chest.
 
“Yes.
 
Touch me.
 
I need your touch.
 
It’s helping.
 
The more you do it, the better I feel.
 
Just . . . go slow.
 
Not too much at a time.”

A feeling of pure, unadulterated tenderness shook through me.
 

It was kind of sick, but I couldn’t even decide if this need I felt to soothe him, to mend him was maternal in nature.
 
Maternal, or else maybe that other intangible woman feeling we all have, the,
oh this man is broken, let me fix him
urge,
because when I fix him, he’ll be mine.
   

Maybe it was an unwholesome combination of the two.
 
I honestly didn’t care.
 
He was covered on the outside by scars, but inside were the real wounds, the deep ones, and all that mattered was that I needed to help him heal every part that pained him.
 

I traced my fingers over the scars on his chest carefully, circling my hips on top of him, rubbing our spent sexes together until he stirred again, grew hard and huge again.
 
I was so slick and ready, so keyed to every inch of him that it took no effort at all, no guiding hand, no careful shifting.
 
I thrust my hips and sucked him back inside of me, where he belonged.
 
It was beautiful.
 

I stopped touching his chest when I took him in, knowing it would alarm him.
 
Too soon.
   

Instead, I grabbed both of his hands, cupping them over my aching breasts as I started to move.
 

He cursed.
 
He praised.
 
My stoic man even begged for it as I rode him hard.

I gave it my best, used every toned muscle in my body to rock his world.
 
This was where all of my hard work at the gym paid off, where I finally got to show him that he wasn’t the only one with some spectacular moves in bed.
   

And then it happened again.
 

I let him empty himself inside of me.
 
Again.
 

I guess at that point we were both just kind of thinking,
ah well, damage is done, might as well enjoy the rest of the night like this.
 

Because, God, it was beyond divine.
 

He snaked a hand down between our sweaty bodies, gripping himself at the root, twisting his hand, rubbing against us both where we still joined.
 

“Jesus,” he muttered.
 
“Fucking
bare
inside of you.
 
I can’t take it.
 
You don’t even know.
 
We’re both going to be
raw
before I’m done with you this time.”
   

He wasn’t exaggerating.
 
By morning we were both sore and aching.
 

And the entire night, all the times he came, he never pulled out.
   

CHAPTER
 

TWENTY-THREE

He was back two nights later, as desperate and needy as the last time.
 

“I didn’t expect you back so soon,” I gasped when we came up for air.
 

It was strange with how little I still knew of him how much peace I had made with our situation.
 
Somehow, with him being mostly gone, I’d wrapped it all up and tied it with a nice pretty bow of justifications.
 

So many excuses that made our age difference, his lack of forthrightness, his random coming and going somehow okay in my mind.

I was good at talking myself into the most romantic explanations.
 

It was a talent, really.
   

Well, yes, he was young, and yes, of course, he was quite a bit younger than, say, me, but what toll did it take on a person to see the things he’d seen?
 
To withstand the things he’d withstood?
 
To do the things he’d done?
 

Yes, quite a toll, I could see.
 
In every line of his tense, readied body, every word out of his cold, hard voice, in every thought in his fractured, paranoid mind, laid that toll.
 

What did years matter when held up to that?
 

Not a lot, indeed.
 
Tragic as it was, violence had aged him more profoundly than years would ever touch the average human.

And, after all of that, who was I to push him?
 
Of course he’d have secrets, but he could reveal them to me at his own damaged pace.
 

I’m a patient woman
, I reasoned to myself.
 

I’d laid out all of the justifications for him in a scrumptious little buffet that he hadn’t even had to prepare himself.
   

He was on top of me, spent but still planted deep inside of me, his hips between my thighs, pinning me to the mattress.
 

He’d tied my hands, but he was already undoing the restraints, his mouth on my neck, tongue on my skin, while he worked at the knots with his agile fingers.
 

“I shouldn’t have come, either time,” he murmured, his voice rumbling into my flesh with every word.
 
“What I’m working on right now—it’s very sensitive—I don’t have the right to be doing any of this, but none of that mattered enough, apparently, because here I am.
 
Again.”

“Well, for what it’s worth,
I’m
glad you came,” I told him just as my hands came loose.
 
I wrapped my arms around his head, cradling him to me.
 

“This can never be what we want it to.”

That sounded ominous, and I felt myself stiffening.
 
“
We
?” I asked him.
 
“We’ve never talked about what
we
want this to be, so how can you know that?
 
How can you know we even want the same thing at all?”

“I think we do,” he said simply.
 

He was nuzzling his way down my body.
 
He paused when he found one soft nipple.
 
He rubbed his lush lips back and forth, once, twice, until it puckered for him.
 
With a groan, he sucked it into his hot mouth.

My hands stroked over his hair as his rough hands pushed my breasts together, and he let go of one sensitized nipple and kissed his way to the other.
 

“What is it you think
we
want?” I asked him, a needy quaver in my voice.
 

With a gasping sigh, he pulled himself out of me, took his lips away, and just lay on me, low on my body, his cheek pillowed on a soft breast.
 
He was so heavy that his flat abs, pushed high between my thighs, were pressed flush against my sex.

I kept stroking his hair.
 
I was struggling to breath under his great weight, but not wanting him to move so much as an inch from this very spot.
   

His body was trembling on top of me.
 
“I want you and you want me.
 
It’s that simple.
 
Every time I get to be with you, I’m better for it.
 
Every
single
time.”
 

For Heath, a man of few words, this was as good as a declaration.
 

With the way he was laying, ear to my chest, I knew he could hear how my heart rate went wild at those words.
 

“Just when I think I’ve given up on you completely, you say something sweet like that,” I whispered, kissing the top of his head.
 

“Like I’ve said before, I’m
not
sweet, not even close, so if I said something that was, you should take it to heart.”

I did.
 
Once again, I took it all to heart.

And then he ruined it.
 

“This is the last time I’ll be here to see you,” he told me.
 
“It has to be.”
 

“Why so final?” I kept my voice surprisingly even.
 

“I
have
to leave.
 
Have to go somewhere far from here, and I can’t say when I’ll be back.
 
Too long to ask you to wait for me, certainly.”
 

Something in his voice was asking me to anyway.
 
Like he knew it wasn’t fair, knew he couldn’t ask it, but some part of him couldn’t help but try.

“Days, months . . . years?
 
Can you tell me that at least?”
 

“I can’t.”
 
At least he sounded like he regretted that.
 

But still, regret was not enough.
 
I needed more.
 
I deserved more.
   

Just give me some information,
I wanted to say to him.
 

Give me an excuse, any sort of explanation, and I can work with you,
I almost told him.
   

Tell me you’ll be back someday, just make me that paper thin promise, and I’ll wait for you
, I almost said.
 

So many things were on the tip of my tongue to say to him, but they never quite came out.
 

And so we both had regrets.
 

I wasn’t bitter about any of it, I swear.
 

Not then at least.
 
Later, I’d find my bitter (with some help), but it was not my first inclination.
 

I went through stages after he left.
 
Which was surely bizarre when I thought about what a short time we’d actually been together.
 

I mean, what did we have, really?
 
We’d spent mere days together, mere hours.
 
And it was a fact that most of that time we were in bed, and some part of him was inside some part of me.
 

That did not a love story make.
 

But no matter what I told myself, he’d made an impact, left an imprint, on every part of me he’d touched.
 
When I took inventory of just what that meant, there was very little he’d left of me unscathed.
 

Even so, I found myself trying, more than anything, to just make peace with his leaving.
 

I was good at making peace with things I couldn’t control or change.
 
I always had been.
 
It was what made me a great photographer, and hell, even a good dental patient.
 
I could hold still, without complaint, as long as it took until the job was done.
 

I had a bit of a temper, but it usually burned out fast, and in its wake, I always found peace.
 
Heath had been right.
 
I was an inherently peaceful woman.
 

The peaceful stage didn’t last long, but then, it had help in its exit as it was forcibly removed.
 

CHAPTER
 

TWENTY-FOUR

It was ten p.m. when my doorbell rang.

Of course I assumed it was Heath.
 
I wasn’t expecting anyone else, and though he’d said he wouldn’t be back, it was a strange hour for a random drop in from someone who was not my mysterious lover.
 

I guess it was excitement that had me not so much as glancing in the peephole or bothering to put on more than the thin tank and tiny panties I’d been about to wear to bed.
 

I’d had what felt like endless hours after to regret the things I hadn’t said to him, hadn’t tried to get him to say to me, and so even if this was just another goodbye from him, I wanted it, if only to get a few things off my chest.