Making It Last - A Novella (Camelot Series) (11 page)

He groaned. Exhaled. “God, bun, don’t,” he said, and she smiled because she’d known that, too.

It hadn’t been like this between them in a very, very long time. But here they were. Here they were, and it
was
like this, and she wanted it to last.

“Give me a second,” he said. “You feel so fucking good.”

He lifted his head and looked right in her eyes, and she smoothed her hands over the
crown of his head, letting his hair brush her palms and feeling frightened, suddenly.

They didn’t do this anymore. Look at each other. Really
look
.

She’d been afraid. So afraid that if she looked, he wouldn’t be there.

But here he was.

Here was Tony. Still hers.

She closed her eyes. Not because she was scared. Because she needed to savor it. To take the moment inside her, wrap it up in tissue paper so she could get it out later when she really needed it. Tell herself,
There it is. There. Not gone at all
.

Tears welled up, and she blinked them away. Relief. Gratitude.

Those girls by the pool—maybe they didn’t know about the hard stuff. They didn’t know what it was like to try so hard to fit a whole marriage in between the kids’ interruptions. Didn’t know what it was like to fight in code in front of three curious young boys because you didn’t even have time to fight, otherwise.

They didn’t know what it was like to love someone so much that you lived for those ten minutes before bed, and when you burned bright for ten years—when you poured all the love you had into your family, all the energy into feeding and changing and cleaning up after your babies, caring about their school field trips and their bake sale cupcakes, listening to your husband complain about his job, worry about his brother, and you piled on top of it all your own worries—when you did that not for a month or two months but for a year, and then another year, and then another year and another baby—eventually you ran out of light. You stopped thinking that the time when it was going to get easier was right around the corner. You gave up the grand illusion that had carried you through the horrific months of early parenthood, and you realized it was never, ever going to get easier.

You watched your husband figure it out, too. That you could never go back to the way things were. Not when the kids started sleeping through the night, not when they started school, not
ever
.

When you did that, and you accepted it, the ten minutes before bed became just another ten minutes. Your husband’s hands on your body became just that. Hands on your body. A mouth between your legs. A need to be filled, and even if it was
your
need, too, you couldn’t get excited about it. You couldn’t believe that there was enough fuel in the world, enough hope, enough love to spare.

Maybe those girls didn’t know any of that yet, and Amber did. And maybe this moment—this night where she’d let down her guard a little bit, told Tony a secret, knocked a hole in the wall and watched it transform the whole shape of the room—maybe it couldn’t change any of that.

It couldn’t. She didn’t believe it could.

But she didn’t believe it was meaningless, either. Not when she opened her eyes and looked at Tony and remembered a hundred other times he’d been inside her like this, looking for her.
Seeing
her.

Their first night.

Their wedding night.

This night. This moment. Now.

“Amber,” he said.

She tipped her head and kissed the bridge of his nose. “Tony.”

“You’re crying.”

She shook her head, though she could feel the tears, warm in the hollows beneath her eyes. “No, I’m not.”

He kissed one hollow. Kissed her closed eyelids. “I love you,” he said.

He kissed her mouth.

“I know. I love you, too.”

He found her hip, stroked along her thigh, caught behind her knee. Brought her leg up and seated himself deeper. The movement ground him against sore, stinging flesh, and she must have given some sign, tensed up, because he asked, “Too much?”

“A little tender,” she said.

“You want me to …”

He didn’t finish the thought, and she smiled, knowing what he felt he ought to say and that he couldn’t—literally
couldn’t
—make himself say it.

Stop. Pull out. Do something different
.

“No, go ahead.” She brought her other knee up. “I want to watch you.”

“What about you? You think you could come again?”

“No. You just take what you need.”

“I’ll feel bad.”

“Don’t. Let’s not feel bad, tonight. Let’s just be together, okay? You and me.”

She stroked her hands up and down his back. He was sweating. His arms trembled. She was laying here, more or less replete, and Tony was dying.

He rested his forehead against hers, and her heart hurt, she loved him so much. She loved his helplessness right now, loved how avidly he’d watched her bring herself off, loved that his first reaction to hearing she masturbated had been glowering jealousy but that it had only lasted about four seconds before it was replaced with
Damn, that’s hot
.

Not everyone got to have this.

And no one got to have Tony but her.

“Can I tell you something, bun?” His voice was husky. Strained.

“Anything you want.”

“You’re the reason for everything. Everything I do.”

That made her eyes fill with tears again. Because of course she’d known that. Deep down, beneath her fear, she’d known. When she’d seen him in the bar tonight, she’d been surprised and not surprised. He was hers. He was Tony.

She’d missed him so much.

Amber kissed him softly on the mouth. She lifted her hips and squeezed around his cock. “Come on.”

Tony smiled.

That smile that rocked her world.

Then he thrust, and the smile fell off his face, wiped away by the bliss he found in movement. He thrust again, grunted, rearing up, palming her breast with one hand. “This isn’t gonna take long,” he said. He sounded so amused with himself, so strung up and desperate, that she found his ass and raked her fingernails over it.

“Whatever you need.”

He started slow. Long strokes, with his eyes trained downward at the erotic sight of the place where their bodies joined, so bare that he could see everything. She brought her hand between them and toyed with her clit, because it felt good, and it made him push harder.

“God, Amber,” he groaned. He dropped to his elbows and thrust faster, his mouth at her neck. He kissed her, tongue deep and dirty, taking what he needed.

She’d lay beneath him like this before, closed her eyes, waited for him to be done. She’d
had nights when she couldn’t bear to give him anything. Couldn’t bear to give anyone anything—not without resenting it.

But there was no resentment in her now. Only joy, and wonder that it was possible to feel it.

“Whatever you need,” she said again, and he pulled out. She thought he would come. Instead, he slid down the bed and put his mouth on her. He did it for himself—she recognized from the first lap of his tongue that this was the purely selfish sort of head that he gave her sometimes when he couldn’t sleep and he wanted to get lost between her legs. Making a humming sort of noise under his breath, working his hand over his cock. Unbearably turned on at the sloppy, wet mess he’d made of her, licking and sucking at it, drawing her own arousal out until she knew she could come again, that she
would
—and when he hit the right spot on her clit, the right pressure, she pushed his head down and held him there until she could feel it winding up tight.

“Tony,” she said.

“Use your hand.” He pulled her wrist. Made her take over.

Her toes curled. She stiffened and lifted up off the bed, and then he was above her, his palm a heavy weight on her ribs, his hand stroking as he came on her stomach, her hand, her cunt.

When she closed her eyes and went over, she held Tony’s face in her mind’s eye. The strain in it. The ecstasy.

Her beautiful husband’s beautiful face.

She awoke to the room fully lit, a breeze blowing the curtains and cooling the backs of her thighs.

Tony’s clothes lay in a pile on the bamboo floor, and she could hear the shower going.

Amber felt sleep-heavy and relaxed, face in the pillow.

Until the phone rang.

Tony’s phone. He was old enough to not approve of ringtones, so he used the ring that sounded most like a telephone. Tinny and sharp.

She hated that ring.

He’d had a carry-on bag last night that he’d left by the door, but the ringing wasn’t coming from the muffled depths of it. She rolled over and confirmed what her ears told her—the phone sat on the bedside table. He must have retrieved it this morning while she slept. Sat up against the headboard beside her naked, prone body and checked his email. His voice mail.

The ringing cut off, but it was in the room now. A third party that she’d never invited to join them.

The water stopped in the other room. She listened to Tony bumping around in there. The sink running, then silent.

His feet padding over the floor. A zipper.

He came to the bed in a towel, his hair wet, and sat down on the edge of the mattress, dropping a small pile of clothes on top of the sheet by her feet.

His smile was easy.

He’d slept well. He felt good.

Amber tried to ignore the resentment that washed over her, the crowded feeling that whispered,
I was supposed to get three days off from that phone
.

Because now that she’d heard it, she knew she’d hear it again. Knew she’d catch him sneaking glances at it all day, and if she so much as raised an eyebrow?

It could be work. It could be the kids. Patrick
.

It could be important
.

She didn’t care.

She tried to breathe away the unpleasantness. To feel the way his eyes looked—focused on her. Steady. Happy. But the phone had flung her into a headspace that she’d been desperate to escape, and now she couldn’t help but remember what her life felt like. She couldn’t help but recall that she was a mother, a wife, a fixer of problems and packer of lunches, a chauffeur and tear-wiper, a floor cleaner and toilet-paper purchaser.

She was all those things, and Tony was Tony, and nothing would change because they’d had good sex.

Great sex.

Still.

“Morning, sleepyhead.” He touched her bare shoulder with one fingertip, drawing a line over it and down to her collarbone. Pausing at the dip of her neck.

“Morning.” She cleared her throat. He lifted his feet off the floor and twisted around so that he was lying on his back, hands tucked behind his head. Gazing at her.

The towel rode low on his hips, and she told herself to be tempted. To unknot it.

The breeze caressed her bare shoulders. Tony was warm and damp beside her, his gaze as heavy as a hand stroking down her spine. Focused on her. On
them
.

She told herself to kiss him and not to think about what came after.

The phone rang.

They tensed together, Tony rising halfway up, bracing his elbows beneath him.

Another ring, and he looked at her, the question in his eyes.
Should I?

He wanted her permission, a nod that said
Go ahead. Put me second. Put me third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh. I understand why you do it. I don’t blame you or hate you for it
.

It’s just the life we’ve made between us
.

Not your fault. Not mine
.

The combination of both of us. Fixed. Inevitable
.

Amber got up and walked into the steamy bathroom and shut the door.

She turned on the water as hot as it would go and got underneath the spray and tried not to think about it, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t, because she lost him every time he picked up the phone.

For years now, she hadn’t really had him to lose, but last night had been different. This
morning had been different.

She’d had him. She’d lost him.

She felt it. It hurt.

Amber applied shampoo to her hair and rinsed it off. Rubbed in conditioner and rinsed it out. She didn’t know how much to measure out. Her hair felt strange, soft and slippery like an underwater plant. Like washing a baby’s hair. Insubstantial.

She turned her face into the spray and washed away last night’s makeup and Tony’s mouth, absinthe and wine, deep kisses and damaging hope. She soaped her skin and rinsed lingering traces of Tony’s come off her stomach and from between her legs. Her fingers explored the denuded landscape of her body. Puffy and tender. Childlike.

Amber didn’t feel sexy anymore. She felt foolish.

There was no way to start over. That was the problem. There was only forward. An eternity of forward, moving into a future where they were always the same people making themselves happy and unhappy in the same ways.

She soaped her legs and ran the razor over them, scraping herself bare.

When she’d met him, the sex had dazzled her. His smile had dazzled her. Everything about him—the way he looked, the things he said, the physical intimacy he’d introduced her to, so unlike anything she’d known before. She’d been ready to tell him she loved him within a week. Ready to move into his apartment and launch herself into the rest of her life with her hand firmly clasped in his.

Tony had been more cautious. He’d suggested she keep her apartment. That they take it slow, because what was the rush, really?

Yes, I want you here
, he’d assured her when she started to worry that they weren’t even reading the same book, much less on the same page.
I want you with me all the time
. He’d reached for her.
God, Amber, all the time
.

So she’d relaxed into it, spending nights in his bed. Long, lazy weekend mornings. Buying groceries for Tony, new clothes she thought he’d like, a little makeup, sexy underwear.

When she thought about those days now, it was always summer, and they were always laughing, even though she knew it hadn’t been like that. Yes, they’d watched TV together, taken turns pretending to know how to cook, made love every night, every day. But they’d argued, too. She had bad periods that made her moody and insecure, and he tried to fix it with sex, which was
the last thing she wanted. He got migraines and hated being fussed over.