Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
“Don’t make me laugh right now. Are you okay if I…”
I dip my head to find her eyes, and my breath stalls at, not just the desire so clearly in the look waiting for me, but the trust.
“Are you okay?” I ask again, brushing my knuckle across the downy softness of her cheek.
“I’m okay.” She smiles, her eyes tracing my face like she’s seeing me for the first time, or like she’s seen me in a thousand other lives.
She hooks her ankles at the base of my spine and grabs my ass, urging me forward. I push in deeper, and we moan together at that clasp of flesh and soul. She’s tight and hot and so slick I slide home and am fully seated. As badly as my dick wants me to move, every other part of me stills with our bodies flush like palms pressed together in prayer. What’s happening between us transcends anything I’ve known before. I have no frame of reference for this tightness in my chest and the emotion burning my throat.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I chant, resting my forehead against hers. “This is… Vee, you feel—”
“I know,” she whispers, tilting her head and brushing her lips over mine. “Fuck me.”
I palm her head, sinking my fingers into her curls and kissing her lightly with the first thrust. Then deeper, my tongue mimicking the motions of my body as I push in and pull out and push in and pull out, setting a rhythm so fierce the legs of her bed scrape across the floor. I brace one hand on the wall above us and pull her knee up past my hip, rocking into her like I’ve never done this before, but also like this is all I’ve ever done. She gasps, dropping her head back into the pillow, her nails digging into my back.
“Come again for me,” I breathe into the curve of her neck. “I want it to be good for you.”
“It is. God, it’s so good. You’re fucking me so good.”
I know that, I feel that, but it still seems wrong to reach that height alone. To come without her our first time.
“Touch yourself,” I say. “For me, just do it, Vee.”
Beneath me, her eyes go tender, indulgent, but she slips her hand between us, and with each thrust, I feel her fingers dip, stroking herself. She bites her lip and bangs her fist into the wall behind us as the orgasm hits and she unravels for me.
Seeing her come again, I lose all control and restraint. I’m mindless and cut free of rational thought, a hundred sensations rolling through me like a storm. We’re coated in sweat, slick, grunting, groaning, when our shouts fill the room and we tumble over that edge. For seconds, I float over the whole earth. My body and heart and soul settle on another plane, and she’s right there with me. I never want it to end, but it does, and we crash in a tangle of limbs and lips, each kiss a discovery. Like we had no idea what we just did together even existed.
As she curls up against me, feathering kisses on my face, I realize it didn’t exist.
Not until just now because we didn’t just make love. We made us.
SEVEN
Monk
“Pass the dressing, please,” my mother says. “And get off that phone. It’s Thanksgiving.”
I glance up from the screen and Verity’s text message, and then stuff the phone into my back pocket.
“Sorry.” I pass the dressing and reach across Mama’s small dining room table for the macaroni and cheese. “Charlie and Shrieva still coming over?”
“Yeah, they just running a little late.” Mama’s face shutters, but she forces a smile. “They called to say they’re helping your daddy at the church’s food kitchen and then they’ll be on. Told us to go ahead and eat.”
The food kitchen my mother started. So many things at Hope Christian Center exist because of Mama’s creativity and her compassion. God knows that choir would be nothing without all the hard work she put in over the years. I don’t comment because I don’t want to argue on Thanksgiving. Every conversation we have about all my mother left behind and my father got to keep turns into an argument. She doesn’t exactly defend him, but she won’t drag him, which is exactly what I want to do. She has more reason to be angry and resentful than anyone in the scandalous shit show my father’s infidelity caused, yet she has been the most gracious.
The living room door of Mama’s small apartment flies open, and my brother and sister burst through, looking harried and almost like twins, though Charlie is older than I am and Shrieva is younger. They take after my mother, and I, unfortunately, bear a striking resemblance to my father. Every morning the mirror reminds me of the man I can’t forgive for destroying our lives.