The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(38)

She is the only woman I’ve touched this way, he thought. He held her in his lap, pushed up deep inside her, his hungry hands coursing along the avenues of her body. Arms and legs wound around each other, foreheads pressed together tight. Her entire body clutched him. The air roaring in his head, eardrums bulging against the dark and firework flashes of yellow and orange behind his closed eyelids. The taste of her mouth in his. And through it all he was sliding and pushing inside her and she was sliding and pulling him in. Hard against slick. Tight, hot and aching.

“God, Erik,” she said, the air falling out of her voice. “I want to come.”

“Dais—" He had turned the corner. A hole opened in the night, beckoning him. He was right on the edge of coming. But he had been with her long enough he could control it and wait for her. He knew her body. Knew it by feel and sight and sound. She was closing in on him, contracting down, like a hand slowly curling into a fist.

“It feels so good.”

“Let it go, Dais.”

“I feel it.”

“It’s right there. Let it come. Come to me.”

She jumped with her silent scream. He followed, gathering the air she left behind. Her kiss crashed into his as a moan passed from his throat to her mouth and back again. As what he had burst forth into her body.

Only me.

Time and space reassembled. Riding out the last of the tremors, Erik held tight to Daisy, rocking her in his lap, stroking her head on his shoulder. He could feel her heart pounding against his, the last little trembles making her body twitch.

“I love us,” she whispered.

He smiled, feeling the world to his bones. “I love us, too.”

“It’s so good.” She ran a hand back from her forehead, gathering her hair up and away from her neck.

“Happy birthday,” he said, running his mouth along her throat, tasting her scent.

She took his face in her hands and kissed him. “Being twenty rocks.”

Carefully he helped her down to her back, pulling a pillow into place, pulling up the covers and tucking them around their bodies.

Another December.

Another Nutcracker Mercenary Season.

Another anniversary.

“Two years,” she said.

Fingers twined, he set his mouth against her wrist, feeling her pulse beat. “Twenty-four months.”

He loved her. Sometimes it was just part of the world, like air and water. Other times, like right now, he looked at Daisy and could not get his mind around the emotion he felt for her. “Love” didn’t seem an adequate word anymore. It was bigger than the world, beyond everything he had imagined love could be. Even the phrase “making love” had morphed out of context. Lately he was struck by the literal idea of making love. Not just a sexual expression but a creation-ary one. As if with each conversation, each shared experience and each time their bodies came together, they were assembling something larger. Adding bit by bit onto some magnificent structure. A cathedral within their private universe.

“I love you so much,” he said. You can’t know. You’ll never know how much. I’ll never be able to say it all.

He put his head down next to hers. Her lips brushed his face, her hand stroking the back of his neck.

“I don’t know where I stop and you begin,” she said. Her voice had the slurred and sultry rhythm which meant she was growing drowsy. “Everything I am is so woven in with everything you are. It’s like… I can’t explain. I can’t explain love anymore, Erik. It doesn’t mean what it used to.”

I am the only one.

Erik moved closer against her as a great bell in the cathedral began to toll.

She knew.

Of course she knew.





How Well You Deal


Erik returned to school from winter break on the fourth of January. It was nearly a six-hour drive from Rochester and he made decent time, pulling up in front of Colby Street around four in the afternoon.

Daisy came out of his house and met him at the curb. “How was your drive?”

Erik kissed her. “Not bad. A little snow when I got into Pennsylvania.” He pulled his backpack and duffel from the backseat and shut the car door.

“Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“I have soup ready at my place and I can make grilled cheese.”

“Perfect. Let me drop my stuff off.”

He followed her to his kitchen door. They went into the living room where a clobber of bags, boxes and jackets was spilled. “When did Will get back?” Erik said, heading to the stairs.

From overhead came a long, loud moan. Erik looked up at the ceiling, then back at Daisy, eyes wide.

She smiled. “Will came five minutes after Lucky did. And pretty much every hour since.”

Erik dropped his things and headed back toward the kitchen door. “Let’s eat.”

Later in the evening Will and Lucky wandered over to Jay Street, dreamy-eyed and sated. David and James came by as well. They sat around the living room drinking wine and smoking. Will had Lucky in his lap, caressing her as she told entertaining war stories about her EMT course. As he listened, Erik covertly watched James, looking for exchanged glances with Will or any signs of tension. So far the air was neutral and relaxed. If anything, both boys seemed to be going out of their way not to make eye contact.