Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(19)
“You’re weak,” she’d said, laughing until I was over her. Until I was inside her and that teasing laugh became a moan she could not contain.
“I am.” My mouth over hers, my tongue, deepening her moan and all around me, Aly shook. “You’re my biggest weakness.”
She went silent with the thrust of my body inside her, nails biting tight into my shoulders, her entire body shuddering, shaking when I grazed my teeth against one nipple. She’d taste so sweet, like honey on my tongue.
“And you’re mine, shoushou.”
The light was low around the lake house with only the soft movement of the water against the beach and the painfully slow creak of that metal bedframe moving as I took all Aly had to give me.
She cried out several times, sultry refrains of “deeper” and “harder, shoushou, harder!” before she clamped around me, before the swell of my need was too great, the ragged panting of our breaths heating together and we both came hard and those breaths went from labored and gasping to slow and even. She filled my senses—a touch that weakened me, a taste that leveled me and the sharp-sweet feeling of belonging that lived in that small room, just us, fitting together like waves against rock, where we were meant to be.
Bruised deep inside, ache.
One.
Brittle, bones, broke into pieces, burnt into cinders.
Two.
Like rain, the ash fell, peppered the world.
Three.
I collect it. Cup the remains of who I was between shaking fingers.
And inhale.
Wishing I could put myself back together again.
Four
New Orleans is a city that only slumbers. There is always some activity, some music, some song—the spice of someone’s loss, someone’s joy echoing through the air. Even at four a.m. when you sneak from your new fiancé’s bed because you let your man think you were all in, that you meant every touch when you didn’t.
Like a kid, I hid away in my studio, in front of the wall of mirrors and the paralleling line of floor-to-ceiling windows covered only by strings and strings of warm fairy lights. This early in the morning those lights glimmered against the wet street and that reflection gleamed across the hand-scraped hardwood floors under my feet.
This place was a sanctuary from the life beyond the aged brick walls, where Camp Street opened up to Canal and New Orleans would bustle and move like it wasn’t Sunday. It was something I hadn’t had in Miami and once I’d gotten here, spread my wings in this studio, the realization landed heavy in my chest. How had I gone so long without this peace? Without a place I could claim as my sanctuary?
The quiet on the streets was only a slumber, meant the crowds were skeletal, not bustling as usual. Not yet anyway. For a moment, I had the quiet and the lights beaming off of Saint Patrick’s just down the block. I had the pre-dawn light, my solitude and the rhythm waffling through the speakers. My studio, my place, where no man had dominion. Where no worry entered my thoughts. Not as long as I danced. Not as long as my fouetté ended in an arabesque and I kept my spine straight, my arms moving and became part of the ballet, the act, the escape that it offered.
I had thought to work through Giselle because there was symmetry in the old ballet about a girl caught between two lovers. But that didn’t feel right, no matter how beautiful I found Coralli and Perot’s choreography. I settled, instead on Midsummer’s Night Dream because it would take me furthest away. Because there was something ethereal, magical about Mendelssohn’s music. There was no sound but for the sound of strings spilling out their beautiful melodies. There was no feeling but for the erratic beat of my heart brought on by my exertion. There was no emotion but for the sway of the dance and the hypnotic song that took me from the real world that was my studio. Then there, right then, I stumbled. Turned when I shouldn’t have, let that inkling of regret swim a little too far into my thoughts. Again I tried, coming back into the middle, to a fondue and jeté passé, letting the music soak into my skin so I did not have to remember what I’d done and how it had made me feel.
Wanted.
Needed.
Beloved.
Another turn, then brisé, brisé, brisé and the flash of Ethan’s bare skin broke through my subconscious. Sweat sliding down his lithe, defined chest, the slow, methodical way he kissed my stomach, the easy glide of his fingers on my hips.
“You feel like heaven, Aly. My own personal heaven on earth.”
Ethan took me away from my modest life, but I kept a firm grip on the reins. He never demanded, hardly requested. A touch on my stomach, and his gaze on me, seeking permission, gaining it because it felt good. He never pressed or pushed, but I knew how badly he wanted me. It was in every press of lips against mine, in each grip of his fingers into my flesh.
He took away my worry and all the cluster of things that had me thinking too much. For a few seconds I floated above myself on some sweet orgasmic cloud he wove for me. Something I had not allowed another man to do for years and years. And, God help me, I liked it. I liked the warmth of his mouth, the surety in every touch his mouth made against and inside my body. I’d liked the sensations he worked in me. I’d liked it all for a full two minutes, just long enough for me to settle, land on my feet with Ethan’s face breaking through the fog his mouth and fingers had made of my mind.