Page 20 of Working for Keeps

“There you are,” she whispers, her voice cracking on the words, like she’s been waiting three years just to say them.

I have to stop. I bury my face in the curve of her neck, my forehead pressed into the pillow beside her ear, and I stop moving entirely. My hands are buried in her hair, my body shaking with the effort of not unravelling right then and there.

She doesn’t rush me. She just wraps her arms around my shoulders, her hand coming up to cradle the back of my neck, holding me tight against her heart.

Nobody warned me about this part. I’ve had this woman before—hundreds of times, from nineteen years old on—and it was never once like this. Back then, we were young and reckless, always racing against something. Now, every inch of her skin against mine feels sacred. There’s no barrier, no clock, no corporate titles, and no lies. Just the slick, heavy friction of our skin, the smell of her skin, and her heart hammering wildly right against my ribs.

Up here, the soapstone stove is dying down in the kitchen, and out in the dark, a whole valley of men is sleeping, but right now, she has her ankles locked at the small of my back and I can’t make myself think past the edges of this bed.

“Hey,” her hand moves gently on my neck, her thumb tracing my hair. “You went quiet on me.”

“I’m here,” I rasp into her throat.

“Then move.”

So I move.

I make it last past the point where it’s easy, driving into her slow and deep, watching her eyes flutter shut as the tension builds in her body all over again. I want to mark her with this. I want her to carry the weight of my hands and the feel of my body inside her all the way into that trailer tomorrow morning.

She starts shaking under me, pleading softly into my shoulder, and only then do I let the pace turn—harder, faster, my hips driving heavy against hers while she lifts to meet every single stroke.

Somewhere in the middle of it, she pushes at my chest. I roll onto my back and take her with me, and then she’s straddling me in the dim amber light, her dark hair falling down around the both of us like a curtain, shutting out the rest of the world.

She sets her own pace—slower, deeper, agonizingly deliberate. She looks straight down into my eyes the entire time, her chest heaving, watching the way her body wracking mine makes my jaw clench and my hands grip the sheets. Every so often she stops altogether, holding me buried deep inside her just to feel the ragged shudder that tears through my chest, filing the reaction away.

I get my hands on her hips, feeling the soft curve of her skin and the strain of her muscles, but I don’t try to take control. She’s spent her whole adult life being the one who has to manage everything. I’m not taking that off her tonight.

“Talk to me,” she breathes, leaning down, her chest pressing against mine, her lips brushing my ear.

There’s a truth standing right behind my teeth. It’s been sitting there since a silver rental car pulled into my lot six days ago, and it’s been there for three long, empty years before that. I know the exact shape of it.

I never stopped loving you. I built this whole damn house for you.

But I don’t say it out loud. Not because it isn’t true, but because in nine hours she’s going to sit down at a laminate desk and face a corporate hatchet man, and a man who drops that weight on her tonight is just handing her one more impossible thing to carry into that fight.

So I put my hand flat between her shoulder blades, bringing her down hard against my chest, and press my mouth right against her ear.

“I didn’t build this house for me, Vera.”

She goes dead still on top of me.

Her breath catches in her throat, and then her arms wrap fiercely around my neck. She buries her face in the hollow of my shoulder, holding on so tight her nails dig into my skin. She doesn’t answer, and I find I don’t need her to. I can feel her heart hammering against my ribs, wild and fast.

I roll her smoothly back onto her back, never breaking the connection. She takes all of me with a soft, gasping moan, her hands coming up to frame my face, her thumb brushing over my cheekbone. She keeps her eyes locked on mine while I work her open—slow, heavy, and unrelenting—refusing to let her hide behind her corporate walls for even a second.

I feel the exact moment the last piece of her defenses shatters.

Her eyes go wide and glassy, her forehead pressing into my shoulder as my name breaks from her lips like a prayer. Her body spasms around me in a tight, overwhelming release, and the feeling of her breaking open beneath me tears away the last of my restraint. I drive into her one last time, my head thrown back, a low, rough sound dragged from deep in my chest as I come undone completely, pouring everything I have left into her.

Afterward, she sleeps with her face buried in my chest and her hand curled under her chin, the exact way she used to when we were kids. The timbers of the cabin tick quietly as the night air cools the room.

At some point after two in the morning, I slip out of bed to get her a glass of water. I stand in the kitchen in my bare feet, the cold coming up through the pine floorboards, staring down at her phone where it lies facedown on the slate counter.

It’s still buzzing.

Nine

Vera