Page 163 of Fearless

“You have to know I never wanted that to happen,” he said, earnestly. “If I’d known, I would have wanted it. I would have done anything–”

She laid her finger against his lips. “I know, baby,” she whispered. She hadn’t ever called him that before; they took a moment to let it settle over them, this idea of her being the one to comfort him, the grown woman inside her coming out, taking its rightful place beside him.

It was a good night for firsts.

“I love you,” he said against her finger. “You know that, don’t you? I always did,fillette. It just…changed.”

“It didn’t change,” she said. “That’s just the lie we tell ourselves to make it sound better.”

Because she would always be the ten-year-old girl in his faded wallet photo, and he the lanky kid who bought her sodas and spoke to her like she wasn’t a child. That love, the closeness it had bred, the way they’d grown to want one another, that was a progression, not a change.

He kissed her, and they traded the taste of Scotch back and forth.

“Get some sleep,” he instructed when he pulled back, tucking her head beneath his chin.

Her eyes closed and she was gone.

Ava didn’t know where she was, but she was warm, and sleepy, and sore in a good way, exhausted in every muscle, loose in every tendon. It was dark, and the scents that pressed around her were familiar, comforting: Mercy.

She lay on her stomach, and a hand passed down her back, lingering in the tender hollow of her waist, traveling downward, stroking her bottom until she ground her hips into the mattress. The hand moved down, between her legs, long fingers giving her something to grind against.

She was a little drunk, and very tired, but she was swamped with a sense of safety, security, like she was loved and watched over. She felt lips beside her ear, warm breath inside it. Mercy spoke entirely in French, his voice low and rich, the words reaching for something inside her that had her leaning into his hand. The room was dark; he’d turned out the lamp and that heightened the sensations, his touch the central point of her world.

She felt him move. Hands on her hips, lifting her onto all fours. His chest at her back; his cock at her wet entrance.

“Mon amour,” he said as he entered her.

She’d taken Spanish in high school. “It’ll be more useful,” he’d told her, and so she’d taken it. And so she only knew a handful of French phrases, the ones he used all the time. She knew “mon amour” wasmy love, and a shudder passed through her, the words tightening the pleasure, elevating her pulse.

Never before had he said such long strings of sentences in French before, like he did now. In the sheltering dark, his thrusts were slow, deep, sure, his hands digging bruises into her hips, the French rolling in thick purrs off his tongue; she had the impression it was sexual, whatever he said, the way the words caressed and encouraged her.

One of his hands left her hip, went down between her legs, to her slippery sex, her clit. He stroked her with expert flicks of his thumb; pulled her backward into each thrust, bringing her ass in tight to his hips as he pushed inside her again and again.

She bit the pillow when she came.

He didn’t stop; rode her through the rippling shockwaves and into another climax, joined her on the second one, his body a great spring-loaded machine behind her as the spasms tackled him.

She collapsed, knees giving out, hands reaching blindly through the dark for something to hold onto. She was sobbing when he lay down beside her, bawling into the mattress, overcome in every sense of the word.

Mercy brushed her hair to the side and kissed her neck. “Poor little thing,” he whispered, an echo of five years ago. But then she heard the raw emotion in his voice. “Let me make it up to you. All of it. Give me a chance to do that.”

Sleep claimed her again, while the tears were still wet on her face.

At six, they had microwaved pasta on the couch in front of the morning news, coffee steaming on the table, in sweats and warm socks. One of those mornings they never got to have anymore: irreverent, careless, unhurried. A morning like they used to have before they were married, up early, before Aidan was awake, Maggie in one of his shirts and a nuked breakfast shared between them. They needed to make time for this, she decided, twirling fettuccini noodles onto her fork. Life was nothing but work, and she missed her husband; missed him badly, she realized, as he handed her coffee over unasked for out of habit.

Her heart melted around the edges, just a little, like warm caramel. He was a sweet man, deep down, really he was, even if he forgot to show it most of the time.

“Hey.” She set her plate down on the coffee table, leaned into him and raked her fingers through his tousled hair. “What are you going to say to Ava this morning?”

His eyes cut over, blue with the reflection of the TV, one corner of his mouth curling. “I dunno. What am I supposed to say?”

“I’m right, you know,” she said with a soft smile.

“I get real sick of that being the case.”

“Don’t let her safety be another worry on top of the pile,” she urged. “Let him look out for her.”

He sat back with a deflating sigh. “God, raising a girl’s a pain in the ass.”

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