Page 92 of Savannah Royals
“Kat?” he rasps. He can’t even lift his head; he has it buried in my hair, lips pressed to my ear.
“I’m fine. Please, Matt.”
He starts to move, and I lose all sense of myself. Everything fades except him. There is only the sound of his panting breath. Only the tangle of his fingers in my hair, the heat of his lips on my neck. Only the feel of him, deep within me. Turning me inside out.
He pulls back and moves a guiding hand to my hips, changing the pace, pushing in deeper. I cry out, trying to absorb each strike. I’m hovering so close to the edge.
“Matt. Oh god, Matt.”
“You. Are. So. Beautiful. Kat.” He punctuates each word with a plunge.
I cling to him and move with him. Allow him to have me exactly how he wants me, as many times and in as many ways. Because in this moment, I finally know what it feels like to be his. I realize what being his truly means.
Absolutely everything.
I am his, and he is mine.
And I can’t remember ever wanting to be anything else.
Wesliphazilyintothe after. Languid, shifting in the bed as one. Whispering, showering soft kisses on each other.
“I wondered if you were going to take these off one at a time out there,” Matthew murmurs. He’s holding my hand, slipping his fingers in and out of mine, brushing over my rings.
I shake my head and smile. “I almost never take off my rings.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. We would have been out there all night.” His fingers move to Paul’s chunky, silver band, and I stiffen. My tattoo pulses beneath it, a dangerous secret.
My reaction gives him pause. “What’s this one mean?” he asks, kissing the finger.
I take a deep breath. “That one is a story for another day, one I do intend to tell you,” I say, surprising myself. “I have to figure out how first. It’s going to take a little more time.”
“Hmm.” He considers me, still tracing, but he’s moved to another finger, another ring. Another kiss. I wiggle around, taking his hands in mine.
“I was watching you earlier,” I admit. “At the hospital, before you saw me.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I was watching your hands move. How comfortable you were.”
“And?”
“And I know you love it, Matthew, but what I don’t understand iswhy? Why do you love it? Why did you choose it?There were a million other professions you could have chosen. A million easier jobs that would have given you more money and more time and more freedom. With far less responsibility. Why this?”
He shifts in the bed, watching as I run my nose, then my tongue, up the length of his index finger.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I loved seeing you there.” I laugh softly as I continue. “Watching your hands move, these hands”—I kiss them—“and your brain working. You’re so smart, Matthew, and I can’t imagine you doing anything else. But I want to understand how you got there. How you came to be this way.”
“It’s just…my hands are mine, you know?” he says. “A few years ago, I had to decide what kind of difference I wanted to make with them and sitting behind a desk like my father, choosing headlines…it didn’t feel right. I wanted to touch people, make a real difference.”
“Doesn’t it scare you sometimes? What you do?” It scared me just being there, just standing in that cavernous room of overwhelming need.
“It did, at first.” His expression changes as he ponders, trying to explain. “The first time someone’s heart stopped in front of me…that’s not something you forget. That feeling of terror, of not knowing what to do. I remember looking around for someone older than me—another physician, anyone—but all eyes were on me. And you don’t get to run. It’s hard, but when the world falls apart around you, you learn how to stay.”
“What happened to that person?”
“He died.” Matthew looks straight ahead. “But there have been many since him who didn’t. People I’ve been able to save.”
I think of myself. How I take lives while he saves them, because it’s quicker, easier. Feels necessary even, to protect what’s mine. How what he does is so much harder, infinitely so, looking into someone’s eyes and committing yourself to giving rather than taking.
