Page 64 of So Close

Your verbal blows were shocking. If you’d struck me with your fists, it wouldn’t have hurt as much as your scathing words and violent disgust.

The avarice wasn’t a surprise. Haven’t you always wanted more, to rise above your station in life, to seize power and control, to make something of yourself? You never hid your ambition. And haven’t I always admired it? But realizing your tenderness was contrived fractures my soul. There’s no love lost here. How could I have ever convinced myself otherwise?

I can’t believe I ever thought you didn’t care about the money. I was so confident you loved me. Or was I? In retrospect, I can admit I was lying to myself.

You threw your head back with a rich, dark laugh. “Not care about the money? I’ve embarrassed myself in secondhand clothes, worked all hours, fucked just to have an excuse to raid someone else’s fridge, groveled trying to make contacts, and debased myself in countless other ways. Money means I’ll never have to suffer through any of that again. Money is power. If you don’t appreciate having it, well … I will.”

There was a bright, unnatural light in your eyes, and it pierced my gut like a lethal blade. All the charm, the head-turning attractiveness, the easy affection was gone as if it’d never existed. At that moment, I saw you. The real you. Wrong and strange. Mad. Capable of anything.

It’s been only days since I said vows meant to last a lifetime, not knowing the sands of time began slipping in an unchecked stream the moment I said I do.

I hear my name and turn away from the water. The beach house waits, its windows and doors framing a deep blackness as if entering it will be akin to stepping into nothingness. Each step toward it grows heavier, my feet getting sucked deeper and deeper into the sand. The surf pools around my feet. The Sound roars like a storm-tossed ocean at my back, and a wide shadow rears behind me. I can’t move my feet as the danger looms, a tsunami that won’t let me leave the water’s edge.

I reach my hand toward the house, screaming, and hear that dark, rich laugh as the sea claims me.

35

LILY

The beloved soundof your voice reawakens me. You woke me earlier with heated kisses and greedy hands until I was left quivering with exhaustion and drugged with orgasmic delight.

“You’d tempt the devil himself,” you murmur, nuzzling your nose against my temple as you pull the blankets off me.

Blinking, I roll onto my back as you return to the bed and straddle me. The sun’s light coming through the window tells me it’s still early morning.

My sleepy gaze rakes your naked body. You are a dazzling vision of sleek lines and rippling muscle. Your hair is still damp from a recent shower, and humidity is thick in the air. “You’re one to talk.”

Your grin is a throwback, a flash of cocky amusement from your younger self. You’ve been growing younger by the hour, your face softening and your shoulders’ rigidness relaxing. Sexual excess suits you. You become more energetic by the day as if you don’t need sleep at all, just orgasms.

Your skin is cool, as mine is becoming without the duvet’s insulation, and your face is smooth and soft. You’ve adopted the ritual of rising before me to shave, then returning to the bed and the slick depths of my sex. Making love is now penciled in before your first shower, a scheduled daily activity as obligatory as hygiene. How would you write it out, my love, if you were to?Keep wife cooperative?Or perhaps,Impregnate wife?You’re certainly doing your absolute best to ensure I’m never not soaked with your semen.

I’m not complaining, not only because I’m well-pleasured but because your animalistic nature is a match for my own. When you grow up struggling for a place in this world, bereft of the safety net of parental support, you don’t have the luxury of civility. I know your soul recognizes its mate in me and revels in the knowledge that you can be as feral as you want, and I’ll relish it.

“Tell me the truth,” I say, looking up at your devastatingly gorgeous face and body, “you’re an incubus.”

Your deep, husky laugh reaches inside me and caresses that dark, quiet place I hadn’t known existed before you. More than anything you do or say, it’s the feeling of being touched in the deepest part of my being that enflames me.

I smile. “That’s why you’re growing younger and stronger, and I’m left weak in the knees.”

“That’s the way I like you.” You bend to kiss me with such heat my toes curl.

I’m still trying to process that we’ve had a handful of such days. We’ve wallowed in each other to the point that the ravening need has eased into luxuriant insatiability. You are warm and playful, the very picture of a hopelessly infatuated man.

But I’m not deceived by that guise to any degree. My mother didn’t suffer fools.

Beneath your charming, relaxed facade is calculating predation. I catch those incisive looks you throw my way when you think I’m not paying attention. I understand that while you’re innately a highly sexual man, the frequency of our lovemaking is very much about control, something you’ve suffered without since the day we met. You’re cataloging my response to every caress and position. Each new encounter hones your technique. You were already a consummate lover, but now you’re focused on mastering me in particular.

Even as my mind comprehends your intent, my body has become your slave. When you joined me in the kitchen yesterday, looking over my shoulder at the sandwiches I was putting together, it seemed like innocent curiosity. Then your lips touched my shoulder, your hand slid between my legs, and in less than five minutes, I was quivering in orgasm, my body held upright solely by your hand at my breast and your fingers inside me. Then, as quickly as you’d appeared, you strolled back to your office. I was left sagging against the cool countertop, trying to gather my wits enough to finish making lunch.

It’s a siege. I’ve been pondering to what end you’re strategizing. I expect it’s a blend of pride and punishment. You can’t stop trying to prove your worth to Lily, even as you seek to punish her for leaving you. You’re certainly trying to constrain your obsession within the lens of sexual desire. Between work and sex, you’ve hardly the time to examine what it is that really ties you to me and how utterly terrifying it is.

Now, you look down at me with such love I can’t breathe. Joy suffuses my heart the way sunlight brightens the room. I am cherished, adored and desired by an incredible man.

This perfection can’t last. We exist in a bubble we’ve created, but reality spreads around the periphery in a thin, oily film whose iridescence hides a mounting horror. The whisper of parting is forever between us, the foreboding that we’re stealing moments.

“You’re perfect,” you praise me, a distorted reflection of my thoughts. Your hands stroke my torso, and I stretch sinuously into your warm palms. “I don’t think I’ll ever get over how lucky I am to have you.”

Lowering your head, you seal your mouth over mine.

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