The darkness is so deep, so dense, I can’t see my hand in front of my face.

“For the record,” I tell Bristol from the passenger seat of her car, “when I said we should use blindfolds, I was thinking kinkier, maybe with some cuffs . . . maybe some anal.”

“Anal?” Though I can’t see her face, her voice sounds horrified. “I told you your dick’s too big for anal. Not happening.”

“I’m gonna take that as a backhanded compliment.” I laugh, reaching up to touch the thick cotton shrouding my eyes.

“Don’t you dare take that blindfold off,” Bristol orders. “And you can take it as a compliment, insult, I don’t care, as long as we’re clear that your big dick is not going in my tiny asshole.”

She says that now, but over the last year of marriage, there hasn’t been much I haven’t been able to persuade her to do.

Except anal. It’s a work in progress.

“Are we there yet?” I ask, tuning all my other senses to the environment to figure out where “there” is.

“Are you seven years old? We’ve been driving for a grand total of ten minutes . . . but, yes, we’re almost there.”

“Is this my anniversary present?” I lean back in the bucket seat of Bristol’s convertible. “Because I read that year one is paper. Is this paper?”

“Um . . . in a way.” The mischief in Bristol’s voice tells me nothing except that she enjoys having the upper hand—for once.

We come to a stop, and my senses automatically go on higher alert. I sniff the air, wondering if we’re going to a restaurant.

“You told me your mom says you have extra senses from growing up in Compton,” Bristol says, a smugness in her voice that I fully plan to fuck out of her when we get home. “How are all those extra senses serving you right about now?”

I sniff again, pulling in deeper draws of air.

“I sense that you’re wet and you want me to fuck you,” I say with a straight face. “How am I doing so far?”

The silence that follows my outrageous comment has my shoulders shaking because even though I was just joking, I know I’m totally right.

“Bastard,” Bristol mutters before I hear the driver’s door open and slam closed.

My head jerks around when my door swings open, and I do smell her. The unique clean scent that is Bristol’s invades my nostrils, and I want to sniff her like a stalker as she leads me by the arm along what I think is a sidewalk. Don’t ask me how I know, but when you grow up with so little grass and nothing but asphalt, your feet know sidewalk when they meet it. A bell dings over a door, and I’m pretty sure . . .

“I smell Mexican.”

The blindfold is wrenched from my eyes, and I come face to face with Mateo.

“You’re half right,” he says with a grin. “The other half is black, on my mama’s side. Blaxican!”

I glance around the tattoo shop where I’ve always gotten my ink. Bristol is already seated, a satisfied smirk on her face and an empanada halfway to her mouth.

“Mateo told me his dad has a taco shop around the corner,” Bristol says around a mouthful. “And I thought this would be a perfect meal for our anniversary.”

“When you said you’d handle our first anniversary dinner,” I say, sitting down in the chair beside her, “I kind of envisioned something a little more upscale.”

I shoot my friend a remorseless glance. “No offense, Matty.”

“I got you, ese.” He leans against the counter that holds the cash register. “But your wife knows what she wants.”

Wife.

Bristol has been my wife for a year. It feels like yesterday and it feels like forever, like we’re just getting started, and like we know each other more deeply than I ever thought possible. I want to slow the hours down because it’s going too fast. One day I’ll wake up and be at the end of this journey, like Mrs. O’Malley, and even after a lifetime with Bristol, I’ll bargain with God for one more day.

“I had an idea for an anniversary gift to each other.” Bristol wipes the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin. “Something that will last all our lives.”

“I’m guessing it’s a tattoo,” I say, looking around Matty’s tattoo parlor.

“You’re very astute without the blindfold. I’m almost done eating so I can go first.”

I frown because she has one beautiful tattoo on her shoulder of the Neruda line that galvanized our connection years ago, and I need to sign off on anything else. I mean, I have tattoos all over, but I’m a lot more careful with Bristol’s body than I am with my own.

“What kind of tattoo are you getting?”

“You mean what kind of tattoo are we getting?” She reaches into her purse and hands me a sketch. “This one.”

It’s a pair of hands, one masculine and one feminine. Banding each ring finger is Matty’s trademark calligraphy of the word still. The letters wrap around each finger, sketched to look like delicate vine.

“You like it?” Bristol asks, her voice soft, uncertain.

After the wedding, she requested that I give her my vows, my poem STILL, in writing. I know she added it to a box where she keeps our memories—the leather book of Neruda poetry, the tarnished whistle from the carnival, and now the vows I wrote for her. I know STILL holds significance, but I never saw this coming.

“You want to tattoo this on our fingers?” I ask, just to make sure I’m clear. “The word still?”

“Yeah. I have no problem making this permanent on my skin.” She smiles, but bites her bottom lip. “Unless our first year has made you reconsider forever.”

As an answer, I slip my wedding band off my finger and into my pocket then turn to Matty, who’s already prepping his ink and needles.

“All right, partner, do your worst.”

I’ve gotten used to the discomfort that comes with tattooing—hell, I got my first one when I was only fourteen. Amir and I were Matty’s guinea pigs, and he had to fix that first one—a sadly disfigured angel—years later, after his skills improved. Bristol, though, has only gotten one tat, and she winces at the sharp needle pumping ink into her skin. Matty’s fast, though, and as gentle as he can be. After a couple of hours, we have matching tattoo bands on our ring fingers, not huge, but present enough to see even under our wedding rings. Matty has cleaned the tats and is prepping for his next customer while we eat the last of our cold empanadas and drink flat beer in the back room that serves as kitchen, office, and occasional bedroom for Matty and his staff.

“It’s not what I expected.” I grin when her questioning eyes find mine. “But it’s perfect.”

“Good.” She licks her lips and sets her bottle of beer on the small round table that’s covered in drawings; the tattoo artists must use it to practice on. “I did something today that I hope you approve of. I probably should have asked you first.”

“Asked me first?” There aren’t too many things that fall into Bristol’s ask Grip first category. “What’d you do?”

“I removed my birth control.” She twists her lips, unaware of the freak-out she just set off with her words. “Well, technically my doctor did. It was really simple. She just—”

“Whoa.” I carefully set my beer beside hers. “Back up. You said you—”

“Removed my birth control, yeah.” She peeks at me from under her lashes. “Is that okay? You said whenever I was ready—”

“We could start trying, yeah.” A foot-long grin stretches between my cheeks. “So you’re . . . are you saying you’re—”

“Ready to have a baby, yes.” She worries the corner of her mouth with her teeth. “Your baby, yeah.”

Being married to Bristol has made the last year of my life the best. To think of us adding children to this . . . so many emotions rocket through me. A girl, a boy—could be both. Bristol’s a twin, and her father and her Uncle Grady are twins.

“We could have twins!” The words fly from my mouth before I think better of it, and I can tell it hadn’t occurred to Bristol, though I don’t know how that’s possible.

“Two?” Her eyes stretch. “At one time?”

“Your father’s a twin. You’re a twin,” I remind her gently. “If your mom, who has the maternal instincts of a barracuda, can do it, I’m sure you’d be fine.”

“Oh, God.” Her dazed eyes fixate on the table. “Two.”

She snatches her bottle from the table, tipping it back until the last drop is gone. Without missing a beat, she grabs mine and does the same. Before she starts raiding Matty’s small refrigerator for cheap liquor, I decide to stop her.

“Baby, come here.”

I hold my arms out and wait for her to settle on my lap. The mere thought of Bristol having my baby has me horny as hell, so when she squirms to get comfortable in my lap, I’m anything but comfortable as my dick swells into the curve of her ass. I had the best intentions when I asked her to come to me. I wanted to soothe her fears, wanted to reassure her that whatever we have, however many kids we have, we’ll be fine.

But damn.

Now with her in my lap and her scent surrounding me and the satiny skin of her throat silently begging to be licked and bitten, reassuring her is the furthest thing from my mind.

I just want to fuck her.

“We have a couple of options,” I mutter into the sweet-smelling curve of her neck.

“What are they?” she asks breathlessly, tipping her head back so I can take more of her skin into my mouth. “These options, what are they?”

“I can lock that door, and we can hope no one needs to come back here to microwave a Hot Pocket.”

She pants against my lips, turning so she’s facing me, her thighs splayed over mine while she grinds her wet heat into me.

“And the other options?” She feathers kisses over my cheeks and plunges her tongue into my ear.

Holy hell. I’ll come in my pants like a pubescent boy if she does that shit again—and that’s a promise, not a threat.

“We can go in the alley, or maybe even the bathroom, but folks use the bathroom a lot around here.” My voice is so husky it’s scraping the bottom octave. “What we’re not gonna do is wait till we get home, because I can’t.”

Our eyes tangle, an electric charge in the air, breaths getting heavier the longer we feel each other, smell each other.

“Alley,” she rasps, standing and practically running toward the back exit.

“You sure?” I ask like she has a choice now, but my hand is already at my belt. I’m already calculating how much time we probably have before someone invades our quiet alley. In my head, I’m already doing a stellar job of fucking her against that brick wall.

Small mercies, she’s wearing a dress. With our eyes locked, she raises it over her thighs to show me her panties, and with slow, steady movements, she eases them over her hips and down her legs. They encircle her shoes in delicate lace and silk. She widens her stance a few inches and reaches back under the dress. I can see her hand moving at the juncture of her thighs and her eyes are still fixed on me, though they start going hazy with the pleasure of her own fingers.

“Did I tell you to touch yourself?” I ask, trailing kisses down her neck, pushing aside the collar of her dress with my chin, sucking the skin tattooed with Neruda into my mouth to make sure she is as sweet as she was this morning.

Just as sweet.

“You didn’t want me to get started without you?” Her fingers slide up and down her slit under the silky material.

“Oh, you can get started.” I slide to my knees. “As long as you know I’m the one finishing you off.”

I duck under her dress and, as gently as I can with a dozen horses galloping through my veins, push her hand aside. Get that shit outta here. Not tonight. When she comes tonight, the first time we make love without a net, it’ll be all me. As hot as it is to watch my wife touch herself, I’m holding myself personally responsible for all her orgasms tonight, kind of like a designated driver, except I’m already drunk on the smell of her and the liquid desire pouring from her pussy while I eat her out in this dark alley. The possibility of discovery heightens every second, like there’s barely time to suck her clit. Barely time to get three fingers inside of her. Barely time to pull these lips into my mouth, except I do take my time. I’m thorough with this, and it’s time well spent when her thighs tremble around my cheeks. She forces my mouth deeper into the V of her body, an act of pure desperation, primal instinct compelling her fingers into my scalp. She thrusts frantically against my face.

I love the scream that rips from her throat as she gushes into my mouth, and I don’t even try to stifle the sound. Anyone who comes back here is getting an eyeful and an education. She starts sliding down the wall, her legs giving out, but I bracket her slim waist with my hands.

“Not yet, baby.” I trap her against the wall with one hand and fumble to get my pants undone with the other. Her eyes are cloudy and sated, but when I jerk her legs up and around my back, she blinks and lust filters back into her stare. I thrust up, deep and hard and sudden, making her breath hitch.

“Grip.” She squeezes her eyes closed, her face wreathed in pleasure. “I do need to walk tomorrow.”

“Yeah?” I press into her, holding her hostage between my body and the brick wall. “Well you should have married some other guy if you need to go around walking all the time.”

“Marry some other guy?” She breathes through a smile. “Never.”

I surge into her again and again and again, relishing the startled sound she makes, like she had no idea I could tunnel deeper into her body than the last time, but I keep making a way. She hooks her arm around my neck for leverage, taking my lips between hers and biting hard enough to sting.

Tension stiffens my back and legs, seethes in my balls as I get closer. Every time I thrust in, those slick walls cling to me, like they don’t want to let me go. Tight and perfect, even Bristol’s pussy is possessive, holding on to me, reminding me who I belong to.

“Grip,” she slurs, drunk on our love, like a shot of moonshine, wild and potent. “Oh, God.”

And then it happens. She goes first, her body clenching and shuddering. Her head drops back against the wall and her eyes slide closed on pure passion. I’m next, and it doesn’t even feel real. Every day is a fantasy with this girl, not just the sex—though . . . dayuuuum, the fucking sex.

But it’s more than that. It’s the depth of this feeling, not just when our bodies lock together, but with every glance, every touch, with the things we tell each other without saying a word. It’s life with her. I’ll never get enough of the emotion careening through my heart right now. I link our hands, pressing them into the wall so I can see the calligraphy tattooed into my ring finger.

When I make love to Bristol knowing that someday soon, she’ll have my child, the vow I spoke to her a year ago today echoes through my mind just as surely as it’s inked into my flesh.

Always.

Evermore.

Even after.

Still.