Kate
I heard the front door slam from my seat at the table, and annoyed I left the room to find him.
“What happened to you?” I asked when I located him putting his keys down into the wooden dish.
“Not now. Please.” He said exasperatedly.
“Jonathan?”
He stared back at me emptily and walked past me to the bar without answering. I followed, watching him pour himself a drink and turn to me.
“What do you want me to say, Kate?”
“I don’t know—you could have called? You could have told me not to bother?”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I have a lot going on right now...”
“We’re getting married Jonathan. Is it so hard to want to see my fiancé for ONE night to myself? I spent all night in there cooking for you—for us!”
“That was tonight?”
I nodded, the energy to be angry and annoyance fading from me.
“Shit!” He threw the crystal tumbler down at his side. It hit the wall and shattered, making me jump and splashing his whisky across the floor.
I bent quickly to pick up the large fragments, but he stopped me.
“Leave them,” he instructed.
“Let me just...”
“I said, leave them.”
I stood up obediently.
“So what is it?” I asked. “Come on, tell me, because right now I don’t understand you. I don’t understand what’s going on in your mind, and if you just let me in, I could—”
“Look, I’m sorry. I can’t be available for you emotionally all the time, and I’m sorry I missed your dinner....” he shouted. “My mother is sick, Kate. My Mother! She’s sick, and I wouldn’t expect you to even come close to understanding what that feels like!”
“Oh, of course, because I don’t have a mom, right?”
I stepped backwards, his words hitting me like a punch in the stomach.
“Sorry,” he said, reaching for me and pulling me closer. “Fuck, I’m a mess right now.”
He sat down on the bar stool and buried his face into my chest.
“She’s dying, Kate,” he said quietly. “She’s fucking dying. This is it. I’ve seen her deterioration and it’s actually going to happen and I...”
He stopped and shook his head, looking away from me. I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, not used to seeing him so fragile but realizing that it made my heart and my soul want him even more.
“It’s okay to be afraid,” I said into the quiet room. “It’s okay to be scared of losing her.”
He turned to look at me again, the purest emotion I’d ever seen in his eyes, and then it disappeared. He pulled me closer to him, looking at me intensely.
“Are you happy, Kate?” he asked, changing the subject. I nodded.
“Do you still want to marry me?”
“Jonathan, where is this coming from?”
“Do you?” he asked again. “Is it still what you want?”
“Of course it is. You know that...”
He pulled me down and brought my head toward his, kissing me hard.
I felt his hands run down my back to grab hold of my ass and squeeze it before breaking our kiss and standing up. He took my hand and led me through the hall.
Normally, I loved having sex with him, and loved to experience every part of his body, but this time something was off. His mood seemed distracted and broken and the sex didn’t seem passionate. If fact, it couldn’t have been further from making love.
He stopped and pushed me up against the wall, kissing his way down my neck roughly and rolling my sweater up.
“Jonathan...” I breathed, enjoying the feel of his lips on my skin, but knowing he wasn’t in the right frame of mind for it.
He kept going, pulling away briefly to free me of my top and throwing it to the floor. His eyes grazed over my breasts in my bra, and he groaned as his strong fingers went around the back to undo the clasp.
“I love your body” he said, his mouth by my ear. “I hope you understand that by now?”
I nodded and threw my head back, as he took my bra off and covered one of my nipples with his mouth, all thought of his mood disappearing as it was replaced with pleasure.
I tangled my fingers into his hair, pulling at it as his tongue flicked and darted over me, and he used his other hand to undo the button on my jeans, unzipping them and pushing them as far down my legs as he could without taking his mouth away from my nipple.
I stepped out of them clumsily, realizing how easy the films made it look, and we stumbled over onto the floor.
He pulled himself up again, reaching for me instantly, and despite my giggles at the mishap, his face remained serious.
“Come with me,” he said, pulling me up to my feet. I stood up and followed him to the bedroom in nothing but the panties I’d put on specifically for him, but I knew as he stood in our room undressing while he watched me, that this time something was different. Something had happened between our encounter in the elevator and now. His sentimentality that he usually had for having sex with me had been replaced with a raw determination.
I wanted to ask him what it was. I wanted to sit him down and get him to open up to me, but I knew he wouldn’t. I knew that whatever had bothered him, he’d tell me when he was ready.
He summoned me over to him and kissed me, surprisingly soft at first and then gradually harder until I sensed urgency within him, and I realized what was happening. He was using me as an escape—as a vessel to forget whatever had happened and take his mind off it.
He walked me backward until the backs of my thighs hit the large dresser by the wall and he pulled away, his eyes deep and unrecognizable.
“Turn around,” he instructed. I did as he said, and he guided me forward gently until I was bent over it. I felt his hands grip my waist and move down to hold my ass. He squeezed it hard and slapped it before hooking his fingers into the delicate lace and peeling it away from my hips then he slid it down my legs.
The panties dropped to my ankles and I stepped out of them, turning slightly to look back at him. His eyes were fixed on my body and he pressed his lips against the skin on my legs, kissing his way back up them, and I sighed deeply at the sensuality of his touch.
“Jonathan…” I breathed as he got higher, but he didn’t stop or listen or even acknowledge how weak he was making me feel, and as he got to the top, he twisted his head so that he was kissing the inside of my thigh. I moaned with pleasure as his fingers stroked a line up the other leg until he found his destination, and he slid two of his fingers inside me.
My legs almost buckled above him as his mouth found my own lips and his tongue massaged my clit, flicking over it with enough firmness that I had to grip the table, my eyes closed, trying my hardest not to fall onto his face.
“God, Jonathan…” I said between gritted teeth, but the more sound I made, the faster he went, until I couldn’t keep myself up anymore and my legs gave way beneath me.
He withdrew his fingers and caught hold of my ass instantly, removing himself and steadying me before he pulled down his pants.
“Can you feel what you do to me?” he said, roughly pressing his solid erection into the small of my back.
I nodded and he disappeared for a moment. I turned to see him sliding a condom over his length and returning to stand behind me.
“Bend over,” he said, his hand on the back of my shoulder.
I felt the head of his manhood glide across my opening and with a groan, he entered me, crying out into the dark room.
“Ugh…!” he shouted in a long moan, and he withdrew and thrust himself in again, shuddering behind me before doing it again, building up his rhythm, and then he sped up, moving his hips faster against my ass so hard that the dresser I was resting against slammed against the wall repeatedly, and several items clattered to the floor.
The thought of how distracted he’d been when he came home clouded my mind again, and I clung to the edges of the table as he pounded me hard, tears falling down my cheeks despite trying to blink them away. Who the hell was this man behind me?
He held onto the back of my hair tightly, pulling at it with each thrust, as his groans got louder.
“Is this what you want?” he said deeply above me.
I nodded.
“Say it. Say you want me,” he demanded.
“I…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I couldn’t force myself to lie, because there was no way I wanted him like this.
He used his grip on my hair to turn my head towards him slightly.
“Kate, say you…” He noticed my tear stained cheeks and took his hand away from my head. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
He pulled out of me instantly and lowered his body to mine so he held me from behind, his face against the skin on my back.
We didn’t speak. He just held me, and every time I sniffed he held me tighter. We stayed that way for a moment until he pulled away and lifted me up in his arms. He carried me past his floor-to-ceiling windows by the bed that looked out at the pinks and purples of the New York skyline, and he put me down on his expensive sheets.
“Damnit, I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I just don’t know…”
I pulled him toward me, holding his head against mine.
“What happened today?” I asked softly, not expecting him to open up and tell me, but he pulled away to look into my eyes intently.
“I went to the medical center after work to see my mom,” he said, “and it was like seeing another woman. It was as though I didn’t even know her, and as I read to her and she fell asleep, it really hit me that the best and worst days of my life are almost upon me. I can’t feel happy about my wedding because she’s dying, and I can’t completely feel sad about losing her because I’m marrying you and…”
“You can feel anything you want,” I said, running my thumb over his jaw line. “That’s the beauty of life, Jonathan. We can feel both, and we can feel everything all at the same time. No one’s judging you.”
He pulled the blankets up and over us, sliding his body in behind mine and wrapping his arms around my waist.
I felt his lips press against the base of my neck.
“I’m sorry I hurt you tonight,” he whispered, his breath tickling my skin. “I shouldn’t have come home in that state and I shouldn’t have tried to have sex with you when I’m just feeling angry with the world. I’m sorry, Kate. I can’t begin to explain how sorry I am.”
“Shh, It’s okay.”
I snuggled back into him, enjoying the other side of his personality and savoring the raw sensitivity that he was exposing to me, and just as I felt myself drifting off to sleep safe and protected in his arms, his words enveloped me in a comforting embrace.
“I love you, Kate Williams.”
Everybody has flaws, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was undeniably the one.