MY HANDS DIDN’T shake.
My heart didn’t race.
I pushed that doorbell with all the confidence in the world.
Within seconds, Michelle walked around the corner from the kitchen, freezing in her tracks when she saw me looking through the glass. She stood and stared for just a second before she pinched her lips together and came to the door.
“Hi!” I grinned as she opened it, walking right past her and into the kitchen.
I heard the door close, and she didn’t start yelling at me right away.
Already a good sign.
“How are you?” I asked nonchalantly as I started taking groceries out of the brown paper bag I’d brought and setting them on the island.
“Viper,” she sighed. “What is all this? What are you doing?”
“You haven’t had a cooking lesson in almost a month. I’m sure the kids are sick of pizza by now, so it’s time.” I glanced into the living room and down the hall toward Matthew’s playroom, frowning when I didn’t see anyone. “Speaking of the kids, where are they?”
“Matthew finagled Taylor into letting him sleep at her house tonight, and she thought she’d give me a break and take Maura too.”
“Even better.” I grinned at her, wiggling my eyebrows up and down.
“I’m so confused,” she mumbled, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples with her fingers.
While her eyes were shut, I stole a quick peek over at her. Her hair was damp from a recent shower, and she had on Wild sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt with no makeup. Frankly, she was one shopping cart full of crap away from passing for a homeless person, but I could not have found her more attractive than I did at that moment. It wasn’t about looks with her; it never had been. It was her heart I was in love with.
“What’s there to be confused about? We’re making chicken marsala.”
Her hands dropped to her sides in frustration. “You. Me. Us. This. I told you to leave and I meant it.”
“I did leave.” I shrugged. “And now I’m back.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Because why?” Her voice cracked, and that was all I needed to hear.
In one swift motion, I slid to my left and locked my hands on the counter on either side of her hips, closing her in with my arms. My face was inches from hers, our noses practically touching.
I stared her right in the eyes. I didn’t want her to just hear what I was about to say, I wanted her to see it too. To fucking feel it.
“Because I belong here. Because I belong with you. Because as much as you try to fight it, you know you belong with me too. Because somewhere in between hearing you sing to Maura, teaching you to make scrambled eggs, and dancing with you at that wedding, I fell in love with you.”
She took a shaky breath as a tear slowly rolled down her cheek.
I gently wiped it with my finger, holding it up in the air. “Because I want to make sure you never cry again.”
“But that night, after the wedding… you didn’t want me.” She swallowed and looked down at the ground.
“That’s not true. It’s not that I didn’t want you. Jesus, Michelle, all I’ve wanted for months is you. I didn’t want the guilt that came along with you, but fuck it. I’m ready. I’ll deal with the guilt every day for the rest of my life if it means I get to wake up and you’re still mine.”
“Really?” Her voice cracked again as tears flooded her eyes. Tears of guilt. Tears of relief. Tears of hope.
“Yes. Really. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my whole life.” I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her so tight against me I could feel her heart beating on my chest. “I have no idea what the future holds. But I do know that I’ve never wanted to try with another person before. Just try. Put all the other bullshit to the side and really, really try.”
She was quiet for a minute, and I started to worry that maybe I’d misread her tears.
“I wasn’t drunk,” she finally mumbled into my shoulder.
“Huh?”
“The night of the wedding, I wasn’t drunk.” She pulled back and stared up at me. “I had two drinks, but by the time I got home, I was barely even buzzed anymore.”
“So you kissed me because—”
“Because I wanted to finish what I’d started. I still do.” She raised up on her tippy toes and ran her nose along my jawline. “I’ll deal with the guilt too. I’m sure it’ll be hard, but nowhere near as hard as trying to convince myself that I don’t love you too.”
Something in me broke, and I just didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t fight the urge to kiss her one more fucking second.
I cupped her cheek in my hand and angled it up toward me, pressing my lips hard against hers. She sighed and leaned into me. We didn’t move our lips. We didn’t move our tongues. We didn’t move at all. We just stood there, connected… finally.
That didn’t last too long. Not only had neither of us had sex in a very long time, but the buildup between the two of us was at a complete boiling point. The minute she shoved her hands up the back of my T-shirt and I felt her nails on my back, every nerve in my body sprang to life. I’d seen scenes in movies where a couple kisses for the first time and they show a series of shorts clips—fireworks going off, a band marching, a tea kettle whistling—I was all of those things combined, and multiplied by a thousand.
For the first time in my life I had no clue what to do with my hands. I didn’t want to just fuck Michelle; I wanted to show her how much I loved her. I wanted to touch her everywhere, all at the same time.
We moved slow, our lips flowing in sync like we’d been kissing each other our whole lives. With my one hand still on the side of her face, I moved the other one to her hip, gripping it softly. She sucked on my bottom lip, pulling it in and gently pinching it between her teeth.
“If you don’t touch me soon, I’m gonna explode,” she said with my lip still between her teeth.
I tugged my lip back and grinned at her. “I’m gonna do more than touch you, but you’re right—you are gonna explode.”
I dropped to my knees and quickly pulled her sweats down to the floor. She stepped out of them and flung them off to the side. I started kissing the top of her feet, slowly making my way up her lower legs to her inner thighs. Even from my knees, I could hear her breathing hard. I grabbed the edges of her panties and pulled them down. Light pink and lacy as hell. I expected nothing less from her.
She stepped out of those too and moved them off to the side with her sweats, but before she could put her second leg back down on the floor, I decided to throw rule number two out the window. I lifted her leg, hooked it over my shoulder, and sank my tongue right into her. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her hands as they gripped the edge of the counter. Her head fell back and she moaned out loud. Really, really loud. The leg that was still on the ground started to shake, and I knew she was right there, but I was nowhere near done with her. My tongue licked and rubbed against her clit until she shoved her hands into my hair and started to convulse, calling out my name over and over.
Once her leg stopped quivering, I pulled back and stood up, softly setting her other leg on the ground.
“That was…” She peered at me with a glazed look in her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t…”
“We’re not done.” I bent down and possessed her mouth again as I cupped both sides of her face. There was no music playing, but we started swaying back and forth as if there were. This girl kissed me in a way that made me forget kissing even existed before her.
“Come here.” She took my hand and started pulling me toward the living room.
“Wait.” I squeezed her hand and tugged back. “Not in there. Please.”
“Upstairs?” She grinned at me as she chewed on the inside of her lip.
I nodded, desperate to get that lip back in my mouth. “Here, hop on.” I turned around and squatted.
“A piggyback ride? Are you serious?” She laughed.
Turning my head to the side just a tad, I ordered, “I’m all kinds of worked up, so unless you wanna do it right here on the wood floor, hop on.”
She giggled as she sprang onto my back, and I took the stairs two at a time.
“Take a left,” she mumbled as she kissed my neck with the lightest flicks of her tongue, sending shivers all the way down my back.
Once I got into her bedroom, I walked straight to the bed and turned around, dumping her off backward as she let out a playful squeal. She crawled backward up the bed, staring me straight in the eye as she moved. I yanked my T-shirt over my head and pushed my pants and boxers off even faster, grabbing the condom out of my pocket.
Rule number one. Always. Until it’s on purpose.
“You brought that with you tonight?” she asked with a raised eyebrow, watching as I rolled the condom down my shaft. “Someone was very confident, huh?”
“It has nothing to do with confidence.” I kissed her collarbone. What was it about her damn collarbone that drove me insane? “But I did know I was coming here to tell you I loved you, and I was pretty sure if you felt even half as strong about me as I feel about you, we’d end up here.”
Michelle lay back on the bed and lifted my face up to kiss her again.
“Hang on a sec.” I pulled her up to a sitting position, dragged her T-shirt over her head, and tossed it off to the side. “Much better.” My mouth connected with her nipple as soon as she lay back on the bed.
I was ready. I was more than ready. So far past foreplay it wasn’t even funny at that point.
As soon as she was on her back, I nudged her legs apart with my knee and positioned myself on top of her. I leaned on my elbow for a second and brushed the hair off of her forehead, looking into her eyes.
“What?” she asked in a worried tone as she ran her nails up and down my side.
“I don’t know. Just… this. You. It’s incredible.” I kissed the tip of her nose. She smiled and pulled me down for a kiss, softly gasping into my mouth as I slid inside of her. We continued kissing while I moved in and out, picking up speed. Her nails dug into my back and she started moaning again, turning her face to the side as she closed her eyes. I knew she was close.
“Open your eyes. Look at me,” I said in between pants. “I wanna watch you. I want you to look right at me when you come.”
Her eyes opened and her brows pulled in tight, making the most erotic face.
“I love you, Michelle.”
“I love you too,” she whispered, breathing heavier. “Oh God!” She curled into me a little as her body went still, and I pumped harder and harder, determined to push her over the edge again. “Viper! Oh shit!” She pinched her eyes shut.
“Look at me. Please. I need to see you.” I’d never felt what I felt in that moment during sex. Before Michelle, sex was just something I did to feel good and fill up time, but with her and with feelings involved, it brought it to a whole new level. Beyond intense.
She opened her eyes again and clamped down on her bottom lip as she came around me, each pulse of her pussy bringing me closer and closer. Finally, I felt my balls tighten, and that was it. I stared back into her eyes and lowered my forehead to hers as I came harder than I’d ever come in my whole life. I grunted, groaned, and told her I loved her two more times before I was done. As soon as I was finished, my body went limp. I was exhausted. I took the condom off and cleaned up before hurrying back to bed with her.
“Should we get up and get dressed?” she asked after we’d lain in bed, hugging each other for about ten minutes.
“No,” I said sternly. “Now that I’ve seen you naked, I’d like you to be that way as often as possible, please.” I kissed her temple, leaving my mouth there.
She laughed and I rolled over, propping myself up on my elbow. “I wasn’t kidding.” I shook my head.
“Well,”—she rolled over and faced me—“I’m thinking that might make Matthew ask a few questions I’m not ready to answer yet, so I suppose you’ll just have to wait until he goes to bed every night.”
I tucked a stubborn piece of hair behind her ear. “You bet your ass we’re gonna do that every night… and every nap time… and when he’s watching TV… and when he’s outside playing…”
“Easy.” She laughed. “I’d like to be able to walk regularly.”
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Starving!” she said dramatically.
“Well, seeing as how I’m too fucking exhausted to cook any of the stuff I brought with me, wanna order a pizza?”
“Very fitting. I would love to.” She chuckled to herself. “And… I can think of something to keep us busy for the half hour until the delivery man gets here.”