Chapter Fifteen
“We’re doing this?” I pant out the words and throw my arm onto my forehead.
A giant grin pulls across Tara’s face. “Looks like we are.”
I suck in air trying to regain my breath. For nearly three weeks we’ve been back and forth between our two places with Jango trailing behind. Take out and movies and dinners and even a play at the Geffen. This, our thing, has become a relationship. A real relationship.
She turns toward me and lies on her side. Her hair mussed from our exertions this morning. My gaze lingers over the perfection that is her body. My wonderland. I take a deep breath and know that I am happier now than I’ve been in what feels like forever. I sigh and press a kiss to her nose. Fear creeps along my spine because there are still conversations to be had, things that need to be said, a past that needs to be dealt with, but I don’t want to believe anything can come between us.
“So my mom wants us to come for dinner.”
The past roars at me and I flop onto my back.
“Come on, she’s been asking since that day in Malibu, now that she knows we’re spending so much time together.”
I press my hand to my forehead. This. Now. This moment would be the perfect time to tell Tara about Wonderfuck and her mom. I have to tell her, don’t I? Is it possible that this could remain a little secret between Mrs. Jennings and myself? A part of my past that remains in my past? No. She has to know. Needs to know. I roll to my side and gaze into her eyes. They are a brilliant blue and filled with joy.
My stomach squeezes. I’ve seen this kind of joy before. This is a joy that includes love, and visions of a future that we both want.
Susie. Susie’s eyes held this joy when she was in recovery, and we’d discuss our house, our future kids, and everything we wanted to accomplish together. I never thought I’d get to see that kind of joy in another woman’s gaze, especially a gaze directed at me. “Tara, I…” I start speaking with the intention of telling her what happened between her mother and me. I sigh. Shit. I shake my head a little and surrender to the fact that I’m not strong enough in this moment to ruin that look of joy. I press my lips to her forehead, then pull away and look into her eyes.
“Of course I’ll go. Just tell me when.”
“Thank you.” She presses her lips to mine. The warmth in her kiss makes me hard but it also makes my heart warm.
Is it possible to re-grow a heart because in the last three weeks it felt as though mine was nearly whole.
“Thank you. You know I love you.”
She says it with such an earnestness and a truth, that I know her words are real. And my heart that I’ve been re-building and stitching back together over time, and really if I’m fucking honest probably since the night in the hall when she was holding that damn wedding dress and I knew something was wrong even though she didn’t tell me. I’ve been piecing my heart back together and working through my past for this very moment.
I look at Tara and I think it. I know it. And I say it, too. “I love you, too.”
Her smiles widens. Her hand is on the side of my face and her lips press to mine. Now this heat between us isn’t just about feeling happy with the other person. No. This heat between us is more, much more, and my cock is hard and pressed against her.
That sigh, with a little moan that I’ve heard over and over again, comes from her lips. That tiny little sound makes my belly clench tight because it’s that very sound that tells me each time that she’s pleased and I’m wanted. Her desire ripples through her body like desire ripples through mine.
And it’s more than desire. So now, here, when we fuck, it’s not just fucking. It’s become more than fucking, more than wonderfucking. It’s become this beautiful, passionate event between the two of us that has taken on more than this physical act has meant to me in the past. What happens between me and Tara is more than a vocation, it’s a dominion. She has dominion over my body and my soul. A duet of two lives. A desire that is intertwining and brilliant and magical and can only be called making love.
Her hand slips down over my belly and her fingertips trail along my flesh until she has my cock in her hand. She strokes down and my breath flows from my body. Her mouth opens to mine and our tongues tangle and tease.
I rise up above her knowing that the need I feel she feels too. My lips pull from hers and our eyes latch onto each other. She is here, beneath me, with her blue eyes that mesmerize me, and her mouth open in this beautiful pleasure.
“I want you so much.”
And my cock glides into her heat, her warm, sensuous heat. I am enveloped by her silky, velvet warmth that surrounds my cock and I lose my self in the wet hot heat that is her. I slide in and out of her, both of us reveling in the pleasure of skin-to-skin contact. My cock in her sex.
Fuck. My body can’t contain this pleasure and my body is stone.
“Oh Jake.” Her muscles clench around me and pull me tight and deeper into her sex. I press forward and with one final thrust my body stiffens and heat rips through me. Heat jets from my body rip into hers.
“Tara!” I yell her name. A prayer and a plea on my lips as I come.
***
“The beach today?”
“That’s the plan,” I say, and continue filling the cooler with ice.
“Could we ask Lily and Rachel?”
I stop. I take a breath. Asking Lily and Rachel to join us at the beach makes what Tara and I are doing, real. Bringing my family into the mix makes everything we’re doing real.
“The Malibu house is empty. What if we have them meet us there and then we play, grill, hang out? They could even spend the night if they wanted.”
This is a huge gift, in fact this is one of the first things I thought of the very first time I visited Tara in Malibu: What a great place for a family to hang out and spend time together. What Mom and Dad’s house was to Rachel and me before all the ghosts that now inhabit our life and our childhood home.
“If you don’t want to ask the—”
“Of course I do.” I walk from the kitchen to the dining room table and grab my phone. I punch in the speed dial for Rachel, smile at Tara, and ignore the panic clutching my insides.
***
“This house is amazing!” Rachel says. She drops her overnight bag on the floor just inside the open sliders that lead to the deck and the ocean that is steps beyond. “Seriously, if I had this, I don’t think I’d ever leave.”
She turns toward me and Tara. We unload groceries we picked up for today and tonight. In Rachel’s smile I see a question. Because of course she has questions. She hasn’t seen Tara and me together, and yet here we are functioning like a couple. Tara turns toward the fridge to load in the cheese, and Rachel raises her palms in the universal ‘what the hell is going on’ symbol.
I smile and fight back a laugh. Walk closer to Tara and nuzzle my face into her hair. “Rachel’s confused, shall we let her in on us?” I’m getting hard and realize that I won’t be able to do a damn thing about it, which is highly unusual, because Tara and I have gotten into this amazing habit of simply having sex whenever we want.
Tara shuts the refrigerator door, smiles at me, and together we turn to Rachel, who is back to pretending nothing is going on by staring out the open sliders at Lily who is on the deck brushing Jango.
I wind my fingers through Tara’s fingers and walk toward Rachel.
“We’re dating,” I say.
“I guessed as much,” Rachel says, and smiles. “I’m happy for you because I really think the two of you make a good couple.”
She pulls Tara in for a hug.
“We’ve kind of been seeing how it works, the last few weeks,” Tara adds.
“And it does? Work?” Rachel asks.
“Really well,” I say.
This knot in my chest slips apart. I feel it almost as though it’s a real entity. Suddenly, this tightness is gone, and I glance out to the deck where Lily sits beside Jango. I squeeze Tara’s hand and look at Rachel, who has a real smile on her face, and I wonder and hope and pray that all the pain of the last six years is finally behind us. Yes, there will be sadness and hiccups and bumps but maybe, just maybe, we’re all ready to have some simple joy and peace and this day, this night, is the start of all of that for us.
“Mommy can I go into the water?”
“Bean, I’ll take you,” I say. I walk to the sliders and bend down and grab one of Jango’s balls. “Guess who loves to swim?” I ask Lily and point toward Jango.
“Oooh!” Lily claps and jumps up and down with the excitement of having Jango and me in the ocean with her.
“My god, I’m going to end up with a fucking dog,” I hear Rachel mutter under her breath. Quietly enough so that Lily, who is already back on the deck with Jango, can’t hear her.
“That was always my plan, sister, dear.” I scoot out of the house before she can find anything hard to hit me with.