“Four Walls” Broods
God, AJ feels good. And I don’t mean when he kissed me roughly in front of everyone, or when he slithered around me while we played pool. I don’t even mean how his sturdy body holds me so completely as he gives me a piggyback ride on the walk home from Trigg’s. It’s just him looking out on the night with me that feels positively beautiful.
Crosby is running circles around his feet but it does nothing to slow AJ’s steady steps as they crunch in the snow. His thumbs trace circles on my thighs where he holds me, adding a whisper of cowhide gloves against the denim of my jeans.
“AJ, stop,” I whisper then lean in to kiss his neck where it’s barely exposed above his jacket collar. “The Christmas tree.”
He knows what I’m asking and he detours from the sidewalk toward the giant tree Willow Creek erects each year. The behemoth is trucked in on a flatbed semi, slipped into a manhole in the middle of town where it takes up the width of an already far too wide street. For a few days, it just fits in with the painfully quaint and snowy street but then it gets blanketed in lights. That’s when it becomes magic.
And tonight…
Carefully, AJ sets me on my feet in front of the glowing pine. He stands with his arms crossed knowing what comes next. Crosby is running in his small little circles but now around me as I kneel down into the snow. I catch AJ’s smirk as I lay down underneath the tree as if I’m on a living room carpet rather than the snow-covered street.
“Come down here,” I say as I pat the snow beside me, Crosby weaving around my hand and darting to the trunk and back.
“Camilla,” he scolds me, dragging out my name but I can already hear his boots on the snow as he walks toward me.
A moment later, and with a heavy sigh tinged with laughter, he folds down onto the ground next to me. And when Crosby bounds over to lick AJ’s face, he pulls the dog onto his chest the way he always did with Gretzky. I scoot toward them at the same time he reaches for me and nuzzle into the crook of his shoulder.
“It’s beautiful down here,” AJ murmurs but the way his lips brush my forehead tells me exactly where he’s looking.
I let my eyes wander, taking in every tiny detail, praying I remember the way he feels every bit as much as the way the tree looks when snow starts falling through the softly lit pine branches.
“I always liked to look at things a little bit differently,” I say as I study how gold and green and red and blue lights cast their shadows on softly swirling flakes then both dust onto AJ. His eyelashes are coated with brilliant little twinkles and his pout is speckled in the reflection of Christmas above us.
He shifts a few times beneath me, keeping up his gentle petting of Crosby, but then he blows out a deep breath and I realize it’s because he shifting under the weight of something that is neither me nor the terrier.
“Do we look different from down here, by chance?” His words are barely louder than a breath.
I bury my head into his chest, making room amidst the layers wrapped tightly around the sculpted muscles I’ve rediscovered. We both know the answer. We knew it before it was even a question forming on our lips. It started clanging like warning bells days ago but we kept up with the cuddling, and the kisses, and the, well, decidedly un-kissing and un-cuddling, anyway.
“We look like Christmas.” My words are shaky at best. “It’s magical, pure and perfect, but it can’t last. It probably wouldn’t be the wonder it is if we could make it.”
We sat under that tree until the city lights flickered off, leaving both our backsides numb and achy. Silence had filled every space between us since my words had hung frosty in the night air. Neither of us had been brave enough to break it. Not as we climbed out from beneath the branches, walked the last few blocks or even when we slipped through the door and into his living room.
I’m not exactly comfortable with the silence but I’m not going to break it either. The dead air leaves me listening to heartbeats—mine, his. And them beating together in a dark night is better than nothing, better than the soundless hollow my chest is likely to become in the next few days. Or weeks? Years? The familiar rhythm is going to be replaced by the heave of my sobs.
But AJ’s hands come to my body, turning me to face him. He cradles me so gently as he leans in for a kiss. I forget the lingering fear and surrender to him, bowing into his body. The second he feels me go putty in his hands, he wraps one to the back of my head and the other to the small of my lower back. His fingers dig into the down of my jacket in a way that cuts through the poof. Cuts through me.
I moan into his open mouth and he uses the opportunity to slip his tongue in. It’s dancing with mine, stealing breaths, stealing my balance, too. When I truly go weak in the knees, AJ backs me toward the edge of the couch. As soon as it presses against my thighs, I sit back onto the perch. His mouth doesn’t leave mine.
His hands do though. They find their way to my zipper, trembling enough to wiggle the fabric against my skin as he unzips. Slow. So incredibly slow. And in sharp contrast to the ferocity that he kisses me with. Like he’s devouring and savoring me all at once. Like I am a Christmas gift to unwrap.
One last gift. One last time.
“Anything you want,” I breathe. “Everything you want.”
He steps back and hurt flashes in his eyes. For a moment he studies me, words obvious on the tip of his tongue, but he stays quiet. After far too long and not nearly enough time, he swiftly shoves my jacket from my shoulders and rushes back to my body, whispering you in my ear.
In that moment, I am a mirror. I want him. Every fiber of him. My very soul needs him, every kiss, every grip, the most exquisite torture. A thousand kisses, a million whisper touches, and the endless valley of forever wouldn’t be enough for me. Me. But for us, for who we’ve become while we’d been apart…
I have to hold the tears in. I have to hold the overwhelming urge to rage against fate, too. My lips sweeping across the stubble blanketing his strong jaw and the taut muscles of his neck will have to satisfy the emotion shredding my insides. My fingers tremble against his zipper as badly as his had on mine.
When I start onto the buttons of his flannel and fumble the way only Cam Collins can, AJ seamlessly takes over. His shirt is off, sliding over his shoulders, his muscles rippling in that sinful way for just a flash, then his hands are back on me. On my sweater, tugging. Cool air kisses my stomach a moment before AJ’s lips find the swell of my breasts.
My head rolls back as my hands find their way into his hair and hold him to my chest. Not that I think he’s going anywhere but I can’t talk myself out of touching him. Out of being the body he so willingly indulges in.
“Camilla,” he groans in between his cherishing kisses and I can’t help but moan in response. “My Camilla,” he repeats as he goes lower, his tongue lapping at the smoke of my tattoo as it laps at me.
I can’t say anything. I can’t think. My world has narrowed to his kisses and the only thing outside of it, are the tiny outer planets created by his fingertips. I don’t even notice he’s removed my bra until his mouth is firmly latched on my breast.
His hair is silky where I’ve all too roughly fisted into it. His lips are just as soft where they brush across my skin. It’s his teeth that are small little lightning strikes flashing through my body.
Then it’s the couch digging into my hip bones when he flips me, smoothly bending me over the back I’d been sitting on. My hands shoot out to brace my body, but just as quickly as he turns me, his hands appear back at my breasts. He rolls my nipples between his fingers as he kisses down my spine. Down every single inch.
I let my head hang, partially to watch his hands where they work me over, partially because my body is going limp against the upholstery. I don’t realize how lax it is until his hands disappear and I all but fall forward. A deep raspy chuckle behind me precedes hands on my waistband. Goose bumps trail in his wake, pulling denim down lower and lower, revealing all of me.
Gently he slides off my shoes followed by the fabric bunched around my ankles. Then his mouth appears between my legs. His tongue is in sharp contrast to the tender way he undressed me. For fuck’s sake, it’s assaulting me. All of me. There’s not an inch between my thighs he doesn’t explore with nips, with licks, little thrusts. And when he goes up…
“Jay,” I moan—no, whine from the very depths of the lust churning wildly in my soul.
“Did you mean everything, Lamb?” His words puff hot against the most intimate bits of me, of my backside, and I’m sure I’d twitch or flinch if I had any strength left to do so.
I haven’t done anything like what he’s asking of me. I am surprised he wants it because AJ from high school never did, never asked. But I have to stop comparing him and his past. I have to stop clinging to what he’d been, what we could have been. I have to seize the last few moments, the last few heartbeats, of now.
My words are soft, hushed, brushing like silk against the fabric of the couch. “Be gentle with me, Jay.”
And with that, he takes absolutely everything I have left to give.