18
My heart is aflame, and my body is boiling with need; my mind is whirling, and my soul is a maelstrom.
All I know, in this moment, is Jamie. His hands scrape across my cheeks, and his lips seek mine with ravenous fervor. His body is hard and close, but not close enough. Yet, still within me is an awareness of all that’s coiled and tangled between us.
I can’t process it—the pregnancy, his declaration of love.
I’ve put off this hunger for him for too long, pushing it away and tamping it down again and again, ignoring it, pretending it’s not there—and now the bill is due.
I NEED HIM. I can’t deny it any longer. I need his kiss, his mouth, his hands, his skin. His heat, his body. Him. Just him. Whatever else may happen or not happen, I need this. I’m sober and aware, and no longer numb.
The pendulum has swung to the other extreme—I’m awash with emotions, and they’re consuming me. They require expression. I can’t put this aside, I can’t pretend it’s not happening.
I have no choice but to give over to it.
Everything.
Myself, my needs and desires.
Jamie pulls away, staring into my eyes. “Elyse…”
Tears still slip and stream down my cheeks, but I can’t stop them. And I don’t even try. “Jamie, I’m just—I’m…” I shake my head and whisper, “Kiss me. And don’t stop.”
“I’m not going to use sex as a way of avoiding talking about feelings, Elyse,” Jamie murmurs.
I laugh through tears. “I have too many feelings right now, Jamie. I need physical feelings. I need you, I need—this. Please. I have a million things to say to you, and I swear I’ll say them. I just need…I need to connect with you like this first.”
His eyes search me. “I just told you I love you.”
“And now I’m asking you tomakelove to me,” I whisper, although it’s nearly more of a hiss than a whisper. “I’m begging you, too. I’m too—overwhelmed by everything to know what tosay. All I can do right now is—is try toshowyou.”
“You’re not saying no, though?” His voice is low, as if he’s holding back powerful emotions from flooding over him.
I shake my head, pass my hand through his hair and scrape the other hand up his back, under his button-down shirt. “No, I’m not saying no.”
“You can’t say it back, though.”
I laugh again. “I’m saying I—” I burst into laughter, and then fumble and rip at his button-down, get it off, and throw it aside and rake my hands over his chest. “I’m saying I need this before I can figure out what I want to say or how to say it.”
He captures my wrists in his hands and holds them between us, his lips grazing mine, his eyes hot and wild. “One last thing, Elyse.”
“What?” I breathe.
“You have my heart in your hands. I’ve never been as vulnerable with anyone in my life as I am with you right now. So just…don’t play with me, okay? Don’t—” He exhales on a shudder. “Please, don’t hurt me—don’t break my heart, Elyse.”
I don’t know how else to make him understand that I have no words just now. They’re jumbled and whirling and clotted in my head and my heart, blotted out and blinded by the white-hot nuclear flash of wild need that currently eclipses all else. I’m literally vibrating with need. I feel too much need to feel something real and physical and true.
I push him backward onto the bed and plant kisses on his chest, over his ribs, across his belly. He sucks his stomach in and reaches for me, grazing fingers over my spine but not quite daring to touch me fully just yet. It is as if he is afraid still of taking this, of letting himself have this. Maybe afraid of waking up from a dream he’s had a million times before, only to wake up alone.
I understand more than he can know.
I palm his chest and scour his shoulders with my hands as I kiss my way down his body, and then, when my lips reach the waist of his once-pressed and now-wrinkled khakis, I trail my fingertip down his chest and over his navel, pausing at the closure of his pants. His stomach is concave, sucked in with anticipation. I gaze up at him over the plane of his body, meeting his eyes. Unbutton, unzip. I hook my fingers in the elastic of his underwear and pull them away from his body. He lifts his hips off the bed, and I yank his khakis off, along with his underwear.
He’s waiting for me, hot and thick and long and hard, and I gasp with need, groan with anticipation. He is utterly still, waiting, as if he can’t believe this is happening. I remember what he told me about his ex, and remember that the last time we were together like this we were both half-drunk, filters and inhibitions flooded and overcome by booze. But I remember every single moment, even the half-asleep moments in the early dawn light that resulted in the child inside me.
I remember it all with stark clarity.
I want it all, and I want more.
