Her hands flash out to grip my shoulders, and her hips slowly begin to move opposite the pull of the sash as she tries to chase the release. The strained moans she makes, the bite of her fingernails digging in my flesh, the heat of her ass rubbing back and forth on my bare thighs – all of it and then a thousand other things I can’t even put in words make me fall for her ten times harder than when her lips were wrapped around me.

Because there is something so damn powerful in making a woman come. With men, an orgasm is basically a given, but with women? As a man you have to work at making them climax, have to know where to stroke and just how hard to rub. It usually takes communication, a lot of trial and error before you learn each other’s bodies enough to not have to speak other than to praise and enhance the moment.

But with Beaux, she doesn’t have to instruct and I don’t have to ask. Our bodies just know, just respond and react without so much as a word exchanged between us.

I vary the pressure and speed as I pull and rub the sash along her body, my mouth closing around the peaks of her breasts as she arches her back when the pleasure starts to become too much for her body to absorb. Her legs tense over mine as her head falls forward onto my shoulder. Her control begins to give way to pleasure and incoherency. We remain like this for a single, powerful heartbeat of time with her teeth nipping my shoulder and my hands working her into a fever pitch.

And when she comes, her strained voice calling my name, her hips bucking wildly against my body, her wetness evident on my own thighs, the only thought that remains in my head is it doesn’t get any more powerful than this.

Physically.

And emotionally.

She’s my little piece of Heaven in this land full of Hell.

Chapter 17




The heat has my clothes plastered to my skin from sweat as the sounds and scents of the city around me permeate my pores and all five senses. It’s a feeling you think you’ll get used to the longer you spend on-site but never do. I’m pulling a Beaux, I think to myself with a smile as I walk through the city’s dilapidated streets, venturing out without telling anyone.

I needed the fresh air, the time to myself to sort some shit out in my head while finding a few things to complete the surprise I have planned for Beaux, because as much as it pains me to admit my sister was right, she was. Beaux and I are in a relationship. We may not have verbalized it, but I think I silently erased that fine line between dating and relationship a while ago and just pretended like I wasn’t looking. And as for the three words that most people hang their hat on, we may not have said them, but it doesn’t matter. When you spend almost every waking minute with someone – with as much time in the sheets as you spend talking and getting to know each other out of bed – over a several-month period, you’re in a relationship.

And since that’s the case, I figured I ought to up my game some in the boyfriend department. It must be a miracle, because for the second time in a day, I’m caving in to something Rylee said… I’m trying to manufacture an out-of-the-ordinary night for Beaux without anyone knowing.

She needs it. We need it. Something simple in nature but special at the same time. We’ve both been climbing the walls with boredom as we wait for a story, any story, even a human interest story. Anything besides rehashing the same shit ad nauseam, because as much as I don’t long for international conflict, there is no denying it prevents people in this instant-gratification day and age from flipping the channel to find something newer and more spectacular.

So I’ve got most of my night for Beaux planned. I’ve bribed the hotel manager with cash to help get the rest of the items I don’t have the ability to get myself. And now I’m just searching for the final few things while Beaux is back at the hotel sleeping in my bed with strict instructions for Pauly to interfere should she wake before I get back and wander downstairs to the lobby.

There is definite irony in the fact that I find myself sneaking out to wander the city’s streets at night.

But I’m so lost in thought, so consumed by Beaux’s and Ry’s comments, that when I look up, my feet falter when I notice where I’ve unconsciously veered. My breath catches in my throat as I stand in the one place I’ve yet to come since being back, the place where Stella died.

The market front looks so benign, nothing like the horrible nightmares that flash through my sleep every so often now. The smell of death is gone, the dark stains of blood nonexistent, the fear riddling through my soul absent. All I feel is a bone-deep sadness when I take in the open windows with wares hanging all around the canopy and the cart out front displaying random items – there’s not a single thing to commemorate the loss of someone so damn important to me.

Immediately, I long to walk away and quiet the images that keep coming back into my mind, but at the same time I can recognize that I need to face this for a moment, allow myself to say good-bye one last time in the one place where my world was turned upside down. Maybe then I can finish finding a bit of the peace that being with Beaux has allowed me to start to feel.

So instead, I take a step forward, my fingertips running over the woven bags and childish trinkets on the table, my eyes searching for any sign that Stella existed here. I know it’s stupid and that it won’t prove anything, but I feel like I need something to be here, to validate my grief in order to help lay it to rest. I begin rifling through the bags hanging off the canopy in front of the crumbling walls of the storefront. I tell myself I need a bag like this for Beaux’s surprise, but there’s no denying I’m reaching for an excuse until I find what I’m looking for.

Then I move closer and lean over the table, my hand reaching out so that my fingertip fits in the bullet hole that’s been left unrepaired in the store’s facade. My finger stays frozen there, the nightmares of that night colliding at a ferocious pace with the good memories of the ten years Stella was in my life until they crumble to pieces, falling with the guilt laid at my feet.

I inhale deeply through a clenched jaw and face all the emotion that’s overwhelming me right now, good, bad, and irrevocable. I shake my head softly, a soft smile on my face as I remember our last full night together. Our kiss. Our promise. That smile of hers and the friendship we had for so long.

“Good-bye, Stella,” I whisper, my words carried away in the sounds of the streets around me and the music coming through the store’s window before me. I hang my head for a moment and close my eyes. I’d be your once-in-a-lifetime, your goddamn everything if you’d come back.

But I know she can’t.

And I know that she was one of the most incredible people I’ll ever meet. I know that I’d live the lie if given the chance to make her happy even though I know now that she wasn’t my once-in-a-lifetime in return. I’d have been cheating the both of us of that chance to find it. Our friendship was the strongest one I’ve ever had the fortune to experience, but that sexual chemistry wasn’t strong like it should be.

Not like the way it is between Beaux and me.

So maybe that’s why I’m here. Maybe I’m saying good-bye to one woman so that I can give myself completely to another. And yes, Stella and I were more like siblings than a romantic couple, but when you’re that close to someone for so long, you still feel like you are cheating on them in a sense when you start to move on with someone new, sharing a friendship, your confessions, your laughter, your comfortable silence.

Once I’ve had my moment with her memory, holding on to the image in my mind of Stella laughing from behind her camera and shedding the horrible ones of that night as best as I can, I’m determined to leave the pain here and move forward with the happy memories.

With my head still angled down, I open my eyes, and something about the sight in front of me makes me smile. There is a bowl on the table filled with small bottles of bubbles. Although it’s amongst a hodgepodge of items, it’s such a welcome sight nonetheless because it brings up memories of Rylee and me growing up. Her theory at eight years old that blowing bubbles makes everything better because you can’t say the word bubble without smiling. How when the bullies in third grade picked on her when I was home sick from school one day, I brought out a bottle of bubbles to where she sat sniffling on the swings in the backyard and made her blow bubbles until she smiled. And then of course I went to school the next day and earned some detention for persuading them with my fists to not pick on my little sister again.

Or how, years later, after her eighth grade formal when she came home upset that no one had asked her to dance, I brought out a bottle of bubbles, again to the swings that hadn’t been used in years, and made her blow them until she laughed.

With a huge smile on my face, I immediately know that even though Beaux doesn’t know the significance of bubbles to me, she’d love them and the small piece of normality that they represent.

Besides, who doesn’t love bubbles?

With the bubbles and a colorful tote bag stuffed into my backpack so Beaux won’t see them, I leave the shop, the weight of grief a little lighter in my heart for the first time since Stella’s death. Glancing at my watch, I realize I need to get my ass back to the hotel before Beaux wakes up and discovers that I snuck out.