Love and Other Words

Elliot comes to a stop in a tight thicket of olive trees, turning to stare at me. This far out the sound of crickets is deafening; the wedding party is a distant buzz. I imagine we walked half a mile away, down a wide path that went from manicured, to dusty, to farmland.

Jesus Christ, where do we start?

I want to start with touching.

He might want to start with words, and explanations, and apologies—mine and his. There’s still so much I need to tell him.

His chest rises and falls with the force of his breath, and my own lungs seem to be flapping around inside me, struggling to pull in air.

I expect him to say something, but instead he just falls to his knees in front of me, wrapping his arms around my hips and pressing his face to my stomach. Frozen for a moment, I stare down at the top of his head, trying to translate the shaking of his shoulders.

He’s crying.

“No, no,” I whisper. My hands go into his hair, tilting his face to me, and I lower myself, push him back against a tree, crawl down to him, over him until his face is right up against mine, so close he’s blurry. So close he’s the only thing I can see. I slide his glasses up over his forehead and off his face, placing them carefully in the grass nearby.

“What are we doing?” he whispers.

“I missed you.” I bend, kissing his neck, his jaw.

He pulls me back by my shoulders, and I watch two heavy tears roll over his cheekbone. “I thought I would never touch you again.”

“I thought that, too.”

He bites his lower lip, eyes wide. “I’ll take anything you give me. Is that pathetic?”

I lean in, lips touching his, inhaling the clean smell of his aftershave, the sharp scent of grass, needing oxygen to stay conscious for all of this.

His mouth opens against mine, and he sits up with a sharp inhale, hands cupping my jaw again. Urgently, he comes back for more, tilting his head, biting and sucking, and I need deeper, more. I need all of him. His moans are muted by my lips and teeth and breath. His hands come up beneath my dress, pushing it to my waist while I tug his bow tie loose, unbuttoning his shirt.

Cold fingers slide up the inside of my thigh. His chest is so warm under my hands, though, and I dig in, sliding my palms over his collarbone and down to his stomach, wanting to feel every inch.

He grunts out some unintelligible words when he feels me through my underwear. And then his fingers slide up my navel, carefully digging down inside the lace, and I push up to my knees above him, helping give him access to the place I need his touch more than I need anything else in the galaxy.

“Are you wet like this for me?” he asks, pulling back to look up at my face. His fingers push into me, thumb stroking. “This is me?”

I nod and his disbelief is contagious; it’s what makes every touch feel amplified, makes me move with him, biting him while he touches me. It’s what sends my body up a tight spiral staircase, one destination, just there, just two strokes higher. Two more.

“Ell.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to come.”

His smile curves the single word: “Good.”

I fumble for him, his belt, his zipper.

“Wait,” I tell my body. “Oh God, I’m close.”

Wait.

Hold on. Wait.

He doesn’t stop what he’s doing when he pulls back and looks up at my face. “You want . . . ?”

His fingertips glide over me, tighter, faster.

Clumsily, I dig in, finding the heavy heat of him, closing my hand around it, shifting so I’m there, tilting him up, making him wet with me.

He groans as he sinks in, and the sound hits me somewhere ancient and savage.

The relief of it—of him thick and hungry, finally sliding deep in and out of me—is a melting star, spreading fire into my bloodstream. He gasps that he doesn’t want to come, never wants to come, doesn’t ever want to stop. I’m already on the sharp edge, and our instant, frantic fucking gets me there through a jagged set of thrusts. Him up, me over.

The crickets and Elliot go quiet at the sharp, aching cries tearing out of me.

In the silence that follows, I can feel the drum of his pulse where my lips meet his throat. But then his hands come to my jaw, cupping, tilting my face to his.

“Yeah?” he whispers. I nod in his hands, feeling the weight of him inside me. “Holy mother of God,” he says into a kiss, “this is unreal.”

Everything narrows down to the tiny shifts of my hips over his, and the soft sucking kisses. I’m barely moving. Just rocking, squeezing. It means I’m not expecting the tight way he tells me he’s close.

I press the question against his lips: “Do you want me to stop?”

“Only if you’re not on something.” His tongue meets mine and he groans. “Macy, honey, I’m so close.”

I’m not sure why it’s this moment that makes the reality sink in, that we’re making love, still mostly dressed, somewhere in the gardens at his brother’s wedding. But when Elliot comes, I want his hands and the cool, humid air on my skin, not on the crushed silk of my dress. Every time we’ve touched each other, we’ve been mostly dressed.

I reach back, unzipping, pushing the straps off my shoulders and quickly doing away with the tiny strapless bra. My dress falls to my waist.

His mouth is there, and his words of approval—for the heat and sweetness of me, for the feel of my breasts on his tongue. Against my belly is the scratch of his open, starched shirt, and inside I feel him climb, feel him need more than the gentle shifting he’s getting, and his hands find my breasts, holding them for his open mouth.

We are a crescendo again, faster now, I’m bouncing on him three,

oh

four five six times

“Fuck.”

He bites me,

wild.

“Yes.”

Elliot stills me when his iron grip drops to my hips, and he’s jerking into me, his mouth open, teeth bared on my breast.

It will leave a mark.

But even after he’s finished he grazes his teeth back and forth, tongue stroking the tight peak, soothing the site of his gentle attack. I feel the way he spasms still. His breaths are tight puffs of air against my breast.

My fingers make a tangle in his hair, holding him to me. Goose bumps spread across my skin as his hands slide around, cupping my backside, holding me tight against him.

He came inside me.

He’s still inside me.

What did we just do?

And how have I gone this long without him?

Making love to him suddenly feels vital, like air and water and warmth.

He turns his face up to mine, expectantly, and it’s only a tiny shift forward for my mouth to meet his in this new, lazy relief.

It’s both familiar and foreign. His skin is coarser with stubble, his lips stronger. Inside me, I know, he’s thicker.

I start to move off him—worried about making a mess of his tuxedo—but he holds me steady, his hips to mine. “Not yet,” he says against my mouth. “I want to stay here. I still don’t believe this is happening.”

“Me either.” I am lost in the lazy sweep of his tongue, the tiny kisses that melt into deeper ones.

“I might want to do it again.”

I smile. “Me too.”

He moves his mouth to my neck, his left hand coming up to cup my breast.

“Is it weird,” I begin, “that I felt like I was having sex with someone new and old at the same time?”

This makes him laugh, and he bends, kissing my chest. Leaning back, he whispers, “Want to know something even weirder?”

My eyes fall closed. “I want to know everything.”

And for the first time in over a decade, I really do.

“It was years before I was with someone other than you. You were the only woman I was with until I was . . . well, for a long time.”

His words hit the blank wall of my sex haze, and then dread falls over me like blackness.

“I’ve loved you my whole life,” Elliot continues, his lips moving against my collarbone. Slowly, I open my eyes, and he looks up at me. “At least from the minute I ever thought about love, and sex, and women.”

He’s still inside me.

He smiles, and the moonlight catches the sharp angle of his jaw. “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. It took a long time before I wanted anyone else, physically, at all.”

It’s a little like being in the eye of a tornado. All around me, things are happening, but inside my head, it’s so quiet.

At my silence, his eyes widen first, and then fall closed. “Oh, my God. I just realized what I’ve said.”