I fight not to move. A couple of pumps in her and it’s going to be over. Oh shit, I’m that fucking hard and we haven’t even started this. The surface of my body is twitching and burning.
“I’ve missed you, baby.” I run my teeth along her earlobe. “Show me you’ve missed me, too.”
My hand moves upward to her perfect breasts as I hold myself still, in agony. Fucking dick-ripping agony. I run the calluses of my fingertips over her nipples.
“Oh God.” She whimpers and is trembling in want and dripping wet. I knead and tease the fullness of her breasts, gliding my lips on her neck. She groans, pushing back against my pelvis and my body responds, meeting the urgings of her repeated, anxious moves.
She starts to pant and her hips move in time with my rhythm, and what I planned to do just died a fast death.
“I love you, Chrissie,” I tell her as I sink myself into her over and over again.
I increase the pace. The surfaces of our bodies are covered with sweat, we are both quivering and straining into each other.
“I want it harder, Alan.”
She’s desperate. She is on fire. She needs me, misses me as much as I miss her when we’re apart. Knowing that is a good thing, feeling it is a fucking hot, out of my mind, flesh-searing thing.
I pull out, leaving just the head of my cock in her. Her limbs start trembling and I know she’s on the edge. I slam into her, balls deep, and she shudders around me and screams my name.
It’s my undoing. I plunge into her over and over again, my cum shooting from me in a torrent, my body unrelenting in its need to pound in her, until I’m drained and collapsed against her back.
I don’t pull out of her. I want to stay buried inside her as long as I can and she’s curled in a ball, ass into me, hugging her pillow. She’s exhausted, too. Her eyes are closed. I bury my face in the curve of her neck and shoulder. I’m still hard enough to keep this going, to do it the way I should have, slow and tender and consuming.
I kiss her shoulder, nipping lightly before I ease back and lift up on an arm. I slowly turn her onto her back, and my mouth drops to her pelvis. My hands lightly move up the tops of her thighs. I kiss her mound, then breathe deeply the scent of her. I run my tongue around her clit, close but not touching that spot that ignites her. I let out a breath. Her body shimmies.
Her fingers snake in my hair, clenching my waves, and she abruptly lifts my face from her. Those enormous blue orbs flash at me.
“Why didn’t you call me?” she whispers raggedly. “You don’t know what it’s like for me when you’re on the road. It’s awful when you’re gone. It’s like I can’t breathe or think, like someone has hit a pause button on me until you’re back again. But it is worse when I can’t reach you. I go crazy when I can’t reach you.”
Oh fuck. Her eyes are wide open, alertly studying me and filled with hurt. Hurt, so much worse than angry Chrissie. Hurt Chrissie always makes me feel like a shit, even though I don’t have anything to feel like a shit over.
My temper flashes, but the way she’s staring at me makes the list tick off in my head: Except that I am gone too much…and she does deserve more…and I do play that trust card to the limit at times, like I did not calling her back for days…but I’ve got shit in my life, too…and I hate leaving her…and she won’t travel with me…fuck, she won’t even marry me…
I bank my thoughts and anger quickly. I can run that list through my head forever—she will always be the winner and I will always be the one not good enough for her.
I inch back up her body and turn onto my back, taking her with me and settling her on my chest. I hold her tightly against me—it feels so fucking good to hold her—and I don’t want to release her. And I don’t want to talk. I just want to fucking hold her.
I want a few days with Chrissie with everything normal, without my problems in the room every minute. I want to hold her, fuck her, and feel normal until reality won’t let me.
She pushes back against my arms and lifts her chin. “You promised never to lie to me, Alan. I called Len. Why didn’t he know where you were? Why didn’t you call me back? Were you with someone else? Just tell me quickly now and get it over with. But don’t lie to me.”
I lift my lids. She’s staring down at me.
“How the fuck could you ask me that?”
Her gaze clouds over. She pulls away from me completely and sits on her heals beside me.
“Were you with a woman?” she repeats, each word clipped and scalpel sharp.
“Fuck you, Chrissie.”
Her body jerks and I regret that outburst. But, fuck, I’m angry. I shouldn’t be. It’s what I’d think if she disappeared and was unreachable by phone, but she should know me better.
I move my hand toward her but she avoids it.
I relent. “It’s not what you’re thinking, and I wouldn’t lie to you, not ever. You know that, Chrissie.”
Her lower lip quivers. She’s battling tears. “Then tell me where you were.”
I study her face as she struggles to maintain her composure. Her gaze is burning into me unwaveringly. Those giant blue eyes are like truth serum.
Fuck. I run my hand through my hair in aggravation. “I was in the fucking hospital.”
Her body goes rigid. “What do you mean in the hospital?”
Shit, now she’s worried and afraid and I can tell that my explanation has collided with the recent events of Neil and is stirring her into full panic.
“It was nothing,” I say quickly, the lie falling from my lips with appalling ease. “It’s been a long tour. Road exhaustion and a touch of lurgy. Just the standard shit, Chrissie. Exhaustion. Too much booze. Dehydration. I just got worn down until I was ill. They released me from the hospital. I wouldn’t be home if it had been something serious. Can you please stop worrying, love?”
Her eyes rapidly search my face. “Are you telling me the truth? I can’t take one more shock, Alan. You have no idea what’s been running through my head since I heard you walked out before the London concert—”
I cut her off by pulling her back into my arms. “I didn’t know about Neil until the pressroom that night. All I wanted was to get home to you. I didn’t think. I was wrong not to call. I just wanted to get home to you, Chrissie.”
Her breasts move against my chest from her rapid breathing. I’m not sure which way this is going to go. More questions or…
She wraps her arms and legs around me. Her mouth takes mine in a wide open, deep tongue kiss. My insides jump and my cock hardens to its full length. Her hips lift. She gloves me with a hard downward descent on my erection, and she is riding me hard, touching and kissing me into full boil.
I thrust upward into her. I take a nipple in my mouth, sucking it until she shivers. I finger that sensitive spot above her hole. She moves faster, more urgent, her shudders more violent with each stroke of her cunt around me.
I moan and surrender to her and I know—this is going to be a hard fuck homecoming.
* * *
2013
Shit, how long have I been sitting here silently lost in my thoughts? I can feel Miles Abernathy studying my face.
I close my eyes, stopping the memory, but not before I remind myself that it wasn’t a hard fuck homecoming after all. It was the homecoming of mistakes. Going to the hospital in Stanford instead of Neil’s funeral. Not telling Chrissie the complete truth about my illness. Letting her be disappointed in me yet again. The fight we had three days after Neil was buried. What she said to me before she walked out that last time: “I’m tired of living my life alone, Alan. Five years we’ve lived together, I see you only a handful of days a year, and I don’t even have a ring. I asked for one fucking thing from you. To be with me at Neil’s funeral. But no, you made me go without out. It’s never going to change. You’re never going to change. And you are never going to really love me.”