“Yes,” my voice was raspy. I held onto his arms tighter waiting for him to move.
He took my encouragement, slid his hips closer before pulling away just enough, to ease it back in again. I knew this was how it was done, the mechanics of the thing, but the actual experience was beautiful. We were one. No Major or a secret life. There was nothing keeping us apart. He was altering my life forever. Ezra had become my “first.”
“God, you’re so fucking tight. It’s taking all my will power not to lose control and bury myself deep inside you.”
I wanted that. This was my chance to have all that Ezra could give me. If he was holding back I didn’t want him to. “Show me, please, do it.”
He paused and inhaled a shaky breath. “I can’t. You’re tender. It will hurt.”
Yes he could. I wasn’t missing this. If we never had this again I wanted every memory that was possible. “I’m begging you Ezra. Please. Go as deep as you can go. I want to be filled with you.”
He tensed and bent his head to kiss me. I leaned into him arching my body. I could not have enough. I longed for his very last inch.
“Will you call me Major? While we’re like this? I want to be who I am.”
I nodded. He was Ezra to me, but I wanted to know him as Major. The man he was before. Had he been different when he carried that name? What had sent him running into a life in the shadows never to return again?
“Raise your knees. Tuck them near my waist.”
I did as he said and I felt him go deeper. He was right, it hurt, but I still loved the feeling and wanted as much as he could give. Almost as much as I needed him to tell me he loved me while we were like this. As close as we could be. But he didn’t, the words weren’t his. Neither Ezra nor Major spoke of love.
He rocked his hips and brought us both to a climax. I shouted his name, his first, the name he wanted to hear. The name I wanted to know. Tears burned my eyes as he rolled to his side and took me with him for a warm embrace. Still close. Snug against his chest. This could be it and I knew that. This moment could be all I’d get.
Or it could be enough to make him stay.
We lay there in silence with our labored breathing slowing with each second that passed. I didn’t want to move. I was afraid to break the silence. So I kept my thoughts to myself. Not asking him for more. Not telling him, yet again, that I loved him, so I said nothing.
Minutes turned into an hour before Ezra finally spoke. He’d kissed my head, his hands caressing my arm, while we were there lost in our thoughts. We weren’t sure of the future before us. At least I wasn’t, not knowing what he’d do.
“I’ll never forget this,” he finally said and my heart shattered into pieces. Those four words were what I needed to hear, everything I’d waited for. He wouldn’t be staying. This hadn’t been enough. Ezra was going to leave.
“Me either,” was all I could say. It was too painful to speak. The urge to beg him was there, under the surface, the barely controllable crust of a wall I was attempting to currently maintain.
He kissed my lips, a peck, nothing more. “I can’t tell you I love you Sammy Jo.”
At least he was honest. I nodded. Any remnants of my heart were now gone. They combusted and evaporated. I was hollow, empty and broken, beyond any repair or fix.
“If I were still Major I wouldn’t leave you. I would give you the life you want. The one that you hold in your dreams. The life I want more than I can tell you.”
Again, I had no words. Couldn’t even nod any more.
“My world isn’t safe. I need to know that you’re safe. Tell me you really understand.”
I did. I wasn’t enough. He had a life of excitement to chase and I wasn’t enough to make him stay. He had excuses but I knew the truth. He didn’t love me. That was the answer.
“You never promised me more,” I managed to say. Anything else was a lie, and I wasn’t a liar so I said it, but didn’t feel better when I did.
Sighing wearily he laid his head on my shoulder, like the world was on his back. Ezra knew he’d broken my heart, and it was hard on him to react. Even though I tried to remain calm and let him go without shedding a tear, so that he wouldn’t remember he’d crushed me.
“I can’t come back,” he said against my skin. “But I’ll dream of you every night. My thoughts will always be wherever you are and I’ll sense that you are with me. From now on I will never be alone. This is the memory I’ll cherish. The one we’re sharing right now.”
That was too much. I needed him to stop if I was going to hold myself together. He was expecting a response, which was impossible.
We then separated, his body from mine, Ezra covering me with a blanket. He stood naked staring down at me. What strength I had met his gaze there above me, and this would be the last that I saw of him. The sorrow in his eyes mirrored what I felt, or maybe that was my imagination. Begging for this man to feel what I felt as he watched and said the expected: “goodbye Sammy Jo,” he whispered.
I wouldn’t say it, couldn’t say it back. Instead I closed my eyes to block out the image of Ezra leaving the room. My memories would end in this bed. They wouldn’t be permitted elsewhere.
His footsteps moved away from me. I listened as he dressed in the kitchen where he’d removed his clothing and mine. I waited in the hopes he’d change his mind and come back to me in the bed. If I stood up and went to him I knew I would cry and beg. I would, so I stayed put. Would he decide in there, with me in here, that we were worth fighting for? Enough for his own rebirth, as the man he’d been before Ezra?