do together doesn’t make you anyone or anything except mine and me yours. I’m sorry I reminded you of the past. This is new territory for me. I never suspected you had been hurt, and now I’m worried. I don’t want to fuck it up.”
I shook my head. “Then rule number one, don’t bring him up during...” I changed my mind. “...Ever. Besides, the last I heard, he’s dead. Those memories can die too. What he made me do wasn’t this.”
“But you said...”
“Technically, but it’s not the same. You were right, Reid. What he—he and I did—was wrong and the blame lies with him alone. I didn’t want to play his damn game. We—you and I—are different. With you, what I just did was me showing you how much I love you, being intimate and open. I want that. Hell, Reid, I crave it. I want more, not less. That’s what we have.”
“I believe what we have is called love.” Reid wrapped his arm around my waist and held me against him.
“Yes, we have love. That isn’t what it was with him.” I took a deep breath. “Back then, I felt dirty and wrong. Right now, I feel” —I tilted my head— “loved and wanton.”
“So,” Reid said with a grin, “telling you to suck me is off the table?”
I reached up and laid my palm over his cheek. “Stop overthinking.” It was what my husband did, what he excelled at doing. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was doing it now. “I have no problem with you telling me what you want as long as you’re okay with me doing the same.”
“What do you want, Mrs. Murray?”
Though other options were on the tip of my tongue, I answered, “Sixty more years of this.”
Reid scoffed. “I’m not exactly confident in my physical ability to do this when I’m ninety.”
“As long as we’re ninety together, I don’t care if we are just holding one another.”
The bandage he’d been placing when I first walked into the bathroom was no longer in place, the gauze had fallen to the floor and the thick black stitches looked like barbed wire upon his skin. I ran my finger over the threads. “Does it hurt?”
“No.”
Leaning over, I gently kissed his wound. When our eyes met, I smiled. “Let me help with that bandage.”
By the time I had his arm again cleaned, covered in antibiotic gel, gauze, and the ace bandage, I looked at the clock. “Shit, it’s after six. I need to shower and get upstairs. I’m letting my breakfast cooking lag.”
Reid tugged on the tie of my robe, loosening the knot, and grinned as the soft material fell open, exposing all of me, including my treacherous still-hardened nipples. “Or we could skip breakfast upstairs” —he leaned down and sucked one nipple, pulling back with a pop— “and work on that wanton feeling you mentioned.”
Though my empty core, heavy breasts, and tight nipples liked his suggestion, I wasn’t sure Reid was ready for more, not physically, and if I wanted sixty more years, I was willing to wait a day or two to have him inside me. And then I remembered something. Pushing his face away as he neared my other breast, ready for a second assault, I grinned. “Nice try.”
“What?” he asked innocently.
“You’re trying to avoid Araneae because you went to 2 before breakfast.”
“I ate a mini-pie.”
“And I’m sure that will get you off the hook.”
Allowing my robe to flutter to the tile, I walked to the shower and turned on the water, but not before a large hand made a playful slap at my ass. “What was that for?”
“Because I can’t keep my hands off of you.”
Reid
“You don’t really want to be a part of this,” Mason said.
“I want to hear what she has to say.” Leaning my head against the leather seat, I sighed. The bumps along the roads were enough to make me consider pain medication. Romero was at the wheel while Mason and I rode in the back seat of the SUV on our way to the halfway house. Beyond the windows, dreary landscapes and scenes of south Chicago competed with an overcast sky for the title of most depressing.
“I’m trying to remain impartial, but it’s fucking difficult.” Mason turned to the window and then back. “Have you ever wished to have power over someone? I’m talking about someone with whom you were theoretically powerless.”
“I’m sure I have. I mean, doesn’t that thought occur to most kids?” I considered his question