Grip Trilogy Box Set - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,305

rush you, to hold you, to keep you.

You ask me if I love you? God, yes.

My lover, you are the single star

in a universe void before you came.

And when the years have passed,

and we have watched a thousand sunsets,

and we are bent,

our bodies crooked with age ask me again.

In the twilight,

in the shadow of the life we have shared,

ask me if I love you,

and my heart will answer before my lips can part.

My love, my life,

my heart never left your hands.

Always, evermore, even after.

Still.

BEHIND ME, I hear sniffing. I’m aware that the audience is moved by Grip’s words, but they cannot feel a fraction of the emotion drowning my senses until he is the only thing I can perceive with any clarity. Every other person, every other sound and sight is mist. The power, the passion of his words turned on me has left me undone, unraveled, a ribbon unspooled. I barely hear the words the preacher speaks, legally linking us together. It’s such a formality. The words we spoke to one another are what joined us. Our words, our wills bind us, and even with so many looking on, clapping, cheering that we are now husband and wife, I can’t make myself look away from him, and he can’t tear his eyes away from me. We are caught in this most exquisite intimacy, and neither of us wants out. We want to revel in it, to revel in each other, for the rest of our days.

Part II

Quote

“Dwell in possibility.”

– Emily Dickinson

Chapter 28

Grip

THE DARKNESS IS SO DEEP, so dense, I can’t see my hand in front of my face.

“For the record,” I tell Bristol from the passenger seat of her car, “when I said we should use blindfolds, I was thinking kinkier, maybe with some cuffs . . . maybe some anal.”

“Anal?” Though I can’t see her face, her voice sounds horrified. “I told you your dick’s too big for anal. Not happening.”

“I’m gonna take that as a backhanded compliment.” I laugh, reaching up to touch the thick cotton shrouding my eyes.

“Don’t you dare take that blindfold off,” Bristol orders. “And you can take it as a compliment, insult, I don’t care, as long as we’re clear that your big dick is not going in my tiny asshole.”

She says that now, but over the last year of marriage, there hasn’t been much I haven’t been able to persuade her to do.

Except anal. It’s a work in progress.

“Are we there yet?” I ask, tuning all my other senses to the environment to figure out where “there” is.

“Are you seven years old? We’ve been driving for a grand total of ten minutes . . . but, yes, we’re almost there.”

“Is this my anniversary present?” I lean back in the bucket seat of Bristol’s convertible. “Because I read that year one is paper. Is this paper?”

“Um . . . in a way.” The mischief in Bristol’s voice tells me nothing except that she enjoys having the upper hand—for once.

We come to a stop, and my senses automatically go on higher alert. I sniff the air, wondering if we’re going to a restaurant.

“You told me your mom says you have extra senses from growing up in Compton,” Bristol says, a smugness in her voice that I fully plan to fuck out of her when we get home. “How are all those extra senses serving you right about now?”

I sniff again, pulling in deeper draws of air.

“I sense that you’re wet and you want me to fuck you,” I say with a straight face. “How am I doing so far?”

The silence that follows my outrageous comment has my shoulders shaking because even though I was just joking, I know I’m totally right.

“Bastard,” Bristol mutters before I hear the driver’s door open and slam closed.

My head jerks around when my door swings open, and I do smell her. The unique clean scent that is Bristol’s invades my nostrils, and I want to sniff her like a stalker as she leads me by the arm along what I think is a sidewalk. Don’t ask me how I know, but when you grow up with so little grass and nothing but asphalt, your feet know sidewalk when they meet it. A bell dings over a door, and I’m pretty sure . . .

“I smell Mexican.”

The blindfold is wrenched from my eyes, and I come face to face with Mateo.

“You’re half right,” he says with a grin. “The other half is black, on my mama’s side. Blaxican!”

I glance around