fucking throat that makes me want to mark her for everyone to see. She’s tarnished perfection. I’ll spend the rest of my life fixing us. I’ll do anything. Love her harder. Love her deeper. Love her more than anyone else ever has.
“Fucking breathtaking,” I breathe, pulling down her night shorts. Underneath, she’s wearing cotton panties. Something else I’ve always found absolutely intoxicating about my wife? Her sexiness when she’s comfortable. She doesn’t have to wear lace and satin. Not garters and nighties. She’s fucking sexy without all the added touches. It’s her. She does it for me. Every goddamn time.
Tracing her pale legs and the little scabbed over heart on her thigh, I moan. She’s my reckoning, and I didn’t even know it when we met.
Leaning down, I kiss her heart, making sure she knows it’s beautiful too. It’s a bearer of pain, an appendage of love lost; it’s strength when she could’ve been weak.
She’s unravelling me, and we haven’t even started.
She pulls my head away from the heart and shakes her head. “It’s ugly,” she whispers, embarrassment and fear tickling her features like a feather to the wind. “All of them are.” The way her voice breaks with those four words has me trailing kisses until I reach her mouth. She folds into herself. The long sweaters she’s been wearing for the past few weeks covering every inch of her upper body.
“You’re absolutely beautiful, Josephine. You fucking kill me with your beauty every single day. If I wasn’t already absolutely gone for you, I’d fall to my fucking knees with your presence alone.”
She shakes her head at me, her lips trembling with sadness. It’s tragic, really, that she can’t see how beautiful she is by simply existing. I kiss each of her closed eyes, her nose, her cheeks, and finally, when she’s breathing heavily, I take her mouth.
She bends into me, her body molding to mine. It’s something I’ve wanted for months. Her entire body, pressed against mine, loving mine, being mine and only mine.
I pull back, but only so she doesn’t deflect what I’m about to say. When I help her to sit, she hides her face. I tip her chin up, and she shuts her eyes.
“What’d I say about those eyes, Sous? They’re meant to watch.”
She lets out a deep exhale, shivering in my embrace. I know it’s not from the cold. Not offering me those pretty amber eyes of hers, I start to undress her anyway.
She wiggles, trying to keep the sweater on. “Can’t I leave it on while you fuck me?” Letting out a little scoff, I continue to wrestle the sweater off her small frame.
“And waste the perfect opportunity to both ogle and grope your tits? Fat chance.”
She smiles at me, fully smiles, and I know I’ve hit my mark. My girl is competitive, and brash, and so goddamn sassy. It’s her confidence I’ve always loved. From the second our eyes met across that room to the moment we woke up next to each other the following morning. We’re meant to be. It’s us. She battles me, and I fight her tooth and nail. We clash, yes, but when we both bend for each other, our resilience snaps like a fucking rubber band about to burst.
We aren’t opposites at all.
We’re the same.
She hates, and I hate.
She loves, and I love.
She fucks, and I fuck right back.
Not listening to her groaning as I lift the material, I see her tattoo. The one I still haven’t asked her about. We’ve been together for nearly three years now, and I still don’t know what this vital quote means. One that had to matter enough for her to mark her skin.
Tracing my fingers over the simple line, I decide right now is a good enough time as any. “Be free, not still,” I recite, thumbing her ribs. She shivers, goose bumps rising to the surface of her perfectly pale skin. I love them on her. “I’ve never asked what it means to you.”
She bites her plush lip, grinding her top teeth over it like it’ll divulge her secrets so she doesn’t have to. “When I was attacked in Paris, I lost all hope to be free. Exploring was the one thing that brought me all my hope and desire to become a chef. It drove me to want to taste weird things and experience all the bad just in case good came along.”
I smile at that. This is the first time she’s spoken about Paris without crying. It’s