Page 1 of Every Breath

Chapter One

“Nizhóní.”

I feel Benny’s mouth on the back of my neck, his beard tickling my skin. I giggle, his arms tightening around my waist as I playfully struggle to pull away. I love it when he calls me beautiful, which is every morning—and when he’s horny like this which is often.

As I open my eyes, I see the time blinking from his bedside clock. “Isn’t your flight in two hours?”

“Hmm.” He nips the skin behind my ear and I shiver, goosebumps dotting my skin.

“You’re going to be late, Benny.”

“Just one more kiss,” he murmurs. “For the road.”

“One more kiss that’ll lead to one more–”

“Are you complaining?”

I turn my head toward him just in time for our mouths to meet. Of course, I’m not complaining. Why would I? I need to take what I can get for he’s leaving again and for how long, I don’t know. One would think after twelve years as an environmental protection scientist, he’d get to stay in one place for good but with another complaint of radioactive waste leaking onto Navajo land, he’s been called in as a consultant. Again. And just like the others before this one, whatever recommendations he’ll propose will only get mired in government red tape.

But I push the thought away, rolling onto my back as my lips part and his tongue slips between my teeth. My belly tightens as his kiss deepens, his tongue sweeping and tasting, making the butterflies in my belly come alive. Funny how twelve years since he first kissed me, not much has changed. Benny Turner still makes me weak in the knees with just a look, a touch, a kiss. And that’s just the parts I can talk about.

I run my fingers through the skin of his back, the faint indentations of the ropy scars on his skin from a long time ago that he never talks about. And just as it happens every time, Benny takes my hand and pulls it away. His scars are his own and no one else’s.

“Shijéí Bóhodínínil,” he murmurs against my ear and I shiver with anticipation as he interlaces his fingers with mine, pressing my hands down on the bed.

“Looks like your heart isn’t the only thing I light on fire, Benny,” I giggle as his cock presses against my inner thigh, hard and hot like a steel rod. My knees part to give him access, always access.

“You love it though.” He kisses me again, little nips on my upper and lower lips, his beard tickling my chin. The hairs on his chest feel rough against my breasts, his taut flat belly hard against my own. I love it when he sleeps naked… no, when we sleep naked for there’s nothing to stop us from doing the things we do to each other.

But only when we’re at his house.

Forget my house where Nana and Dyami can hear everything. No, at Benny’s house in the city, we get to do everything we’ve ever dreamed of, and I don’t need to muffle my cries.

“Shi'áád,” he murmurs as I shudder with anticipation, his mouth leaving my lips to lay claim on the sensitive skin of my neck and then my breast. I love the way his voice lowers, almost gruff in his intonation, his possession of my heart and soul evident in every word and every syllable.

Shi’áád. My woman.

Already I’m wet, and he pulls away to watch me with heavy-lidded eyes, letting our bodies do the talking this time. There’s no need for anything else. He knows I want him inside me. He knows I need him.

But of course, he doesn’t give me what I want, not right away. Benny blazes a trail of kisses down my neck, sucking one nipple into his mouth and then the other. He continues down my belly, letting go of my hands as he positions himself between my legs, his fingers sliding between the soaked lips of my pussy. He plants a light kiss on my clit, following it with a lap of his tongue.

“Benny…”

Time stands still as he kisses and licks and sucks until my body shudders with its first orgasm. And when he moves up to kiss me on the mouth, letting me taste myself, I feel the head of his cock push against my entrance and I gasp when he roughly thrusts himself in my wetness. I love it when he’s rough like this, reminding me who commands my heart and my body.

I want to hold him but Benny holds my hands down again, his head lowering, his mouth on my neck as his teeth leave his mark on my skin. At least, it’s winter and I can keep it covered with a scarf or a turtleneck. If all else fails, there’s always makeup.

With the dawn light slipping between the blinds, the only sounds in the room are of our bodies, our breaths, whispered words he knows I crave to hear from him. My woman. My heart. Precious girl.

Benny lets go of my hands to stroke my side, one hand gripping my hip as he thrusts a few more times, groaning against my neck as he fills me completely and I cry out, my fingernails digging into the skin of his shoulders. Why do these types of couplings always seem desperate, an attempt to appease a hunger that never seems to be satisfied?

Afterward, as I lie in his arms, our fingers interlacing playfully, he kisses my forehead, my eyelids, my lips. Tender now, gentle.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” he murmurs.

“You know how these trips make me nervous,” I say. “When you say you’ll be gone for a week, it usually ends up being three or four. Dyami gets restless. He reads the news.”

Dyami is our eleven-year-old son, a precocious boy who looks just like his father. Intense dark eyes, dark hair, but he has my smile. He loves his father like it’s no one’s business. He’s proud to have his father’s Navajo blood even if Benny’s half Navajo which makes Dyami a quarter Navajo, as he calls himself. But he has the spirit of a Navajo warrior like his great-great-grandfather. Already, his grandfather wants Dyami to spend the summer in the Navajo Nation so he can learn how to be a man complete with some puberty ceremony.

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