Page 80 of Provocation
‘No, it’s right that we’re here together. She loved us both, Daisy.’
I don’t tell him that she loved him more than she did me. I’m not upset about that anymore. He deserved her.
I blink back tears as he moves closer to me, putting his arm around my shoulders. I snake one around his waist.
‘We need to find out what happened,’ he says.
‘We will.’
We stand there for a few more minutes, until dark clouds begin to roll in and the temperature falls with the light. It’s gloomy when we get back in the truck. I think we’re going to leave, so I’m surprised when Shade plucks me out of my seat and settles me on his lap, kissing my lips gently.
My hands delve under his shirt, feeling the hard lines of his body. If he cares that they’re freezing, he doesn’t show it, but he does begin to pull off my jeans and underwear.
‘Wait,’ I say, and he pauses.
‘What is it? You don’t want to?’
‘It’s not that. It’s just that I’m on my period. It started this morning.’
His eyes flash with something. Disappointment?
‘I do want to have kids one day,’ I say quietly, searching his face. ‘But not yet.’
He nods. ‘Me too.’
He kisses me and then draws back. ‘I don’t care about…’ he looks down. ‘If you don’t.’
I shrug. ‘It should be pretty light still, so it won’t make a mess.’
In one swift motion, he pulls off my bottoms completely as I grip onto him, pulling me back to straddle him and thrusting into me. He fills me slowly, his movements unhurried and gentle. He doesn’t fuck me the way he usually does, and I understand that this is the difference between fucking someone and making love to them. Hemakes love to me, his hands almost frantically trying to pull me nearer, to touch more of my bare skin to his. And I do it back, not because I’m mimicking him, but because I want to be as close to him as he does to me. It’s quiet and desperate, and it’s everything we both need in this moment.
He pulls open his shirt, baring the tattoo on his chest of the daisy, the one that he said was for April, to my eyes.
‘April’s favorite flowers were white roses, not daisies,’ he whispers. ‘This was for you.’
‘I love you,’ he whispers. ‘I love you.’
He says it over and over like a prayer or a chant, and we stare into each other’s eyes, share each other’s breath. Minutes go by and I don’t feel the need to look away, or to hide from him. I see him and he sees me. I kiss his chest where the tattoo resides and then his lips.
When I come, it’s not a tsunami that washes over me, it’s more like a pebble disrupting the surface of a pond, the tiny waves fanning out and lapping at the shore. It’s a calm and relaxing ebb and flow. He pushes into me one last time and lets out a satisfied hum as he goes rigid under me and spills into me.
When we’re finished, we hold each other tightly, our eyes wet. We stay there in the truck. The heavens open, pelting the car with freezing rain as intermittent gusts of loud wind make the vehicle sway a little.
‘Oh, I forgot,’ he murmurs after a few long minutes, drawing back a little. ‘The box from Stevens.’
‘What about it?’
‘I brought it. I thought, maybe, it would be nice to look at it here, but if you’d rather get back. You know, cleaned up…’
‘No,’ I say, drawing on my underwear and my jeans quickly. ‘I’d like to look through it. I have a pad on. I can wait a few minutes. Where’s the box?’
‘Behind your seat. Here.’ He grabs it from the back and puts it between us. ‘Ready?’
I nod and he opens the innocuous cardboard box. We peer inside expectantly.
‘Looks like it’s from the closet,’ Shade murmurs and I nod, pulling out an old, flattened shoe, its counterpart nowhere to be seen.
Feeling a bit disappointed, I rummage around in it, taking out a couple of costume jewelry pieces that weren’t reallyher.
