Page 30 of Untangled
“good.”
thrust.
Each move of his hips is a punctuation mark—an exclamation point—for emphasis. I want to reply, to sayyes, so good, but my mouth opens for a moan and nothing else. The wholeworld is blurry, even in my mind, within the darkness of my blindfold.
I hear it before I feel it, the click and then the buzzing of my favorite toy. On instinct, I try to reach for it, only to remember my hands are tied—literally. Daniel laughs.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I know what to do with it,” he says, and then the small bullet vibrator nudges my clit and a searing pulse of pleasure radiates through my body.
“Oh God, yes,” I manage to reply between breaths.
He continues to fuck me, and it’s all so much—the rhythm of him entering and retreating and the unrelenting hum against my clit, the few seconds every thrust where the stars align and he’s pushing against me from the inside and out.
“More, please, more,” I beg.
He turns the vibrator up—holy shit—and picks up his pace, rutting into me harder.
“Do you know how hot you are like this?” he says, and I don’t feel sexy, I feel like a scattered collection of nerve endings, but still he continues, “Those pretty tits bounce every time I bury myself in your pussy. And down here,” he tilts the toy slightly, eliciting a gasp, “you’re swollen and dripping with want, Molls. You’re stunning, baby. God, I’m so lucky.”
And you’d think the dirty talk or the magnitude of different sensations would have pushed me over the edge but they don't. This time, it’s his gratitude. His appreciation.He feels so lucky.
My release spills like liquid sunshine, warm and bright, curling my toes. In my haze, I ask Daniel to come, to be with me here, and he does.
After, he pulls out, lowers my legs and collapses next to me. Our breaths mingle while our bodies recover. His heart beats fast against my chest as he leans over me to undo one wrist, then the other. Last, he cradles my head in his palm to lift the makeshift blindfold out from under me and remove it from my eyes.
We hold eye contact then.
There’s eight years and a million words held in the space of that stare. Cradled there.
There’s a whole entire universe that lives within the walls of this house and the chambers of our hearts and the buoyant laugh of the human our love made.
And it’s there, in that stare.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you too,” I reply.
Day 19
Discuss your favorite parts of your wedding day.
(Then, read the next prompt to prepare for tomorrow.)
“Should we watch it first?” I ask Daniel, who is cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast-for-dinner with Violet. There are chunks of banana splattered on the floor, scrambled eggs in the creases of her high chair cover, and syrup all over her fingers—which leave sticky handprints asshe cruises under the island. We’re going to be in trouble when she starts walking for real.
“Watch what?” he answers, as he disconnects her tray from the chair and brings it to the sink to wash.
“Our wedding video. We could pause it to discuss our favorite parts throughout.” The idea of curling up on the couch and watching our younger selves pledge our undying love feels way more fun than another conversation. Not that we’ve had many of those with the nature of the prompts lately. I certainly haven’t minded.
“Oh. Yeah, sure—sounds fun. I’ll put Lettie to bed if you want to find it and pull it up. I wouldn’t even know where to start with that.” He grabs our sweet girl under the arms and hikes her up to sit on his forearm. She looks like a bird perched on a tree, with sticking-up hair to complete the image. Daniel runs his fingers through it and they come back tacky. “I’ll give her a quick bath first. Be down in fifteen.”
“Use the new lavender soap I put by the tub—it’s supposed to help calm her before bedtime.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and it catches me off-guard. Three weeks ago, he would’ve been defensive.I know how to give the baby a bath, Molls. Today, he’s receptive, understanding my request isn’t a commentary on his abilities, or presumed incompetence. While I know we’ve been getting closer physically—how could we not, with everything we’ve been doing—these moments of emotional understanding are even more profound. We’re assuming the best in each other. We’reon the same page. Even better, it feels like we’re on the same team. It’s exactly what I hoped for when we started this experiment.
The relief that this is working is palpable in my body. It’s in the way the base of my neck doesn’t ache at the end of the day, and my teeth don’t wake up clenched. I feel it when Daniel glides a hand along my waist as I’m cooking dinner, and I’m no longer annoyed at the distraction. When I catch his gaze across the table and he smiles, and I smile, and my chest flushes warm with the crinkle of his eyes. It’s working.
When I hear his footfall on the stairs, I’m no closer to having our wedding video ready than when he left. I scramble to the drawer in the tv stand and squat, yanking it open as the wood squeaks. Sorting through old DVDs and even older Blu-Rays—none of which we’ve watched in years—I find our wedding video on its small thumb drive.
