Merrily Ever After--A Novella Read online

  He had slightly emphasized the word should in that sentence in a way that suggested he was not going to do what he should. That he was going to…tend to her first.

  She shed the remainder of her clothing and dived under the fluffy duvet, shivering almost violently—from the cold. Jay often said or did things that made her shiver, but this time it was a simple biological response to being naked in the frigid cabin.

  “Jesus Christ, it’s cold.” There was one more bang, then she could sense him moving toward the bed.

  She thought he might continue their game, perhaps by issuing instructions from the other side of the wall, but he just bounded around the corner, lifted the duvet, and slid under it, fully clothed.

  He reached for her, and she shrieked when his hands made contact with her waist. They were like blocks of ice.

  “I’ve been unloading the cooler, so my hands are as cold as yours usually are.” He moved them around to grab the globes of her ass.

  Laughing, she tried to twist away from him, but she was on the side next to the wall, so there wasn’t really any room for escape. “Ahh! Jay! Quit it!”

  “What?” He pulled the duvet up so high that only their eyes were peeking out, then rolled over on one side to face her. “You don’t find this”—he quickly pressed one freezing palm against her collarbones and then removed it—“sexy?” He made an exaggerated thinking face. “Hmm. I seem to remember one time with some ice cubes you enjoyed yourself immensely.”

  “That was in the summer! In a heat wave!”

  But he was right. That had been…an extremely enjoyable evening.

  “I know.” He smiled and pulled her close, using his arms only, taking care not to touch her with his cold hands. She burrowed into him, his strong body providing familiar comfort, if not of the warming variety. Being next to him like this always triggered a physical relaxation response. Even through the shivering, she could feel herself loosen.

  What if she lost this?

  And if she did, she couldn’t really even blame him, could she? She’d presented herself, when they were first getting to know each other, not only as someone who couldn’t have kids, but as someone who didn’t mind not having them. And she hadn’t. She’d been thirty, just starting her own business. To that point, she had thought of infertility as vaguely sad; but until Jay, she’d never met anyone she was serious enough about to want to marry, so it had always been a theoretical thing. And she’d been glad, in a way, that Jay actively hadn’t wanted them. It had made her condition a non-issue.

  But somewhere along the way, she’d…changed. Maybe it was as simple as her biological clock kicking in, but she suspected it had something to do with how happy she was. With how happy Jay made her. Lately, she’d found herself getting swoony over babies on the street. Weepy when she heard certain songs, like—

  But no. No. She wasn’t letting herself go there. Not this weekend. Not until Monday. All pregnancy-related angst was strictly on hold until then. So she let herself lie there. Let her breathing slow down to match Jay’s as she inhaled his clean, soapy smell. Let their bodies warm each other. Eventually, she stopped shivering, her core making its way back up to a neutral temperature.

  The amazing thing was she could feel him loosening, too. Jay worked hard. Long hours—which she didn’t mind, because so did she. His devotion to his company was one of his most attractive traits. But at work, and in the world at large, he carried himself with a certain formality. She knew how he appeared to other people. He seemed to fit the stereotype that most people had of the serious, borderline uptight accountant.

  She loved how much he wasn’t that with her. Loved the discrepancy between the face he turned outward and the man he showed her. Loved that he trusted her that much.

  They lay there, just holding each other and breathing. It wasn’t how they usually did things. Usually, they were more a “tear each other’s clothes off” kind of couple. Or they played coy power games that created a delicious sort of tension.

  But this, this profound relaxation, was nice.

  No. Not nice. It was everything. It felt like everything she needed right now. It felt like a drug. A narcotic bringing blessed relief to her racing mind. It should have been ironic that he was the one providing comfort, given that he was the cause of her anxiety, but it wasn’t. Not at all. Because that’s who he was—her rock. No matter the circumstances.

  Eventually, he started moving, working one hand down between them to unbutton his jeans. He shoved them down his hips, then worked his legs free. Next came his shirt. She assumed their little quiet interlude was over, that he would pounce on her now. Moisture gathered between her legs at the notion.

  But he only resumed his previous position, his arms wrapped tightly around her, his chin resting on the top of her head as she notched her face back into his neck. Of course, he was naked now, so she felt his skin. The smattering of hair on his chest, the lean muscles of his back. The stirring of his cock. But he didn’t do anything about the latter, just plastered her to him and nuzzled her hair.

  They stayed that way for a long time. His breath lulled her. His body heated hers. She’d already stopped shivering, but slowly some actual warmth returned. She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing even more, luxuriating in the deep…what? The word that was coming to mind was peace.

  Sleep in heavenly peace.

  The lyric just popped into her head. It felt right.

  But that was a mirage. She could tell herself she wasn’t going to think about the life growing inside her this weekend, but it was there. Its presence meant that any peace she felt right now was, if not a lie per se, a temporary reprieve. The calm before the storm.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he whispered. His hand, which had been on her back, slid up to stroke the back of her head. She realized she’d tensed slightly. He must have felt it. He was always attuned to nuances like that.

  “Yeah. I’m just…feeling oddly vulnerable right now.” Not a lie. Not the whole truth, but not a lie.

  Thankfully, he didn’t press her. He just brought that hand around to rest on her cheek as he gently pushed her head back enough so he could look at her.

  He smiled, and there was so much love in his eyes, it took her breath away.

  “I just love you so much,” she whispered, hating how small, how borderline pathetic, her voice sounded. She was about to try again, to say something with a little more volume and a little less wistfulness, but his mouth came down on hers, preventing any further speech.

  It was a slow, gentle kiss, but not a polite one. He pressed his thumbs into her cheekbones, slid his tongue in her mouth, and staked his claim, feasting on her for what felt like ages. The kiss went on and on, showing no sign of letting up and also no sign he meant to move things along. It was the same patience he deployed when he was delaying his own gratification in favor of hers, as he so often did in their usual sexual games. But in this case it was just a kiss. A kiss that was everything.

  She believed in that moment that he intended to kiss her forever.

  The thought was erotic enough that she moaned, and the sound seemed to galvanize him. The hand that had been pressing into her cheek slid down to find her breast. Her breasts had been tender in recent days, which she now knew was from the pregnancy. She would have thought his touch would be too much, and it kind of was too much, but in a good way. The kneading pressure from his palm was exquisite. Extremely intense but stopping short of being intolerable.

  The warmth that had been gathering inside her turned to heat, and she slung one leg over his hip and let loose what she thought was going to be a sigh but came out as another moan—a loud, almost obscene one.

  Usually, if she made a noise like that, he would start talking, exhorting her to do it again, but this time, he just breathed her name, “Elise.” And then again, but louder this time, almost like he was in pain. “Elise. Jesus.” Whatever this extra intensity between them was, he felt it, too.

  On a groan, he ro
lled her over on to her back and started to slide down her body. She knew what he was doing. There was a certain fierceness of purpose about the way he’d let go of her so suddenly. He was aiming to go down on her. Normally, she’d be shoving his head down there to help him along, but she wanted that considerably less than she wanted his hands back on her breasts. They felt…wrong now that he’d let go of them.

  “Come back,” she whispered, grabbing his upper arms and arresting his progress.

  “Why?” he countered, just before he pressed a kiss to her clit. “What if I’d rather be here?” His question had been teasing, issued in the mock-confrontational manner that frequently characterized their lovemaking, but to her surprise, she didn’t want to play that way right now.

  “I want you to keep touching my breasts,” she said.

  That was all it took.

  Usually he was the one issuing the orders in bed. It was just how they did things. How they liked things. But on the odd occasion she stated a genuine, not-teasing preference, he acted on it instantaneously.

  Like now. He cupped her breasts—one hand under each—and kneaded as he pressed in and up, ripping another of those involuntary moans from her as her eyes slipped shut. It was like magic. “Oh my God, that feels good.”

  She felt him shifting, so she opened her eyes and lifted her head. He was looking at her, so intently. Watching her like he was trying to memorize her.

  “What about this?” He lowered his head to one breast and took her nipple and as much of the surrounding flesh into his mouth as he could. Then he paused, tilting his head a little so he could make eye contact. He spoke with her nipple still half in his mouth. “Is this good?”

  She nodded urgently. “Yes. Yes, please.”

  He smiled as he shifted and settled on his stomach between her thighs so he could lick at her breasts while his hands continued to work their magic.

  She thrashed beneath him—as much as she could, given that she was mostly pinned by his body—unable to wrap her mind around the intensity of the sensation. His wet mouth, his prickly stubble, his strong, warm hands. Her writhing had the effect of working her body a little to one side of him. She hadn’t done it intentionally, but as he shifted his torso, her clit rubbed against…she wasn’t even sure what. The side of his torso generally, but maybe a rib? Whatever it was, it was the perfect amount of pressure, so she did it again on purpose. Soon she was grinding herself against him, not caring that she was getting him wet, as he kept up the measured assault on her breasts. He paused every once in a while—not with his hands but with his mouth—and lifted his head enough to make eye contact. He was checking in to make sure everything was okay. He did that.

  He apparently liked what he saw on his most recent check-in, because before he lowered his mouth again to her aching nipple, he did a sort of shimmy with his torso, rubbing it hard against her clit and said, “Yes, sweetheart. Take what you need.”

  And then she was coming. So hard. So astonishingly hard.

  He rode the waves with her, keeping his hands and mouth moving, until the pressure that had been just the right side of too much suddenly was too much. So she pulled him up and wrapped her legs around his waist, lifted her hips in clear invitation, and grabbed his ass to guide her to him. “Now you take what you need,” she said against his ear.

  He groaned and reached around to dislodge her legs. Once they were back on the bed, he spread them, leaving his hands on her inner thighs. He liked to do that, to pin her thighs or hips down with his hands while he pushed into her. She liked it, too. So when he had her arranged to his satisfaction and looked up at her with his eyebrows raised, seeking her go-ahead, she said, “Yes.”

  He slid into her. She was so wet from the nuclear orgasm she’d just had that it made an audible squishing sound. In another context, it might have embarrassed her, but he just closed his eyes, said, “Oh, fuck,” and started to move.

  It was funny. She had been singularly focused on her breasts—and then on the previously undiscovered ridge on his rib cage she’d been humping—that she hadn’t given any thought to his cock. Which meant that having it inside her now was a pleasant surprise—because she loved his cock. She loved everything about it—the way it looked, with the thick vein running up it. The way it stretched her and filled her up so completely when he was buried in her to the hilt.

  God. There was something so unbearably hot about this, about being, essentially, held down and fucked. And he was so deliciously ruthless, staring at her with his signature intensity as he moved in her, grinding down hard at the bottom of each stroke. Staying there for a while as he stared before pulling out again.

  “Oh my God, Jay.” Her breath hitched so she ended up swallowing his name more than saying it. Each time he filled her up and did that grinding thing, it was like he was shoving her another inch toward the edge of a cliff.

  “Does that feel good?” he rasped, buried so deep in her and pressing down on her hips so hard that she was about to come. She nodded rapidly. He switched to extremely shallow thrusts, barely letting up on the pressure before grinding down again. “Do you need a good deep fucking, Elise?”

  That was all it took. It worked like that sometimes with them. A certain type of pressure that was almost enough could be nudged into definitely enough with a few choice words.

  He wasn’t far behind her, the shallow thrusts reverting back to big ones—one, two, three, and he was pulsing inside her as he let loose a string of curses that were profoundly unlike Jay the Accountant of the Year.

  They didn’t speak as they came back to Earth. After a few minutes, as their panting abated, he rolled onto his side and pulled her into the same position in his arms she’d been in earlier. Notched his chin back over her head. Smoothed her hair.

  Once he had them arranged, he echoed back to her the same sentence she’d said earlier. “I just love you so much.”

  Chapter Four

  Something was up with Elise, Jay thought the next afternoon as they bundled up and headed outside. He suspected it had to do with her family. She’d met her brother for lunch midweek, and though her relationship with Andy was fine, seeing him sometimes brought up junk related to her asshole parents. She had broken with them when they’d disowned her for starting her own business. And after an attempt at a truce—her mom and dad had attended their wedding—went south, the chasm had widened.

  The way she’d stood up for herself against them was something he admired the hell out of—it had been part of what had attracted him to her in the first place, in fact—but their estrangement weighed heavily on her.

  He knew shitty fathers. It didn’t really matter how utterly gone from your life they were, they could still fuck with you.

  But both he and Elise had done what they had to. Removed themselves from the orbit of their toxic fathers. Though in his case, it hadn’t been that simple. He had been a kid. He’d had to wait for the grown-ups to take action—twice. First with his father leaving his mother, and then his mother kicking Cam’s father out. And with Angus MacKinnon, it had taken a physical assault for her to finally send the bastard packing. Not that he blamed his mother. She had done the best she could with the resources she had.

  But God, it make him so fucking angry sometimes. And not even at his dad or Cam’s. At whoever was handy. Which was often Elise’s dad. Not that he was actually handy. Elise never saw him. But Jay knew where he lived. Where he worked.

  He was handy in an emotional sense.

  And every once in a while, he was overcome with an anger so strong he wanted to march right up to Mr. Maxwell and clock him. Once, when Elise had come from seeing her brother, crying because her aunt had died a week previous and no one had told her about it, he’d come close to doing it. He’d gotten in his car and driven to the house Elise in which had grown up. Parked in front and stared at it for a good twenty minutes until his better judgment had kicked in and he’d gone home.

  Poor Elise. His wife was strong. She didn’t need his pi
ty. But he ached for her. He wished he could wave a wand and give her parents that were worthy of her. He wanted to fix it all, but he knew he couldn’t.

  But he could spoil the hell out of her. Which he sought every opportunity to do.

  Which was the only way he could think to explain why he was dribbling water onto a pile of loose, dry snow in an attempt to make it sticky enough to form a ball.

  “I never thought I would say this, but I think Toronto snow is better than this.”

  His Christmas-crazy wife was standing with her hands on her hips, her brow knit as she watched him attempt to get the base of a snowman started. Or a snowperson, as she would say. Her cheeks were pink and her nose was running, and she was so goddamn adorable, it almost hurt to look at her.

  “For snowpeople anyway,” he agreed. “This is skiing snow.” It was like baby powder. It did not want to stick to itself.

  She huffed a frustrated sigh and sat down in the snow. “I wish it would snow. Like, actively. Snow like a verb, not a noun.”

  There was a lot of snow on the ground up here, but none had actually fallen that weekend—it was a bright, sunny day.

  “Have faith,” he said. “I will prevail over this powder.”

  And he did—kind of. After ten or so minutes of strategic dripping, he had a snowperson. Technically. “It’s a snow kid,” he said laughingly. “A snow toddler!”

  He had expected her to laugh, but she didn’t. Just stared at his pathetic handiwork.

  “We can try again tomorrow before we head home. Or…” He wracked his brain trying to think of a solution, of something that would make this powdery stuff cooperate.

  She shook her head like she was waking from a trance. “It’s great.” She scooted over and dumped the contents of a plastic shopping bag on the snow in front of the snow kid. She picked up a full-size carrot and jammed it into the spot where the nose should be. It took up almost the whole “face” of their snow kid. The effect was absurd, and it cracked him up. He picked up two lumps of coal from the pile—she’d clearly planned for an entire family of snowpeople—and stuck them into the snow above the carrot. Again, the “face” was small enough that the eyes ended up more on top of the poor kid’s head.