“I’d do that now,” Sarai said. “We don’t have to be married for you to let yourself go.”
I smiled at her joke. “I want to know the minute you change your shampoo just by the smell of your hair, and I want to see your feet swell up because you’ve been on them all day.”
“That doesn’t sound very fun,” she whispered.
“In forty years, I want to be looking at you the way Mr. K still looks at Mrs. K.”
A tear rolled down Sarai’s cheek, and I brushed it away with my fingertip.
“I don’t need another proposal,” Sarai said, her voice hoarse. “This one was pretty good.”
“I didn’t even get down on one knee,” I argued.
“We’ll pretend you did.”
I let out a mock sigh of relief. “Thank God, because my knee is throbbing from our hike out here.”
My knee hadn’t been bothering me much lately, but I still wore the brace. Sometimes, when I twisted just so, the thing still gave me trouble. I couldn’t wait for it to start feeling normal again.
“Then you’d better sit,” Sarai said seriously.
I let her pull me to the ground and sat back against the tree. She straddled my lap, making me groan as my hands went to her ass. This was exactly what I’d been hoping for when we’d left the house. Just me and Sarai in the middle of the forest.
I pressed my thumbs against the creases where her thighs and hips met, pulling her harder against me, and her mouth went to my throat, her teeth gently biting the skin there. She knew exactly what I liked, exactly what drove me crazy. It had been like that since our very first time. We moved together perfectly, seemed to instinctively know what the other person needed.
I have no idea how, because my mouth was too busy nibbling at any skin I could reach above Sarai’s jacket, but we got her leggings pulled down just enough. I could feel the sweet wet skin between her thighs against the back of my hand as I unbuttoned my jeans and shoved them down.
She was tight and slick around my cock just seconds later, and I let out a sigh of relief at the contact. Our positioning was awkward with our clothes in the way, but we made it work. Her hips ground down as mine shoved up, our bodies barely moving so the contact wasn’t accidentally lost.
“I love you,” I said against her mouth. “Jesus.”
Her lips curved as her eyes drifted shut. She murmured something I didn’t understand, but it wasn’t the time for explanations, so I didn’t ask. In some part of my mind I knew, even though I couldn’t imagine being unhappy with her, that there would be a time down the road, in some distant future, when I would think back to this moment and realize how lucky I was that she’d chosen me. That she’d agreed to spend her life with me. That my woman, who always wore makeup and looked ready to take on the world, got down in the dirt and loved me in the middle of the forest.
I came first. I held out as long as I could but eventually gave in to the inevitable. Sarai didn’t complain, but I felt the way her body tensed when she realized that I’d finished.
“It’s okay,” I whispered into her ear, more to myself than her. “Shh.”
I reached down between us and slid my fingers to her clit, willing my body not to go soft yet. She was nearly there. Her fingernails scratched at the shoulder of my jacket as I pressed, and her breath stopped as I rubbed gently, then harder.
When she came, it was with an exhalation against my throat and tremors shaking her thighs. Then the sky opened up, and the drizzle that had mostly been contained by the branches above us turned into a deluge that poured down on our heads.
“Cold!” Sarai squealed, pulling up her hood. “Oh, shit, it’s running down my back.”
I’d lifted her to her feet and pulled her leggings to her waist before she could say anything else. I was mostly dry because she’d shielded me from the rain, but as soon as she was up, the cold air and rain hit my lap like a cup of ice water.
“Fuck,” I yelped, hurriedly pulling my jeans up. I scrambled to my feet and laughed as Sarai tried to find a place to hide from the rain. “It’s no use,” I told her, grabbing her hand. “Let’s just go back to the house.”
I took one last look around the fort, memorizing the old memories and the new ones, then led her back toward home.
Chapter 10
Sarai
Was I being an idiot? As we trudged back through the wet forest, our shoes sticking in the mud and our coats completely waterlogged, I wondered where the hell my new impetuousness had come from. I was a planner. I made lists. It was the only way that I could function without anxiety taking over my life.