Free Riptides (Lengths) by Steph Campbell, Liz Reinhardt Page B

drinking in their deep, warm color. I can see by the way they shine that she’s smiling, and that the smile is for me and about the way I’m making her feel right now. That smile alerts me to the fact that I make her happy, and I realize that’s all I need to be happy myself.
    Damn, I’ve never wanted anything more than I want to make her feel good.
    I drive into her, both of us silent, eyes locked, bodies matched in a rhythm. She clings to me, tighter and tighter, until it’s like our two bodies meld into one. She’s tight around me, and then she twitches and her breath catches. She hitches up, fingernails digging at my neck, teeth biting into my arm, scream muffled by my skin, and I feel the wave of heat and wetness that clings her to me even tighter.
    “Oh, babe,” I say, but she can’t hear me because she’s moaning and shaking in my arms, her head thrown back, her body loose and heavy.
    I wrap both arms around her and pump into her, feeling like there’s too much skin to feel and kiss, too much of her to see and smell and fall into. Damn I’m falling so hard.
    “Enzo,” she whispers into my ear. “No one ever made me feel like this before. You make me feel this way. You make me…I’m so…Enzo!”
    There are a million things I want to say to her, but not a single one comes out, because I lost it. Her voice tangling in my ears, her body wrapped tight to mine, those eyes fixed on me with a love I know I have to earn…I let go and come hard in her, feeling so damn right about where I am and who I’m with for the first time ever.
    I carry her back to my bedroom and decide to take ‘practice makes perfect’ as my official life motto.
    I’m not stopping until everything is perfect for her.

 
    EIGHT
     
    “That was…that was so…” She presses a hand to her chest and lets out a laugh that sounds semi-manic. I like it. I like driving her a little bit crazy.
    “Gear up, woman, because I’ll be ready for more before you know it.” I nuzzle the underside of her jaw, and she pushes me back, away from her.
    “Enzo. We really need to talk.” She tugs the sheet up tight to her neck, so only her face peeps out, like a little kid’s.
    I roll onto one elbow and look down at her, tucking her hair behind her ears, smoothing a thumb over her lips, any stupid excuse to touch her skin. “What do you want to talk about?” I cup her chin in my hand. “Anything.”
    “It’s, um——” She licks her lips and squeezes her eyes shut. I wonder if she’s trying not to cry. “It’s hard to talk about.”
    “I get that. I mean, I’m not trying to claim I know the pain you went through, because I don’t. I have a big, annoying-as-all-hell family. They’re a little overbearing and a lot obnoxious, but they’re really good people. I actually can’t wait for you to meet them.” I continue to caress her face. “And, as much as I bitch about them, I don’t know who I’d be without them.”
    “That.” She nods her head and her mouth crumples, so this time I’m sure the tears are only a second away, but she holds back. “That’s my problem. When I was a little girl, I was someone. My mother, her love for me, that made me someone. And when I lost her, I lost myself.”
    I tuck her into my arms and run a hand over her long, thick hair. “I’m so sorry, doll. I can’t even…I don’t know how you did it. You’re brave as hell.”
    “I think I made it possible by shutting down.” Her soft voice echoes back off the wall of my bedroom. “I think maybe I’ve kidded myself into believing I dealt with it all, and I never really did. Until this year.”
    “What changed?” I ask, lifting the sheet her body has pressed tight to the mattress. I realize she may have done that specifically to make a barrier——however small——between the two of us, but I’m not about to let her dig up the pain of her past without me giving her every comfort at my disposal, and that includes the physical: just holding