Free Air by Terra Harmony Page B

return the favor he stopped me. “I want to do this for you. I want to please you, protect you, have you always. No matter what.” His hands stopped and rested on my belly. “You should have known that.”
    Tears started to form in my eyes. “It is more complicated than that, and you know it.”
    “We’ll figure it out. From now on, only truth between us. I want you to tell me everything.”
    “Now?”
    “Later.” He rolled on top of me, this time more gently, giving me the space needed on certain parts of my body. My other parts melted into his so that I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began. Distracted by his mouth on mine, sucking the very breath from me, I barely noticed his knee snaking up between my legs to give him access. When he entered me, it was sharp; painful almost. He was on the verge of ripping old wounds open.
    I took a loud and abrupt breath in and froze with my back arched underneath him as far as it would go.
    He held my hips in place with his hands. “I’m sorry, I cannot stop now.” He started whispering in other languages in my ear. More apologies, perhaps. His words rippled through my mind and body, soothing both. I was on fire on the outside but inside I was cool liquid. It was that part of me that willed him to continue. I slowly relaxed into him and he pushed deeper into me. The entire time he whispered, sometimes in English, sometimes in Irish or French and sometimes in languages I couldn’t recognize. He could have been reciting the Pledge of Allegiance for all I cared. His words sent me into a trance, heightening the experience. I didn’t last long. He pushed harder and faster as he felt me coming to my peak, not stopping until we climaxed together. Finally we lay still in each other’s arms until the aftershocks subsided.
    After a while he looked down at me. “Are you ok?”
    I smiled back. “I might be a little sore tomorrow, but I think I’ll survive.” He could honestly have done that ten times again before morning and I wouldn’t have stopped him.
    “I’m sorry,” he whispered again, resting his forehead just above my ear.
    “Promise me something.” I propped myself up on one elbow and looked at him intently.
    “Anything,” he said.
    “Promise me you will stop apologizing.”
    “Oh.” He didn’t look happy with the thought. “In English or….”
    “In any language. We aren’t going to get through this if you keep apologizing for the past.”
    He paused, and finally agreed, “Deal. But I think now is a good time to share with me what happened on Galapagos. I want to know everything. Every detail.”
    “Why now?” I looked for a reason to stall. “We have all day tomorrow.”
    “Yes, but sometimes it’s easier to expose the truth while naked. Besides, we always seem to do better when we are touching.”
    I glanced at my shredded clothes on the floor. “Speaking of – you owe me some new clothes.”
    “What about me?” He reached down the side of the bed and produced his shirt turning it so I could see it had been ripped partly down the back.
    “How did that happen?” I furrowed my eyebrows, inspecting the shirt.
    “That was all you, babe.”
    “Nooooo,” I denied it with a slight hesitation in my voice.
    “Yeeeessss,” he mocked me.
    “Ok,” I conceded. “We’ll call it even.”
    “Ok.”
    Another deal made .
    We sat in silence for a long moment.
    “So about what happened….”
    He wasn’t going to let me off the hook, and there was no way I could possibly tell him what happened.
    What to do, what to do .
    After a short time of playing with the pillow’s edges, I came up with an idea. I sat up in bed, bunching the blankets up around me so at least from the waist down I wasn’t exposed. “Sit up. I know how we are going to do this.”
    He obeyed without question and sat across from me on the bed.
    I explained, “So basically, I want you to read my memories.”
    “What?”
    “I’ve done this before, trust me. It’ll work.