by Kennedy Ryan
“Daddy used to say don’t waste time on things that don’t set you on fire inside, and I haven’t. Every campaign, every election, each candidate—I’ve believed in. I believed that putting that person in power advanced one of my convictions.”
She bites her bottom lip. “I felt the same about people. I didn’t want to waste time on anyone who didn’t set me on fire inside. And there have been people I liked, people I enjoyed sex with, but no one I wanted to build a life with. That’s why I never committed. No one ever set me on fire inside.”
She looks over at me, her eyes telling me before her words do. “Until now. You set me on fire inside, Ezra Stern.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t swallow. I can’t move. My composure teeters on the head of a needle, but I at least have enough presence of mind to know exactly what I should say right now. “I love you, Tru.”
It feels like the words have been waiting on my tongue for years, for the moment when I was old enough, free enough to feel them, to say them. The look on her face says she’s waited that long to hear them from me. She slides her fingers into my hair and touches her soft lips to mine.
“I love you, too,” she says. “So much.”
I kiss her so deeply, I struggle to breathe, but I can’t make myself stop. She’s my air and her heartbeat a talking drum, telling our story through the walls of our chests. I want us to be one, to be joined and hooked and sealed together. Breaking the kiss, she sits on the bed and lies back, her lips wet and full. She watches me with a sultry expectation. Keeping her eyes on me, she undoes the line of buttons holding her sundress together. The panels fall away, revealing plump breasts cupped in gold satin and lace. She sits up, shrugs out of the dress and reaches behind her back to unclasp the bra. Her breasts spill free, and I reach out a hand to touch her, but she shakes her head, her eyes dark and molten.
“Watch me,” she whispers.
She lifts, pulling the dress from under her, tossing it aside. She does the same with the gold panties, sliding them off and tossing them away, leaving her naked on the bed. She lies back in a cloud of curls. I swallow hard when she lifts her knees and spreads her legs, honoring me with this beautiful, bare intimacy.
“Are you watching?” she asks, her voice husky and hot.
I manage to nod and try not to drool.
She slides slim fingers down the plane of her belly and between the fat lips of her pussy, squeezing her clit.
“Shit, Tru,” I hiss, moving forward.
“Watch.”
She palms herself, an aggressive move that flattens the lips and the tight bud of nerves. Her fingers go to work, brushing against her clit at first slowly, then with more speed, more pressure. Her back arches and she moans, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. I can’t resist. I sit beside her, hoping to catch her scent. I know how she smells, how she tastes, and my mouth waters for it, but she’s so clearly in charge of her own pleasure I don’t even want to intrude.
“My breasts,” she gasps. “Suck my breasts.”
Thank God.
With permission to be part of the hottest thing I’ve ever witnessed, I take her nipple between my lips. Her hips are bucking and she slaps her pussy, so I know she doesn’t want gentle. I bite down, and she moans, her fingers going faster.
“Yes, Ez.” She dips between her legs, gathering her essence, fingering herself with one hand but she offers me the other, wet and shiny. I take her fingers into my mouth, lick the webbing between, drag my lips over her palm, searching out every trace of her. I knead one breast and suck hard on the other.
“Oh my God, that’s it.” She screams, her hips bowing off the bed, her body stiffening with the tempest of her pleasure. She rides her hand and bites her lip and pulls her knee back, opening herself wider to her plundering fingers. I keep kneading her breasts but pull back enough to watch her because I know this is just as much for me as it is for her. She knew what this would do to me. There’s already a wet spot on my shorts from seeing her come. She moans with the sensations and after several seconds, stills.
“Stand up,” she commands hoarsely, her eyes dark, possessive slits. “Undress for me. I want to see you.”
I do, my gaze latched on to hers. I peel the T-shirt over my head, relishing the hungry crawl of her eyes over my chest and abs. I undo the belt, pulling it through the loops and tossing it to the floor. My cargo shorts and boxers follow, falling around my feet. She licks her lips, her eyes zeroed in on my dick. I take it in my fist and pump, slowly, rubbing my thumb over the wet tip. In seconds, I’m lengthening, thickening. I widen my legs, plant my feet to brace for the torrent.
“I’m gonna come if I don’t stop,” I gasp.
“Then stop.” She spreads her legs. “Give that to me.”
I kneel on the bed between her thighs and line our bodies up. Supporting myself on one elbow, I push the hair from her eyes.
“Whose are you?” I’ve never asked another woman for this, never needed it. But at the core of who I am, I know I belong to Kimba. I want to hear that she feels the same.
“I belong to myself,” she says, a spark of defiance in her eyes. “And to the boy who married me when I was six years old.”
I pull back and stare down into her eyes, alive with love and peace and fire. “You remember.”
“I remember everything. You owe me a lifetime.”
The distance between us is a physical ache when she’s saying the things I’ve dreamed of hearing, reflecting the words that have been locked away in my heart for years. Treasures I thought would rot, would fade with age, but never have. Our love is as bright and real as the day we were made together. I plunge into her body, and she wraps herself tightly around me, arms and legs clutching me to her. I brace one hand on the headboard, curl my arm under her knee and push in deeper, finding no resistance, only a warm, wet, tight welcome.
I surrender to every primal urge I’ve checked. I fall through the trap door to my basest desires, biting her neck, her breasts. Slamming into her with such force that the headboard bangs the wall and the bed slides.
“Oh my God, Ez.” She drops her arms behind her, over her head, giving her body to me completely. “As hard as you want. As long as you want. Just keep fucking me like that.”
I seize the fullness of her ass in one hand, squeezing, pushing in deeper, urging our bodies beyond the limits of flesh and bone. That place where we’re joined is a gateway to what I want more than anything. I’m desperate to reach her heart, her soul.
We claw and bite and sigh and snarl until her body trembles beneath me with sobs and shudders. Even after she comes, I go on, needing to release, but not wanting this to end in case it’s all a dream. When I come, it’s with a primal roar that ricochets through my marrow and tears at my throat.
We lie there in the dark, our bellies pressed together, a tangle of sweat-slicked limbs and hurried heartbeats. I can’t imagine leaving her body right now, so I don’t. Our skin cools and our breathing evens into a quiet that doesn’t need breaking. We rest in our own thoughts and in each other’s arms.
“I need to tell you something,” she finally says.
“Okay.” I find her hand, link our fingers. “What is it?”
“I’m in…” Her fingers tighten on mine and I hear her swallow. “I’m in perimenopause, Ez.”
I don’t know what peri in the front of it means, but I do recognize menopause.
I reach over to turn on the light, but she stops me. “Don’t.”
Reluctantly, I pull out and lie down to face her, making out the shape of her face in the moonlight slanting in through the window
“You’re too young for that, right?”
“It is early, but it happens for different women at different times. This is when it’s happening for me.”
“So what does this mean?”
She hesitates. An uncharacteristic uncertainty hangs around her. She’s always sure, but right now, even in the dark, I see that she is not.
“I haven’t had a
period in four months, almost five now. I may have a year, eighteen months to have a baby naturally. It’s hard to know, but there is a definite, shrinking window. There’s an expiration date in the near future.”
I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed sometimes. It takes me a few moments to realize the uncertainty, at least in part, might be because of me.
“You don’t think it makes a difference to me, do you? I know this is a big deal, and I’ll support you whenever it gets hard, but I’ll love you no matter what. You know that, right?”
“You’re a great father,” she says, somewhat haltingly. “Earlier you admitted to wanting more kids. I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I think we have some kind of future together.”
“That’s not presumptuous at all. I know you’re in D.C. and are on the road a lot, and I’m here in Atlanta. We’ll work it out but make no mistake. You are my future, Kimba.”
“I feel the same way, which is why I wanted you to know that it’s possible I won’t ever have kids naturally. I’m still deciding what I want to do.”
“What’s the decision? What are you considering?”
“I want to elect Georgia’s first Latino governor.”
“And you will.”
She smiles, cups my face and strokes my jaw. “Only a man in love would be that confident that I can. It’s gonna be hard as hell.”
“Hard as hell is your default setting, Tru. It’s not my love for you that tells me that. It’s your track record. It’s who you’ve always been.” I pull her into me, stroke down her back and kiss her temple.
“I wasn’t thinking about having a baby right now,” she says, laying her head on my chest. “I’m not sure I want to focus on that if I need to focus on Ruiz’s campaign.”
“Can you do both?”
“I don’t know. I can take the things the doctor has recommended to restart my period.”
“They can do that?”
“Sometimes. If they can, there’s a chance I can have a baby, but I don’t know that I want to just because someone says it has to be now. I could adopt later.”
We could adopt later.
That’s what I hear. Noah doesn’t even know Aiko and I have broken up. There is a lot of transition ahead and we have to handle it carefully, but there’s no doubt in my mind I want to spend my life with Kimba.
“It just felt wrong not to tell you,” she says. “I didn’t want you to think I was keeping it from you or hiding anything.”
“I’m glad you did.” I pull her closer, wishing I could shield her from every threat to her happiness, her peace of mind. “We’ll face this together.”
She feels small nestled against me. The humanity of naked skin and shallow breaths reminds me the woman the world sees as so powerful is also vulnerable. The privilege of intimacy has shown me that, and I fall asleep dreaming of ways to keep her safe.
Chapter Forty-One
Kimba
I’m still in bed when my phone rings on the nightstand the next morning. Ezra’s humming in the bathroom. He’s such an early bird and is already up. I’ve been receiving notifications ever since the CNN spot from friends and colleagues congratulating me, but the number flashing across my screen is the only person I actually hoped to hear from.
“Congressman Ruiz,” I say, sitting up in bed, heart in my throat and phone to my ear. “Good morning.”
“Good morning, Kimba,” he says. “Hope I’m not calling too early.”
“There is no too early in this game. You know that, sir.”
“Good. Well, I wanted to call and tell you that was a brilliant audition the other night.”
I grin, but keep my voice even. “I’m sorry? Audition?”
“You were trying to prove what a valuable asset you’d be in the fight against Colson come November.”
“Is that what you think?” I ask, unable to keep the smile from my voice.
“That’s exactly what I think,” he chuckles. “It worked.”
I leap out of bed and allow myself a fist pump and a quick body roll before replying. “What exactly are you saying, sir?”
“I’m saying, let’s meet this week to talk about what it’ll take to win this great state of Georgia. You ready for that?”
“Oh, I stay ready.”
“That’s what I hear. Good work on Colson. Looking forward to winning with you and your team.”
Ezra walks in from the bathroom as I’m hanging up. “Everything okay?”
I practically skip across the room and throw my arms around his neck. “Ruiz just hired me.”
“Tru, that’s amazing.” His strong arms tighten around me, the perfect hold. “I’m so happy for you. Proud of you. You did it.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.” I pull back, laughing up into his face. “Colson won’t roll over and play dead.”
“Of course there’s a long road ahead, but we have to celebrate this. You saw the chance and you made the move.” He takes my face between his hands, looking at me intently, so much love in his dark blue eyes.
“I know this is the first campaign without Lennix and you feel like you have something to prove, but you don’t. Mateo Ruiz just made the best decision of his life. He chose you. Not your father or your family name or your partner. You seized that opportunity. You set aside your own fears and insecurities to go on that show. You spoke truth to power and called Colson out on his shit. In front of millions.” He squeezes my waist and drops his forehead to rest on mine. “And I’m so incredibly proud.”
There have always been hard-to-reach places in me that only Ezra could find, could touch. Even when we were kids, when I barely understood myself, in a deserted park on a pair of swings, he would ask the right questions or he’d leave me the quiet to figure things out myself. All the times we were there for each other rush back to me on a loop.
And we will strengthen each other.
If only I had known this was possible for us. I would have torn the world apart searching for Ezra Stern.
“I’ve missed you so much,” I whisper, tears burning my throat. “I’m so glad you’re in my life again.”
“I’m glad, too,” he says, his voice husky with the emotions darkening his eyes. “And you’re not getting rid of me.”
“I have no desire to.”
He seems to hesitate for a moment and then continues. “Last night you trusted me with something hard.” He tilts my chin up, searches my eyes. “I don’t just want you when you’re strong. I want you when you’re vulnerable, when you’re lost, when you’re not sure. I see the armor you have to put on to make it in your world. I just want you to know here, with me, you can take the armor off.”
All my life, I’ve had to be the strongest one in every room. It was expected of Joseph Allen’s daughter. It was required in the shark pond of politics. No one wanted to make room for me, so I had to make room for myself.
Fine.
That’s what you do. You put in that work if you want the rewards. And I’ve accepted that I have to work harder than everyone else sometimes just to get the same results. That’s the reality girls like me learn to live with. We use it to make us stronger. I kick those doors down, whether it’s in work boots or Jimmy Choos. Looking down at the floor, my feet are bare. Here with Ezra, my soul is bare, and at his words, I slump against him and for a few moments, I rest. It’s a sigh of the soul and his arms tighten around me. He kisses my temple and strokes my back. It feels so good to let someone love me, to let him cherish me, to share my burdens with his strong shoulders.
“You okay?” he asks.
I look up at him, trace the strong line of his jaw and the dark silk of his brows. He doesn’t like it when I say he’s “dear,” but that’s exactly what he is. Dear and rare and precious and mine.
“I am now.”
“You sure you’re okay if we swing by my house first?” Ezra asks after we’ve showered.
“Sure.” I tug the fitted sheet from the bed. “You need to change for your meeting,
right?”
“Right.” He grabs his standard YLA T-shirt from the bench at the end of the bed and slips it on. “I can’t believe I forgot I’m supposed to meet the publisher downtown at noon or I would have brought the right clothes with me. I had it in my calendar for tomorrow. Glad my editor reminded me. I’ll just change at home. I can drop you off at your place and make it there in time.”
“Sounds good.” I gather the bedding and pad around to kiss his jaw.
He pats my butt, kisses my cheek and steps away. “I’ll load the car.”
“I’m just gonna put these in the laundry room. There’s a service that comes to clean. They’ll change the bed.”
We just added this laundry room. We’d planned some upgrades and renovations for a while, but then Daddy died and no one seemed to care until recently. The lake house hasn’t been used much lately, but my family had some good times here. Now that Congressman Ruiz has tapped me to run his campaign, I’ll make sure this house gets use while I’m here, even if it’s just for Ezra and me to get away.
The laundry room is small and neat and has a shiny new washer and dryer.
“Nice,” I mutter, stuffing the bedding into a hamper in the corner. The early morning sunlight shining through the window catches a glint of gold. I glance down and see the tiny tip of something in a far corner. It’s actually lodged in the crack between the wall and the floor, and I would have missed it if the sun hadn’t wanted me to find it. I squat and coax it out with a fingernail until it’s fully revealed on the floor.
The star of David.
And at the center, an onyx stone.
My breath catches. I’ve seen this charm before. Ruth Stern wore it all the time when we were growing up.
I pick up the charm and run outside. Ezra’s stashing my overnight bag and slamming the trunk.
“Ez,” I say, my heart racing with the possible implications of what I’ve found. “You said you never came here before, right?”