And in return, I get a big, soapy kiss.
Ten minutes later, we dry off and crawl into bed, the curtains open, sheers closed, the city lights glowing through the thin, shimmery fabric like stardust illuminated by the dying light of a thousand stars from long before the earth began.
He reaches for my left hand, fingers worrying the thin wedding band. “We’re really married,” he says, his voice strong, his breath hot against my shoulder.
I find his matching band, hard and cool against the warm skin, light hair encircling the ring. “Yes. It only took two tries to get here.” The rustle of skin against soft, Egyptian cotton sheets that feel like silk prickles my ears.
“It took forever. At least, that’s what it feels like sometimes. I wish I’d met you sooner.” He kisses my neck, his nose brushing against my earlobe, his fingers still tracing my ring as we snuggle between the sheets.
“I wish we’d met sooner, too.” He’s familiar and new. My husband—and just Declan. We’re some kind of different right now, and the change is just enough to make this all unspeakably real, as if every experience I’ve had before now was just practice for this.
“Think of all the years we’ve wasted,” he says, pausing his kisses. We’re in no rush. I’m pretty much a sure thing.
You know. For the next sixty years or so.
“You bought me a company.”
“Too much?” He’s on his side, facing me, his profile in shadow, eyes bright.
“If the only reason you did it was to beat Andrew at his own game, then well played, Declan. Very well played.” My hip brushes against his, and as I tuck my legs in, thighs brushing against thighs, my smooth calves finding just the right place to rest between his, the tickle of his body hair makes me smile.
“I did it for you. And me, too. I told you to stop letting people take your power away from you. Turns out I was really talking to myself.”
“Is that what you want to do now, Mr. McCormick?” I flatten my palm against his chest, tickling a nipple with my thumb, the tiny point of attention a pleasant bump along the road that leads down to even bigger encounters. “Talk?”
“I—” His voice hitches, and he clears his throat, a sensual sigh emerging in the resulting seconds that tick between talking and what my hand decides to do to my husband.
Flipped on my back by strong, corded arms that know how to say so many words without uttering a sound, Declan’s naked body covers mine, parts hard and muscled, some sections peppered with coarse hair, others blissfully smooth and determined to elicit a response from my prone, pinned form. His kiss is neither tender nor rough, but instead a pressing engagement that tells me it’s time to descend into a world under the covers, where we make this marriage truly official.
The good old-fashioned way.
After more than two years of making love with each other, you would think this would be routine. Pleasant and passionate, yes, but also a bit too known. A bit too tame. A sequence of moves and touches, mouths and fingers, a joining that is scripted to maximize pleasure, but that comes from a place where the unexpected gives way to the predictable.
But no.
Each time his mouth touches my breast, I shiver like it’s the first time. Every sigh, every moan, is a fresh sound. The gravelly sound of his groan sets off new neurons in my brain, a lightning-fast signal speeding through my brain, traveling through my blood to my heart.
The path of love doesn’t always make sense, but like the laws of physics, it doesn’t care.
We’re so serious, Declan taking my face in his hands, the light notes of a symphony rolling out of speakers somewhere in the suite, a low, contemporary sound of music that fills the air with a mood designed to highlight this newness. Never before have we made love for the first time as husband and wife.
And we never will again.
I kiss him, rising up to meet his mouth, the tender taste of him making my mouth tingle. Every breath sounds harsh and soft against my ear. The drag of his lips against my jaw and neck is a world unto itself.
“Shannon,” he whispers into the mingling of our breath, mouths so close we become one taste. I sigh, the long exhale a release of the past, my body letting go of uncertainty and fear, and as I breathe in his breath, I feel that grounding I have spent my entire adult life seeking.
Bloom where you’re planted, they say. Tonight we do just that, in each other.
“Declan,” I gasp, his name tickling my mouth, which soon meets his lips as his hands touch me in gentle and slow ways, fingers lighting my skin with love that masquerades itself as passion. The cold slide of my wedding and engagement bands against his inner arm leads to the metal absorbing the heat from his blood that pumps to the surface, the exchange of warmth from his heart to my ring a transfer that leaps from organism to object, turning physics on its head.
Turning love into a physical transfer, from his body to mine.
My hands ride up from his hips to the tight band of muscle at the base of his ribs, counting one, two, three...and losing count as he enters me, my gasp against his mouth making him quicken, our bodies connected in the most spiritual of ways.
“Mrs. McCormick,” he whispers, the words punctuated by a delightful sigh, then a groan that tightens into a raw sounds that I am privileged to witness, for I am the only person who will hear them.
Ever.
“I am,” I murmur back, the words replaced by emotion that jumps from skin to skin, dancing across the electricity that friction and love so deliciously create.
In the part of my soul that only Declan has glimpsed, but not yet touched, I hear the distinct sound of steel on steel, feel the scrape of yet another key sliding into a lock, sense the tingling hope that this is the one, a prayer which resides, ever present, in the ever-searching fingers of the holder of the key ring.