“Shut up.”
That was a definitive two-word answer, wasn’t it?
Dylan opened the profile he’d started for Mike the other day and shoved the laptop screen in his partner’s face. “Here.”
“What’s this?”
“Your dating profile.”
“My what?”
“You heard me. Unless there’s so much dirt built up in your ears that you can’t hear.”
“Fuck you.”
That was two words, too.
Mike snapped the laptop shut. “Not now,” he said, walking out of the living room.
“Where are you going?” Dylan watched as Mike peeled his shirt off, his bare back visible before he turned and walked into the bathroom.
“Shower.”
Slam! The bathroom door shut with a violent shudder.
“Damn,” Dylan hissed under his breath. At least he got Mike to take care of basic hygiene. These two off-seasons since Jill had died were miserable for Mike. Snow meant he kept busy. Nice weather meant he sulked and moped around the house watching nature shows when he wasn't running constantly.
Dylan opened the laptop and pondered the profile.
What if he just... submitted it? Mike wouldn’t need to know unless someone contacted him, right? Checking out the online dating site’s settings, he realized he could configure the ad so Mike never got an email. All his contact would be through the online dating site, via private message.
Dylan had to do something. Mike was suffering. No amount of meditation or running was going to drag Mike out of this dark place. And, since Dylan was his partner and along for the ride for life, whatever emotional dungeon Mike lived in, Dylan visited heavily, too.
He wasn’t being selfish trying to get them back into the dating game, to find their third partner. He was being realistic.
Life couldn’t go on like this.
No matter how much they both missed Jill.
Her mouth was like fire and ice, warm heat and slickness as it left his eager lips, kissing down the hollows of his neck, sucking each nipple with a teasing intensity. Her hands skimmed the contours of his arms, muscles swollen from need. As she left a wet trail that journeyed down, down, down she blew lightly in his wet, used skin, making him groan.
Her long, curly hair was like an afterthought, trailing behind her as she lavished luxurious attention on his skin. It caught in the wetness, slipped between his torso and arms, tickled his cock as finally, mercifully, her mouth took him in, half-hard and in full need of her.
Her.
She didn’t have a name, but oh, did she have a grin. A touch. A taste about her that made Dylan sure this wasn’t just a dream. He swallowed, the tight keening of his cock alleviated by her singular attention. She moved like beauty in pure form, her hand grasping the base of him, pulling up and stroking, lubing the shaft as needed.
Engulfing him with her soul—via her mouth and throat—she ministered to his every wish.
The sex was infused with a wholeness, a gentle, tender feeling of being loved. This was what he craved, and before he could come from her mouth he pulled her off, flipping her with a commanding movement, mouth raking over her lips, sucking and biting as she widened her legs for him, the tip of his entire self resting at the entrance of her.
“I love this. I love you,” she whispered as he drove inside her, the warm, soft place making him groan.
She was his love, his life, his erotic end to what felt like an eternal journey, and as he rode her, twisting her hair in his fist, watching her mouth open in ecstasy, he rippled with pleasure, pouring his seed into her as she clenched around him, milking him, urging him on.
She touched herself, gentle circles of movement that elicited aftershocks in her, the rhythmic pulse of her mini-climaxes like a heartbeat they shared. As they waned, she moved her arms around him, hands splayed on the expanse of his back, short fingernails digging in slightly.
He rolled off and she snuggled against him, both breathing hard into the air, a warm flush covering him from head to toe.
And then, blissful sleep took over, a slumber within a dream, as Dylan experienced the first good night’s sleep in eighteen months, completely unaware that the woman he’d just made love with had never been in his bed.
Only in his head.
Chapter 6
“I’m only here because Dylan insisted,” Mike ground out, sitting on the red velour chair surrounded by tiny throw pillows that made up the rainbow if he sorted them in order.
He did not.
Never had.
Dr. Harr was a kindly looking woman who looked a bit like Michelle Obama, though her hair, pulled back in a fierce and always-tidy bun, was streaked with white. Her face was impassive, with a high forehead and strong cheekbones. Eyes that flickered with strength and intelligence peered at him through fashionable red-rim glasses.
Her office was primary colors and light, all glass and spider plants. His fingers picked at the quilted pillow next to him. He’d cried into this very pillow.
More than once.
Dr. Harr was the psychotherapist Jill’s oncology nurse had referred him to as Jill’s death became imminent. He’d seen the psychologist for twelve sessions, declared himself cured, and had carefully avoided all thoughts of being in this room, an expansive office at the top of an old mansion in Harvard Square, her view of the Charles River both breathtaking and daunting.
Just like Dr. Harr.
“Is it important that I know that?” Dr. Harr asked, eyes blinking slowly, like an owl’s.
“What?”
“I am assuming that you find that detail important. The fact that Dylan insisted you see me again. Is it important?”
Mike was nonplussed, but scrambled internally not to show it. “No.”
“Then why lead with it?”
“I don’t know.” Those three words bedeviled him, because while they were absolutely correct—his internal emotional state was one he simply could not understand, no matter how hard he tried—he knew they were inadequate.
Unfair, even.
People had asked him his entire life to describe what he felt, and when he tried, it was like trying to explain how it felt to watch a beautiful sunrise, or to have a knife slice through your thumb, or to watch your best friend score a touchdown.
Describing a feeling seemed as stupid as asking Mike to give birth to a baby.
It defied nature.
His nature.
She smiled, a crooked grin with arched eyebrows that he could not help but match. He had four sessions approved by his insurance company and he’d spent fifteen minutes of this one just staring out the window over her shoulder.
What a waste of—
Money.
His flat palm curled into a fist full of yellow cloth, the pillow becoming the size of a cantaloupe in his hand.
Dr. Harr’s smile faded, her face impassive as she looked at it. “Tell me what that hand is doing,” she said, a gentle nod added for emphasis.
He dropped his head and stared at his own fingers as if they were on another person’s body.
Jill
Jill
Jill.
Her name whipped through his mind like a ceiling fan set to triple time, whirring and spinning around and around and around, the grief so intense he thought it would break away and carry him off on the wind.
“Grief,” he said, his voice a croak. He had to say something, right? That’s why he was here, in a therapist’s office. To talk. To mourn.