“I should have worn something sexy,” I say in a rush. “Like a negligee or—”
“Just stop.” His laugh comes out, a wisp of smoke. “Seeing you wear my number is like a wet dream wrapped in a hand job.”
He outlines his number, thirty-three, emblazoned over my chest with one finger. When he pinches and rolls my nipples, the cartilage in my knees goes to goo. I grab his shoulders, smooth and velvet, to keep me on my feet. His hands wander over my legs, creeping under the hem of the jersey to cup my bare butt, squeezing until his fingers meet at the crack of my ass. With his eyes locked with mine, he spreads my cheeks and runs one thick finger along that secret, sensitive ridge. Like he’s pulled a lever, moisture leaks from my body, dampening my thighs.
Stealthily, one hand slips between my legs, and for a few moments he just caresses my lips. My breath grows jagged. I’m a moaning, shameless girl spreading her legs, silently begging him to touch me there. To open me up, invade, and own this pussy.
August teases me until his fingers are soaked with my body’s wet, begging offering, with the supplication leaking down my thighs. My nails sink into his flesh, demanding more.
He doesn’t look away and neither do I, when his mouth, steamy and insistent, possesses one breast through the jersey. He finally spreads me and taps my clit.
“Oh.” I wilt against him, weak and gasping, resting my forehead on his. “August.”
His thumb strokes me, repeating the caress and stealing more breath with every pass. He pulls one leg on either side to frame his muscled thighs until I’m splayed over him, cool air whispering over the wet, hot pleat of me.
“I wanna fuck you in my jersey, wearing my number.” He tongues the length of my neck. “Ride me, Iris.”
Just those words said just that way—I’m frozen in the moment. Preserved in a block of ice. For a second, my body shuts down. Cools. Stalls. Those words haunt me.
Another man commanded me to ride him. He told me to make him believe I wanted him, but I couldn’t. I didn’t. His cruelty stole my passion and turned me cold.
“Iris?” August’s frown, the concern on his face, in his voice, remind me where I am. “Baby, you okay?”
I blink down at him dumbly, swallowing my tears, eating my memories whole and digesting a nightmare from long ago. I nod, my lips a cold, wobbly curve.
“Kiss me,” he whispers, his eyes so tender, so intent.
I remember a magical night under the stars, under a streetlight on the eve of greatness. A night filled with laughter and confidences, pregnant with promise. And I see him so clearly, my prince, asking for a kiss.
And I do.
I kiss him like the world might end tonight because I’ll never take this for granted. Not his kindness, when I’ve known cruelty all too well. Not his tenderness, when I’ve been handled roughly in the past. Not his love, when I’ve been possessed and owned and mistreated.
He thaws me with his kiss, my prince, and I melt into him. We’re chest to chest, with August’s number crushed between us. I take his cock in my hand, aligning our bodies, and two become one in a carnal slide of flesh. I anchor myself by my elbows hooked around his neck, and we kiss until I’m dizzy and our breaths tangle in a cloud of bliss. Under the jersey, his palm spans my back, digging into the naked flesh as our hips lock and roll and grind. My body clenches around him, and we pray, we curse, we moan, we mate like our bodies were made for this moment.
Ours is a love that reimagines—that peels back the sky at high noon searching for the stars, collecting them like shells in a bucket. We bathe in stardust, drink from the Milky Way, and dance on the moon. We pierce the firmament, peer into infinity, and tread on time and space. There is no before. There is no after. Now gives birth to forever. This moment may die, but this love never will. Time is not a line. It’s a circle, and we, August and Iris, we stand at the center.
“Have you seen Sliding Doors?” I ask, pressing my back into the rigid wall of August’s torso.
It’s dark and I’m only a few minutes past an orgasm that left my brain like an old floppy disk wiped clean.
“The movie?” His hands move in my hair.
“Yeah, Sliding Doors.”
“Kate Winslet?”
“No, Gwyneth Paltrow.”
“Is that the movie where her mother-in-law tries to kill her?”
“No, that’s Hush.”
“Why do you know so much about Gwyneth Paltrow?” he teases, pinching my sides and making me squeal. “It’s weird.”
“It’s not w . . . okay. So in Sliding Doors, this lady—”
“Gwyneth Paltrow.”
“Oh, my god. Yes,” I agree, laughing into the pillow both our heads rest on. “Gwyneth Paltrow.”
“I’m just clarifying.”
“So she drops this earring in the lift.”
“A what? A lift?”
“It’s London. Lift. Elevator. Same thing.”
“So she drops an earring in the lift.”
I hear his grin in the dark and wait a beat to let my silence warn him.
“Okay, okay.” He laughs into my hair. “I’ll stop.”
I elbow him in the stomach. He “omphs”, and I go on.
“Well she drops the earring and the story branches off into these two different scenarios.” My good humor dissolves like sugar in vinegar. “With these two different men.”
August doesn’t laugh either, but finds my hand and links our fingers under the overstuffed weight of the duvet. He waits for my next words.
“I used to think of the night we met all the time.” I bite my lip and blink back unexpected tears. “You wanted to kiss me outside the bar.”
“And you told me you had a boyfriend.” His voice has grown sober, too.
“When I was . . .”
Beaten. Bruised. Threatened. Violated.
“. . . unhappy, I would imagine that I kissed you that night.” I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing I could erase the wasted years between then and now. “I would imagine that I chose you, and that one choice changed everything.”
He’s quiet. I won’t tell him everything. I won’t tell him much at all, but it will be the truth.
“It was like there was this parallel universe where I made the right choice, and we were happy.” I struggle to release the words that acknowledge my error. “But I would always wake up, and you weren’t there. Caleb was.”
“In this alternative universe,” he says softly, caressing the webbing between my fingers, “was Sarai mine?”
I hesitate, not sure what he wants me to say, so again I choose the truth. I nod. He drops his head to my nape and leaves a long breath there.
“Then we were there together, because that’s what kept me going when you were with him.” He rolls me onto my back, pressing his forearm by my head into the pillow. “Not that it had already happened, but that it still could.” He brushes the hair back from my face, peering down at me in the darkness like it’s the light of day and he can see me clearly. “It has happened, Iris.” He brings our clasped hands to his lips. “That’s not an alternative universe. That’s our life, baby.”
I almost don’t want to smile—like my happiness might shatter this illusion, and I’ll wake up curled at the edge of the bed, staring down the barrel of Caleb’s pistol. But I won’t. Tomorrow I’ll wake up in August’s arms, and my past, my memories, Caleb – can’t rob me of that.