Same Time Next Year

She takes me to her throat again, those delicate muscles flexing around me, and my balls squeeze in a level-ten warning. “Oh fuck, get up. Up, up, up. ”

I don’t wait for her to follow instructions, especially because she is proving more and more that she won’t. I hook my shaking hands beneath her armpits and heave her up, skipping the part where her feet touch the floor, throwing her up against the door, and then wedging myself in between her incredible thighs instead, because it’s motherfucking business time. I’m not playing around anymore.

“Did you like that?” she has the nerve to whisper breathlessly while I’m guiding my miserable, aching dick to her entrance. Sinking into her hot pussy, groaning against her mouth as she accepts every inch.

I get both hands beneath her skirt and grip her ass hard, gratified by the excited flash in her eyes when I knead those tight cheeks. “Not going to answer,” I say thickly. “Just going to show you.”

“Please . . .” That word turns into a gasp when I pull out and ram deep again, rattling the hinges of her apartment door. Rattling myself. My

composure, my emotions, my foundation. Being inside her is more than sex; it’s an experience that could never be matched or even explained. “Oh my God,” she whimpers. “Sumner, yes.”

Her visible enjoyment of my dick is like a shot of testosterone that hits me everywhere, and I lose the ability to be polite. I’m just an eager, aching mess, and she’s the cure, and that’s the beginning and end of it. “You feel that? You feel what being without you for a week does to me?” I’m banging her, vicious stroke after vicious stroke, up against the door, my teeth bared against her ear. “I’m in fucking pain, Britta.”

“I’ll take it away.”

“Yeah, you will.” Flesh smacks between us. Slap, slap, slap. Those tiny but powerful muscles of her pussy tightening and releasing around me.

Making me insane. Making me drive harder, my grip on her backside bruising, my hips frantic. “You’re the only one I’ll ever give it to, tight girl.

And you take it so good. You take it, take it, take it. Fuck. ”

“Harder, baby,” she whines, her head falling back against the door, her thighs spread so wide for my thrusts, I start to see double. “Sumner. I’m . . .

I’m close.”

It’s so hard to control my body’s response to her, I have to grit my teeth and roar into the slope of her neck, my hips continuing to drive upward, rolling and punching, because that’s what she needs, and I give my wife what she needs or there’s no use carrying on with my life.

The problem with being half-delirious is that I can’t control my mouth. Again.

Every thought, every feeling inside me comes pouring out, compensating for the orgasm I’m holding back. “You know how proud I was introducing you to my family? That’s my fucking wife.” I plaster our foreheads together, kissing her lips roughly, catching her hiccups of breath every time I pump. “My. Wife. Mine. ”

It’s not my imagination that her pussy clamps, wet and tight, around me, harder than before. “I was proud to be your wife.” She barely makes it through that statement without her teeth chattering, her back arching between me and the door. She’s really close, thank God. “Sumner, please

. . .”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’m not stopping until you come.” I lick my tongue up the smooth curve of her neck, catching her mouth in a hectic kiss, the pace of my thrusts picking up naturally, out of necessity. I can’t stop,

she feels so motherfucking good, and now the doorknob is rattling, along with the hinges, both of us rasping each other’s names, moaning as the friction does its job, making her sex quicken, cinch up tight, tighter, tightest. “Tell me you need me,” I demand in between frenzied kisses of her mouth. “Tell me, Britta.”

“I need you,” she says on a rushing exhale.

“For more than this. For everything.”

She looks me in the eye, and my heart tumbles down the side of a mountain. “I do,” she whispers. “I need you for everything.”

“I need you too. For everything.”

Our mouths collide. Take. “You’ve got me,” she says quietly, but I hear her.

I hear her, and my entire chest, my heart and soul, they know she means it. “You’ve got me too. I’m not going anywhere.”

And it’s like hope has imbued me with another reserve of willpower, because I manage to hold back another few seconds, grinding my cock deep inside her and speaking nasty against her ear. “Knowing I’m fucking my wife makes me so stiff, Britta. You do that.” My middle finger slides down between the cheeks of her ass and jiggles that pucker. “A husband has to earn his wife’s come, huh? Do I earn it?”

“Yes! ” she screams, her hips writhing between me and the door, before they go still and trembles rock her, all the way to her sweet knees digging into my hips. “Sumner. God!”

A storm tears through me, whipping through my muscles, my gut, my head. I’m caught up in it, and I barely register the movements of my body, I’m just blindly humping her into the door, my finger fully inside that back entrance now, my teeth buried in her neck, hinges protesting, liquid fire leaving some deep well inside me, the utter relief and pain of the orgasm making me moan and shake, using Britta as an anchor. Holding on to her and giving her everything inside me, physical and emotional, and my wife holds me through it all.

We hold each other, shaken, our mouths seeking each other for long comedown kisses that brand themselves on my chest.

She said she needs me.

She meant it. We fought her insecurities and won. We’re going to make it as a couple.

In that moment, nothing can go wrong.





Chapter Ten





BRITTA


I’m in Sumner’s kitchen the next morning, having breakfast with his family, when his phone rings. It’s weird, the way everyone stops what they’re doing. His sister ceases turning over the bacon; his mom pauses in the act of pouring orange juice. It’s as though everyone senses that there is something about this 9:00 a.m. phone call that requires everyone’s attention. And I’m not sure why, but my heart starts to pound dully, palms dampening.

“Hello?” Sumner turns slightly to observe the sudden stillness of the kitchen with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah, hey, coach. What’s up?”

The oil sizzling in the pan might as well be a foghorn blaring over a silent ocean.

“You’re serious?” His chest dips, his free fingers plowing through his hair. “They’re really bringing me up. That’s—”

Everyone moves at once, chairs scraping across the floor, arms lifted in victory. Sumner’s mother yelps and does a little dance by the stove.

It’s happening.

Sumner finally got the call. He’s going pro. Or at least to the developmental league, which would put him right at the precipice. This is it.