With Daisy on the pill, their lovemaking was even more frequent and intense. The spontaneity it allowed them caused a bit of a circus the first month. A second honeymoon. They were doing it all over the damn place. Seduction on the couch, sneaky trysts in the dressing rooms under the stage or the storage rooms where old sets were kept. Erik was waking up hard every other morning, rolling half-asleep onto Daisy or pulling her on top of him. Or he was pulling over in the car or pressing her up against the kitchen counter or surprising her in the shower. But even better than the freedom was the mind-bending sensation of having nothing between his body and hers. He had never been inside a girl without a condom before and he loved how she, and only she, now owned the experience.
She is the only woman I’ve touched this way, he thought. He held her in his lap, pushed up deep inside her, his hungry hands coursing along the avenues of her body. Arms and legs wound around each other, foreheads pressed together tight. Her entire body clutched him. The air roaring in his head, eardrums bulging against the dark and firework flashes of yellow and orange behind his closed eyelids. The taste of her mouth in his. And through it all he was sliding and pushing inside her and she was sliding and pulling him in. Hard against slick. Tight, hot and aching.
“God, Erik,” she said, the air falling out of her voice. “I want to come.”
“Dais—" He had turned the corner. A hole opened in the night, beckoning him. He was right on the edge of coming. But he had been with her long enough he could control it and wait for her. He knew her body. Knew it by feel and sight and sound. She was closing in on him, contracting down, like a hand slowly curling into a fist.
“It feels so good.”
“Let it go, Dais.”
“I feel it.”
“It’s right there. Let it come. Come to me.”
She jumped with her silent scream. He followed, gathering the air she left behind. Her kiss crashed into his as a moan passed from his throat to her mouth and back again. As what he had burst forth into her body.
Only me.
Time and space reassembled. Riding out the last of the tremors, Erik held tight to Daisy, rocking her in his lap, stroking her head on his shoulder. He could feel her heart pounding against his, the last little trembles making her body twitch.
“I love us,” she whispered.
He smiled, feeling the world to his bones. “I love us, too.”
“It’s so good.” She ran a hand back from her forehead, gathering her hair up and away from her neck.
“Happy birthday,” he said, running his mouth along her throat, tasting her scent.
She took his face in her hands and kissed him. “Being twenty rocks.”
Carefully he helped her down to her back, pulling a pillow into place, pulling up the covers and tucking them around their bodies.
Another December.
Another Nutcracker Mercenary Season.
Another anniversary.
“Two years,” she said.
Fingers twined, he set his mouth against her wrist, feeling her pulse beat. “Twenty-four months.”
He loved her. Sometimes it was just part of the world, like air and water. Other times, like right now, he looked at Daisy and could not get his mind around the emotion he felt for her. “Love” didn’t seem an adequate word anymore. It was bigger than the world, beyond everything he had imagined love could be. Even the phrase “making love” had morphed out of context. Lately he was struck by the literal idea of making love. Not just a sexual expression but a creation-ary one. As if with each conversation, each shared experience and each time their bodies came together, they were assembling something larger. Adding bit by bit onto some magnificent structure. A cathedral within their private universe.
“I love you so much,” he said. You can’t know. You’ll never know how much. I’ll never be able to say it all.