Happy Saturday, people!
The usual stuff:
1. People, you propelled Ivories WAY PAST 1,8k reviews! Thank you so, so much. Special shout-out of the week goes to ohtobeyoung, who's been reading and reviewing every single chapter. Thank you for joining EditorWard's newsroom!
2. Also thank you to Team Momo, who work tirelessly to help me make this readable. My stories wouldn't exist without them and I'm so grateful they're in my corner. Alice's White Rabbit and Midnight Cougar are in the editing chairs. AGoodWitch, IAmBeagle, Driving Edward and RobsmyyummyCabanaBoy pre-read.
3. I still don't own - SM does. But I still own a collection of mugs. One of them is shaped like an owl.
4. There is still a week or so to vote for the Golden Onion Awards, and yours truly was lucky enough to be nominated in a bunch of categories:
- Author of the Year
- Best A-Lister (Edward/Correct the Narrative)
- Best Farce Fic (Business Class Girl)
- Best Je t'aime Fic (Correct the Narrative)
- Best Nail-Biting Fic (Correct the Narrative)
- Masterpiece of the Year (Correct the Narrative)
- WIP of the Year (Behind the Ivories)
- Mina Rivera was also nominated for Best Banner of the Year for the wonderful cover she designed for Behind the Ivories.
Congrats to all fellow nominees and thank you to the organizers for their hard work putting this together year after year. You can vote daily until August 21.
Because ffnet doesn't like links, I put a link to the voting site in LaMomo's Lair, my fanfic group on FB. Enter the name in the search bar on FB and you'll find it.
I'm sure at this point you're not even reading, so without further ado, let's get back to the show.
BEHIND THE IVORIES – CHAPTER 31
"Who am I to say no to you?" I reply.
I drink her in hungrily as my gaze follows the dozens of water droplets drawing tantalizing paths on her skin; they sparkle in the twilight, hit by the crimson light of the waning sun that filters in from the window. Bella's backlit against it, but I don't need a spotlight to discern the shape of her body. My heart knows it; my body recognizes it. We stand separated by the tub, its cast iron barrier between us, elevating Bella at the same time so her gaze almost levels with mine. With the nighttime about to envelop us, the temperature around us is falling. Bella shivers under my scrutiny and yet stares at me without shame, projecting the same yearning I feel bubbling up inside me.
I reach for one of the towels on the shelving unit. Esme didn't skimp in her remodeling; these things are even fluffier than the ones I get for myself, and I'm a fucking towel snob. When I wrap her in the towel, leaving her shoulders uncovered, she sighs, reveling in my touch. I pull on the towel to drag her closer to me and leave a trail of open-mouthed kisses on her collarbone. She trembles, and her sighs get shallower the closer I get to her lips. But I change course on a whim and nibble on her earlobe; I know it drives her crazy with want.
"I'm about to pick you up, Ladybug. Then we're going to engage in a lot of funny business. In my bed."
She nods, wide-eyed and silent.
When I hoist her in my arms, she feels like liquid electricity—supple and alluring. The familiar, exciting tingle that grips me when I touch her runs haywire underneath my skin, as if all barriers between us have been pulverized.
It's a battle of self-control to walk the long way from the bathtub to our room with her in my arms because I can't help myself—I can't stop kissing her. I'm lucky I know this place like the back of my hand; otherwise, I'd be bumping into shit left and right. Because I discarded my shoes at the front door, my steps make little to no noise on the floorboards, except when I hit one of those persnickety ones that creak.
Once in the bedroom, I kick the door closed behind me. Nobody else is here, but the idea of being wrapped in a cocoon only she and I inhabit appeals to my wilder, possessive side. A side of me that's lain dormant for years and is just resurfacing lately because I feel happy and safe enough to let it loose. Because deep down in my soul, I know she won't be intimidated or repulsed by it.
When the door slams, she giggles and looks at me, her eyes dark with want and shining. I'm tempted to throw her on the bed and strip away the towel that hides her from me, but there's something I need to say first.
"I want you, Ladybug. May I have you?" I murmur. My lips are so close to hers I feel their silky warmth.
"Yes."
There's no doubt, no trepidation in her voice as she lays a hand on my cheek, caressing along my jaw until my breath hitches in anticipation.
"Then you don't need this anymore." I unravel the towel from around her torso; it falls to the floor in a muted thud, then I drop Bella on the bed.
She lands in a cascade of giggles, with her riotous hair in an impalpable cloud around her face. "And now?" she asks after recovering her powers of speech.
"Now, I'm going to strip for you, and you're going to watch."
Now her breath hitches, then she leans on her elbows to get a better view of me.
I'm standing at the foot of the bed. My yearning for her tugs at me, pulls me to her like an invisible force. But I want to have some fun with her, too. I want this to be as sensual and tantalizing to her as she is to me, lying there before me, naked and flushed. Nothing mars her skin but goosebumps that sweep over her like a wave of desire and end at her taut nipples, at her parted, plump lips. She pushes herself up the bed until her back hits the headboard, then her legs fall open before my eyes.
When I glimpse her core glistening, something snaps inside me. "You are a temptation."
With painstaking slowness, I undo the buttons on my shirt. The fabric rustles under my touch as my fingers slide lower and lower. The rhythm comes as second nature to me, which allows me to pin my gaze on my beautiful, sexy girlfriend. My heart skips a beat when I find the same hunger that fuels me reflected in her eyes.
One by one, the buttons break free until the last comes undone. With a roll of my shoulders, the shirt falls off me, landing on the floorboards next to Bella's discarded towel. An involuntary hiss escapes me when my hand grazes the front of my jeans and my hard dick straining against them.
I steal a glance at Bella before moving my hands to my belt. She barely blinks; her eyes all but glued to my movements. She follows every move, every shift, with rapt attention.
Without averting my gaze from her, I let my hands do the work of unfastening my belt; next, with one harsh pull, I tug open the button fly, pushing my pants down my legs. Bella's stare falters for a second, then she reverses course, taking in all my uncovered skin.
She doesn't linger on my scars. She never does, which is another of the countless reasons why I love her so desperately. Because under her loving gaze, I'm whole—the golden thread of her love stitched me back together.
"You're still overdressed," she murmurs.
I take a step closer to the bed, hooking a finger at her. "Want to help me?"
In a wordless answer, she rises to her knees, scooting down the bed toward me.
She always feels tiny, diminutive in my eyes, only tall enough to fit under my chin at full height, but there's nothing vulnerable, nothing helpless about her at the moment. She's glorious, intoxicatingly sexy, and all mine.
She leaves a hot trail on my skin as she all but brands me with her touch, and it's only one finger tracing the waistband of my boxer briefs. Slowly, inch by inch, along the band of fabric separating me from her, she moves from my hips to the center of my abs until she grazes the trail of hair south of my navel. When she repeats the same titillating gesture from the other side, I don't know if I can bear this torture any longer. The reprieve comes when her hands sharply drag down my underwear until it falls to my knees, then to the floor.
I hold my breath, overcome by anticipation and arousal, and by the sheer magnitude of my yearning for her. When I bend over her, she follows me and leans back, sprawled out beneath me, ready for the taking.
As ravenous as I am for her—more than I've been so far—hovering above her is no longer enough. I cage her in with my arms, tangling my legs with hers. With my forehead against hers, I capture her lips in a searing kiss and lose myself in her.
Her hands roam over me, and instead of going where I expected—on my shaft, which she's been known to do before—they land on my butt cheeks with a playful slap.
"Someone likes my ass," I murmur, nipping at her earlobe and neck again. The way she shivers when I kiss her there drives me crazy.
"God, yes."
That's her reaction when I probe her with my hands only to find that she's soaking my fingers.
A sudden pang of desire pierces through me, and I roll us over until she straddles me. "Fuck me. Then I'll fuck you, baby."
She doesn't need telling twice. Rather, she descends on my hard, pulsing cock with gusto, leaning on my chest for leverage.
Lying beneath her, I revel in the sight, smell, and feel of her on me, above me, and around me. I have access to all of her there, admire every single minute shift in her expression as she loses herself in me; her breath turns erratic and shallow, and her muscles flutter around me.
I let my hands and lips prowl over her, basking in all of her. It doesn't take long for her rhythm to unravel as her walls pulsate and constrict around me.
After she cries out, I sit up and roll us over again. She's taken aback and pouting adorably when I pull out of her.
"I told you I'd fuck you, didn't I?" I murmur those words against her skin, letting my sweaty finger trace the lines of her body.
She's euphoric and yet unsated. Perfect—because I want more, too. When I turn her onto her stomach, her breath hitches, and she looks at me over her shoulder. I stretch out to cover her and whisper again in her ears.
"I've never taken you like this. May I?"
She nods her assent, kneeling in front of me with her delectable ass taunting me.
I kneel behind her as my hands caress her skin in random patterns. When I line myself up with her entrance and push inside her, I see stars.
"So deep, so warm, so mine."
She chants my name as she moves against me, meeting me at every thrust. I'm so far gone that it doesn't take me long to feel the coil unraveling within me. When I come with a strained growl, one word leaves my mouth.
"Bella."
We fall asleep spooning and naked, with our limbs tangled together and with my face buried in her hair. It's a deep, uninterrupted night of dreamless sleep.
No dreams, no nightmares. Only Bella in my arms.
&&&IVORIES&&&
I wake up with Bella draped over my chest. I stifle a yawn after noticing that she's still asleep. More than asleep—she's snoring softly, but it doesn't last long.
She stretches out beside me, long and sinuous like a cat. It's one of her morning things—the big stretch before opening her eyes. Yet, her hands remain connected to my skin, as if she needs to feel that I'm there. I empathize with this feeling a lot. Sometimes, I look at her to make sure she's there with me and that she's real.
"Morning."
It's more a yawn than a word, but I decipher it nonetheless and kiss her nose for good measure. "Good morning, Ladybug."
She stretches out again, then perches her head on my chest. It's another morning habit when we wake up together, which has been happening more often lately. Letting her go once the night ends is getting harder and harder.
"So, what are we doing today?"
"Is more of last night on the menu?"
She giggles, then places a soft whisper of a kiss on my nipple. "At some point. Give me some recovery time, won't you?"
I roll my eyes, feigning disappointment. "Fine."
"I repeat. What are we doing today?"
"You were serious then."
She laughs, kisses me briefly, then lays her head on my shoulder. "Yeah. I'm in the mood for a lazy day."
"This is a prime 'lazy day' location; you've come to the right place. Walk on the beach?"
"Won't it be super crowded with the holiday tomorrow?"
It's a legitimate question. "On the bay side of the Cape, hell yes. Oceanside, not so much. We should be good here on Ballston Beach, especially if we avoid the warmer, later hours of the day."
"What time is it? Did we sleep in like beach bums?"
I snicker at the implied equation between beach bums and oversleeping, throwing a sidelong glance at the alarm clock. It's one of those old-fashioned, hand-cranked contraptions. Mom left a bunch of these all over the house after the remodel, and it turned out to be a stroke of genius. These chunks of metal don't stop working when the power goes out.
"Depends on your notion of beach bums. It's barely nine. Want to have breakfast outside on the picnic table?"
"Now that feels so rustic-chic. Let's do it."
She jumps out of my arms and out of bed at the speed of lightning, grabs clean clothes, and runs toward the bathroom. Her last words, thrown over her shoulder as a taunt, leave me in stitches.
"The last one in the shower is a rotten egg!"
&&&IVORIES&&&
Two hours later, after having been declared a rotten egg, after two short and solitary showers, and after our rustic-chic breakfast on the picnic table, we're ready to leave the house and go for a leisurely stroll on the beach.
Bella's wearing a pair of itty-bitty denim cut-offs, flip-flops with the requisite bling, her bikini top, and a big, floppy straw hat. She's braided her hair, so there's no scarf today. I've thrown some water and a bag of trail mix in a canvas beach bag, along with my wallet and house keys. Once I lock up, I extend my hand out to her, and she threads her fingers with mine.
"Shall we?"
She nods, holding her floppy hat with one hand against a sudden gust of wind.
We're graced with glorious weather today—sunny, barely a cloud in the sky, temps upward of eighty degrees, and a refreshing breeze from the ocean. Along with the company, these are all the makings of a perfect day. We start down the path toward the beach where our flip-flops make scrunching sounds on the gravel pathway, then turn silent once we're on the sand.
Bella pulls on my hand to attract my attention, and I stop, turning to her. "Yes?"
She kicks off her sandals, then picks them up and throws them in the beach bag hooked over my shoulder. "Thank you for stopping. I want to feel my toes in the sand."
"Might as well," I reply, then copy her. Only my flip-flops are gigantic compared to hers, and since the beach bag I grabbed from Mom's stash at the house isn't that big, I opt to let them dangle from my free hand.
We walk in silence, swinging our linked hands between us, down the sloping dune toward the actual beach. When we reach our destination, Bella looks left and right, surveying the lay of the land.
"You were right about crowds. There are a few families scattered here and there, but it's not overrun with people. I really love the wild side of this place."
"Imagine what it would have felt like in the '40s when my grandparents bought this place. It must have been positively removed from civilization back then."
"Hasn't the Cape always been a popular vacation spot?"
"Yeah, but farther south—Yarmouth, Hyannis. That whole area around the 'elbow' of the Cape. So far north, and oceanside, again, these are places for connoisseurs, not mass tourism. It's pretty lively in the summer in town, but here … listen for sounds. What do you hear?"
She closes her eyes, raising her head, then turning left and right. It's as if she's savoring the music of this place. "Seagulls. Waves. Wind. Children playing in the distance. A dog, far down to the left. A laugh, carried on the wind. No cars. No engines."
"Exactly. It just cleanses noise pollution right out of your system."
"It does. So, which way?"
"Left, northward. Right, southward. Pick one."
She narrows her eyes, trying to make a decision based on some mysterious criterion I don't know. "Northward. Fewer people over there."
Turns out the leisurely, lazy stroll on the beach has one requirement she didn't voice, but I couldn't agree with it more—solitude, or close to it. And silence—because we don't exchange a word for the next twenty minutes, each lost in our own musings.
Bella's gaze wanders here and there, and for some time, I follow it, taking in the marvels of this place alongside her, trying to see the same things she sees. But on another level, I'm reveling in how blissful this is. There's no tension, no lingering conflict marring our companionship. The silence between us isn't a barrier. It's a cocoon of peace.
At long last, Bella speaks, with a finger pointed to the sloping, ragged shoreline dotted with thickets of sea oats. "It looks like erosion has been doing a number on this beach."
I nod. "It's a problem that plagues the Cape in its entirety. The status of protected national shore helps secure funding to reclaim it, but it's never-ending work."
"Sounds like you're well informed about the issue."
"Esme is a member of a local organization that promotes preservation of the Cape's environment. We've all been involved in spreading awareness or supporting their activities and events at various points in time. We care because we love it here."
"The world changes around us, and we change with it. It washes over us, just as the ocean polishes those pieces of sea glass over there. And they endure. Rougher around the edges, but they still reflect the light. They're still beautiful."
I drop the beach bag to the ground and gather her in my arms, trying to swallow the knot in my throat and failing. She speaks of the world, and yet it feels like it's about us—about me.
She wraps her arms around me, looking up at me under the wide brim of her floppy hat. "I wrote that song for you. I never told you."
"'Sea glass'? That one?"
"Yes. First, it was because of your eyes—the color shifts with changing light, and that day, they were so green, then turned blue in darker light. Then, when I learned more about you, when I had time to sit with my feelings about that botched interview and knew that part of it was my fault, it became about more. It became about second chances. About being tossed and turned by the tide of life. But underneath it all, I still saw your eyes. I think, even then, I loved you. I just didn't have the words for it yet."
"So you wrote me a song?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, Ladybug." I lift her chin with my finger, then lean down until I'm so close I smell the heady, citrusy fragrance of her skin. "I think I loved you when I heard that song and didn't have the words for it either. Sometimes, I still don't, so 'I love you' will have to do."
The kiss, when it comes, is brief and chaste. A whisper on her lips, but a whisper with the force of a rousing battle cry.
"Do we want to plop here for a while?" she murmurs, her lips still against mine.
Instead of replying, I take her literally and drag her down on the sand with me. We end up laughing like loons in each other's arms.
"Thank you."
"For what?" she replies, sobering up from our laughing fit.
"For being you. For going easy on me. For not giving up. For making me whole. For loving me."
She caresses my cheek and jaw with slow and loving motions as she often does. "Baby, you've been whole. You just needed to see yourself whole."
"Let's say you gave me the right motivation … and the right lens to see myself as you see me. Because for so long, I believed I wasn't good enough … or enough period."
"The people who think that are wrong as fuck and don't matter. Are we clear?" Her voice is serious, but her expression remains playful; she's pointing a finger at me, narrowing her eyes to slits.
"Crystal. That's the other big thing I admire about you. I've told you before."
"Oh, the optimism thing?" She says that casually; it's obvious it isn't a big deal to her, but to me, as the resident old curmudgeon of the Tatler, looking for the bright side of things is a new development. Not even a year ago, I would've written it off as an exercise in futility.
"Yes, that. I'm just in awe of your ability to see the silver lining in everything."
She sits up, disentangling herself from our embrace. I follow her, then loop my arm around her shoulders. She's lost her floppy hat in our tumble through the sand, so I pick it up before the wind blows it away.
"Well, it's easy to explain. Maybe my profession makes it easier, but I didn't set out to be a Pollyanna in rose-tinted glasses. Life hasn't always been kind to me, but being willfully morose never helped me either, so … I'm giving myself permission to dream a little. For all the people who can't. I'm giving myself the mission to create a little beauty for this world. For all the people who need it. And maybe someday, it will make a small difference to someone. Because let's face it, the world needs beauty and grace to rise above pain and despair. If I can provide a glimpse of that, then my day, my work, my life has not been in vain."
She's giving me life lessons without even realizing, but this is one of those epiphanies that will stay with me forever. And out of the blue, I get a glimpse of that day I ran out on her and why.
"Remember when you first kissed me, and I freaked out on you?"
She nods, burrowing into my chest.
"At that time, I didn't have the brainpower to parse what the fuck possessed me to do it, but now … now, I do. In a second, the moment your lips touched mine, my mind and my heart saw it all. You and I, together. Not just like this. Not just like last night. I saw our life together. Living together, marriage, kids, the whole enchilada. Years out in the future. And it scared the crap out of me."
"What are you trying to say, Edward?"
"That I'm not scared anymore. I want it. I want all of it. And I'm hoping I'm not scaring the crap out of you with my confession."
She moves to straddle me, wrapping her arms around me, eye-level with me until all I see is her. "I'm not."
Bella's lips are intoxicating at any time, but now, with this kiss, with this promise of the future, it all engulfs me. Never mind that we're on a family-friendly beach. When we break it off, there's one thing I want to tell her.
It's been brewing in my mind for a while, and when I checked my calendar last week before our Cape Cod getaway, it jumped out at me. I would have normally been trying to scrape the bargain bin of excuses not to go to the damn thing by now, but that was in the past. The bleak, lonely past when I didn't have a girlfriend I love with all my heart. A girlfriend I want to spoil with a fantastic trip and a surprise birthday party.
"There's an event I'm committed to attend in September. It's in New York. During your birthday week."
"Oh. What is it?" She doesn't comment on the "birthday" part of my sentence.
"It's a gala organized by the CPJ, the Committee to Protect Journalists. It's an award ceremony, slash memorial. They'll probably ask me to say a few words. It's a nerd prom of sorts."
"Yes, and?"
She's making me sweat for this, I swear. "Come with me. Wear a sparkly pair of Chucks and come with me. Please?"
She smiles. There's the usual mischievous glint dancing in her eyes as she weighs my offer. Characterizing the whole shindig as nerd prom may not have been my best idea after all.
"As your arm-candy for the night? As your girlfriend?"
I don't even have to think about it. The words just tumble out. No hesitation, no uncertainty. "As my everything. As my Ladybug."
She nods pensively, then kisses me again. "Is that going to involve sleepovers? Maybe with a grand finale like last night?" Her salacious smile says it all. "I didn't know you prim and proper Mr. Editor liked dirty talk."
I burst into a roaring laugh, then look at her.
"You unleashed me, my love, and now you get all of me."
"Take me to New York and talk dirty to me then."
Our mixed laughs resonate along the almost deserted beach as we tumble onto the sand again, laughing and kissing.
Carefree. In love. Happy.
Lots happening on their weekend away! And a major trip on the horizon. Wonder who they'll run into in the Big Apple, uh? Stick a pin in it.
Some of you already know, but yeah, Ivories is winding down. We only have six chapters to go and, if everything goes according to plan, this story will be marked complete in late September.
Last thing before I go. Run, don't walk to check out Powered by 23 Kicks' new story, Stupid Little Game. Only two chapters in, but promises BIG things. Andi is tackling a delicate, thorny subject with a lot of realism and empathy. The premise of the story is fantastic, I'm loving it, and can't wait to see where she takes this. Links to this are in the Lair (LaMomo's Lair on FB, type that in the search bar).
See you all next week!
