DREAMING OUT LOUD
Chatham, Massachusetts
Four months later - October 11, 2004
It was another lonely Monday morning in the Hanson house. There was the scent of wafting coffee beans from a freshly brewed pot, and there was the sound of the dog beside her in bed, stretching and scratching behind his ear as he panted and looked to her with a curious face.
"Morning Spark," Lily mumbled into her pillow as she slid out of bed and reached for her sweater. The dog hopped down and took the lead as they left her room and went downstairs to find the coffee.
She filled his bowl with food and water as she leaned on the counter with her mug, breathing in the warmth of the pumpkin scented coffee, letting it warm her face before she indulged. When she lifted it to her lips to do just that though, from over the rim, she saw something pinned to the cupboard door in front of her, a small note from someone she knew had scratchy penmanship.
Lil,
Mom's at work and there's fresh coffee.
When you're feeling up to it, you should get dressed and come over to the old Quinn place today.
We're finishing painting the fence and it will be all done!
Love ya,
Tommy
Lily sighed, sipping at her coffee and trying to decide how best to get around the offer. She could just 'not go' and save herself all the pain of having to see that magnificent house all completed and awaiting a family who would love living in it only half as much as she ever could. Or she could drive over there to Brewster, maybe park the car at the docks and walk down the beach with the dog to the house, see it from the back end first, let it all sink in.
Yeah, she thought, as she pushed away from the counter and headed upstairs to get dressed, I can't NOT see the thing all fixed up finally. That would be a crime.
So she got changed into jeans and a warmer sweater since the fall breeze outside was taunting her, even through the window panes. She stuffed a wad of Kleenex into her back pocket, just in case, and then hurried outside into the drive with Sparky, loading him into her dad's old truck the same as most days that he went somewhere with her. Then she turned away for the highway across the Cape.
It was probably the one thing she needed at that point, the closure, the end to a decade of wishful thinking and dreaming and hoping. The wispy scent of early red tide covered her as it blew through the windows of the truck and through the curly hairs on Sparky's ears. She smiled, scratched his head and turned the radio on to the dead middle of My Father's Gun. It seemed appropriate, with the way things had turned out in her life, with the way everything had come and gone so quickly, and then come back all over again, and just as fast. It suited her to no end, with the memory of her father constantly shining back at her whenever she looked into a mirror, like the rearview one she sat swiping her chap-stick on in that morning.
Thomas Hanson was still in there, waving back at her beside the other lost faces she'd known.
Eight months had rolled right by in no time, although some days and some late nights, they had felt as equivalent to the eight years prior as anything else could. Lily had done most of her crying, she'd washed herself clean of as many surfacing memories as she could, and now only had the ones hidden deep inside of her, locked up for personal, private moments of curiosity and wish making. She was back at square one in so many ways. Back to where she was before Jeffery Sands decided to come into her life again, for a mere week, and turn it upside down.
She'd let him though. She'd healed him while he was subconsciously healing her, something they both knew how to do for each other so well, that they hadn't even realized it was happening when it was.
Lily turned down Breakwater Road with a timid smile on her face twenty minutes later, humming the fading lyrics to Masters of War, and petting Sparky as he crawled into her lap with the slowing of the truck down the coastal curve of the bay.
"Almost there, buddy."
He yawned tiredly and she pulled onto the shoulder of the road closest to the North Brewster docks. She turned the car off, jumped out with the dog on the back end of her bare foot step, rolled her jeans up a few times and took off down to the shoreline. Lily stumbled around in the sand, headed in the direction she knew the Quinn house was, three long blocks of beach further west, and she tossed a piece of driftwood she'd found, out yard after yard for Sparky to fetch.
"Go get it!"
With a flapping tongue and flying ears, he would take off ahead of her, then run back and meet her halfway before hurrying for the stick again, as she laughed. That was something else she'd started to do the last few weeks, at the very end of summer. She had noticed herself laughing, at all kinds of things and people and incidences, stuff that would have made pre-tragedy Lily laugh like mad. It felt good, it felt so raw and real and right, that she couldn't let herself give it up even for her own pride or mourning.
It was a ten minute stroll down the beach, at most, to where the freshly painted fence of the Quinn estate began as promised in Tom's note. The white wash of the stakes in the sand started her careful steps toward the private shoreline property's backdrop. It hit her very suddenly, that her dream for the poor old house had somehow managed to be fulfilled, and she wondered if her brother had something serious to do with the minor changes. Every shutter was painted a patriotic blue from floor one to floor three and there were daisies and lilies growing from one edge of the sandy pathway to the back door of the house. The existence of history had been completely preserved on the estate, the way she had always hoped for it to be, with the exact same bricks on the chimneys and the same woodwork around the porches.
Lily sighed and knelt down to pet the soft puppy at her feet as he panted tiredly.
"What do you think?" His large chocolate eyes and wagging tail on the back of her leg taunted her to smile. "Pretty, huh?" Sparky barked and Lily stood up again, noting every new and improved detail on her fantasy, "Yeah, pretty expensive still."
She grabbed the rigid stick from the ground and swung it back and forth as she walked towards the house closer, calling out for her brother.
"Tom!"
There was no response, but she could hear the engine of a truck from further ahead out on the front street of the property. She eventually tossed the stick away again and let the dog run.
"Tommy! You here…?"
The crash of the waves on the wet shore and the sound of a few mid-afternoon seagulls were all that she could hear in her midst. No return calls or shouts or words of assurance. There were no workers moving around near the house, no more truck engines sounded, and no hope to go on. The only thing that came in the silence of the sea and sand was the single bark of the dog. This was met by another bark, and another, until the barking fell into tune with what sounded like the softly prepared strings of a guitar.
Lily stopped moving and thinking, she stopped breathing and instead aimed for gulping. She thought she was imagining it, like so much else from the last eight months, imagining guitars and whispers and promises and the sound of an old Trans Am. She swore it was a lyrical mirage playing against the haunted waves of this shore and this house. And she told herself this for a minute or so, until she heard a voice to match the strings of those tired, plucked guitar strings.
"I woke up this morning and the sun was gone…"
It was a dream, it had to be. That voice had already been locked up a month before, the key swallowed and the memories juggled away for much later review. Not for now, not for today.
"…I turned on some music, to start my day…"
No, it couldn't catch her, it can't anymore. The voice couldn't do anything but be a voice.
"…I lost myself in a familiar song…I closed my eyes and I slipped away…"
A hundred million things passed over her head and none of them gave her the answer or the clue she needed to turn around and see the blank Cape Bay. None of the memories or feelings gave her the strength enough to walk right back down the beach from where she'd come and ignore it. In fact, not only did nothing help, but the voice moved closer to her, came in right behind where she stood, and ushered a fanatical, well-wished breath down her neck.
"…It's more than a feeling…"
The strings of the guitar pressed on, the breathing grew warmer and the voice became a mere hum as it wandered in nearer to her neck, sighing against it, resting so closely that she swore she imagined her skin upon another's, someone completely imaginary of course.
"It's your verse, baby. You gonna sing with me?"
Lily shook her head at the muse of the faux man, the faux memory.
"Oh come on," he whispered lightly, kissing her trembling neck from behind. "Sing for me."
"You're not real. Go away, Jeff. Just, go away."
She attempted to make a run for it and step away, but something grabbed her, an arm, just as the strumming stopped. He held her to him, pressed to the heat that shouldn't be and the warmth that wasn't supposed to exist again.
"This isn't a dream. God, trust me on that one, kid."
"You're supposed to be dead."
She heard a laugh, but it didn't sound divine or hellish. It just sounded. "Why am I supposed to be dead? Because it makes you feel better to have an easy out with me?"
"Because you died, that's why."
Lily struggled in his arms, not sure whether she was fighting a nightmare or not. Not sure if she would wake up sweating and screaming in the middle of her bed like a child.
"I didn't die, Lillian. I couldn't die. What the hell kind of ending would that be?"
She felt tears welling in her eyes as she fell hard to his touch, "A typical one for me."
"Well, I guess it's good that we're both in this story then, huh?"
She said nothing and only focused on the sound of his breathing, on her neck, in her ear and all over her where she thought only sadness and confusion could linger with his name.
"Now," he sighed and turned around her body, his hand soft on her waist and his face coming into view against the backdrop of her dream house. He landed directly in front of her, a foot taller and five years wiser, his Ray Bans covering his eyes like she remembered so well, his lips twisted into a smile like she loved, and his hair a mess of sweat and exhaustion, cut shorter than it had been in all of her recent memories. He looked like he was twenty five years old again. He looked like he did the last time they had stood on this property together, admiring and concocting and dreaming.
"Are you gonna sing with me or what?"
Because she was on a cloud of impossibility, she let herself nod and wiped away the tears as he began to focus on old Hank between them, and strum lightly for her choral beat. She gave it a few seconds, waiting for him to find the perfect harmony, and then when she got the ghostly nod and smirk from him, she opened her mouth to the lyrics of a distant reminiscence.
"So many people have come and gone…"
Her words were slow and fixated as she heard him whisper a soft, 'yes they do' and then went on.
"…Their faces fade as the years go by…"
"Not mine, I hope?" He mocked as she giggled away the tears, still sure she was dreaming.
"…Yet I still recall, as I wander on…"
Jeff nodded with a wild head for the music he was playing so gently against the October wind. And Lily stalled for a long time before she began to sing the next line, giving him just enough clearance to practice his one handed strumming and reach up with his free hand to touch his glasses as she sang.
"…As clear as the sun in the summer--"
They were tugged away and Lily choked at the revelation of the one thing that she swore made it an official dream, a complete fantasy. There before her were two blinking, sparkling, functioning eyes, on a man who didn't have the opportunity for such a thing when she'd last seen him. Jeff smiled down at her as he tossed his glasses to the sand and began playing again, pretending as though there was nothing abnormal about him at all.
"Jeff - this isn't--"
"Come on Hanson," he teased, "Stop staring and finish the verse."
"You—your eyes they--"
He smiled with his head turned low towards the guitar, hiding the brown orbs she was certain she saw. The chords of the song he was playing struck every nerve in her body as she reached out for his face, not needing to brush his long hair from his cheeks anymore, and pulled it up to balance in the sky with hers.
"Can I help you, babe?"
Tears fell before the words were washed free of her tongue.
"They fixed you. How did they--?"
"I wasn't broken. They just gave me some of my missing parts back. If there's one thing the CIA is good at, it's providing impossible healthcare…"
She laughed against the rush of sobbing and held her hands over her mouth when the heavy breathing came back to her, the incessant, nervous, unreliable breathing habit of her previous state of mind, the one she'd fought so hard all year to control.
"Can you—I mean…"
He chuckled down at her, "Yes. I can. Can't you see?"
"I see a dream. Is this a dream?"
"Would I be here if it was?"
She nodded but he shook his head in a disagreeing taunt.
"Will you just finish the verse for me? So I know."
"So you know what?"
He twisted his face at her with a crooked eye and smirk, reminding her of the truth with his delicate fingers strumming away harshly and his lips coming ever closer to hers in the wispy fall afternoon.
"So I know. I need to know you're still with me in this thing."
"In what…?"
"…In our story, sweets. It's not over yet."
She caught her breath with a soft laugh and reached out again, this time to grasp at his dirty, paint covered cotton shirt, then at his strong arms, then at his chest and nose, just touching him and feeling him to be sure, to know herself, that this wasn't going to fade away to an alarm clock and nine months before. She had to know she'd been through everything, just to be there with him then, like that, so realistically, so believably.
Lily stepped in towards Jeff, leaning up on her bared tiptoes to reach his warm neck, where she breathed in his musky scent of cigarettes and cheap beer and sandpaper. She smiled and kissed him once before whispering clearly, even in the New England wind and between the crashing of waves, "…It's more than a feeling."
He sighed at the touch of her, desperate for it, dying without it, and he let the guitar fall from his hands as he shoved it to his back. He traded it for her body, as his arms consumed her so willingly, so pleadingly and pulled her right into him, as close and warm and altogether lustfully as he could get her. He held her to him, her breath on his neck and her soft curves pressed to his beating heart, like it was a dream, the one she'd begged him to admit to. But he couldn't, because it wasn't, and he knew this when he felt her kisses continue from his neck, to jaw, then right back to where everything bad and good and beautiful and frightening had ever begun for them, at lips.
"Am I going to wake up if I kiss you?"
He breathed desperately against her mouth and shook his head.
"Are you sure? What if you become a frog?"
Jeff laughed in distress, "I think it works the other way around, kid."
"Oh," Lily continued to mock, standing higher to brush her lips against his hungrily, "So you'll become a prince then?"
With a groan he finally urged her, "Why the hell don't you just lay one on me and find out?"
Lily shoved his chest, "Don't be a pain in the ass, Jeffery."
"Don't be stubborn, Lillian."
"I'll be stubborn if I want to. I've been losing my mind for eight months, and now you show up at this old house, with vision, playing your stupid guitar and trying to make me--"
He shut her up, the only way that ever worked on her rambunctious mouth. He forced his down upon it, clamoring it with sweetness and a nibbling passion that she had feared in the back of her mind for so many long months and seasons. Lily felt as though she was being devoured wholly by his lips and tongue and hands on her cheeks, but she refused to deny the sensation.
She could have told herself that she felt eighteen again in that moment, but she didn't. Nor did she feel nineteen or twenty or even a wholesome, untamed twenty-one. Their kisses had never been quite that good at any of those tender ages. This was a kiss designed for a twenty-nine year old, spun through webs of desire and depravation by her thirty-five year old counterpart, the only one she knew she could ever have in life. He was absolutely it.
Jeff's crushing lips on hers subsided to the same distant melody and sweetness as the waves overhead and behind them. He caressed her cheeks until they were warmed from the numbness of the cold and relaxed into a smile as his mouth slid from hers, testing the open waters, not sure if he wanted to be separated again so soon.
"I have to show you something."
Lily shook her head with eyes closed and reached her lips out longingly for his again.
"Fine, one more kiss and then--"
"Okay," she assured him, pulling his face right back to hers as brutally as she could hope for. They were like two fierce beasts that needed one another as the sea needs salt and the sky needs carbon dioxide. They were like an equation that finally got solved, with much deliberation and timid correctness. They were fixed, healed, placed back together at the top of their forgotten wedding cake.
He felt her tongue swirling for agonizing truthfulness against his, and he couldn't stop to deny her anything, not when he knew he needed it all at the same rate of necessity. He squeezed her tiny body to his, grasping and holding every bit of softness and tender flesh he could accept back into his world. His hands ran through her longer, gentler, darker curls, the ones he could see now. He laughed in a guttural groan when he finally felt her fingertips meet the flesh of his lower stomach, tugging at a button that he knew needed to stay closed for at least the time being, if he was going to get anything shared with her.
"Lily," he mumbled against her lips, laughing. "Baby, okay, easy does it." He held her face in his hands, struggling just to pry her mouth from his, "I swear to you, that part's coming. Okay?"
She nodded anxiously as he chuckled and took her hand in his, pulling her along up the sandy back pathway of the house.
"Where are you going? We can go back to Chatham, my house."
Jeff shook his head at her innocence, her still confusion in the midst of shock value.
"We don't have to."
"Why?"
"Come here," he thrust his head with a nudging smile, "Come with me and I'll show you."
She had a distrusting eye, but she followed behind him, letting his fingers twist smoothly with hers into that same old perfect fit. Jeff walked her down the sand trail between the daisies and lilies, both of them barefoot, his guitar swaying against his back as they made it to the steps of the whitewashed back porch. He walked her upwards carefully, pulled open the creaky screen door and tugged her even closer to him.
"Did Tommy tell you they were fixing this old place up? Is that why you came to help?"
A wild smirk crawled across his face as he shook his head at her again and opened the door to the warmth of the inside, gesturing for her to go before him. And when she did, when her sand covered feet hit the beautifully waxed wood floor of the large parlor, when her waist was entirely too snug in his hands and her back entirely too comfortable where it rested against his chest, Lily heard his voice in her ear as her eyes picked out the finest of details to the readjusted and re-touched home.
"Tommy was helping me, Lily."
"Helping you what?"
"Helping me to get this place ready for you," he hummed with a kiss on her ear. "…For us."
"For--"
Her breath caught in her throat as she turned her face back at him abruptly.
"No. You're lying."
"Do I look like I'm in a position to be lying to you today?"
Lily let her body sag in his arms, tiredly, well beyond the point of being shocked or surprised or thrown aback. Now she was just beside herself with the possibility of everything in front of her, and behind, for that matter.
"It's designed to your specifications, just like I promised. It's taken us almost six months."
Her jaw gaped as he walked her carefully, his hands on her hips for protection from fainting, throughout the first floor, from the parlor to the kitchen, to the dining room and into the office, all of it empty of furniture and echoing with his whispers and sweet nothings. He stopped with her in the middle of the living room, where the wide bay windows brought in every last bit of sunlight granted to the Cape, sparkling on the walls and floors all around them. Jeff hugged her waist and rested his chin in the crook of her shoulder, where he'd loved to be his whole life and missed more than anything else.
There was peace in the world before he spoke. There was a soft, accepting sigh in her tone. Her hands covered his on her stomach, her head tilted down to the left, locking his in place where he suckled at her neck tenderly, and she closed her eyes to imagine it full of things, and people, and life, and babies, and puppies and warmth.
"Welcome home, Mrs. Sands," she finally heard him hum in her ear.
Lily giggled and wiped away the one existing tear in her eye before she turned in his arms and cradled his face in her hands, with begging eyes and awaiting lips.
"Thank you, real Sparky."
He laughed goofily with a contemplative brow at her.
"It's a long story. See my brother got me that dog outside and--"
"Oh God, here you go again." He bent down and lifted her over his shoulder in one quick haul, making her screech just the same as when she was twenty. "No more talking, just screaming!"
"What? Why?"
She gripped the back of his shirt, trying to keep a steady hold while he hurried up the stairwell.
"We officially have four extra rooms to fill!"
She laughed out as she felt him grab her ass tight, nearly jogging up the second flight of stairs, in the echoing house.
"What do you think," she screeched, giggling at his rush from one end of the long hallway to the next, "We're going to fill them all tonight?"
"All I know is we're not quitting until they are, Tiger Lily…"
Wish fulfilledSTOP
Dream fulfilled STOP
All possibilities overturned and granted STOP
Mission aborted for the sole gratification of finally getting to carry your wife up the three floor threshold of her fantasy house, with 20/20 vision, and make love to her until you're sure she's carrying the product of your determination STOP
DO NOT SEND BACKUP, STOP
He could see everything.
He could see the spiraling steps it took to get her to the third floor. He could see the doorway, the wood floors and the curtains blowing against the October breeze of the open windows to their room. Sands could see the only existing piece of furniture in the new house, a four poster bed of cloud-like cotton, turned towards the French doors of the balcony to take in the scaling view of the Bay, just the way she'd always dreamt. And then, finally, he could see her again, when he pulled her from his shoulder to fall into the billowy softness of the bed.
Lily stared up at him and teased, "Interesting how the rest of the house is empty, but this bed was no problem at all…"
"The bed was first priority in my plan," he chided, crawling onto the end of the mattress and between her open, worn denim legs. His hands gripped her hips as he pulled her center hard against his prodding jeans the same, making her heartily gasp out. He chuckled at the dark way her eyes brooded at the long awaited sensation, "For that very reason."
"What's your second priority?" Lily whispered as she stroked his cheeks, staring as intently as she could into the unrealistically full of life and impossibly identical eyes she remembered from so long ago. When she stopped to refocus on her own question, the answer was already grinding comfortably against her inner thigh, where Jeff's fingers tugged at the button of her jeans.
"Next priority is to make sure the neighbors can hear you howling my name. I want them to know," he growled in her ear with a bite of her lobe as he began pulling her jeans from her legs, "That we've finally made it home. No more window shopping on the curb."
"I think I can do that."
"Oh, can you now?"
"Yes. Are you going to doubt ME, Sheldon?"
He breathed a laugh on her lips, "Never. I'm ready for the challenge again."
"Good," she replied with a bite on his sweltering mouth, ripping at the button of his jeans next. They were off before he realized how close they'd become after too many lonely days and restless nights. It was like he had finally fallen back to Earth, back to where things actually had the potential to make sense. And he was more than prepared to take it for all it was worth.
Sands slowly yanked her sweater from overhead, followed by her old white t-shirt, where he was entirely too pleased to find the lace he loved, awaiting him evermore. He could see it again, the color, the design and the way it hugged her gently heaving breasts.
"Only lace on my girl," he whispered as he moved down to capture the hardened bud he could see peaking through the black material, suckling through the soft lace until he could see her back arching off the bed towards him. When his name escaped her lips, he tugged the delicate cup of the bra away to return his mouth to her skin, his tongue to the rigid sweetness of her nipple. There, amid the wetness and voracious nerve endings, was his Lily's first zenith of the act.
He witnessed it without a blink.
Her tiny mews and begging made him shudder through the thin confines of his boxers as he sharpened his movement against her pleading axis, where more midnight lace awaited him in the shadow of the distant sunshine. His lips worked wonders over her breast, matching the skill upon the second, until he was far too overcome with desperation to linger so high up. Sands needed to travel, he needed to venture and explore his territory all over again. Lily's fluttering eyes caught short glimpses of his movements, memorable images, like his tongue striking the cool surface of her skin and his wedding band dancing in the light as his hand traced the curvature of her thigh.
It was like no time had passed. No time but the imaginary, the dream like.
"Jeff?" She murmured slightly as he began to rove further down, kissing every tingling inch of her lower stomach. His charcoal eyes that shifted upwards from her skin was response enough as she continued, "Why did you never call? Why did no one ever tell me what happened?"
He wanted to ignore the questions, nowhere near ready to answer them, but realizing as much that it was unfair to even try. His fingers idly played with the waistband of her lace panties as he meagerly attempted to come up with something, the right words; the ones that would best suit. In the end though, his contemplation was worthless, because he was well beyond covering things up or sugar-coating the inevitable for Lily. What was the point of that with someone like her?
"I told them not to. Shane and Jack and everyone wanted to come to you, they wanted to worry you about the operation and the risks and all the bullshit that I couldn't let myself lay on you. I figured that if you had the opportunity to think I hadn't made it, and then I didn't after all, that it would just be easier. You deserved an easy out with death for once, Lil."
She sighed, resting into the heavenly sheets as she felt his warm mouth touch her navel, begging forgiveness without words. "I wasn't going to move on, you know." His hands grew softer around her hips as she spoke, and his chin rested against her stomach, staring wildly towards her.
"I swore I wasn't going any further without you here. I couldn't let myself. Maybe I was subconsciously praying that you'd come back like Tommy, as a ghost survivor."
Sands laughed only gently before he replied, "I'm no ghost. I'm all here with you, baby."
"What about the agency?"
His head tilted downward in thought as he eased the lace from over her bottom and off her toes, unsure where to begin to think about his job, the one he'd ignored in recovery since March.
"Jeff? Are you going to work for them still?"
"Lily…"
"Tell me."
"I don't want to do anything but wake up in this bed with you every morning and fall asleep here every night. Okay?" Her eyes fell somberly, understanding in nature, and re-collective of the short conversation they had on the morning after their wedding night in the desert of Vegas. "I want to get a boat and sail with you. I want to sit in the sand, play my guitar and have staring contests with you all afternoon, because I can."
She laughed with a teary-eyed sigh.
"The agency took a lot from me and I just got it all back. I won't let them take it again."
Lily nodded and reached her hand down to stroke through his shorter wisps of jet black hair.
"That's all I wanted to know. You can continue now, if you want?"
The devilish smirk at the corner of her mouth was enough to send him reeling to the grave, a happy man. Sands took her hand from where it was lost in his hair and drew two of her fingers into his mouth, swirling them around against his tongue. He slithered his way back between her open, ready, honey smooth legs, as she pushed his boxers down over his hips, toying in fairness with the stark and determined proof of his love. Lily could feel every tiny scratch and scar and battle wound at the enticing dip of his backside, moving her freed hand up along the arc of his spine, counting each of them, remembering a few and studying others. Then she felt a quick stab of pain as he bit down on her knuckles between his lips and lifted her hips from the bed to drive within the chasm of her most heated ability to kill him.
She moaned righteously and he swore he felt his heart fall from his chest. He examined her intently, taking advantage of the view he now had, and watched as the blue waves in her eyes crashed against the imaginary shores of the Cape Cod that was lost inside of her. He was buried there too now, all over again, to the hilt of existence where all things were warm and sunny and predictably unpredictable. Sands groaned against her cheek, cradling Lily in his arms as he slowly dipped back out, kissing the sunlight from the freckle on her temple.
"Sweet God," his voice in her ear brought her even higher as she sunk under his eyes, "I might not be dead but I think I'm getting close--"
"What did I do wrong now?" She sighed with a deep breath.
"Not a damn thing. I wished you'd do something wrong for once. I wish you'd stop being so insanely, fucking perfect for me."
Lily laughed back a tear and clung to his neck as she urged him to return to the wanting depth of her. He obliged with an immediate spell of promise, submerged in ecstasy and moisture that left him without a clue, a pounding heart and quivering howl to match.
"That was--" he waited for it, drawing his hips smoother against her as she caught her breath. "That was good," she finally exhausted, pinching the skin on his shoulder blades, "But I know you can do better than that, Sparky."
Sands shook his head, consumed by the amazement of that one clear statement, that truth washing over her beautiful exterior.
"You have a cruel tongue, Lillian Hanson." She smiled with stars in her eyes and held onto him for life as the penetrating words left his lips to touch hers, "And I'm a goddamn fool for ya."
"Oh, well don't I know it."
It was an abrupt end to a perfect conclusion, when he began to suddenly pummel her body, maul over every inch of her, driving harshly within and tenderly back out, covering his solidly satisfied cock from one corner of her endlessly boiling form to the very next. He never shut his eyes, even when he felt it was inevitable and necessary. They were as wide as the day he first saw her in the light of her mother's kitchen, as wide as the afternoon he'd first watched her sail his father's yacht beneath his own hands, and as wide as the night he'd first kissed her mouth. To close his eyes now would be criminal, and even though Sheldon Sands was still a mean man, a frightening force of nature with a gun and a cocaine hit list, he wasn't that way as she moaned—
"…Jeff yes. Please..."
A lot of women had said that, but a lot of women had called him other things and made him feel other ways that he didn't like as much as he had convinced himself he did. A lot of girls had clung to skin and kissed his lips and shouted his praises in the throes of pulsating glory, but none of them had a silver tongue like his one girl, his wife. None of them had the knowledge enough to squeeze their thighs against his hips as he rocked to the exact rhythm of the sea outside and his own oncoming release. None of them had ever known how to say just the right things to make him topple over in lust and pain combined.
"…take me, have all of me…" she whispered with her sweet liberation.
And he felt his toes tingle against the white cotton, his grip tighten on her waist to glue the surface of her skin to his alone, then he let the indigo waves in her eyes carry him away.
