Broken Read online

  The edge in his voice sent a thrill through me. I sat, running my hand down his body, over his stomach. “You want me to…”

  “Straddle me. Sit on my cock.”

  Desire flooded me at his words, the words of the Adam I knew before, who’d never hesitated to tell me what he wanted. I got up, put my leg over his abdomen, his penis nestled between my thighs.

  “Kiss me,” he demanded, and I bent to do that, too.

  Adam took command of the kiss, caressing my tongue with his until I gasped. I was timid, fearful of leaning too much of my weight on him, but his growl convinced me to lean closer and open for his kisses.

  “Stop thinking.” He came after my mouth again, and though his hands remained at his sides, I felt them on me, one on the back of my neck to hold me to him. “Kiss me.”

  We kissed for a long time, the way we had that first time in his apartment. With the bed upright I could straddle Adam’s lap, my knees clamped tight to his sides, my pussy rubbing against the bulge of his cock and his belly. He kissed me fiercely. Hungrily. He was in charge, and I let him take control.

  “Rub yourself against me,” he ordered. “Are your nipples hard?”

  “Yes…”

  “Let me suck them.”

  I lifted my breasts to his mouth, one and then the other, and he lapped and suckled them until I cried out and shuddered on the verge of climax. His mouth slowed, tongue slipping out to stroke my tight flesh before his lips closed once more over my nipple. I arched into his mouth, lost in the ecstasy of being touched this way. He paused, teasing me. Pleasure built with anticipation and I moaned. Then, slowly, he sucked a little harder, a little harder, until I could no longer keep still.

  “That’s it,” he said against my skin. “Come all over me, Sadie.”

  Rubbing my clit against him had brought me even closer to the edge. At his words, and the following stroke of his tongue along my breasts, I came.

  I didn’t breathe while eternity revolved around me. My entire body clenched, released, my cunt contracting in spasms of pleasure so intense it was almost pain. Sex noises are never pretty, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t have held back the moans shuddering out of me if I’d tried.

  “Come for me, Sadie.”

  Adam’s voice cracked and broke, and I opened my eyes to look into his as I tumbled over the edge. It was more intimate than anything we’d ever shared, looking into his eyes at climax. There was nothing he did not see in me then, and nothing I wanted to hide.

  He grinned after a moment and slid his tongue along his lips. “Next time, I’m going to taste you.”

  The breath I’d forgotten to take rushed back into my lungs. “Let me recover from this, first. Okay?”

  “Wimp.”

  I kissed him slow and tender. “I love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  I hugged him, my head nestled into his shoulder, feeling boneless and satisfied. When he yawned, though, I knew I had to move. Reluctantly, I did, making sure to touch and stroke him wherever I could reach as I did.

  “Quit fondling me, you brazen hussy.”

  We laughed. His cheeks flushed, and his eyes sparkled in a way I hadn’t seen from him in far too long. Love for him rushed over me in a force so strong I would have staggered had I not been holding on to the edge of the bed. Now was not a time for tears, and I held them back.

  Adam was effusive as I brought warm washcloths to wipe him clean and rearranged his pajamas. He talked about his lectures and students, about his plans for next year…about taking a vacation.

  “Really?” I paused in buttoning his shirt. “You want to go on a trip?”

  He nodded. “Think we can manage it? Someplace with a beach? I could look online for disability-friendly resorts.”

  I’d never been the one to deny Adam the right to leave the house. He’d always chosen not to go anywhere, claiming even going downstairs to the garden outside was too much of a hassle. For him to express interest in taking a much grander trip so surprised me I didn’t know what to say.

  “No? Yes?” His eyes followed me as tucked in all his limbs and smoothed the covers over him. “You hate the idea? What?”

  “I think it’s a fine idea.”

  He enthused further, talking rapidly, words tumbling one over the other while I listened and put on my nightgown. He talked while I brushed my teeth and tied up my hair, while I folded out the recliner and settled into it with my blanket and pillow, while I set the alarm to wake me so I could turn him.

  “It’ll be work for you, Sadie, I know it,” he said finally. “But maybe we can take Dennis with us. So you can get a break. Go to a spa, sit on the beach. It could really work.”

  “It could really work,” I agreed, content to listen to his enthusiasm.

  “I’ve done my best to drive you away, Sadie,” he said suddenly. “But you’ve never left me.”

  “No. I don’t want to leave you.” I smoothed a hand over his hair, letting it tickle my fingers. “I’m not going to leave you, Adam.”

  He paused for a moment, his expression serious. “Things are going to be different from now on, Sadie. I promise you.”

  I got up to kiss him again. “Lots of things will be different.”

  And for a while, they were.

  Adam was noticeably cheerier. Flirtier, too. He even started talking about looking into erectile aids, a prospect that intrigued and concerned me, since drugs could always have side effects.

  “Just think,” he said with a wink one night as I lay beside him. “A four-hour hard-on.”

  “I wouldn’t need four hours,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Jesus, Adam.”

  He wasn’t deterred. “If I can get hard, Sadie, then…there’s a chance…”

  I propped myself up on my elbow to look him. “Yes?”

  “We could have a baby.”

  Stunned, I sat. “Do you want a baby?”

  “Don’t you?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. I didn’t know if I did or didn’t…but the fact he’d brought it up meant things had changed, indeed. I could only shrug in response.

  “Lots of quads have been able to have children,” Adam told me. “It’s just something to consider, that’s all.”

  A child. A son, perhaps, with Adam’s wicked grin. Maybe a daughter with a sense of practicality. A baby? Years of responsibility, of diapers and vomit. Of sweet baby hugs and childish kisses.

  A part of Adam I could keep forever.

  “Hey, hey,” he said, alarmed. “Don’t cry, Sadie-me-love, don’t cry!”

  I wiped my tears at his command. “Do you really think we could?”

  “Sadie,” Adam said in a voice that left no doubt. “I really think we could.”

  That night was the first since the accident that he licked me to orgasm. After, sated, the room filled with the scent of sex, he whispered poetry into my hair and we spoke of the future as something bright with possibility.

  I did not intend, on the first Friday of October, to return to the bench. Joe had made his intentions clear by bringing Priscilla to our place, and the new start with Adam had left me not needing Joe’s stories.

  When I kissed Adam goodbye that morning, he’d tilted his head to sniff my neck, giving me a look I wasn’t sure how to interpret.

  “Have a good day,” he told me.

  I meant to. With sunshine and warm but not blistering weather, it was a good day to eat lunch outside. I didn’t have to go to that bench. There were plenty of places to enjoy, some along the riverfront, where I could enjoy the early October sunshine.

  I had the best intentions, but as I shrugged into my light cardigan and grabbed up my lunch box, my feet refused to take me in any direction but toward the park where I’d spent my first Friday for the past two years.

  All things must end, I told myself. Resolution.

  I didn’t mean to meet Joe again.

  But in the end, I did.

  Chapter

  14