All those letters, they were you . . .
All those beautiful powerful words, they were you! . . .
The voice from the shadows, that was you . . .
You always loved me!
–Cyrano de Bergerac
“Do you want to come over later? We can watch a movie or something. I’ll even let you feed me cupcakes.”
Scarlett laughs, the sound tinny from my phone’s speaker. “I would love to stuff your face with cake and frosting, I’ve got some new flavor ideas for the truck and I could use some advice, but Guy has something planned for us tonight.”
“Oh.” I sidestep a questionable puddle on the sidewalk. It hasn’t rained in weeks. That’s either booze or urine. “Maybe tomorrow? Or Sunday? I could use a distraction.”
“You’re not hanging out with your new friends tonight? I thought maybe you had plans.”
“Nah, they’re cool and all, but I didn’t feel like being social.”
I have hung out with my coworkers periodically over the past few weeks. I’ve gone for drinks, out for dinner, I even went to a movie with a fellow new hire. I’m practically a social butterfly. It’s helped ease the incessant longing pushing at my heart, despite the excitement and gratification with my job.
I haven’t talked to Beast as much lately. We’ve both been busy. And I can’t help but wonder, is he slipping away? Will our calls and texts get more and more infrequent and eventually cease entirely?
“You don’t want to be social, but you wanted me to come over?” Scarlett asks.
“With you I can be bleak and miserable. With my coworkers, I have to put on a face like I’m happy and normal.”
She pauses. “Aren’t you, though? Happy?”
I stop at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. “I mean. I am in some sense. I’m ecstatic about my job and apartment. But . . . I know, I can’t base my entire happiness on someone else, and I’m not, but I miss him, Scarlett.” I can’t stop the thickness from entering my voice.
“I know, Fred. Why don’t you go home, take a bath in that awesome claw-foot tub, order takeout, and call Beast? I bet you’ll feel better.”
I swallow. “You’re right.”
“And call me in the morning, okay?” There’s something off in her tone, like she’s distracted, but it’s probably just Guy or one of the kids. I don’t want to push her on it, and I’ve reached my building anyway. We hang up and I get out my keys for the front entryway.
The elevator has a Do Not Use sign so I trudge up the stairs. I guess it’s a good thing. This is the only exercise I get. I exit the stairwell onto my floor and halt.
Down the hall, a large figure sits in the hall, head tipped back against my door, eyes shut.
Oh my Chuck.
“Beast?” The word, only a whisper, may as well be a gunshot.
He jerks up. Our eyes meet.
“Am I hallucinating?”
He smiles at me, shaking his head no. He lumbers to his feet, and I’m already running.
Heart pounding, I leap into him in a graceless move that should send us both sprawling to the floor. But he would never let me fall. He catches me, holding me up against him while I rain kisses all over his face.
I hold his face between my hands, tracing his features with my eyes. He’s thinner. Grey smudges line his eyes, and there is enough stubble under my fingers to indicate he hasn’t shaved since at least yesterday morning. “You’re here. You’re really here. I’ve imagined you here, but I can’t believe this is real.”
Then we’re kissing again. I lift my legs to wrap them around his waist and he grasps my ass in his giant palms.
He leans back against my door, his mouth devouring mine like I’m a succulent dessert and he hasn’t eaten in months. I start unbuttoning his shirt and then my neighbor’s door opens and a whistle jars us out of our kissing trance.
Flushing, I unwrap myself from Beast but his hands don’t leave me, touching my back, my shoulder even as I unlock my door and he picks up his bag from where it was sitting on the floor.
“Hey, I was enjoying the show!” my neighbor yells.
“Good night, Dave.”
“I think yours is gonna be better than mine,” he calls out as I shut the door.
We get inside the apartment and I lock the door. He drops his bag on the floor and then we’re kissing again.
This time, it’s not a consuming scorch of lips, but a tender expression of intent. Soft and sweet, full of heated emotion.
We pull apart, and I grasp his hand and lead him into the bedroom. It’s not yet dark outside, though the sun has disappeared behind the buildings, casting the sky with an orange glow that seeps through the curtainless windows.
No words are needed as we undress each other, the only sounds the whisper of our clothing as it hits the floor.
He runs his knuckles over me, from my breastbone to my navel and back up. Tracing delicate patterns over my skin in effortless seduction. Then we’re falling into bed.
He shifts over me, arms braced on either side of my head, the blunt head of him pressing against my sensitive entrance. His mouth sips at mine as he pushes inside, hard and insistent.
I grip at his lower back, pressing at him, rocking my hips to drive him deeper, but he’s inexorable, the power of him a leashed force entering me barely an inch at a time. Finally, he pulls back from the kiss, our eyes locking, and he plunges the final inch. We shudder together, holding on to the moment. My hands glide up his body to close around his nape.
His gaze is raw, possessive, full of a primal heat that echoes inside me.
And then he moves. Our bodies rock in unison, a slow and tender dance. He lifts one hand to brush against my skin, cupping my breast, drawing circles around the sensitive peaks.
I lift my legs and lock around him, clasping him, guiding his movements into the perfect angle to thrust right there. Minutes later, pleasure ripples through me without warning, a wave that takes Beast out with me, and we’re both groaning in the aftermath of release.
Sometime later, actual time has ceased to have meaning, but the room is dark and we’re lying in bed, facing each other with my leg up over his waist.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, tracing the line of his shoulder with a finger.
He shakes his head. Then he reaches out and runs his thumb over my lips, his eyes following the movement before he meets my eyes.
“I love you.” His voice is deep and soft, comforting like hot chocolate, the words hoarse.
I can’t move. I can’t think. I can only stare at him in awestruck wonder, my heart pounding.
“Beast,” I manage to get out between frantic breaths. I push up to sitting and stare down at him. “You talked.”
His eyes widen in feigned shock. “I did?”
Stunned by both his words and the fact that he can make jokes at a time like this, I burst into tears.
He pulls me into his chest.
“You talked,” I blubber all over him. “You told me you loved me. You’re here. It’s all so overwhelming I’m not sure I can take it.”
His chest moves under my cheek, and I pull back to watch, holding my breath while he takes a couple long seconds to force out words again. “It’s . . . hard.”
The words aren’t quite as confident as his profession of love. This time, his voice is forced, a little ragged with effort.
“It’s okay.” I hold his dear face, rubbing a thumb over the scruff on his jaw, meeting his eyes. “You don’t have to. I don’t care if you never talk again. You’re perfect just as you are.”
He smiles and nods. I know, he mouths.
“Maybe I should mention that I love you, too.” I’m smiling so hard, my cheeks hurt.
His returning grin is blinding, the dimple in his cheek winking at me.
I sigh, completely infatuated with everything about him. If I were a cartoon, those little heart eyes would be popping out of my face right now.
“Oh.” A thought occurs to me. “What if ‘I love you’ was all you could say? You could be like the romantic version of Groot.” I widen my eyes, a little excited at the prospect. Beast is as probably as big as adult-sized Groot.
He pulls me down, kissing me even as his shoulders shake with laughter under my hands, his mouth curved up, smiling against my lips.
“Wait.” I sit up before we can get sucked back into Sexy Land. “You might wanna grab your phone because I have a lot of questions. How long are you staying? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? When did you start talking?”
I slide off him and he rolls away, grabbing his phone from his pants on the floor while I continue my barrage of questions and rambling nonsense.
“We have to go to Dinosaur Bar-B-Que while you’re in town. It’s in Harlem, not quite like Granny does it, and well, maybe you could do it better but . . .”
He gets back in bed, holding up his phone.
I blink at the words on the screen, not registering it at first, like his phone is somehow converting the words to Dothraki.
I’m not going back to Blue Falls.
I read it twice. Meet his eyes. He nods. I read it a third time. And then a fourth. And I burst into tears all over again.
Minutes later, after I’ve pulled my shit together, he gives me the rest of the story. With his phone this time. He’s met max capacity for speaking. He tells me about Grace applying to CIA for him, her admission that she interfered with his prior application, but now he’s starting in less than a month. He even has a place to stay, since the school helped him find housing nearby.
“I wish you could live here with me.” I run a hand down his stomach, watching his muscles flex and respond to my touch.
We both need to stand on our own, I think. For now.
“You’re so wise for one so young.”
I’ll be a train ride away.
“Which is so much better than a plane ride and hours of driving.”
We stay up half the night catching up on everything. We’ve been communicating since I left, but not as much recently—since, apparently, he was planning a cross-country move. We touch and talk. I tell him stories about my coworkers, he tells me stories from Blue Falls and what I’ve missed since I left. There are sexy times in between when we need a break from the talking and the touching and caressing brings us to the point of no return.
It’s early in the morning, nearly sunrise, when I show him my “patio” so we can look up at the stars.
“I see one!” I point at one glimmering light in the sky. “Oh wait. That’s a plane.” I squint. “Maybe a drone?” I grin up at Beast. “Not quite like home, huh?”
His arms wrap around me and his voice is in my ear, hushed and raspy, but pure. “You are home.”