Chapter Forty

 

Ezra

 

 

“I didn’t get to come here when we were growing up,” I tell Kimba. “It’s beautiful.”

Lake Lanier’s surface shines like volcanic glass under the moonlight, black and bright.

“My grandfather bought the lake house right before you guys moved.” She sets down a plate of cold cuts and the fresh-baked bread we bought on our way here. “Things picked up significantly for Daddy—not just the money he was making, but all the work he was doing. It became a good place for us to get away from the city.”

The Allens’ lake house is modest, but comfortable. Its best feature is the private dock that leads to the lake. We’re having dinner under a small covered structure set at the end of the dock.

“The glamorous life, huh?” Kimba jokes, proffering a sandwich. “I really go all out for my man.”

I grab her by the waist and pull her onto my lap, inhaling the unique mix of lemons and cocoa, which shouldn’t work, but is intoxicating on her skin.

“Say that last part again,” I say into the cove behind her ear.

She turns to me, kisses my jaw. “Which part, baby?”

I make a note that I also want her to call me baby later. “Don’t tease me, Tru. You know. Say it again.”

“My man.” She hooks her arms behind my neck. “You like hearing that you’re my man, Ezra?”

“Very much.” I cup her breast, brushing a thumb over her nipple and smiling against her throat when her breath hitches. “Your man is hungry.”

“So is your woman,” she says, slanting her mouth over mine, kissing me possessively with ardor that matches mine.

“Are you gonna feed me, or what?” I mumble into the kiss as it slows. She smiles against my lips and turns back to the table to grab the sandwich, offering it to me for a bite. I tighten my hands at her waist and pull her closer to my chest.

“Today was exhausting,” she says, biting our sandwich and offering it to me again. “That book has taken over our lives.”

“You guys read it?” I sip from the glass of wine she brings to my lips.

“Yeah.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s actually really good, dammit. Gripping and makes Daddy look like a giant, besides accusing him of philandering with your mother, of course.”

“I wonder if taking that approach might work better. Meaning, you see all that’s great about the book. Negotiate with the publisher that if the author removes that one aspect, the Allen family will help promote it.”

“Hmmm.” Her dark brows knit and she nods. “That could work, but I still want to disprove that lie about Daddy. It’s too incendiary. Poses too much of a threat to his memory, to his legacy and what he means to this city. I need to speak to the author, find out the source and prove it false.”

“If anyone can do it, you can.” I open my mouth and look at her expectantly. “Food, please.”

She chuckles, leans in and offers me another bite. We eat one sandwich together, exchanging bites and kisses, alternating with sips of wine from one glass. In this moment by the water in moonlight, we share everything.

“I’m sick of talking about this damn book,” she grumbles when we’re done eating. “Have you heard from Noah?”

“Briefly.” I gather our plates and trash and toss them into a bag. “He’s fine. Wondering if he can stay an extra week.”

“Will you let him?”

“No.” I chuckle and take her hand as we walk up the dock and back toward the little house. “I miss him too much.”

Her rich laughter rolls out over the lake and she lifts my knuckle for a kiss. “You’re such an incredible father.”

“Thank you. I love kids,” I say, opening the door and letting her into the house ahead of me. “I wish I had more.”

Her first step into the living room falters for just a second and her smile slips. I hear what I just said. Shit. Does she think I’m saying I wish Aiko and I had more kids? Or that I’m imposing any expectations on her?

I follow her into the bedroom. “Kimba, I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant,” she says, sitting on the edge of the bed. “You’ve poured your whole heart into YLA, and I saw you with the kids at Noah’s party. It’s apparent how much they love you and why. You’re just as much a dad to some of them as you are to Noah.”

I’m quiet for a moment, thinking of all the kids in our school who don’t have dads, who come to me for advice, look to me for guidance.

“I did want more.” I sit beside her, take her hand, and the soft mattress gives beneath my additional weight. “We didn’t intend to get pregnant with Noah. Hell, it was the worst timing. I was a poor doctoral student barely able to take care of myself, but later, after Aiko and I had been together for years and things stabilized, I wanted another baby.”

“And?” she asks, her voice quiet, yet alert with something I’m not sure of yet.

“And Ko didn’t. She’d sacrificed a lot. Delayed some opportunities when she had Noah, moved to Atlanta because I wanted to set the school up here. The last thing I wanted to do was make her feel pressure.”

“How’d that make you feel?” Kimba asks.

“I didn’t resent it at all.”

Kimba breathes out a little laugh, looks down at our hands in her lap. “In some ways I envy her.”

“No.” I angle until I can see her face, look into her eyes. “You have nothing to be jealous of. You know that, right?”

“She had all those years with you. She’s had a life with you.” She dips her chin to her chest. “A child with you. I wouldn’t trade the path I’ve chosen for anyone else’s. I love the choices I’ve made. I stand by them, but choosing one thing often means not choosing something else. I look at my sister. She complains, but her kids are the joy of her life.”

“I’m sure you had offers,” I force myself to say, not wanting to hear about the men she could have had and kept. I’m just glad she didn’t tie herself permanently to any of them so I can have her now.

“Daddy used to say don’t waste time on things that don’t set you on fire inside, and I haven’t. Every campaign, every election, each candidate—I’ve believed in. I believed that putting that person in power advanced one of my convictions.”

She bites her bottom lip. “I felt the same about people. I didn’t want to waste time on anyone who didn’t set me on fire inside. And there have been people I liked, people I enjoyed sex with, but no one I wanted to build a life with. That’s why I never committed. No one ever set me on fire inside.”

She looks over at me, her eyes telling me before her words do. “Until now. You set me on fire inside, Ezra Stern.”

I can’t breathe. I can’t swallow. I can’t move. My composure teeters on the head of a needle, but I at least have enough presence of mind to know exactly what I should say right now. “I love you, Tru.”

It feels like the words have been waiting on my tongue for years, for the moment when I was old enough, free enough to feel them, to say them. The look on her face says she’s waited that long to hear them from me. She slides her fingers into my hair and touches her soft lips to mine.

“I love you, too,” she says. “So much.”

I kiss her so deeply, I struggle to breathe, but I can’t make myself stop. She’s my air and her heartbeat a talking drum, telling our story through the walls of our chests. I want us to be one, to be joined and hooked and sealed together. Breaking the kiss, she sits on the bed and lies back, her lips wet and full. She watches me with a sultry expectation. Keeping her eyes on me, she undoes the line of buttons holding her sundress together. The panels fall away, revealing plump breasts cupped in gold satin and lace. She sits up, shrugs out of the dress and reaches behind her back to unclasp the bra. Her breasts spill free, and I reach out a hand to touch her, but she shakes her head, her eyes dark and molten.

“Watch me,” she whispers.

She lifts, pulling the dress from under her, tossing it aside. She does the same with the gold panties, sliding them off and tossing them away, leaving her naked on the bed. She lies back in a cloud of curls. I swallow hard when she lifts her knees and spreads her legs, honoring me with this beautiful, bare intimacy. 

“Are you watching?” she asks, her voice husky and hot.

I manage to nod and try not to drool.

She slides slim fingers down the plane of her belly and between the fat lips of her pussy, squeezing her clit.

“Shit, Tru,” I hiss, moving forward.

“Watch.”

She palms herself, an aggressive move that flattens the lips and the tight bud of nerves. Her fingers go to work, brushing against her clit at first slowly, then with more speed, more pressure. Her back arches and she moans, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. I can’t resist. I sit beside her, hoping to catch her scent. I know how she smells, how she tastes, and my mouth waters for it, but she’s so clearly in charge of her own pleasure I don’t even want to intrude.

“My breasts,” she gasps. “Suck my breasts.”

Thank God.

With permission to be part of the hottest thing I’ve ever witnessed, I take her nipple between my lips. Her hips are bucking and she slaps her pussy, so I know she doesn’t want gentle. I bite down, and she moans, her fingers going faster.

“Yes, Ez.” She dips between her legs, gathering her essence, fingering herself with one hand but she offers me the other, wet and shiny. I take her fingers into my mouth, lick the webbing between, drag my lips over her palm, searching out every trace of her. I knead one breast and suck hard on the other.

“Oh my God, that’s it.” She screams, her hips bowing off the bed, her body stiffening with the tempest of her pleasure. She rides her hand and bites her lip and pulls her knee back, opening herself wider to her plundering fingers. I keep kneading her breasts but pull back enough to watch her because I know this is just as much for me as it is for her. She knew what this would do to me. There’s already a wet spot on my shorts from seeing her come. She moans with the sensations and after several seconds, stills.

“Stand up,” she commands hoarsely, her eyes dark, possessive slits. “Undress for me. I want to see you.”

I do, my gaze latched on to hers. I peel the T-shirt over my head, relishing the hungry crawl of her eyes over my chest and abs. I undo the belt, pulling it through the loops and tossing it to the floor. My cargo shorts and boxers follow, falling around my feet. She licks her lips, her eyes zeroed in on my dick. I take it in my fist and pump, slowly, rubbing my thumb over the wet tip. In seconds, I’m lengthening, thickening. I widen my legs, plant my feet to brace for the torrent.

“I’m gonna come if I don’t stop,” I gasp.

“Then stop.” She spreads her legs. “Give that to me.”

I kneel on the bed between her thighs and line our bodies up. Supporting myself on one elbow, I push the hair from her eyes.

“Whose are you?” I’ve never asked another woman for this, never needed it. But at the core of who I am, I know I belong to Kimba. I want to hear that she feels the same.

“I belong to myself,” she says, a spark of defiance in her eyes. “And to the boy who married me when I was six years old.”

I pull back and stare down into her eyes, alive with love and peace and fire. “You remember.”

“I remember everything. You owe me a lifetime.”

The distance between us is a physical ache when she’s saying the things I’ve dreamed of hearing, reflecting the words that have been locked away in my heart for years. Treasures I thought would rot, would fade with age, but never have. Our love is as bright and real as the day we were made together. I plunge into her body, and she wraps herself tightly around me, arms and legs clutching me to her. I brace one hand on the headboard, curl my arm under her knee and push in deeper, finding no resistance, only a warm, wet, tight welcome.

I surrender to every primal urge I’ve checked. I fall through the trap door to my basest desires, biting her neck, her breasts. Slamming into her with such force that the headboard bangs the wall and the bed slides.

“Oh my God, Ez.” She drops her arms behind her, over her head, giving her body to me completely. “As hard as you want. As long as you want. Just keep fucking me like that.”

I seize the fullness of her ass in one hand, squeezing, pushing in deeper, urging our bodies beyond the limits of flesh and bone. That place where we’re joined is a gateway to what I want more than anything. I’m desperate to reach her heart, her soul.

We claw and bite and sigh and snarl until her body trembles beneath me with sobs and shudders. Even after she comes, I go on, needing to release, but not wanting this to end in case it’s all a dream. When I come, it’s with a primal roar that ricochets through my marrow and tears at my throat.

We lie there in the dark, our bellies pressed together, a tangle of sweat-slicked limbs and hurried heartbeats. I can’t imagine leaving her body right now, so I don’t. Our skin cools and our breathing evens into a quiet that doesn’t need breaking. We rest in our own thoughts and in each other’s arms.

“I need to tell you something,” she finally says.

“Okay.” I find her hand, link our fingers. “What is it?”

“I’m in…” Her fingers tighten on mine and I hear her swallow. “I’m in perimenopause, Ez.”

I don’t know what peri in the front of it means, but I do recognize menopause.

I reach over to turn on the light, but she stops me. “Don’t.”

Reluctantly, I pull out and lie down to face her, making out the shape of her face in the moonlight slanting in through the window

“You’re too young for that, right?”

“It is early, but it happens for different women at different times. This is when it’s happening for me.”

“So what does this mean?”

She hesitates. An uncharacteristic uncertainty hangs around her. She’s always sure, but right now, even in the dark, I see that she is not.

“I haven’t had a period in four months, almost five now. I may have a year, eighteen months to have a baby naturally. It’s hard to know, but there is a definite, shrinking window. There’s an expiration date in the near future.”

I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed sometimes. It takes me a few moments to realize the uncertainty, at least in part, might be because of me.

“You don’t think it makes a difference to me, do you? I know this is a big deal, and I’ll support you whenever it gets hard, but I’ll love you no matter what. You know that, right?”

“You’re a great father,” she says, somewhat haltingly. “Earlier you admitted to wanting more kids. I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I think we have some kind of future together.”

“That’s not presumptuous at all. I know you’re in D.C. and are on the road a lot, and I’m here in Atlanta. We’ll work it out but make no mistake. You are my future, Kimba.”

“I feel the same way, which is why I wanted you to know that it’s possible I won’t ever have kids naturally. I’m still deciding what I want to do.”

“What’s the decision? What are you considering?”

“I want to elect Georgia’s first Latino governor.”

“And you will.”

She smiles, cups my face and strokes my jaw. “Only a man in love would be that confident that I can. It’s gonna be hard as hell.”

“Hard as hell is your default setting, Tru. It’s not my love for you that tells me that. It’s your track record. It’s who you’ve always been.” I pull her into me, stroke down her back and kiss her temple.

“I wasn’t thinking about having a baby right now,” she says, laying her head on my chest. “I’m not sure I want to focus on that if I need to focus on Ruiz’s campaign.”

“Can you do both?”

“I don’t know. I can take the things the doctor has recommended to restart my period.”

“They can do that?”

“Sometimes. If they can, there’s a chance I can have a baby, but I don’t know that I want to just because someone says it has to be now. I could adopt later.”

We could adopt later.

That’s what I hear. Noah doesn’t even know Aiko and I have broken up. There is a lot of transition ahead and we have to handle it carefully, but there’s no doubt in my mind I want to spend my life with Kimba.

“It just felt wrong not to tell you,” she says. “I didn’t want you to think I was keeping it from you or hiding anything.”

“I’m glad you did.” I pull her closer, wishing I could shield her from every threat to her happiness, her peace of mind. “We’ll face this together.”

She feels small nestled against me. The humanity of naked skin and shallow breaths reminds me the woman the world sees as so powerful is also vulnerable. The privilege of intimacy has shown me that, and I fall asleep dreaming of ways to keep her safe.