Grabbing the suitcases, I followed her. I wasn’t letting this go. Never. Not if she threatened death or castration or anything else. “Why not?”
She broke to a sudden stop a few feet inside the room. “Because I don’t want to focus on the past. I want to concentrate on the future. That’s not going to work if you keep asking me questions about Matt.”
There was a sharpness in her voice—one she didn’t use too often. She didn’t want to keep talking about me, which only made me want to continue talking about me. I’d struck a nerve, but I wasn’t sure how deep that nerve went.
I needed to know how deep it went. I had to know. My whole life, I’d been under the impression that Cora saw me as nothing more than a good friend and substitute brother. She cared for me, but not in the same way I cared for her.
Or did she?
“This thing with Matt . . .”
Her back stiffened.
“Was it a thing? Like ancient history? Or is it still a thing?” I closed the door and wondered why I could feel my heartbeat in my eardrums.
She kept her back to me, standing in the middle of the dark room like a lone ship on a vast ocean. “I married you.”
Yeah, she did marry me.
“But if he’d made a play for you, way back before all of this”—I waved my finger between the two of us, not that she could see it—“would you have given him a chance?”
“He never made a play for me.” Her voice sounded faraway, like she was out of reach when she was less than an arm’s length away.
“That doesn’t answer my question.” I stepped closer. “If he had? Would you have?”
Her back was moving faster from her quickened breathing. This conversation was making her uncomfortable. Why was that?
“Stop, Jacob. Enough.” She spun on me, swaying in place just enough that I reached out to steady her. She shook my hand away like it was white-hot. “I’m not going to get into another fight with you over Matt. I’m done. I picked you. I married you. What else do I have to prove?”
“That you don’t—”
“I don’t love Matt!” Her arms flung out at her sides as her voice spilled across the room. ‘There. I said it. Are you happy now? Are you happy we’ve managed to get into another argument over this infatuation you’re convinced I have for your brother? On our wedding night of all times?” She glared at me with bleary eyes. I couldn’t tell if that was from tears or from alcohol. Maybe both.
“Cora, I’m sorry.” I ran my hands through my hair, wondering what in the hell I was doing—for the millionth time that day. Deceiving her, betraying her, and now accusing and angering her. Maybe I didn’t know the first fucking thing about love. Maybe Jacob knew more about it than I did, because I wasn’t sure love was supposed to hurt as badly as this did.
“Just . . . enough already.” As she shouldered past me, I reached for her, but she shook me off. “I need to be alone.”
She slammed the front door behind her a moment later, leaving me alone with my idiocy.
“Cora,” I called to an empty room. I wasn’t thinking when I rushed toward the door after her. “Cora!”
The moment I pulled the door open, something crashed into me. It made a sharp breath rush out of my mouth as I staggered back a few steps.
My arms barely had time to wrap around her before Cora’s mouth was on mine, moving in such a way that made staying upright next to impossible. Before I had a chance to catch up to the fact that I was kissing Cora in an entirely different way than we’d kissed at the wedding and reception, her fingers were working at my belt. Quickly.
I didn’t know she’d already gotten it undone before she’d moved on to my zipper. The sounds she was making as she kissed me, the way her body felt aligned against mine, the way her mouth knew the intricate balance of submission and domination . . . one moment at a time, Cora was crushing the last remnants of my resolve. Destroying the final pieces of my views of right and wrong.
My arm stretched out to brace against a porch beam, Cora clinging to me like I was trying to cling to my senses, and that was when I saw it. The thick shining band on my finger. That wedding band might have been on my finger, but it wasn’t meant for me.
Cora might have been tangled around my body, but she wasn’t meant for me either.
“Wait.” I didn’t recognize my voice. I didn’t want to acknowledge my demand. “Cora—stop.”
Her mouth slowed, but her lips hovered against mine. Her fingers slowed . . . but they didn’t stop. A throaty groan echoed in my chest when her hand slipped through my zipper, cupping a part of my anatomy that felt like it had, at present, taken over my mental capacity.
“I don’t want to argue with you,” she breathed against my mouth. “I don’t want to feel distant from you. Not tonight. I want to be close. I want to be part of you. I want you to be part of me.” Her hand moved against me, slowly and methodically, and I felt like my lungs were about to explode. Kind of the way a balloon pops when too much air has been added. “I want a part of you inside me. Please.” Her mouth lifted to my ear, my back trembling when her breath warmed my skin. “Please.”
I’d never been able to resist Cora whenever she’d asked me for something. Never once. Whether it was the time we were kids and she’d asked me to eat her Brussels sprouts so she didn’t have to, or when we’d been older and she asked for a ride to the movie theater to meet some friends. Feeling like such a strong person in so many areas of my life was a hard thing to reconcile with how totally and utterly weak I felt in one area—her. Always her. She was as much my strength as she was my weakness. My best memory and my worst regret.
Cora had yet to request something of me that I’d failed to give her. I doubted if she ever would.
This time included.
My answer didn’t come as a verbal one, but I wasn’t sure responses came any clearer. Pressing into her, I backed her into the thick beam of the porch my arm was still braced against, still trying to keep me from falling out of whatever dream I’d landed in. When her body was as fitted against me as it was against the beam, I hoisted her up so I was looking her in the eyes. So I could press my hips between hers as her legs wound around my back.
A ragged exhale spilled from her mouth when I ground myself against her. I did it again, desperate to pull the same sound from her. Drunk with the feeling of knowing I could make her feel the way I did. Her chest rose and fell hard, writhing against me, lost in the same crutches of lust I was overtaken by.
My arm wasn’t braced against the beam any longer. It wound around her, clinging to her body like it was my only salvation left in this world. My mouth covered hers when the next breath trembled from her. I reveled in the taste of her lips on mine, the feel of her tongue against mine.
Cora was everything I’d fantasized she would be, and nothing I ever thought I’d get to experience. I’d expected nothing, and here I was, getting everything.