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“What are you making?” he asked. His eyes flickered down to my chest, where my robe gaped. His gaze lingered too long for it to be a casual, disinterested glance. The hope bubbled up again. Maybe seduction by silk would work. I just wanted him to stop seeing me as a friend. Once and for all.
“I don’t know yet. Something with biscuits, but I don’t need a recipe for those. Hungry for anything special?”
“Just coffee.”
I waited, keeping my body open to him so he could kiss me, hold me, hold the book longer than necessary so that our fingertips could brush when I pulled it from his grasp.
Nothing. It was no different than before I proposed. Maybe even less connected now. Before my stupid marriage idea, we always had something to talk about, argue or commiserate over. He’d always had questions about my faith or my family, and I, his. We’d carried fonts of complementary knowledge, each desperate to drink from the other’s. To bathe in that wisdom and distill each other down to our most essential.
Now we were married, and our wedding bands had essentially rendered us strangers.
But our marriage was still as new as the moon, and I tried to cut us both some slack.
We didn’t know what we were doing, and we were both so reluctant to make a mistake, for fear of creating some irreconcilable chasm between us.
That was the difference.The stakes. There were no repercussions if we didn’t see eye to eye as friends.
Marriage had shrunk our world down to a tightrope.
One misstep and we’d never recover.
Gus poured his coffee and leaned back against the counter.
I pulled two sticks of cold butter from the fridge, unwrapped their waxed wrappers and started grating them into the bowl with the White Lily flour and salt. It was the one thing Granny and I disagreed on—in biscuit making, anyway. She’d liked to pinch the butter into the dry ingredients with her knuckles. I thought the secret to fluffy, flaky biscuits was in the cold tidbits of butter, melting in the hot oven, creating little pockets of rich deliciousness.
I overturned the bowl onto the butcher block and formed the rounds, careful not to twist the biscuit cutter as I went (it made for biscuits that didn’t rise). As I worked the dough, handling it as little as possible, the tension left my body. My breathing flowed more deeply into my belly and my shoulders released, dropping from where they’d been clamped somewhere up around my shoulders. That was the magic of kitchen witchcraft. I didn’t even have to say an intention or incantation to work a charm. My magic worked intuitively. My body knew the ritual.
Perhaps Gus was right to… to what? Backtrack? Keep me at arm’s length? I couldn’t know what he was doing, and wouldn’t know until we spoke, but I wasn’t ready for awhat are we to each otherdiscussion so early in the morning. And so soonafter our wedding.
I closed my eyes as I envisioned an even larger cloud leaving my body. Dark and opaque, conveying with it a sense of doom and desperation and need for definition. This was less intuitive now and more of an assertion of what I needed. I also knew I had a choice. I could live under this cloud, watching it as it gathered more and more of my need for control, perhaps ruining any good that might come out of our marriage.
Or I could do something I’d never done before. I could let go and trust where the journey took us.
Gus
“How do you wantthese organized?” Decca blew out a breath and planted her hands on her hips as she looked at the books stacked high all around the room.
After breakfast, we’d spent most of the day moving boxes and boxes of books into the guest room. It was intimidating, an endless task, but she seemed determined. And I was grateful for the help, even if it did mean a lot of awkward silences, audible sighs, and jumping away whenever our body parts brushed against each other.
“I’ll leave the cataloging system to you, but I’m warning you now, I have a lot more books here than I did at my parent’s house.”
“Good. I need new reading material.” Her eyes lit up as she twisted to grab one off the top of a stack so tall she could hardly reach.
Thank God she’d changed out of that little slippery silk thing she’d worn at breakfast. She was fully covered now, in black leggings and a vintage The Cure t-shirt that reached to the middle of her thighs, her hair pulled up high in a sloppy ponytail. She wasjust as sexy this way, but I could at least keep a lid on my lust, now that vast expanses of skin weren’t begging to be touched.
Had she bought that pink thing special for our wedding night? If it was designed to seduce me, it fucking worked. I was achingly hard half the morning, knowing that little wisp of satin was the only thing keeping her covered. And it barely did that. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the deep V, parting wider and wider as her belt loosened, threatening to reveal her tits. Her shapely ass jiggled and bounced under the pink silk while she kneaded biscuits on her tip-toes, the muscles of her smooth, strong legs contracting, her bare feet working the hardwoods while she performed the motions.
I’d had to leave the kitchen abruptly. Rudely. I was desperate for a cold shower and pants that would better hide my erection.
When I came back down, only partially sated, things had been weird between us. Me, still insane with desire. Her understandably cold. Maybe hurt.
I opened my mouth, tried to apologize for my… inability to perform last night, but what could I say? Was I sorry because Icouldn’t…?Or because I’dalmost…?
Decca didn’t deserve some half-assed apology. Our relationship was always going to be strained while we underwent this adjustment period. Until I could keep my cock soft while living under the same roof as her, it was better to keep my mouth shut.
So, I said nothing, and we ate our biscuits and gravy in silence.
“Do you want to add my witchy books to yours? We could probably take up at least three shelves.” Her question jolted me back to the present.
