Paradise Found

I try my best to be guarded, but when he’s undoing the buttons of my shirt and peppering kisses along the bone hidden beneath non-existent pecs and the thin layer of skin, it’s impossible to be anything but vulnerable. Her fingers trace the jut of hips, trailing the tips over the waistband, teasingly as she giggles. I can’t help but moan, relishing in every touch as fleeting thoughts flash about the notions of fucking and of being fucked. The second skin of clothing is shed, discarded carelessly and my only thoughts are of the sex, abandoning the phantoms of self-consciousness and pain that had been prevalent before they’d both trailed kisses along my collar and stripped my clothes for me.

It’s not always about the sex and as we collectively fall from the peaks of orgasm, it’s about tangled limbs and butterfly kisses and sweet nothings whispered into the air. Sleep befalls upon each of us eventually as we are wrapped in each others’ embraces and the saccharine murmurs erode into drowsy mumbles and sound sighs.

In the light of morning, the hiss of shower water awakens me from my slumber. The first image to meet my gaze is the blue of his eyes, always so icy in hue but always so kind, lighting with the smile that graces his lips as he realizes that I’ve caught him watching as I slept. Subtly, I tug the sheets around my form more tightly, hiding away the scars and still-healing bruises of batter at the hands of another, less righteous man who'd had too much to drink. With a whine in the back of his throat, he pulls away the layer of fabric, stripping it away just as gingerly as he had assisted in the removal of my clothes, and reveals the rise and fall of my chest.

We lie in silence, neither breathing a word. His fingers trace my skin, skirting over the darkest of the bruising before coming to a rest over the fresh, fingertip marks over the curve of my hipbone. The quiet is broken as the shower stops and the bathroom door opens. I request good morning kisses as she emerges in her bathrobe, reaching for her with sleep still in my eyes. She obliges but squirms away before I can snake my arms around her waist and pull her back to bed. As she dresses, she tosses the robe at us, chiding in a very ladylike fashion for us to get our asses out of bed to make sure that she doesn’t burn the house down with breakfast.

I creep off to shower, blatantly refusing to save water in favor of scrubbing away sleep and dried sweat in my own company. When I move to the kitchen, clean and with wet hair, tugging a shirt over my head, I’m greeted with the smell of burnt toast and scrambled eggs as she pushes a mug of coffee toward me. He jokingly complains to us over having to shower all by his lonesome before abandoning us both for the bathroom.

She spoons the eggs onto a plate, next to the burnt toast and a few patties of microwavable sausage, depositing it on the table in front of me before settling on my lap. Between sips of coffee, she attempts to slip forkfuls of food into my mouth, murmuring to eat something, hunny and that I’ll wither away to nothing if she doesn’t get some food into me. Her laugh makes me smile and I humor her, eating a few of the pieces of egg and the triangle of sausage she holds against my lips.

The dog whines at us, shifting as he sits, staring at the food we share and nuzzling her leg and my hand, demanding that we include him as well. I steal kisses from her occasionally, despite my coffee breath and her rambled sentences being interrupted mid-thought. He comes back to us kissing and riles the dog up with the prospect of breakfast and table scraps. Today is a Sunday, so the morning routine is later than usual and I won’t have to go into work while he has the afternoon shift. She’ll most likely scurry away to get a bit of work done around noon, but for now we eat the breakfast and talk about things we’ve talked about hundreds of times before but never tire of conversing over.

As she peppers kisses over the line of my jaw, she takes the hand that rests on her knee and presses it to her abdomen. In her usual fashion, she murmurs to us both that she thinks she has a baby and we grin. Whether it’s biologically his or mine doesn’t matter to us, the baby will be ours, hers, his and mine. No one really understands what it means for the three of us; most roll their eyes, labeling us as kinks, sluts or having fallen to commitment issues. Having this child, the perfect baby that each of us is guilty of dreaming of, will only draw us closer and give us a real family to raise and rear.

He’s giddy when he finally leaves for work, kissing us both time and time again as he leaves at the absolute last minute. She drags me off to the couch, curling up on me and tracing the curve of my collar, careful not to dip below the shirt’s hem and touch the bruises that still won’t heal. I press kisses to her hair, murmuring to her as the television plays some mindless comedy with the volume turned low. She murmurs back, resting her head by mine to look at me clearly and tells me that she’ll go to the doctor to see if her hunch is correct.

I smile and trace the curve of her lips with my thumb before pressing a kiss to them. We talk about the prospect of a baby and the spare room that we’ll have to fix up, giving all of our attention to each other rather than the sounds in the background. Eventually she drags me outside to play fetch with the dog, tugging me by my wrist as she tosses the ball across the lawn. We end up huddled together in the warmth of the late afternoon sun, the dog gnawing on his toy at our feet. We doze off like this, wrapped up in each other and our sentences fading into steady breathing.

When I awake, it’s dark out and I’m alone. He laughs quietly as he comes out of the house, walking over to me and saying that he’d hoped that I wouldn’t wake up while he took her inside. Sleepily, I reach for him and he lifts me into his arms, most likely with as much ease as he’d lifted her from the grass. He sets me next to her in bed before lying next to us, wrapping his arms around each of us. In a drowsy voice, I whisper I love yous to them, not waiting for their replies before drifting back into sleep’s embrace, limbs tangled with theirs and their breaths a lullaby.