“Really?”  I gave her a sad face.

She laughed at me some more but said nothing.

“Well, it’s a nice day today so maybe you fancy an out-of-doors shag.”  I winked.  “I’m game if you are, babe, I love me a bit country sunshine.”

She shook her head at me and blushed beautifully.  Man, did it wreak havoc on my insides.  There was something about how Elaina got shy around me, and blushed at the mention of naughty deeds.  That rosy flush of her skin that appeared when she thought about all the sexy things we’d done together, was definitely my kryptonite.

* * *

The day was perfectly fine and just about everything else was too.  Iridescent blue dragonflies flittered over the water, buzzing around us, and even occasionally coming to rest upon the water’s surface.  The fresh air mixed with the scent of her hair comforted my senses to the point I could honestly admit I was blissed out.  It was a first for me.  I’d never known the feeling before.

Elaina lay back on my chest in a little green and white rowboat upon Lake Leticia, a scenic meandering pond situated on the Hallborough estate.  I was again reminded of the many BBC miniseries my gran had enjoyed on TV when I was a boy—lovers from times past with nothing better to do than float on a garden lake, stealing kisses in their fine clothes and flattering their dates with fancy words.

I had to say it wasn’t at all bad.  I was loving it.

“My mum would love it here,” she said, trailing a hand over the side and into the water.  “She’s always been captivated by historic homes and gardens.”

“My gran would have too.”  I surprised myself for mentioning her at all.  Gran was a topic I kept close and pretty much closed.  Elaina was different, of course, I could share with her, but it wasn’t something I sought out to do.  Thinking of my gran, I only wished I could have brought her to a place like this for a holiday.  She would have loved the gardens and the ocean views, and the stately house very much.  I never got the chance to take her anywhere nice or do anything special for—

“You lived with your grandmother before you came to England when you were seventeen?” she asked from the side of the boat, cutting off my retreat into past regrets I couldn’t do anything to change.

“Yeah.  In Glasgow.”

“I knew that you were a Scot because Ian used to call you Scotty when you were younger.”

“He changed his mind about it once I grew bigger than him, now didn’t he?”

She laughed.  “I remember that too.  Ian was so disappointed when you topped him in height.”

“By like an inch, maybe.  Your brother can be an idiot sometimes.”

“Very true about Ian.  But what happened to your mum?”  She asked it softly, as if she were being gentle with me in case her question brought out sad feelings.

I rubbed up and down her arm to reassure her.  “She had me when she was very young…just sixteen.  My father was a student at the University of Glasgow when he met my mum and impregnated her.  He abandoned us when she told him I was on the way.  McManus was her family name, not his.”

“So, you lived in Scotland with your mother and your grandmother?”  She turned away from the water and asked me directly.

“Right.  Her mother, my gran, took care of us, and then me, when Mum died.  Yeah…it was pretty awful.”  Elaina pulled her hand from the water and leaned back against me again.  She was waiting for me to talk about my past and I figured there was no time like the present.  Hiding it certainly wouldn’t help anything, and I might as well get on with throwing it all out there with her.  I’d want to know if it was the other way ’round.

“When I was ten, my mother and her boyfriend got themselves killed in a car crash driving home drunk from the pub.  They ran themselves off the road in a rain storm and into a flooded ditch.”

“Oh, that’s horrible.”

“Mum never really settled down like a typical mother.  She had me far too young, and she didn’t really grow up or get over the fact that my father didn’t love her or want anything to do with us.  She was only twenty-six when she died.  And she had dreadful taste in men, apparently…”  I trailed off with my sad story and hoped I didn’t have to talk about it much more.  I wanted to enjoy our time here, and not waste it on the uselessness of regret over things I had absolutely no control.  Strolls down memory lane didn’t do a bloody thing for me. I had learned to live in the present and for the future.  It was the only way.

Elaina rolled over to face me and rested on my chest, looking up.  “I didn’t know all that about your family.  I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For you, for how scary it must have been for you as a little boy losing your mother and then later on, your grandmother.  I knew it was bad for you, but I didn’t know the story.  I’m so sorry for your losses.”

I shared more with her because she was so gentle and kind with her feelings, and I could tell she wanted to know about me.  For the first time, I actually felt like talking a little about my life because I knew I could trust her.

“Gran was lovely…and if we're being completely honest, she's the one who really raised me.   My mum was not ready to have a child and although my memories of her are sweet, we weren't ever like a typical mother and son.  It was my gran's dying of cancer, when I was seventeen that dealt the worst blow.  It devastated me…and there was so little time to settle things before she passed away.”

  “You had to leave Scotland, then?”  She found my hand and entwined our fingers together, caressing back and forth with her thumb.

“Yeah.  And it was clear I'd have to go with my father as soon as Gran's condition was pronounced terminal.  There was nobody else to take me.”

She brought my hand to her lips and held it there.

I kept talking.  “Everyone was unhappy about it.  I didn't want to leave my home, or for my gran to die, or to go live with a father I'd never met, and who didn’t want me any more than I wanted him.”

She gripped my hand tighter.

“He had a wife who really didn’t want me around—messing up their perfect little family life in England, bringing up questions, destroying the façade of respectability they’d earned.  They had a three-year-old son already.  Sam—their real son.”

"So, you came to live with your father and that's when we met you?" she asked softly.

"Yeah, but I didn’t make it easy for any of us.  As soon as I was delivered to my father’s house and got a good feeling for how things were going to be with my new family, I ran away, sneaking off almost immediately, hitching rides all the way back to Scotland.  It took a while, but they found me trying to live in the back of my gran’s garage.  My dad sent me off directly to school in London after that mess so I didn’t have to live with them, and since our last names were different, nobody connected us as father and son.  I was just a kid dumped at school by people who liked to pretend I didn’t exist.”

Elaina was quiet for a bit, just holding my hand to her lips and absorbing everything I’d told her.  When she finally spoke, her voice had a detached ring to it as if she were making a confession.  “I always hated your family.  I never met them but I hated them just the same for how uncaring they were of you.”

God, I loved her.  “I always sort of sensed that from you, Cherry.  Just made me love you more though.”

She wasn’t done.  “But then I probably shouldn’t hate them, because if they hadn’t been so awful we might never have met you.  Ian wouldn’t have befriended you and dragged you home to us.”  She leaned up to find my lips for a kiss.

I clung to her as if she were a lifeline.  “Your family probably saved my life,” I whispered, holding her face close.

"How did we do that?"  I could see tears in her eyes and knew it hurt her to hear all this horrible shit.  I hoped it was the last time I ever had to speak of it with her.  Elaina was only part of the good things that had happened in my life.  She was the light to all that darkness.  I was relieved to now know how that all the sorry sad rest of my past just didn’t matter to me anymore.

“By wanting me.  You always wanted me, Cherry, and I don’t know why you did, but I do know that it was the thing that saved me.  You and your family saved me.”

She nodded and let out a sob.  “Always did…and always will.”  Her hand started moving, rubbing over the place where my heart beat and the blood was pumped, showing me the truth behind her lovely words.

“But, I don’t want you to dwell on it.  Please, for me, don’t think about it anymore because it’s over and just doesn’t matter.  I survived because of you, and more importantly, I have you now.  You’re mine.”  I smiled.  “That’s all I care about.”  I kissed her for a long time.

I held onto my Cherry Girl.  I held her up against my heart, in that little rowboat on the idyllic lake, at the splendid English estate that felt like something out of a Dickens’ novel, and knew pretty much what complete happiness felt like for the first time in my adult life.

All the sad shit and the fucked up past was well behind us, where it belonged.  I figured we only had good in our future to look forward to together.

No words could do justice to what I’d just shared with Elaina in such a very special place.  It was that meaningful to me.  I certainly couldn’t find the right words to express what it meant to me to know that she’d always loved me and wanted me…just because she did.  No other reason, than that the path of her heart led her to me.  A miracle.  I couldn’t rationalize it and I wouldn’t even attempt to figure out why things played out the way that they did with us.

I made a decision to just believe in fate right then and there.  Done.  I wouldn’t question the how’s or the why’s of it anymore, but simply accept the gift of fate I’d been given with my Elaina.

I’d hold the memory of this beautiful time together with her, keeping it safe inside me where I could revisit whenever I needed to so I could make it through the next ten months of being apart.

And that time was coming far, far too soon.

11

The enormous bathtub had a view to rival the best scenic vistas on any travel documentary, but I wasn’t looking or caring about it.  No, my attention was elsewhere.  And my view was much more spectacular.

Elaina naked was breathtaking.  Elaina, naked and wet in the bath with me, even more so.  Elaina, naked, wet and sucking on my cock, was probably going to render me blind in the next minute or two.  If I wasn’t dead by then.

She worked me over good, drawing the length deep and pulling back with a little twist of her hand on each stroke.  I held her long hair back from her face and let her take me to heaven.

“Oh fuck, fuck, fuck…that’s it—I’m going off!”

I tried to pull away but she wouldn’t let go and the wet warmth of her mouth felt too good against the bare flesh of my cock.  I couldn’t stop the force of the spunk that exploded from me, and worried about choking her, but I was too far gone to do much of anything about it.  My state of control over myself had come and gone.  I’d come hard.

She took it all down her throat while I shuddered and pulsed, feeling like I shouldn’t do that to her, but it felt too fuckin’ good to stop.  I was a slave to her love and very happy to my lot in life.

“God, girl, you’re gonna kill me,” I panted through the after rush of my orgasm.

She released me from her lips and grinned like the devil, wiping the corner of her mouth with a finger.

I groaned from the sheer pornographic lust she instilled in me.  In a very good way of course, but still… “Yeah, I’m dyin’ for sure.”

“Nope.  No killing you off, Captain.  No dying allowed, either.”  Her hand still gripping ’round my cock, she stroked me slowly, still managing to keep me hard, which was not really an issue ever with her.  I wanted Elaina all the time, and she was so generous with me; I just took and took some more.  If she wanted me, I was ready to serve which was just another reason to be careful with the extra protection.  With all the spunk going off from all the sex, it would just be a matter of time until I knocked her up.  I couldn’t let that happen.

“I love you so much it scares me,” I whispered.  “Come here, beautiful girl.”  I pulled her up my body to lie on my chest, her breasts pressing against me, her cheek just below my shoulder.  I trailed fingers through her hair and just held her.  How in the hell was I going to survive ten months without her?  I really couldn’t bear to think about it at that point.