Reconnaissance

He's quiet for a beat. "Why, when we aren't even together?" Ooo. I sit and look over at him, and he looks back. "I know we weren't, still aren't, but it hurt to hear that day. I can't help but feel some type of way about that."

I nod again. "I get it."

He sighs, stands up, fixes his rumpled clothes, and steps over the wriggling baby. "I know you do. You get me, so I know you know how much I want you. All of you. Badly. It hurts each time I leave you."

Somewhat angry, he continues. "And I get you, and I know you have to deal with everything I've piled on you before you come back to me." He shakes his head when I open my mouth to protest. "You will," he says. "You think it's just some sort of muscle memory that's got you falling for me again. But I'll wait, and I'll try not to touch you... as much. And then you'll come to me. And I'll come in you. On you. With you. Maybe even let you breathe for a moment, take you out so we can date properly, be in love somewhere besides the bed."

I realize I can't think when he talks, either.

Jonah whines a bit, probably hungry, and Micah sweeps him up, kisses him and hands him to me before walking into the back room and returning with my breastfeeding pillow and blanket without me needing to say a word. He stays and watches Jonah latch on, jingles his keys in his pocket and runs his hand over his hair.

"I'll uh, go find some errands to run until Noah's ready," he says.

"Smart," I smile, unwilling to fix my mouth to say anything more in case something stupid comes out.

He leaves, and I become a mother feeding her son again.

. . .

"Nelle don't give him that pacifier, I just boiled all of Oscar's. I was gonna send your man over with them the next time he came over."

"I- okay. Where is your horde, anyway?"

"Anthony took them to the skating rink."

"Hmm."

Priscilla walks into the room and hands me a mug of jasmine tea and a warm pacifier before sitting down with me. "How's the courting going?"

"Why is that all anyone talks about? There's no courting. Just two parents trying to be normal after a few years' worth of crazy circumstances."

"I'm the last person you need to lie to, Nelle. I may get mad quick but you know I always understand."

I stare flatly back at her but fail to keep my cool when I try to sip blazing hot tea.

"That hot water hot, ain't it?" she says dryly.

"Yeah. And nothing is happening, we're working on co-parenting."

"Janelle, if you want to deal with everything yourself, just say so. You went through a lot. We get it, and we're gonna be here in any way you need. But don't shut us out, please."

I hear emotion in those last few phrases, and I cradle Jonah to me before I look up at her. "I'm not."

"J, we thought you were dead. You were supposed to come over that Saturday, remember, to watch stupid crappy movies with me and my kids, and then for the next two months, you were dead." Tears fall now, first from me, then from her, and from Naomi who walks in behind her.

"It's like no matter which side our family fought on, they never came home in the end. First mom and dad, and then you. You came back different, and God knows you have good reason, but I want you to know we're here, okay? We can't do anything else but just be here."

"Prissy you always make things so fuckin emotional for no reason, you coulda just made her tell you," Naomi snaps, swiping at her wet face.

"Shut the fuck up, Nao, you can do the talking next time since you know so goddamn much," Priscilla seethes.

I laugh a little bit, shifting Jonah in my arms before Naomi leans over to take him to the other couch directly across from us. Whenever I visit my family, I can never hold my baby for longer than two minutes.

"Guilt tripping with mom and dad worked pretty well though, I think she's still got it," I chuckle, sniffling, grunting at the knuckled punch to the arm I receive from Prissy without complaint. "If y'all wanna know so bad, I just..." I shrug. "It doesn't even make sense to me. Of course he still wants me. He said he'd wait until I figured everything out, until I knew my feelings were real."

They listen, unmoving. I sigh and continue. "And honestly, we both know that if he had pushed, he could have everything he wanted. That's the thing, it feels like the playing field still isn't level. I'm the new mother with his child, and I feel raw and I'm grateful that he came back and I want to have my family, my whole family, all together, and it all makes me sick. I wanna spew exorcist-style over the whole scene."

"You feel weak to it all." Naomi rocks Jonah, saying it oh-so-analytically like a paid psychologist.

"Of course I feel weak."

"There's nothing wrong with that," Prissy offers. "He's always going to be that man who took you from us. We have years of hate for him. But J, I hate to say it - that's a good man. So incredibly flawed, and dramatic, for fuck's sake, but good. If you want him, we want him for you."

"And you're not crazy. We'd be the first to tell you if you were," Naomi adds.

"So be weak if you want. You're at luxury to do it. We're here for you if it's not what you thought it was. Not many people have the support you have."

I sip cautiously at my tea. Prissy never uses enough honey for me. "Y'all planned what you were gonna say?"

"No, we've just all been talking about it for weeks when you're not here, we been knew the gist of what we wanted to say but it came out real smooth, didn't it?"

Priscilla furrows her eyebrows at Naomi and sucks her teeth. This is exactly where her kids get it from, but they can't do it without getting yelled at.

"Y'all are rooting awful hard for the man who shot me twice," I muse.

"And how hard were you rooting for him when y'all made this baby?" Naomi says, standing to lay Jonah down upstairs.

Prissy snorts. "Girl, she was on the root."

These fucking bitches.

. . .

Here we go. "Micah."

"Hmm?"

"Can I kiss you?"

He looks up from the playpen we've been trying to put together for the last forty-five minutes. He's holding the canvas bottom of the whole thing up to the metal frame he just put together. I don't have the heart to tell him he's got to take it apart to get it inside the sleeves.

"Yeah," he says, eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline. "Yeah, of course." He glances back down at the assemblage of screws and poles laid out on the floor, then back up. He looks terribly suspicious, and I almost wish I hadn't asked. I crawl over the wreckage to him anyway, after looking towards my room where Noah is quietly watching Cars 3.

We've been casual and friendly for the past two months we've been co-parenting. We shop together, we take the kids out to the park and stuff. He hasn't asked to kiss me; he rarely hugs me. When he does, it's from the side. One-armed, friendly. We've been good. I can give him a simple kiss, I can see if anything I'm feeling for him has changed.

He sits cross-legged against the foot of the couch, expectant. I kneel in front of him and press my lips to his, naked under his gaze.

Gray eyes, clear and sharp as I cross to one side of his mouth, then the other. His breath flutters out and I hear his hands move sluggishly in his lap, palms whispering over each other. I tear my eyes away from his and paint light kisses down his jawbone, and when I reach the curve of it I hover, lips pressed to his racing pulse. I feel drugged, like the Ivory soap scent of him is filling my lungs and head with a cloudy mist.

My hands are against the couch on either side of him, bracing my body over his as I rise back up to meet his lips. But even though they're warm, they're unresponsive.

"Janelle, what are you doing?" he murmurs, drawing back against the couch. His face is firmly set against me, eyes still clear and sharp.

I blank. "Uh- I wanted to kiss you. See if everything still felt... So, just... I can stop. We've been doing good, I'm sorry." I sit back on my haunches with tightness in my chest, and he watches me.

"Yes, we have. You're trying to start something you don't want me to finish," he says softly. There's menace in his voice, and I feel my eyebrows furrow at the recognition of it.

"No, I literally-"

"You asked to kiss me, not to seduce me on the living room floor when you know I'm starving for you." He's angry. This is the first time I've ever seen him angry. Even when we first met in that warehouse, he was just cold, grim, deadly. This is seething, hot anger, and it burns.

"I didn't-"

"And the next time you do, I don't care who's in the other room. Your sisters, our sons. I'll just make it so they can't hear you screaming my name." He clasps his hands together in his lap, sealing his promise.

I stand awkwardly and walk back to my space, his eyes following me, and as we finish building the playpen in relative silence, Jonah wakes up silently and Noah marches out of the bedroom to inform us of it.

"It's probably a good idea to get out of here, then," Micah says on a sigh. I nod, somehow wanting to cry.

At the door, holding Noah's hand, he pulls me in with the other hand on the back of my neck and kisses my forehead. "It hurts," he whispers against my skin, a question. I nod, acknowledging for the first time that the hollow, burning ache in my stomach is more than lust, more than friendship or a bond with the father of my child.

I thought I could fill it with other types of love. Love for my son, my family, my job, even just platonic love for Micah.

Noah tugs his father's hand, on his tiptoes and tilting his forehead for a kiss too. I smile as the man I love obliges, and watch them walk down the hall while Jonah starts to fuss in his bassinet.

I close my door to take care of my son, and wonder how to tell my sisters they were right.

. . .

We show up at Naomi's condo at 6:00pm with Jonah napping in his carseat and Noah devouring two packs of peanut butter sandwich cookies next to him. Naomi tells us we might as well come on up; she needs fifteen more minutes. "If she only needed fifteen minutes, she wouldn't've asked us to come up," Micah sighs, irritated.

She opens the door in a bright yellow caftan with sunflowers down the front and back, her bonnet still on.

"Did you say fifteen or fifty?" Micah asks, looking back at Naomi and frowning as he tows Jonah's car seat over to the couch. Naomi catches my eye and winks hers. I already regret planning this whole thing. Noah plops down on the couch. "Come on, buddy, we're only stopping for a minute, until your Aunt Nay finds some clothes that won't attract any wildlife into the restaurant."

"Actually, y'all can go now. We're staying in tonight."

Micah looks up, confused. "What do you mean?"

"I planned a date night," I announce, flinching as he whirls around to me.

"You planned a date night," he repeats. I nod, almost squirming, until Naomi speaks up.

"You can express your joy and excitement in the car, just get out. We got movies to watch," she fires.

"Auntie Nay, you got chicken nuggets?" Noah asks, already pulling his chosen toys out of the overnight bag Prissy packed for him at her house.

"You know it," she whoops, and he whoops back. Micah's still staring at me, so I grab his hand and pull him out the door, yelling goodbye to my partners-in-crime.

"Date night?" Micah repeats again. My heart hammers in my chest, his hand still in mine. I press the down button on the elevator at the end of the hall.

"Yeah, and we're gonna be late for our reservation if your comprehension skills don't kick in soon," I state with more bravado than I feel.

The elevator doors slide closed behind us, and for the next few floors down it's deathly quiet, until he smoothly turns to look at me. "When did you start planning all this?" My stomach drops and kicks as we sink.

"After you threatened to eat me alive in my apartment," I retort. He nods to himself for a moment before a smile spills across his face. He straightens up and renews his grip on my hand, stroking the sensitive skin on my wrist with his thumb.

. . .

"How long does Naomi have the kids for?" Micah asks over warm pumpernickel. I spread grass-fed butter on a slice, feeling the weight of his question.

"...Both the boys have enough stuff until tomorrow afternoon," I answer. Silence from the man as he butters his own bread. "I remember what you said about how I would come to you. And I don't think this is exactly what you had in mind, but... " I look up at him, and immediately drop my eyes back to my plate. The look in his eyes as he just sits there with the condensation from the outside of his glass dripping over his fingers starts a heated thrumming in my chest, and I concentrate on breathing slowly to keep it from spreading.

"Whatever I had in mind was just that. In my mind. But my woman's right here. She's going to be in my bed tonight. In my hands," he husks.

Breathing isn't working. Every inch of me is wired now, and the tightness in my stomach is only a little alleviated with a nervous chuckle. I breathe deeply again, letting the heat of his eyes further stoke the flames. "Yeah," I nod, both euphoric and panicked.

Dinner is a ruse of eating, and we pay the bill with most of everything we ordered in boxes. In his car - the same SUV from the safehouse - we make the thirty-minute drive to his house in a solid eighteen, his hand gripping and kneading my thigh the entire way. The need is building up so bad that I throw my head back to the headrest and close my eyes, pulsing my insides for some relief. He groans, feeling my leg flex and shift under his hand.

Parked in his car garage, his hand creeps up just enough to discover the lowest of the broad straps of the body harness I bought a week into my scheme. He hesitates and slides his fingers around it, feeling for a strap on my other thigh and then proceeding to run a hand over the rest of my wrapped-up body through my clothes.

"Oh my fucking God," I hear him whisper, and his eyes look frantic as I'm dragged by my hand from the car.

I trot behind him like a victim under a vampiric trance, staring openly at the bulge of his crotch as he pauses to lock the door behind him and pulls me through the dark house towards the stairs.

"I need to get you to my bed, J," he pants. "It's important to me, because if we do it on the floor it's gonna be me fucking you, and I don't want that." Up the stairs.

"You sure?" I ask, almost purring. His grip on my hand squeezes a little tighter, and I could swear his dick pulses once in his pants.

"I'm sure. Here," he urges at the second door on the right, and I step into his bedroom for the first time. I've been to his house, but I've never gone past the living room. It's decorated a lot like both safehouses; comfortable, but plain, with neutral colors. I watch him turn on the lamp on his nightstand and try to calm my nerves.

I'm going to make love with Micah Rennfield, and I'm going to tell him how I feel about him. The two objectives for tonight, seemingly easy to achieve with the way he's looking at me. He doesn't move, a silhouette in front of the yellow lamp light, but he speaks. "Strip."

I want to fire back a saucy "yes sir," but my hands are already untucking my silk shirt from my pants. I pull it over my head and through the sheer bralette under it, I know he sees the bold black straps of leather wrapped around my torso, running between my breasts, around my neck, and across my stomach. Continuing under the waistband of my slacks.

I unbutton them and ease them over my hips, parting my legs to let them pool at my feet. And now slipping my undershirt off, my breasts swing and tremble on my chest, my shoulders arching back proud from the release. We both look down at my body, cocoa brown adorned in slashes of studded leather.

I finally look up and see Micah with his hand wrapped around his phallus, idly stroking while a shiny string of precum runs over his fist down to his lap. His eyes never rest on one portion of me, but are flicking from my face to my bulging thighs, from my wrapped-up breasts to the expanse of my stomach.

I step towards him carefully, still in strappy black heels I had forgotten I owned. As soon as I get in arm's reach I feel his hands on me again, finally, at last, slipping under a strap around my waist and pulling me between his legs. He gazes up at me, almost whispering to himself. "I don't deserve this."

I cradle his head between my hands and he leans forward as if magnetized to place little licks on my trembling stomach, hands firmly pulling at the small of my back. "You gon deserve it today, Rennfield."

He chuckles low and licks across the crease of my waist, above the triangle between my legs. As he quietly busies himself there I spread my legs in a wider stance and grip and release handfuls of his hair.

His breaths fans out against the trimmed folds beneath his lips before he laps at the seam between my legs. My breath rushes out all at once as he parts me with the tip of his tongue and finds my clit immediately, circling it slowly and creeping a hand around to cup the slick mound of my pussy.

"I have to earn it, huh?" he muses, protruding his middle finger to slide into the cleft, slipping through the juices I'd been steadily producing since the first course at the restaurant. He presses his tongue firmly against the side of my clit, forcing back the hood.

My breath hiccups out of my lungs, and I feel drunk with his touches. "Gotta try your best, yeah."

The only warning I get is the white of his eyes flashing as he looks up at my face before he grabs me by the straps around my shoulders and hips and twists to pull me down into the bed, somehow between my legs with his tongue deep inside me before I regain my bearings.

"Micah, Micah, baby," I pant, thighs wrapped around his head as his tongue swirls hot and wet within me, one of his hands gripping the strap between my breasts and the other whispering over my clit.

"Mmm?" he murmurs before me, still clothed except for the angry red rod I know is pulsing against the blankets beneath him. My pussy clenches around his tongue at the thought of it and his fingertips crowd more urgently at the bundle of my nerves above it.

One of my hands flies up to cover his hand on my chest, trying to pry him off so I can gather myself, but his wrist and forearm laying across my abdomen are like iron. I groan underneath him, finally trembling to climax around his fat tongue, and he slows, thrusting it in and out of me, wetness flooding thick against my thighs that he doesn't move to clean up.

"That was wonderful, but now I want to see your face as you come for me," he rasps. I wriggle under his hands, making to sit up, but he just presses a solid palm down against my chest and slides his fingers back into me, twisting and rocking them as he moves over me.

A small gasp is dragged out of me as he flicks his tongue around the tip of my right breast, and I arch against the oversensitized flutterings in my pussy. "Micah hold on a minute, let me see you," I almost plead. Every nerve between my legs is alive for him again.

"No." He shoves his fingers deep inside me to punctuate his phrase, and I make a guttural sound in my throat. He presses close against me as I lay my feet against the mattress and buck under him, carried through into another wave of desire. I feel his dick press turgid against my stomach, smearing himself against me.

He grunts and I keen underneath him. "Baby just come here, I want to feel you. I'm all wet for you, I know you can feel it," I babble, and he grunts in reply, brows furrowed as he watches my face like a hawk.

"Yes, I've been waiting over a year to feel it, I'm not rushing now." Teeth lightly scraping my breast, followed by a tongue lathing across my chest.

"Shit," I moan, the pad of his thumb rubbing solid and sure against my abused clit, and he smiles gracefully as I choke out a quiet sob underneath him, hands flying anywhere I can grip onto, but I can't reach him at all. Everything in me seizes up again and I think my moan turns into a surprised scream.