Our Hearts' Desire (The Monkees Family Vol. 2)

Chapter 2

Gabby scooted under Micky so he could put his head on her lap. She moved her hands over his whole chest and traced the lines of his pectoral muscles, then down to his abdomen and over and across those muscles, then up and over his ribs. He squirmed and leaned in to her touch. She took the flat of her hand and swept it over his belly and said "Now you're a puppy and I'm giving you a tummy rub." Micky hammed it up and kicked his leg as if she had caught a tickle spot where the fleas had been worrying him, sticking out his tongue and nosing her arm and making barking sounds. She caught him behind his ear and gave him a rub with her knuckle and he started to howl, making her dissolve into giggles.

Suddenly he sprang to his knees and dropped to all fours and butted his head into her, requesting more scratches and cuddles as a puppy would. With his unruly, curly mop of hair, it wasn't hard for Gabby to picture him as a hairy sheepdog, or given his lean build, maybe an Irish wolfhound. He gave her cheek a big sloppy lick with the flat of his tongue, making her squeal with simultaneous delight and repulsion, then he grinned at her and peeked at her from under his curly bangs and long eye lashes. Their eyes locked for a long moment, then suddenly their lips connected for a kiss that set their passion aflame. They crossed the divide together, as one.

The kiss differed from those they had shared the previous two months since their reconciliation. It was free of boundaries and hesitations. As Gabby said, it felt like a homecoming. Its significance was monumental, but its execution was quiet and reassuring. Micky didn't want to scare Gabby off, so he let her take control of every aspect of it. How much pressure their lips applied, how long it lasted, whether their tongues met, whether there was emotion attached or if it was just a physical release. He wanted to gauge her state of mind and calibrate his accordingly, so he watched and observed, felt and listened, and honed all his senses.

Gabby claimed her territory by asking for entry into Micky's mouth with her tongue, again, a first since their blowup. Just a tiny incursion of the tip to begin with, then as she gathered her confidence and remembered all that she had been missing, she made a more definitive statement of what she would like, nudging her way in further to his warm mouth and asking for re-admittance to that cozy haven. She nudged him along, giving him tacit permission to let loose his own desires, but yet he hesitated, pausing to look her in the eye to confirm that she wanted this from him. Gripping her face by the jaw and holding her still for a moment, he stared deep into her eyes, silently inquiring and she nodded, then delved again back into another deep kiss with him, this time presenting herself to him and waiting for him to take over. He began tentatively and she encouraged him along, smiling into the kiss to signal pleasure, comfort and peace with her decision. Micky reacted similarly and they almost scraped teeth because they were both grinning like fools.

It was all too much for Micky. He took her head in his hands, smoothed her sleek bobbed hair down and tucked it behind her ears, gazed into her eyes and then pulled her to his chest to embrace her.

"Ohhhh, Gabriella, how I've anticipated this moment, wondered where and when and how. I plotted it out a thousand different ways in my mind, how I would make it okay for you, safe, warm, comfortable, loving, welcoming, and then you go and make it all those things and more for me. How much more generosity do you have for me that I feel like I hardly deserve?"

She murmured into his chest, "Micky, we aren't doing that anymore, that whole guilt trip about who's a bigger shit. You're a shit for turning into a five-year-old and having a world class tantrum and breaking my heart, and I'm a shit for holding out on you for months before I felt like I could let you back into my physical space. Neither one of those statements sounds logical to me, and I ought to know because Mr. Spock told me so before he sent me up here with you for this frolic. We're just two flawed human beings trying to figure out how to move in tandem, which is really hard to do, particularly when we're both so extra and so out there with such hard heads and big personalities. I used to fear you for being too tutti frutti but didn't you tell me I was just as totally tutti and frickin' frutti as you? So we're like one of your science experiments. We're explosive when we mix and we have to be careful when we get knocked off course that we take our time to do the work to get our feet pointed back in the same direction again."