Excerpt of The Man I Love by Suanne Laqueur

In the wake of passion, time and space reassembled. Erik held tight to Daisy, rocking her in his lap, stroking her head on his shoulder. He could feel her heart pounding against his, the last little trembles of love making her body twitch. “I love us,” she whispered. He smiled, feeling the world to his bones. “I love us, too.” “It’s so good.” She ran a hand back from her forehead, gathering her hair up and away from her damp neck. “Happy birthday,” he said, running his mouth along her throat, tasting her scent. She took his face in her hands and kissed him. “Being twenty rocks.” Carefully he helped her down to her back, pulling a pillow into place, pulling up the covers and tucking them around their bodies. It was their anniversary as well. “Two years,” Daisy whispered. Curled up to him in the warm glow of the Christmas lights, she was unbearably beautiful. Sometimes she looked at him a certain way and his heart reset itself, closed up coyly just for the pleasure of opening to her again. Fingers twined, Erik set his mouth against her wrist, feeling her pulse beat. “Twenty-four months.” He loved her. Sometimes it was just part of the world, like air and water. Other times, like right now, he looked at Daisy and could not get his mind around the emotion he felt for her. “Love” didn’t seem an adequate word anymore. It was bigger than the world, beyond everything he had imagined love could be. Even the phrase “making love” had morphed out of context. Lately he was struck by the literal idea of making love. Not just a sexual expression but a creation-ary one. As if with each conversation, each shared experience and each time their bodies came together, they were assembling something larger. Adding bit by bit onto some magnificent structure. A cathedral within their private universe. “I love you so much,” he said. You can’t know. You’ll never know how much. I’ll never be able to say it all. He put his head down next to hers. Her lips brushed his face, her hand stroking the back of his neck. “I don’t know where I stop and you begin,” she said. Her voice had the slurred and sultry rhythm which meant she was growing drowsy. “Everything I am is so woven in with everything you are. It’s like… I can’t explain. I can’t explain love anymore, Erik. It doesn’t mean what it used to.” Erik moved closer against her as a great bell in the cathedral began to toll.