“Can’t help it. So there’s this thing where when I get nervous or scared or excited, I keep talking and I can’t stop and usually I say things that are completely nonsensical and right now I’m excited and nervous and terrified and happy all at the same time, which is a lot of emotion for one body, and I think you should know that I’m going to say weird things, like for instance, your hands are?—”
I stop. Because his hand has slipped under the waistband of my underwear and his fingers find me and the sentence collapses into a sound I’ve never made in this kitchen.
“Like that?” he asks. Low. Close to my ear.
“Like—yes. Like that. Exactly like—” My hips roll against his hand. His fingers move with a patience that borders on cruelty. Slow circles. Deliberate pressure. He’s learning me the way he learns wood grain—methodical, attentive, reading every response.
I reach for him. My hand slips into his boxers and wraps around him and he makes a sound against my neck—this sharp exhale, almost a groan—and his hips press forward into my fist. He’s hard and warm and he pulses against my palm and the fact that my hand on him draws that sound out of his chest makes something expand in mine.
“I haven’t done this in a while,” I tell him, which is true and terrifying and important information.
“Neither have I.” His forehead is against mine. His breath is uneven. “But I’ve been thinking about it.”
“For how long?”
“Weeks,” he says. “Maybe longer.”
My bra comes off. His boxers come off. My underwear joins the flour-dusted apron on the floor. And the vulnerability of that—of being completely bare with someone who still has his hand on my face like I’m something he’s trying to see clearly—is almost too much.
He reaches for his jeans. Wallet. Condom. I watch him roll it on and there’s something about the practiced efficiency of it, the way his hands are steady even though his breathing isn’t, that makes me want him more than I’ve wanted anything since I landed in this town.
I pull him down. He settles between my thighs and pauses—his weight on his forearms, his mouth an inch from mine.
“You’re sure,” he says. Not a question exactly. A confirmation.
“I’m sure.”
He pushes into me slowly. Not slow like he’s being careful—slow like he wants to feel every inch of it. My breath leaves me in one long exhale. My hands grip his shoulders, fingernails pressing crescents into his skin, and I’m full of him in a way that rearranges something fundamental.
He stays still for a moment. His jaw tight. His eyes on mine.
“Move,” I say. “Please move. I’m?—”
He does. He pulls back and pushes in again, deeper, and my hips rise to meet him. We find a rhythm—not immediately, not gracefully—but in the way two people figure out a shared language when the stakes are high and the couch is small. His mouth finds my neck. My legs wrap around his waist. The couch creaks under us and I’d be embarrassed about it if I could think about anything other than the place where his body meets mine.
He’s slower than I need. Taking his time. Reading me., every angle that makes me gasp. His hand slides between us, finds the spot his fingers already mapped, and presses. I arch against him and my vision blurs and my mouth opens on his name.
“There,” he says against my skin. Not a question.
“There. Yes. Don’t you dare stop?—”
He doesn’t stop. He quickens—his hips hitting mine harder now, his breath ragged—and I can feel him losing the careful control he walked in with. His hand stays between us, circling, pressing, and the dual sensation—him inside me, his fingers on me—builds until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
“You’re—” he says, and his voice breaks. “When you’re honest like this?—”
I come without warning. It crests hard and sudden—a wave that starts deep and breaks everywhere at once, my whole body tightening around him, his name broken into syllables against his shoulder. My fingers dig into his back. My spine arches off the couch.
He feels it. I know because his rhythm stutters, because his hand grips my hip hard enough to anchor us both, because his head drops to the curve of my neck and he says my name once, rough and low, like a confession.
Three more strokes. His body goes rigid against mine. He shudders—a full-body tremor that I feel everywhere—and buries himself deep and holds there, his breath coming in sharp bursts against my collarbone, his hands gripping me like I’m the only steady thing in the room.
We stay locked together. Breathing. His weight settles onto me and it should feel heavy but it doesn’t. It feels like the exact amount of pressure my body has been asking for. His heart hammers against my ribs, or maybe that’s mine. Hard to separate them when we’re pressed this close.
He exhales. A shaky, disbelieving sound. His lips move against my shoulder—not a kiss, not words. Something between the two.
After—I don’t know how much after, time is doing something weird—I’m lying across the couch with my leg hooked over hiship and his arm around my ribs and there is so much flour. We’re covered in flour. It’s in my hair, on his skin, marking where we’ve been.
“We match the pastries now,” I say dreamily.