I press a hand to the back of his head. “Show me.”
He starts with his mouth, of course, but it’s never been quite like this before. The focus on something that isn’t one of several fun stops on the way to somewhere else is different, and I press my lips together to avoid begging him to be casual about an act that was always going to fall far short of a goal like that. He devours me as tenderly as anyone could, and however vulnerable I am, I know I’m safe, too.
By the time he’s sliding a lubed finger forward, I’m trembling, and he can feel it when he continues to reassure me at every turn. He doesn’t coddle me—that promise was made in my bedroom a long time ago—but he sucks my sac and licks just below it and gives me time to adjust to the pressure of a single finger longbefore he adds one more. I arch off the floor, but he’s still got me, sucking and licking and working me over with skill that would make me jealous if I were that kind of man.
Instead, I reach down to where I’ve gone mostly soft, soothing myself with a touch I’ve known my whole life, and Darren hums against my skin.
“You okay, baby?”
“I’m relaxed. And the complete opposite of that,” I pant, coherency long gone. “It’s so good. You’re so good.”
After another round of forever, his fingers curl, and when I arch again, it’s so much better and so much worse. The most intense kind of pleasure is right there, and still out of reach, and more slowly than I would’ve thought possible, Darren’s tongue trails over my sac and along the underside of my shaft until he can suckle nothing but the tip, his eyes on me the entire time.
“Hello again.”
“You’re not drunk,” I whisper.
“No, I’m not,” he agrees, easing his fingers from me until I’m clenching around a loss I feel everywhere. His mouth is there for another moment or two, his tongue still so wet and eager as he drags it over my hole a few more times. “I’m a lot of things, but I’m not drunk.”
“Me, too. A lot of things.”
Darren hums and nods and kisses along the inside of my thigh as he lowers each leg to the ground, and I let myself go just to reach for him again. It doesn’t stop, really—his kissing or my touching—and he spends several seconds over the worst ofmy off-ramp wounds before he crawls up my body and lets his mouth map ground he knows well, pushing my tank top out of his way as he goes. After he finally discards it completely, I claw at his shirt too, and he’s completely naked when he resumes his beautifully torturous trek.
He pauses when he reaches my heart, and my breath catches the moment he nuzzles me there.
I pray for sin as his tongue traces the rosary I made part of me a very long time ago, the ink alone some kind of sacrilege. His attention to it is the silent scream of a confession that would bring me to my knees, but it’s impossible to fall from where I lie, and I’m not convinced I’d be afraid of the landing.
“Does this hurt you?” Darren asks.
“The tattoo?”
“Any of the reasons behind it.”
“It’s no secret that God and I have gone a few rounds, but we’re good now,” I answer. “Nothing hurts tonight.”
Something wild flashes in Darren’s eyes, and it reminds me of the fire still burning behind us. He’s perfectly hard against my leg, and we’re sticky everywhere, and as much as I could stare at him like this until morning, I’m relieved when he shifts to cover my mouth with his. The kiss is built from the same contradictions that have followed us for months, and I don’t care about parsing any of it now. Instead, I hold him close and pour his name down his throat when his hand slips between us, his fingers wet again without me knowing how. It’s as overwhelming as the first time—or maybe more so—because our kissnever ends and my body has become greedy, the two of us chasing the pleasure of it together.
But then Darren’s lips are at my neck and everything is warm and good when I hear him speak, his fingers still deep inside me.
“Tell me you’ll let me fuck you.”