“Come for me,” I rasp against her ear. “Let me feel it.”
She breaks.
Her back arches off the wall and she comes so hard she can’t make sound; it’s just this silent, shattered gasp, mouth open, eyes locked on mine, her body clenching around me in waves so intense I have to grit my teeth to keep from following her over.
I want to watch her. I want to memorize every second of this; the way her face looks when she falls apart, the way her pulse jackhammers against my palm, the way she whispers my name when the aftershocks hit like she’s making sure I’m still here.
She comes back to herself slowly, her fingers uncurling from where they’ve been clawing my shoulders. She cups my face and kisses me, trembling, and that tenderness after the violence of what we just did undoes me completely.
“Your turn,” she says. “Let go.”
I thrust into her once more, twice, and on the third my vision whites out. I come so hard it feels like something tearing open.
Her name rips out of me. I press my forehead to hers, shaking, emptying myself inside her, my hand going back to her throat and her heart still beating against my palm.
We stay like that. Pinned to the wall and breathing each other’s air.
My legs give out eventually. I sink to the floor with her still wrapped around me, and she straddles my lap on the cold hardwood, tucking her face into my neck and just breathes.
“Lance.”
“Yeah.”
“That was—”
“Yeah.”
She laughs, shaky and perfect, and I pull her closer because if I let go right now, I think I’ll shatter apart.
We sit on the hallway floor for God knows how long, and I run my palms up and down her back trying to warm her.
Cavall appears from the living room, pink duck in his mouth, and stares at us with an expression that can only be described as deeply judgmental. He nudges my knee with his nose. Then nudges her elbow. Then drops Virgil on the floor between us like an offering and sits down, tail wagging cautiously.
“I think he wants us to go to bed,” she says, laughing.
“He’s not wrong.”
“Your bed or the guest room?”
“Mine,” I say. “If you want.”
She pulls back just enough to look at me. Her hair is a disaster. Her lips are swollen. There’s a red mark blooming on her collarbone where my mouth was, and her eyes are certain in a way that makes my body ache.
“I want.”
She scoops Virgil off the floor as I stand, pulling her up with me, and tucks the duck under her arm like it’s the most natural thing in the world. We walk down the hall—me in mysweats hanging off my hips, her in nothing but her bralette she never actually took off—and Cavall trots behind us like he’s herding us to safety.
I drop her on the bed, and she pulls the covers up. I slide in beside her, and she curls into me immediately. Head on my chest. Leg thrown over mine. Her fingers drawing invisible shapes on my skin.
This is what I imagined. On the bench, when I told her about Saturday mornings and coffee and bare feet and a hand on her back. This is the picture I painted in my head and then tried to give to someone else because I don’t think I deserve it.
I deserve it.
The thought startles me. I turn it over, examine it for cracks, wait for the guilt to swallow it whole.
The guilt is there.
But so is her breathing evening out against my chest. Cavall settling at the foot of the bed, Virgil between his paws. The moon through the window making everything slightly glow.