“Two months too long.” Julian unfurls himself to his full height, then twines our fingers together. “If I’d had my way, I would’ve been on my knees for you right there at that piano at the mansion. Figuring out what other sort of music you could make.”
My god.My mind has liquefied into soup, the thoughts I’d tried so hard to hold on to floating out of my grasp. Julian guides me to his bed, and I hobble after him, knock-kneed, my movements restricted by my half-doffed clothes. He sits on the edge, runs his hands up and down my sides, his eyes weighed down by a question I am already answering in my head:Yes, please, now.
Our clothes come off in a frenzy. I peel off my shirt, nearly tip over dragging my leggings off my remaining ankle, and Julianmirrors me, standing to drop his pants in an unceremonious swoop. My eyes snag on the tent in his boxers. I’ve seen him hard through his clothes before, grinded against him until I was quivering in his arms, but this is different. More immediate. He lowers his boxers and my eyes widen into saucers.
“Oh,” I say.
“Oh?” Julian repeats. He wraps a hand around the generous base, strokes up and down his length as if to further demonstrate his virility.
“I just…” I whisper, trying to keep the trepidation out of my voice becausegood lord I am far too out of practice for this. “I understand where you get your confidence.”
Julian laughs breathlessly, but his eyes are almost black with desire. He reaches for his nightstand, pulls a condom from his drawer, and makes a show of pulling it on.
“Come here,” he growls. Before I can oblige, he’s grabbed me by the back of the thighs and lifted me bodily onto his lap. We hiss as he slides through my folds, his tip settling at my entrance.
It occurs to me, suddenly, that this is it. That in a matter of seconds, the very memory-wiping dick I’ve been half running from is going to be pounding into me, and that, by the buzzing hollowness that has been ringing inside me since the second I laid eyes on it, I’m going to like it. I’m going to like it too much.
But Julian doesn’t realize my fantasies right away. Instead he chases down a nipple, sucks it into his mouth. Rocks against me. Without layers of clothing, the sensation is exquisite. I wrap my arms around his neck, content to let him take the lead, to lose myself in the warmth of his embrace, the easy, mounting pleasure of our rhythm. He kisses me, deep and slow and tender, and the anxiety that surrounds me like a shell casing cracks.
“I want to fuck you,” Julian whispers, the salaciousness of his words belying his gentle tone. “Tell me you want me to.”
In this moment, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more. Not my medical degree, not my beautiful downtown apartment, not the job I’ve spent my life working for. Just Julian, fucking me,now.
I raise my hips, tilt him so that we are aligned, and lower myself onto him.
Oh.
My general consensus on sex is that it is nice, lovely even, but not necessary or even desirable outside of the occasional treat, like indulging in a cheesecake or a warm bread pudding. I have gone years without much more than the occasional craving quickly sated by an efficient rendezvous with a battery-powered friend.
But Julian isn’t even fully inside before I know that this is different. My body adjusts around him and I think that this is what a person must feel after the line of cocaine that makes them lose control. That they’re experiencing the last moment of awareness before the addiction takes hold, when they find themselves awash with euphoria and realize that all the small joys of their life will forever pale in comparison, that they will spend eternity chasing this same high.
Julian moves slowly. I’ve become boneless, rendered useless by pleasure, and so he does all the work, rocking into me in a steady, shallow rhythm that sends electric currents into my core. His kiss, in contrast, is vicious, a clash of tongue and teeth that leaves my lips stinging and my lungs straining for breath.
“Shit, Sean,” he groans into my mouth, and I want to laugh, because I understand. Because nothing legal should ever feel this good.
Suddenly, a flicker, and the room becomes bright. I’m back in my apartment, but it can’t be my apartment, because there’s a king-sized bed in the middle of my living room, and someone is having sex in it.I see a man’s rippling back, shining with sweat, two brown legs curled tight around his waist, two brown arms holding on for dear life around his neck. A woman lies underneath him, her body arched, her head tilted back, desperate, keening sounds dragging from her mouth.
“Julian,” she cries, in a voice that is mine, from lips that are mine.
I don’t have time to fully process what is going on before another set of arms wraps around me from behind.
“Do you like seeing yourself like this?” a voice croons into my ear. A hand raises, cups my breast through the thin silk pajamas I only wear when I have company, and squeezes. “Does it turn you on?”
The Sean on the bed seizes. This is her third orgasm of the night and her hardest one yet, something she wasn’t sure was possible after the last. She scrabbles for purchase on her partner’s back, and he swallows what I’m sure would have been a scream down his throat. I watch her spasm underneath him, her stare upward and glazed with pleasure. She doesn’t have time to recover before he pulls out, flips her onto her stomach, and drives into her again. He’s rougher now, his pace relentless, one hand pushing her shoulder into the bed, the other delving between her legs.
The space between mine pulses. I tear my eyes away from the scene before me to the one behind. Dream Julian grins down at me. He’s still dressed in my leopard-print robe. Over his shoulder on my kitchen counter I see his mug, still steaming, like no time has passed at all.
He grabs my chin, directs my attention back to the bed.
“Don’t run away from it,” he says. “Let go.”
“I’m not…” I start, but I’m silenced by Dream Julian’s fingers, prodding my lips for entry that I reflexively grant. He groans into my neck before withdrawing his fingers and sliding them down my body until they dive past the band of my shorts.
“You’re perfect,” he pants, working a pace that that makes me grasp onto his arm to keep from collapsing. “So perfect. I can’t wait for you to lose yourself to me. It won’t be so bad, I promise. I’ll make sure of it.”
The Other Sean is going to come again. I can tell because I am her, because I can feel the same dick that is grinding against my ass pummeling inside me, because I can see the way her teeth clench and fingers curl into the sheets and feel the strain on my cheeks and tightness across my knuckles. Because Julian and I not only feel good together but look good, my brown skin against his golden, his hard lines against my lush ones. Because this is the sexiest thing I’ve ever done or seen in my brief and careful life, even as it is the most frightening too.
“Say it, Sean,” Dream Julian says, the pad of his finger worrying my clit in circles that get tighter and faster. “Tell me you’re mine.”