“What do you need?” he asks, as I keep circling my peak, but then losing it.
“I . . . I don’t . . .” I manage to stutter, for once in my life unable to find the right words.
“I’ve got you.” And in one smooth motion that I’m too far gone to really understand, I’m beneath him, pressed into the mattress again, with him still inside me. He slides free and then reaches above my head for a pillow. “Lift up,” he says, with a hand at my hip and I raise them just enough for him to slide the soft cushion under my ass.
“Like that?” he asks, a hand across my stomach pushing down just as he presses forward again.
“Yes. Oh God, Charlie, yes,” I ramble, as he sets a punishing pace, his body hammering into mine and hitting just the right spot inside of me over and over again. It’s so good my back arches up off the bed, my head thrown back, completely unconcerned with the scream that tears from my throat as my entire body convulses around his when his thumb finds my clit. I’m still so sensitive from his mouth and it’s more than enough to launch me onto another plane of existence, my soul crashing up and out of my body as I take him with me to a place where it’s just the two of us and this rapture, forever.
When I finally come back to myself, it’s to the sound ofgasping breaths, his and mine. He’s collapsed, half on top of me, like his strength gave out when he came, but he had just enough judgment left to shift aside so he didn’t crush me completely.
“Holy shit,” he slurs, almost drunkenly, the words like kisses against the place where my neck and shoulder meet. “You’re fucking incredible.”
And my mind is still barely functional enough to manage, “My best friend always told me to never believe anything a man says after he comes inside you.”
His body hitches with silent laughter. “You should, though.”
“What?” I ask, half losing track of what we’re talking about as a sweet aftershock slides through me.
“You should believe me,” he murmurs, “because I love you.”
Struggling to blink my eyes open, I shake my head. “You don’t have to . . .”
“I do, though.” His voice is suddenly firm and clear. “Look at me.” And just like it has for the last hour, my body obeys his every command. My gaze meets his, warm and serious. “I love you. I think I’ve loved you for years, but I know I’ve loved you every damn day since I saw you climb into that car on a rainy morning at the airport.”
His hand slips over my ass and down my thighs before tracing his fingertips back up over the curve of my waist and the underside of my breast before pressing into the center of my chest, right above my heart.
“I love you, Frankie Sullivan, and I’m sorry I had to tell you on the worst day of your life.”
“It is, isn’t it?” I ask, covering his hand with mine and holding it tight, warm and calloused and mine. “But things are looking up.”
“Yeah?” he asks, somehow still unsure, and I hate that so much I can’t let it stand.
“I love you. I said it and I meant it, and it might be the worstday of my life, but you’re the one I want with me for the worst days and the best days and the exciting days and the boring days.”
He makes a disbelieving sound in the back of his throat. “I know one thing – boring isn’t something we have to worry about.”
A laugh bubbles out of my throat and then another, which is joined by a chuckle from deep in his chest, and I love this too, laughing together: our bodies still stick with sweat, his come still staining my thighs and mine all over his mouth and jaw.
I nudge his hip and he takes his cue, just like he has every other one tonight, and lifts up so I can slide out from beneath him to go use the bathroom. We didn’t use a condom and, even though I have anIUD, that’s pretty irresponsible of me and, without the warm weight of his body and his breath against my skin, it’s easier to remember that.
I stop at the doorway to his bathroom and turn, bracing my hip against it, catching him watching me, propped on his side, his hand holding up his head.
“Protection next time,” I say, simply, “and we’re both getting tested when we get back to New York.”
“My last one was clean,” he assures me.
“Mine too, and I have anIUD, but it’s still a good idea, for the both of us.”
“No problem,” he says, smiling, and it’s all I can do to turn back around and close the bathroom door behind me, because if I run back into that bed, I won’t be getting out of it again for hours.
He knocks on the door just after I flush the toilet and start washing my hands.
“Come in,” I say, and then add, “also I’m not into thepee in front of each otherkind of relationship.”
“Me neither,” he agrees quickly, “but I was thinking.”
“Always dangerous,” I say, as he comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist and I dry my hands on the towel next to the sink before looking up at us in the mirror.
