Iroll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. At this point, I’d stand on my head in the corner if I thought I could sleep that way. If I thought, for a single second, it would turn it all off.
I have a dozen different conversations running through my mind as I lay there in my bed in the dark. Some are things Quinn and I said to each other years ago. Some are things we should have said to each other back then, and some of them are the things I wish I’d said tonight. Before I chickened out. Before I let all the years between when he last saw me naked and now get in my head.
I’m fifteen years older and forty pounds heavier. My boobs no longer defy gravity. My ass doesn’t either. And he… well, if he’s heavier it’s all muscle. Quinn looks better than ever and I just look… tired. I look tired. Not in the I-can’t-sleep kind of way, but in the I’ve-let-life-whip-my-ass kind of way.
There’s an uncomfortable truth buried in all of this. It’s the same one he called me on earlier. The same one that sent medown to the unemployment office to start sorting shit out. I’ve lost my spark. I’ve lost the fire inside me that I always had. And I want to be her again. I want to be confident and sassy and to feel like I can conquer goddamn anything. And the person who always made me feel that way is just down the hall. I’ve just gotta have the nerve to get my ass up and go to him.
The process is exhausting. Question, decide, doubt, reconsider, repeat. And then, two words slip out of my mouth—famous last words. “Fuck it.”
I open the bedroom door and walk down the hallway like I’m on some kind of damn mission. I stop just outside the door to the guest room—his room. I lift my hand to knock, but before my knuckles even touch the wooden surface, the door whips open and he is there. Shirtless. Tatted. Sculpted like a fucking god.
“Find your nerve?”
“Something like that… I’m not seventeen anymore.”
“Good, ’cause that would be a felony since I’m sure as shit not seventeen either.”
I laugh at that. He could always do that. Always make me laugh. “Look, Quinn. Time marches on, but it marches harder for those of us who worked a largely sedentary third-shift job, snacking on vending machine food while charting into the wee hours. I don’t look the way I used to.”
He blinks at that. “Are you fucking shitting me? Is that why you were all ‘take me for a drive, let’s fuck in the truck like old times’ and then you turned into Miss Prim and Proper, ‘oh, this is a mistake’? Because you don’t look like a little girl anymore?”
Okay, so now it sounds stupid. But it’s not. It’s so not. “Look, you have this amazing body and I'm pudgy with stretch marks now! I’m entitled to be nervous.”
He shakes his head, like he’s mad and maybe laughing at me all at the same time. Then he looks up, his eyes lock on mine, and all I can see in them is heat. And when he speaks, his voiceis rough. Deep. And filled with something I recognize because I feel it too. Need. “I have scars all over my body. Ninety percent of the tattoos are just camouflage, Cec. And for the goddamn record, I know what you looked like then. I know what you look like now. And the only thing that fucking matters is that you’re you.”
I’m not evensure how it happens. I just launch myself at him. And god help me, he catches me, his arms going around me, hauling me so close not even a breath exists between us. His mouth is on mine, hot and hungry. Demanding. Irresistible.
And then he’s hauling me back down the hall to my room, my legs locked around his waist. He drags his mouth back long enough to mutter an explanation. “Your bed is bigger.”
When we’re in my room, he kicks the door closed behind us and then we’re tumbling down onto my bed. Hands sliding under the worn T-shirt that was probably his at one point in our long history. His mouth is moving along the side of my neck, then down. Lower and lower until I feel his lips close around one hardened nipple. Just enough pressure. Just enough of his teeth scraping over that tender skin. He knows just how to touch me, but then he always did. But I don’t need a slow seduction. I just need him.
“Quinn?”
He looks up. “Something wrong?”
“A little… I need you to hurry.”
“Cec,” he says softly. “You can have anything you want. You just have to ask for it.”
I reach down and tug at the tie of his sweatpants. “This is me asking… fuck me. Now.”
He doesn’t answer with words. Instead, he just slides his hand between my thighs, his fingertips creating a storm of sensation. I reach for him, my hand closing around the hard, thick length of him until he groans. “Christ, Cecily!”
“Hurry… please. Just hurry.”
He rolls us over until he’s on his back and I’m now straddling his thighs. “Then take what you want.”
So I do, sinking down onto his cock, drawing it deep until I can feel him everywhere. Then I start to move, lifting and sinking in a rhythm that has us both panting. His hands are on my hips, digging into my skin.
It doesn’t take long. Not for me. It’s been too long since I’ve had anyone make me feel the way he does. It’s like he’s brought me back to life. With my body pulsing around him, the pleasure rocking through me, he’s right there with me.
Afterward, when we’re both completely sated, when the sweat is cooling on our skin and I start to shiver, he pulls the blankets up, tucking them around us. And I don’t have to ask him to stay, because he’s making it clear with his every move that he’s not going anywhere.
For the first time in a long time, everything feels right. It feels like all the pieces are settling into place. Because Quinn and I, we just fit. Physically and in every other way. But that’s something to think about tomorrow. For tonight, I just want to feel.
9
Quinn
