Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Oh, god.”
Sybil’s moan traveled like lightning from his ears, down his spine, through his balls, up his shaft, and straight to the tip of his dick. He was barely inside her warm, welcoming body and the desire to come was almost too strong to be tenable.
One of her hands gripped his shoulder while the fingers on her other hand threaded through his hair, and her legs wrapped around his hips, trying to draw him deeper, faster as he worked his length into her with each roll of his hips.
“Fuck, I’ve missed this,” Sybil sighed, tilting her hips to deepen his thrust. “You feel so good.”
If she wanted this to be over before they really got started, she was doing a great job. Peter caught her mouth and kissed her deeply to shut her up before her words obliterated the thin thread of self-control holding him together. Except the slide of his tongue against hers made her inner walls tighten around him and his toes curled in response.
Peter tried to distract himself with condom safety facts, like if it was safe to unload his balls twice in the same condom. If he came immediately, he could probably shoot off a second time without her noticing the first, but it was likely inadvisable.
Sybil’s needy whimper focused his attention back on her.
“More,” she begged, rocking her hips against his.
His next thrust had him firmly seated inside of her, his balls touching her ass. Sybil arched her back like a woman possessed. And he might have enjoyed the moment more if he wasn’t ready to rip her pillow apart to distract himself so that wouldn’t be his last thrust.
“Peter? Are you okay?”
The gentle sweetness in her voice, tinged with trepidation, cut through him like a knife.
“You feel too good,” he admitted, nipping her shoulder. “I’m barely hanging on.”
“I already came twice. You can let go,” she told him. “I want to feel you come inside me.”
“You can’t say shit like that when I’m on the edge,” he groaned, and buried his face in the crook of her neck.
“Fuck me. Come for me.”
She’d asked for it, and Peter had never been able to deny her anything.
The bedframe creaked as he chased his own pleasure, and the headboard thumped against the wall rhythmically, punctuated by Sybil’s squeaks and breathless moans. She’d called it fucking, but to him it was making love, showing her how desperately he’d wanted and needed her all the years they’d been apart.
His muscles tightened, taut with anticipation, as he rapidly approached the finish line. Some almost-forgotten instinct had him slip his thumb between their bodies to find her clit, and he rubbed it rapidly.
“ Shit! ”
Sybil’s body contracted around his violently and that was enough. He came with equal ferocity, blinded by the sweet rapture of release. Shudders rolled through his body in wonderful waves. When the pulsing in his cock subsided, exhaustion hit him like a tsunami, and he collapsed on top of Sybil, his arms drained of their strength.
His balls were drained too.
“Are you okay up there?” Sybil asked, her hands gently stroking his back.
“I’m dead,” Peter mumbled against her neck. “I went to heaven, so I must be dead.”
She laughed and wiggled under him until he got the hint to roll off her.
“You’re dramatic.” She sat up, and he was too hypnotized by her breasts to protest the characterization. “So you had a good time?”
“The best time,” he promised, and kissed her freckled shoulder.
The cleanup process was as awkward as it always had been. Or it was for him. Sybil showed him the upstairs bathroom, where he disposed of the used condom by wrapping it in toilet paper and throwing it in the little trash can. Then they switched spots and he lingered awkwardly outside the door, naked, for a moment before it occurred to him that if he stayed there, it would look like he’d been trying to listen to her pee. He decided to wait for her in bed instead.
He faintly heard the toilet flush down the hall as he snuggled himself under Sybil’s blankets. The flannel pillowcases were infused with her scent, and he turned his face to inhale deeply. Could he smuggle one of these home with him without her noticing?
“What are you doing?” Sybil asked from the doorway, her face a mixture of surprise, confusion, and amusement.
There was no use denying the obvious.
“Smelling your pillow.”
“I mean, why are you in my bed? I thought you’d be half dressed already.”
He frowned. “Why would I be dressed?”
“So you could leave.”
His heart sank, and he struggled to keep his face close to neutral.“Did you want me to leave?”
Sybil shook her head, then wordlessly crawled into bed next to him and nestled herself against him, one arm across his stomach and her cheek on his chest.
The rush of dopamine made him dizzy, and he was so happy his heart hurt. This was all he had wanted for the last twelve years.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Sybil mumbled, sounding like she was about to do exactly that. “You can’t sleep here.”
An amused grin tickled the corner of his mouth.
“Why is that?”
“I heard from Graham how this works. If I let you sleep here, you’ll never stop sleeping here. You’ll move in when my back is turned.” She yawned. “That was really good sex.”
“I think I could do better next time.”
“You could start by coming prepared. I can’t believe you didn’t remember to bring a condom.”
“I haven’t purchased condoms in years, so it completely slipped my mind.”
All the lovely, languid sleepiness in Sybil’s body vanished, and she sat up, as if propelled by a spring. “Please tell me you’ve been using condoms.”
A vivid blush spread from his neck all the way to his forehead and the tips of his ears.
“I haven’t needed to,” he said.
“You haven’t been using condoms?” she admonished. “Seriously, Peter?”
“It’s not like that?—”
“You’re not some exception to the rule. STDs don’t care who you are— Oh, god, do you have kids you’re hiding?”
“No!” He sat bolt upright and reached for her, but she shrank back, putting a protective arm over her bare breasts. “It’s not like that at all. It’s…I haven’t needed condoms because I haven’t had sex with anyone since you.”
Sybil stared at him like she didn’t believe him. Peter hadn’t expected her to, which was why he was hoping they could go the rest of their lives without her ever finding out about his self-imposed celibacy.
“You expect me to believe that?”
He sighed. “Sybil, if I was lying, wouldn’t I have come up with a better lie than that? I know it sounds implausible?—”
“Impossible,” she corrected.
“But it’s true. You’re the last person I had sex with. Outside of work, I haven’t even kissed anyone else. It felt wrong to even consider it, like I was cheating on you.”
Her disbelieving expression didn’t even flicker.
“You expect me to believe that someone who looks like you”—she gestured from his head to where the sheets had pooled around his hips—“hasn’t had sex or even kissed anyone you weren’t being paid to kiss in twelve years ? No one hangs on that long.”
“You hung on to my sweater that long,” he pointed out, “even though you claim to have borderline hated me the entire time.”
“That’s a sweater,” Sybil countered, exasperated. “I have a box of stuff I hung on to. That’s stuff. I didn’t deny myself for over a decade because of some over inflated sense of duty or self-flagellation. You don’t get a good conduct medal for waiting, Peter.”
By the time she was finished, her voice had risen and the flush from her cheeks had spread to her chest, like an angry sunrise. To anyone else, he knew she would have seemed cross, but he’d spent his life obsessively studying facial expressions to use in his craft, and his favorite subject had always been Sybil. The almost imperceptible pinch between her eyes and the slight downward turn to her hard-set mouth told him that she felt guilty, maybe even ashamed. She wasn’t mad at him, at least not more than she was mad at herself.
Peter kissed the lovely slope of her shoulder, right where it dropped off to her arm. “I never expected you to wait. That would’ve been unreasonable. I only fervently hoped you’d still be available.”
She let out a heavy, exaggerated sigh. “Why do you have to be so understanding? It’s infuriating.”
He grinned and laid back against the pillows, pulling her with him. She went, unresisting. When he put his arms around her, she melted against him.
“Tell me more about this box.”
It was a plain shoebox, tucked into the corner on the high shelf in her closet. There wasn’t any writing on the box, no indication that it was full of memories or who they were associated with. Only a shoebox that rattled conspicuously when she took it down. She handed it to him, then shoved her fists into the pockets of his sweatshirt that she’d grabbed off the floor. The sweatshirt grazed the tops of her thighs, and he tried not to get distracted when he frequently remembered it was the only thing she was wearing.
Peter placed the box reverentially in front of him on the bed, adjusting the sheets so they were a little higher up his waist, then lifted the lid.
It was filled with scraps of paper, ticket stubs, programs, trinkets, and photos. He lifted out each memory carefully.
The first love note he’d ever written her before he’d told her he loved her, so every word was laced with saccharine adoration without ever using the word “love.”
The program of a play he’d done for free to help a friend who was trying to become a playwright. That friend had become an award-winning playwright, but they hadn’t been then. Sybil had suffered valiantly through three performances of that wretched play.
Ticket stubs from all the films they’d seen at the discount cinema, trying to cobble together dates on a shoestring budget.
He should take her on a date. Maybe to the cinema. Maybe to that nice restaurant Graham had taken Eloise to on their first date. It didn’t matter what or where, as long as they were together.
Then came the photos, proof of how young they’d been and how deliriously in love he’d been with her. Every candid photo someone had taken of them, he was looking at her like the besotted dolt he had been and continued to be. Every posed shot he was smiling so widely it looked like his face would break from happiness. And there were candid shots of just him, ones she’d taken when he wasn’t looking.
He held up a photo strip from a photo booth. “I still have my copy.”
Sybil stopped anxiously nibbling on her thumbnail. “You do?”
“Check my wallet. It’s in my pants.”
With a soft, uncertain frown, she went and picked up his pants and located his wallet. She opened the brown leather billfold and took out his well-worn copy of the photobooth pictures. It curved in the middle from the years it had spent in his back pocket. If he’d had any true talent at art, he could have drawn the four stacked photos with his eyes closed.
“Why?” she asked, passing her thumb over the photo where he kissed her while she laughed, like she could feel the moment.
“Because I never stopped loving you.” He picked out a postcard sized watercolor of a fox he’d bought for her at a market. “Why did you keep all of this?”
“So I’d know it happened.”
“Were you afraid you’d forget?”
She shook her head. “No, but sometimes I felt like I’d made it all up, or that part of my life was one of those stupid movies you made me watch where the character wakes up and it was all a dream.”
Her voice cracked on the last syllable, and she clenched her teeth so hard he saw her jaw muscles flex. Determined as always to ignore any seemingly “weak” emotions, she focused on replacing the photo strip in his wallet, and then his wallet to his pants. She held them out to him.
“You really can’t spend the night,” she reminded him.
He ignored his pants and grabbed her instead, bringing her back onto the mattress and close to his body.
“I know you keep saying I can’t spend the night, but that doesn’t mean I have to leave right this second. I haven’t had a proper cuddle yet.”
And for good measure, he stuck out his bottom lip and looked up at her through his eyelashes, doing his best orphaned puppy act.
Sybil groaned, rolled her eyes, but wrapped herself around him like an octopus, and squeezed him tightly.
“You’re so damn needy.”
“You like being needed.”