Chapter 40
Forty
W ith incredibly minor exceptions, every part of Mia’s body hurt. Hurt in that earned ache she once had after completing a spin class without collapsing off the bike, stupid clippy shoes and all.
Tori was hiding it, but Mia was sure that she was tired, too. The sky was starting to lighten outside Tori’s huge uncovered windows, and even for a runner, the hours of sustained cardio must have been depleting.
But Mia couldn’t stop thinking about all the time they’d lost. All the nights over the last nearly fifteen years they hadn’t been together. All the times Tori’s lips went unkissed. The nights she went to bed alone without Mia’s hand rubbing gentle circles on her back. Every time she thought of that, she couldn’t imagine stopping. Not for something as inconsequential as physical exhaustion.
“Did you change your mind?” Tori returned from the bathroom with a smaller strap and different kind of harness. Unlike the new one they’d picked, Tori’s looked like boy shorts.
“You wish,” Mia joked before getting out of bed and realizing even the bottoms of her feet were sore for reasons she didn’t know. “Why? You ready to call it quits?”
Tori laughed. Hair a mess and body littered with as many bites as Mia had—though all easily concealed under her work clothes—Tori looked thrilled by the challenge.
She leaned in and kissed Mia’s bruised lips. “Baby, you’re not going to out-sex me, but if you’re ready to tap out?—”
“No.” She swiped the new strap from Tori. “After this.” She smirked. “Then I’ll give you a break.”
Tori grinned, intoxicatingly smug. “I’m not the one who needs to stop.”
Convinced that Tori might fuck her to death if she had the chance, Mia promised that they would get some rest soon. She just needed to know what this was like—to have Tori like this. She couldn’t put anything else off with her, couldn’t take a single second for granted.
The earliest rays of dawn painted Tori’s skin with pink and gold light while she propped herself up on a pillow, tipping her hips up, and beckoning Mia closer. Wearing the tight strap, Mia didn’t feel nearly as cool as Tori had looked.
“I feel like you’re giving me those training chopsticks for kids,” Mia said when she kneeled between Tori’s legs, thighs so fatigued, they were already quivering.
Tori smirked and handed Mia the little bottle of lube. When she rested back on the pillow, dark hair wild and body achingly beautiful, Mia forgot what she was supposed to do. Forgot everything that didn’t involve staring at Tori. At her beautiful body and captivating face and eyes that saw every part of her.
“Coming, champ?” Tori flicked on the vibrator.
Nothing looked better than Tori with her eyes half-lidded. Nothing hotter than her gasp when she pressed the sleek vibrator, long and slightly curved, to her clit.
Mia didn’t move while she watched Tori tease herself. Watched her slip down to her entrance to gather her arousal and return to the same spot on the side of her clit. A spot Mia committed to memory and might have tattooed on the inside of her wrist so she never forgot it.
And then Tori was back to her entrance, pushing inside and sighing. It seemed impossible that Mia could have any lingering desire. That she could have a drop of arousal left to offer. But her tender core pounded as if she’d never been touched. A trap tricking her into forgetting she was a full-body bruise.
“Come here,” Tori said, voice faint and dripping with want.
Prodded into action, Mia squirted more lube than necessary along the length of the strap. Closing the bottle, she tossed it onto the bed and moved closer to Tori while spreading the lube.
Tori bit her lip, attention fixed on Mia’s hand.
“Fuck, I like the way that looks,” she moaned, planting her feet on the bed and squirming.
Confidence gathering, Mia pressed the tip of the strap to Tori’s entrance.
“Go slow,” Tori warned, as if afraid that Mia would immediately get carried away. Knowing she likely would. “Only go in half as deep as you can.”
“Half?” Mia’s brain couldn’t process Tori’s words while she watched the head of the strap disappear.
“It’s the G-spot?—”
“That’s a real thing?” Mia looked down at Tori, whose brow was already furrowed.
Tori chuckled. “It’s not a mystery of Ancient Egypt, Mia. It’s just the back of your clit. Angle up like—” Tori’s back arched off the bed when Mia went in as deep as Tori said. “Yeah, just like that. Go slow.”
Jaw dropped and head tipped back, Tori was unbelievable. Mia grabbed one of her legs, pushing it back to hit the spot that seemed to drive Tori crazy.
“Fuck,” Tori gasped when Mia found her rhythm. She had to stop herself from grabbing Tori’s legs and immediately ignoring her request to go easy.
“After I come,” Tori managed, “I want you to fuck me as hard and as deep as you can.”
“Jesus,” Mia nearly cried.
“I won’t take long,” Tori promised.
As she watched the singular perfection that was Tori writhing beneath her, Mia apologized to every guy that couldn’t last. She hadn’t known the cruelty of self-control in a moment like this. Then she imagined what it would feel like to be inside of Tori. To feel her hot and wet and clenching around her. Pulling her in. She knew, without a doubt, she’d never last more than a minute.
When Tori stopped breathing, so did Mia. Her hips continued moving of their own accord while Mia was completely captivated by Tori’s expression. As the rising sun slowly revealed her, Mia couldn’t help but notice how much pleasure looked like pain. How thrilling it was to see it on Tori’s face.
“I’m close,” Tori whispered before increasing the speed on the vibrator.
Then she dropped her jaw, tossed her head back again, and shattered Mia with silence. She didn’t make a sound when she clenched so hard around the strap that Mia had to struggle against her not to be pushed out completely.
There had never been a more devastating silence. A more crushing beauty. Mia tried to keep herself steady, but she kept slipping on the sheets they’d yanked off the bed. She couldn’t find her footing. Couldn’t get the counterbalance she needed.
Trembling, Tori turned off the vibrator. “Get on your back,” she said, panting and desperate.
Mia dropped onto the bed sideways, not wasting a moment so Tori could scramble on top of her. Helplessly, she watched Tori grab the strap and position it inside herself, taking it completely.
Body slick with sweat, Tori rested her hands on Mia’s chest for balance. Mouth dry, Mia couldn’t speak while Tori rode her hard. Hard enough for the base of the strap to press against Mia’s tortured clit. For it to rub against her with every swing of Tori’s hips. For it to send Mia into an unexpected orgasm just as Tori announced a breathless, “I’m coming.”
Twice they both came like that, one bleeding into the next with hardly any break. Sore and aching and completely depleted, Mia matched Tori’s fast movements until Tori slumped forward, skin soaked and sweltering.
“Fuck that was good,” Tori said before she kissed her. And then she eased off Mia and rolled onto her back.
“Sex goddess,” Mia muttered the confirmation, half to herself.
Tori chuckled, still catching her breath when she reached over to the nightstand for the only bottle of water that wasn’t empty. While she rehydrated, Mia used the last drop of energy in her body to yank off the strap, leave it at the foot of the bed, and join Tori under the thin sheet.
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t even quiet. It was alive with the rhythm of their breathing. The rustle of the sheet as Tori made space for Mia’s body, thrumming with the ache and sweat and wreckage of what they’d done, to mold to hers.
And then there was the enormous truth between them. The humming, pulsing truth that had been building for years.
Mia didn’t want to lose it in the quiet. Didn’t want to pretend she wasn’t cracked open and bleeding love all over the sheets.
“I love you,” Mia confessed with her head on Tori’s bare chest, heart hammering against her cheek. “I’ve always loved you. Even when I didn’t know just how deeply that love ran.”
Tori didn’t answer right away. Her hand slid into Mia’s hair, fingers threading through the sweat-damp strands, and for a horrified second, Mia thought maybe she’d said it too soon. That she’d ruined it.
But then Tori exhaled this odd little sound—part laugh, part sigh.
“I love you too,” she whispered, cupping Mia’s cheek and looking at her with sunrise in her tired eyes. “I never stopped loving you. Not for a year. A day. A moment.” Her eyes watered, making the lighter tones of brown incandescent. “If I could go back, I would never have let you go. I didn’t know that it would be like cutting out a piece of myself. That I’d be left so hollow.”
Mia blinked hard, tears stinging her eyes.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” Tori brushed her thumb over Mia’s cheek. “But you’re here. You’re back, and I’ve never felt more whole in my life.”
Mia closed her eyes and let herself feel it—the weight of Tori’s body beside her, the press of her words, the truth of them. She’d spent so long grieving things she couldn’t name. So long thinking only in terms of loss.
She’d forgotten it was possible to gain.
To find something.
To come home.