Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Two
We come aboveground in our neighborhood uptown. It’s chilly and we’re still a little damp with the Hudson.
“So!” I clap my hands together. “What do we do now?”
“I honestly have no idea.”
I’m utterly baffled by this. “What? You always know what to do.”
“Are you hungry?”
I shake my head. “No. I ate Thai food after I got my haircut.”
I was definitely right about this feeding-myself thing being a part of the Kissing Lenny list because, right there on the sidewalk, he slides his arms around me and kisses me deeply.
Hot tongue and strong arms and I’m breathless when we pull back and people are eyeing us as they walk past.
“You’re very easy to make happy, you know,” I tell him.
“Yes,” he agrees. “I am.”
“Let’s go.” I grab his sleeve and start in the direction of the studio apartment. He breaks the hold just to grab for my hand, lacing our fingers and creating a world of warmth between our palms.
I lift those hands and study them as we walk. We hold hands now. It’s wild to me how someone who makes me feel more safe than anyone else in the world can also make me so unbelievably nervous.
We get to my stoop and he hesitates. I don’t take this for an answer, tugging him inside and up the stairs. He isn’t saying anything, so I don’t say anything either. I kick off my shoes and grab pajamas from the drawers, disappearing into the bathroom.
My short-haired reflection shocks me in the mirror. The hairstylist cut off so much hair, so much weight, that my roots are physically sore. Which feels apt. It should ache when you change this much.
I brush and change into the pajamas and when I reemerge, Miles is sitting on the foot of the bed. He took his shoes off but not his coat.
I don’t like this at all.
I yawn hugely, theatrically, rubbing one hand into my eyes. “I’m so beat.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” I plop down next to him on the bed. “I just want to curl up in bed and get a solid eight hours, you know?”
He gets a sly, understanding smile. “You’re playing me.”
“Hey, you get flirty when I’m responsible. I can’t be blamed if I use this to my advantage.”
His eyes drop to my thermal pajamas, his smile soft. “You want me to stay and get flirty?”
“Yes.”
He stands and shoulders out of his coat, hanging it over the top of mine. He walks to the dresser and opens the bottom drawer where he’s still got some clothes, digging out some sweatpants and a T-shirt.
“Dang,” I say. “I thought you’d have no choice but to go full monty.”
He laughs and disappears into the bathroom. A few minutes later he comes out looking full boyfriend. His hairline is wet from where he washed his face. I find this so cute I can barely hold in my excited scream.
I’m already under the covers and he joins me, lifting the blanket and sliding in. His body forces mine up against the wall. I’d be shocked if he had more than a centimeter of clearance on his other side.
“Ugh,” he groans happily. “We should have gone to my house. Where the beds are the size of two people.”
“You have a bed at your house?” I’m very skeptical.
He laughs. “What do you think I sleep on?”
“Well, I’ve never seen your bedroom.”
He quirks his face in disbelief. “You’re kidding.”
“You always keep your door closed! And contrary to popular belief I do understand some social boundaries. Okay, let me guess. Waterbed? Black silk sheets? Strobe light and techno music for when you’re feeling amorous?”
“It’s crazy how well you know me.”
“Oh, I know! There’s no bed at all. Just a bearskin rug. You sleep in the nude and snack on beef jerky.”
He laughs and shakes his head at me. “Hey, while we’re on the subject of scenarios your brain creates…” He rolls up on one side and props his head on his hand. “When we first met, what was your love-at-first-sight fantasy about me?”
His hand comes to rest on my rib cage. I follow his lead and trace a hand over his body. It’s meant as a power move, to seduce and tantalize him, but I find myself immediately drawn in by his heat, the firm pushback of his muscles, the hardened tracks of his bones. His hand starts to wander me, gliding down from my ribs, over my ass, down my thigh until he finds the back of my knee. He effortlessly, easily, lifts my leg so that it rests on top of his.
I gasp a little, my eyes finding his. His eyebrows lift, like Go on with what you were saying.
I try to remember what we were even talking about. “Oh, the fantasy? Well, remember that the whole thing took place in, like, the very first second I saw you. Right when Reese opened the door for you and you were arguing with her. So I got this kind of intense version of you right off the bat.”
“And…”
“Well, the fantasy was that you were kind of hardcore. Punk rock or something? And we were sort of fuck buddies but you were cheating on me a ton and treating me bad. So one day I got super fed up with you and broke it off and then you finally realized that you were in love with me and came crawling back, totally devoted to me. And then I guess we got married or something?”
He’s bodily aghast. “What? Are you serious?”
I shrug.
“What kind of fantasy is that? It sounds more like a cautionary tale.”
“They’re not predictions! They don’t mean anything. Who even knows why I do it.”
His face makes a face.
“What?” I prod. “Oh, you think you know why I do it?”
“I think…you are indomitable.”
“Thanks. But why would that have anything to do with compulsive romantic fantasies?”
“I think that even in all your worst moments of grief, you’ve wished for companionship. I think you’re always, secretly, hoping for happy endings, even when they don’t seem possible. You say compulsive but I think they’re actually kind of just…tenacious. Like daisies popping up out of the snow. Grief has been sort of, I don’t know, it sounds sappy, but like winter for you. And I think that the part of you that can’t help but manufacture happiness, because that’s who you are, it’s been sending up these little flowers to pop up and keep you company.”
I’m gaping at him. There are no words. I knew he paid attention to me, but this is like… knowing me.
Luckily he saves me from having to respond to this by serving me a light insult. “But this whole time I kind of thought that you generally got a good read on people right away with these fantasies. But come to find out you’re just so wrong.”
“I know,” I say with a sigh, collapsing down onto my back and looking up at him. In this position, he’s the wall between me and the world and it’s so lovely I could cry. “I’m pretty much wrong about everything. Honestly, it’s one of my favorite parts of life. It turns everything into a surprise.”
He smiles and tucks me against him. “You surprised me too.”
“Because your first impression of me was so bad?”
“No. Well, yeah. But I meant that you surprised me because…I feel corny saying it, but…I’ve never felt like this before.”
“Oh, come on. You’ve been in love before.”
“That’s not quite what I mean. Yes, I’ve been in love before. And it was real and I’m grateful for it and I wouldn’t change it. But with you, Len, when I met you…I sort of feel like I met myself. ” I tip my face up but he’s watching the ceiling. “Not that I didn’t know myself before…it’s more like, after my mom and Anders died I was just so injured that I couldn’t do anything but survive. It got better little by little, but I was still the guy with the tragic backstory. Everyone was always very careful. And then I moved here and met you. And you…let me help you. I got to remember what it feels like to give. And you’re not in the least bit careful with me. Which…yeah. Feels good. You helped me remember how to feel strong. Healthy. Needed. I didn’t know I could feel like that anymore.”
There is nothing he could have said that could have possibly made me feel better about myself. “Thank you,” I whisper, holding him so tight. “I’m so, so grateful that we met each other.”
He holds me tight. “Yeah. It really worked out well.”
We laugh and even as I’m wondering how we’re ever gonna last a whole night crammed on this minuscule bed, I’m starting to drift. My pajamas tangle with his pajamas and his breaths get long and everything is so warm and fuzzy. I dip easily down into the kind of lazy, loopy sleep that I used to beg the universe for not three months ago. I cannot believe how much has changed.
—
“No! It’s more like yah !” Ainsley does a karate kick so high that even Emil looks impressed.
He turns to me. “Get her lessons. She should train.”
“What about me?”
Emil has been showing Ainsley and me how to dribble a soccer ball on the sidewalk in front the building. That devolved into a how-high-can-you-kick contest, at which Ainsley has just bested us both.
“No. You are hopeless,” he says. It’s not even an insult. To him it’s just fact.
“She’s not hopeless!” Ainsley insists, looping her warm hand around mine and staring indignantly at Emil.
“I mean at karate.”
“Oh.” Ainsley nods matter-of-factly. “Yeah, she’s hopeless at that.”
“Couple of karate experts we’ve got here.”
“Hey, let’s give him the…” Ainsley says, waggling her eyebrows meaningfully.
“Oh! Right.”
Ainsley and I engaged in a little something we dubbed “the victory lap” today. We wanted to celebrate her absolutely stellar stage debut, so we went in a big circle around her neighborhood and ate all the good food and drank all the good drinks and bought all the good books and even watched a (pretty good) movie. Now we’re home and we have extra muffins from Jericho’s bakery.
I hand her one of the bags and she proudly holds it out to Emil. “Do you like lemon muffins?”
He’s got a yuck face on.
She waits expectantly, her face a bright, hopeful moon. He can’t withstand her charm.
“Oh, did you say lemon muffins? Yes, I eat those.” He takes the bag. “Thank you.”
“We got one for Mom, too. We’re celebrating!”
“Your birthday?” he asks.
“No. The performance! Lenny, show him the video!”
In what was simultaneously the worst moment of Miles’s life and the best moment of mine, Ainsley’s theater teacher sent out a link this morning to the recording of the entire talent show. Ainsley and I have shown the clip of her dance performance to three separate shop owners (and Jericho twice) already this afternoon.
I queue it up and hand my phone to Emil. He is completely straight-faced through the entire performance. He hands the phone back to me and then immediately walks inside without saying anything.
Ainsley and I shrug at each other and follow him inside. He’s just coming back around from the desk with a pen and paper in his hand.
“I want an autograph,” he says. “You’ll be famous.”
She’s lit up with effervescent joy as she kneels on the ground and painstakingly writes out:
This is my first autograph—Ainsley Hollis.
She changes the O in her last name to a star and I swear, Emil is right, because that is some serious gonna-be-famous mojo.
He takes the paper from her and carefully pins it to the bulletin board behind the desk.
We head up and tumble into the apartment, chatting, and skid to a halt in Reese’s kitchen.
“Mom!” Ainsley launches herself into her mother’s lap.
Reese was supposed to be working until late tonight to make up for cutting out early on the conference yesterday. But there she sits at the kitchen table with Miles. We’ve clearly just interrupted an important moment; they’re both serious. But not tense. Actually, Miles looks downright relaxed.
“Hi,” I say to him, and it takes every modicum of strength I have not to draw a little heart on the ground with my big toe.
“Hi.”
“Oh, my God. Get out of here, you two,” Reese says playfully. “Spare me.”
Miles stands up and stretches. “Shall we?”
“Oh.” I glance between them. “I thought I was supposed to be staying until bedtime?” It’s only four o’clock right now.
“Go, go,” Reese says. “I’m taking off work. I thought Ainsley and I might do something fun.”
Ainsley jolts up in Reese’s lap and puts a hand on either shoulder. “What is it?” she asks too loudly, three inches from Reese’s face.
“Harper invited us to her cabin for the weekend.”
“Oh.” Ainsley deflates a little.
“And her cabin just happens to be next to an indoor water park.”
“Oh!” And she’s back! “We’re going right now? Should I go pack?”
“I already packed for you.”
“You can eat the muffin in the car!”
Reese is laughing and hugging Ainsley; she looks lighter and happier than I’ve ever seen her. “What muffin?”
I hand over the muffin and wave as Miles tugs me out of the kitchen and all the way up to his apartment.
“Was everything all right with you and Reese?” I ask as we toe off our shoes. “It seemed serious.”
“Yeah.” He heads to the kitchen and comes back to join me on the couch; he’s got two little bowls of mixed nuts.
“What’d you talk about?”
“A lot. Let’s see…well, for starters she’s thinking she might take a leave of absence at work.”
“Really? Whoa.”
“Yeah. She mentioned that she’d definitely keep you on, though.”
I wave a hand through the air. “I love working for them, but I can always find another family to work with. That’s the nature of nannying work. They need you until they don’t.”
“Mary Poppins. OG commitment-phobe.”
I smile. “Reese was just feeling overworked?”
“No. I think she actually really enjoys the pace of her work. But it gives Ains the short end of the stick. When she saw the dance last night”—he valiantly makes an effort not to bodily wince at the memory—“I think it made her sad. Not because I was the one dancing with Ainsley. But because she wasn’t. So her plan is to use up the vacation she’s accrued and see how it feels. If she wants more time, she might take the leave of absence.”
“Wow. That would really change their lives.”
He nods. “Hey,” he observes, peering into our almost empty bowls. “We both left the almonds till last.”
“Uch, I hate almonds,” I say, dutifully eating one so it doesn’t go to waste.
“You’re kidding.” He eats a small handful. “I love them.” He watches me retch my way through another. “If you hate them so much, then why do you save them for last?”
“You gotta eat the best ones first, obviously!”
“No, Len. You gotta save the best for last !” He brings our empty bowls back to the kitchen.
“We’re doomed,” I say on a sigh, leaning over the back of the couch and watching him wash his hands. “Our worldviews are way too divergent. We should probably just break up now and get it over with.”
“Totally,” he agrees. “If we ever get a divorce, instead of irreconcilable differences, we’ll just cite almonds.”
I’m outraged. “Don’t say ‘divorce’ to me!”
He’s grinning. “It’s not Beetlejuice, Lenny. You can say the word without bringing it upon yourself.”
He’s on his way back over, so I tug him down and install him back on the couch.
“Miles.” I put my hands over my face. “I really don’t know anything about relationships. What if I’m so bad at it and everything gets screwed up and we have no choice but to…break up! I get sick just thinking about it! That can never happen!”
His hands slide up my arms and to my wrists, he gently pulls my hands away from my face and kisses one palm and then the other. “Lenny.” His voice is coal-black and there’s steel in his eyes. I start to melt. When he’s like this, all I have to do is listen to him. “No breakups.”
I nod obediently. He sits up all at once, scooping me into his lap. We’re nose to nose. He puts one finger under my chin and takes an indulgent sip from my lips. “No,” he says, and I get a kiss. “Divorces.” I get another kiss.
I’m liquid in his arms and all I have to do is open wide for his kiss. When he pulls back this time I sigh. “How’d you possibly make divorce so sexy?”
He chuckles and it makes me bounce lightly against his lap. “I was going for romantic.”
“Well, then, you majorly failed,” I say, tipping my head to one side when he starts to kiss his way down my neck.
“Should I try again?”
“Definitely.”
He’s kissing at the hinge of my jaw and I can’t help but wiggle against him. Thank God for his jeans because that’s good friction right there. “You don’t have to worry about marriage. I’m going to go slow, Lenny. And I’ll take a good, long time getting you ready.” I’m gasping and grasping his T-shirt when he starts to lay me back on the couch. “And when it’s time, you won’t be scared anymore. You’re just going to want it so badly.”
“Is this…” I gasp. “Matrimonial dirty talk?”
He chuckles darkly, nuzzling my sternum through my T-shirt. “Is it working?”
“Depends. Are you trying to get me to marry you or fuck you?”
“Sure,” he says with a shrug and I laugh, just generally thrilled.
He leans up and returns to my mouth. He’s teasing me, preventing the kiss from deepening. He slides one big hand just under my shirt, thumb on my bare hip. He’s mostly got me pinned, but even so, my legs reflexively push open and I taste his smile. He likes that.
He takes himself on a little tour. His fingers press over my ribs and lodge, a quarter inch, under the elastic of my bra. “Hey…what do you like?” His head is cocked to one side and he’s studying my whole face.
“Sex,” I say, attempting to lever up and keep kissing.
He laughs. “Okay, great.”
He’s pulling the collar of my T-shirt from one side to the other, kissing as low as he can while his hand works its way higher. He opens his mouth over my chest, slipping the fabric, leaving wet heat in his wake, stroking any skin he can find.
I’ve got hands in his short hair, clenched in his T-shirt, grabbing his arms, his shoulders, everything I can reach. His mouth is on mine again and he does the impossible: he undoes the button on my jeans without breaking the kiss.
And then he waits. “Thoughts?”
I kick my legs, scrambling to get my pants down and out of the way. He chuckles, leans to one side to make room, and then thwump ! We overbalance and topple off the couch. He’s on his back and I’m slapped over top of him, my pants around my knees.
We burst into laughter. “Where’s this alleged bed?” I demand, hauling myself up to my knees.
“Yeah. Good idea.” We help each other stand and he leads the way toward one of the mysterious doors I’ve never been through before. I rip my pants and socks off on the way, toss my shirt on the ground.
He opens the door of the bedroom and steps aside to let me through first.
There’s an enormous framed photo of the full moon over a big wooden bed frame. I wonder vaguely if he got it before or after I made him get a howling wolf tattooed on his back. He’s got a gray-blue bedspread, an off-white knitted blanket tossed over the foot of the bed. The walls are a darker gray-blue and there’s a dark leather armchair under the window. A brass lamp leans over the chair, a stack of books on the floor underneath. His black hoodie hangs out of a semi-open dresser drawer and I’d like to hug it for being the only thing I recognize.
He comes up behind me and kisses my shoulder, my neck. His hands land on my belly and he pulls me back against him. He’s taken his shirt off apparently because all I can feel is skin-heat and chest hair. I make an involuntary noise and push back against him. Reaching back, I get two thumbs into the waistband of his jeans and underwear. I push down but don’t get very far.
He pulls his hips away, undoes his jeans, and this time when I push, his clothes fall down. I feel something very interesting and very domineering pressing into my lower back and when I turn, into my belly.
His hands trace from my back to my ass and when I jump up he catches me. My legs go around his waist and he walks backward to the armchair in the corner, sitting down with me on his lap.
We’re separated only by my underwear and holy smokes this is Miles who I’m naked with and more than that, this is someone who I love that I’m naked with. I turn my head away from our kiss and he goes automatically to my neck.
I’m about to have sex for the first time in two years. No, wait. I’m about to make love for the first time in my life. A hysterical bubble of laughter rises in my throat and I swallow it down.
What is this room? Seriously? I feel like I’m in a stranger’s house. Like I’m one-night-standing Miles, which makes this even weirder.
All at once, I scramble off his lap and turn away, taking deep breaths and trying not to completely freak out.
“You okay?”
Slowly, I turn back to him. He’s legs spread, elbows on the arms of the chair, one temple resting on his fist and staring atme.
My eyes finally drop to his crotch and I come face to face with the very interesting, very domineering part of him, but unfortunately for everyone involved the hysteria wins, and I explode into laughter.
He shakes his head and raises his eyes to God.
“Oh no,” I say on a gasp for air. “I’m completely ruining this.”
His chin drops. “Well, yeah. Raucous laughter isn’t what you hope for when you show someone your dick for the first time.”
“Your dick is wonderful! I love your dick. Miles, how are you so calm over there? We’re naked. ”
His temple goes back to his fist. “ We are not naked.”
I glance down at my bra and panties. “Oh. Right. Sorry.” I quickly and gracelessly strip out of my bra and hop on one foot to get out of my undies, kicking everything to the side.
And then I’m completely naked in front of Miles.
I put my hands out to the sides in a T. “Ta-da?”
Now he’s the one laughing.
“How do we make this less weird?” I ask, shaking my hands out and starting to pace.
“For starters you could come over here.”
“Not yet. I think we need to get super horned up first. I wish this were a porn, then the sex would just happen like bam!” An idea strikes and I freeze halfway through one lap of his bedroom. “Should I pretend you’re my stepbrother? They do that in porn.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Or I could be your high school teacher?”
Heavy sigh.
“Ooh! I know, I’ll just get on all fours and you can do me from the back. Then we wouldn’t even have to look at each other.”
“If you don’t even want to look at me, then I don’t think we should be sleeping together.”
I pace past him with a scowl. “Hey! I love looking at you. Looking at you is one of my favorite things to do in the world.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“Is this how you pictured this going?”
“Well, I definitely didn’t anticipate a naked soliloquy but—” He pauses and considers. “I probably should have. Yeah, that’s on me. Hey, Lenny. Come sit on my lap. Right now.”
As soon as he’s offered an instruction, I immediately comply. I walk over and flop onto his lap. That was easy.
I’m treated to a warm, firm hug, complete with wiry chest and leg hair. I try to stiffen up and say more stuff, but his arms tighten and my forehead is pressed into his neck.
His hands are on a lot of places. He gives my back a vigorous rub. Not the kind you halfheartedly do to suggest some boning, the really good kind. When he’s finished with that he lifts one of my hands and laces our fingers. I hide my thumb between our palms and he kisses my haircut.
“Here’s an idea,” he says.
“What’s that?”
“Let’s not have sex.” He lifts me off his lap and plunks me onto the floor. He’s already back into his underwear and tossing mine to me before I can catch up.
“Hey! No! Terrible idea!” I’m chasing him back out to the living room.
He waves a hand toward me. “It was too much at once. The bedroom reveal. My dick. You need a slow rollout, I think.”
He drops onto the couch and turns to see that I’ve put my underwear back on but not my bra. This is met with obvious approval but no comment.
He reaches for the remote. “Let’s watch TV and try again later.”
He thinks he’s the boss of me? No. I’m the boss of him. And I’m going to take charge and do the sex!
He must read it in my eyes because he raises an eyebrow when he sees me coming and then defensively rolls onto his stomach. He pillows his hands under his cheek, stretched out completely.
“Hey.” I put my hands on my hips and loom over him. “I’m wearing nothing but underwear and a frown and this couch is getting more action than I am.”
“Look, Speed is on.”
I begrudgingly give up the sex fight and condescend to lie atop Miles the way he’s lying atop the couch. I’m fully stretched out along his body, boobs pressed to his back and my toes tucked between his calves.
At first I think he’s unaffected and impervious, but then I realize that I can hear his heartbeat where my ear is against his back and every time I wiggle it starts to beat like wild.
I prop up a little and start to fiddle with his hair. His ears are big and cute and I can’t help but lean down and kiss his earlobe. He clears his throat. I walk my fingers from shoulder to bicep, poking at each muscle as I go. He resituates himself under me and I think I might be creating a problem for him down there. Yay.
I’m certain that any moment now he’s going to flip over and ravage me but after I return from an adventure with the inside of his elbow I realize his eyes are closed.
“Hey,” I say.
He grunts.
“No sleeping.”
His lips kick up into a smile. “I’m not sleeping.”
“You always say that when I catch you sleeping.”
“I’m never sleeping when I close my eyes like this with you.”
“Then what are you doing?”
He pauses and I think he might not answer. But then he says, “I’m committing the moment to memory.”
I freeze and melt at the same time. There’s a quick flipbook of moments that skim past. Miles with his eyes closed on this very couch, on the tattoo table, beside the swimming hole, on the floor at his mother’s house. Never sleeping, just savoring. Committing it all to memory. Committing me to memory.
I still haven’t replied and his eyes come open. He tries to lift his head to better see me but I stop him with an open mouth at his neck. I kiss his throat slowly, letting heat bloom against his skin, tasting him.
I make it to his shoulder and test his rounded muscle with my teeth. He grunts and when I check, his eyes are closed again. Now that I know he’s burning me into his brain, I couldn’t love it more. I scoot up and kiss one of his closed eyes and he pounces. Landing his mouth on mine.
It’s gotta be a bad angle for him so I slide off his back and land my knees on the floor, next to the couch, kissing him with all I’m worth. He’s draping an arm over me, leaning off the couch to get closer to me, and I’m drawing him backward, down to the floor. He comes willingly, immediately. I lie out on my back and he crawls over top of me. One glance down shows me that his pal is poking out of the top band of his underwear, desperate to get to me.
Desperate is a wonderful thing.
I touch his hips, his stomach, lock my legs around his back, and to my utter delight, I note that his hands have turned into fists on either side of my head.
I take one of those fists and put it on my chest and it immediately transforms into a warm, open palm, an attentive thumb. He tests and presses and has to stop everything to watch his own hand touch me.
“Bed, take two,” I request on a gasp.
He looks up, takes a long pull at my mouth, and then shakes his head. “Not tonight.”
“What?”
“Remember the panicking like ten minutes ago? Let’s go slow.”
I’m not sure what his definition of slow is, considering he’s kissing his way down my throat and sucking my nipple into his mouth. I arch off the floor and an idea occurs to me.
I sit up and he goes immediately backward, giving me space.
I want, very badly, to see him crawl toward me again. I scoot back, spread my legs, bite my lip. It has the intended effect. Miles is all shoulders, collarbone, and pecs, crawling toward me and then there’s stubble at my neck. Wet heat on my breasts, firm hands at my ass, yanking me toward him. Again, I pull back from him, scooting backward. Again, he crawls toward me. This time, a glint in his eye.
He finally gets my intention when we get to the doorframe of the bedroom. He looks up from where he’s been tongue-kissing my rib cage and realizes where I’ve dragged us. He said no bed, I said why not.
I go for the kill stroke, sitting on my heels—the picture of obedience. “Please.”
He’s a strong man, maybe the strongest I’ve ever met. But he’s not strong enough to withstand that.
I’m lifted up and tossed bodily onto the bed, laughing and turned on and delighted.
He joins me there, crawling over me again, his eyes are horny as hell and everywhere, he likes what he sees and he can’t kiss me as many places as he’d like to all at once. There are teeth at my hip. He tongues my thigh, then he’s back up to my mouth, my neck. A big hand draws a map from my sternum down to my belly button and down to the waistband of my underwear. I take initiative and do the same to the beautiful body in front of me.
We read each other’s eyes and cross each other’s waistbands at the same moment, breaking eye contact when sensation takes the wheel. Miles is smooth and firm in my hand. He’s got teeth against my collarbone and two fingers between my legs.
We’re banded together by his arm at my back, holding me in place. He’s breathing through his teeth and suffering against pleasure. All at once, I have to stop my explorations of him and grab the bed behind my head. Because he’s pressing those fingers inside. I say his name and see nothing but his dark, promising smile. He watches my face and patiently pushes me closer and closer. I think I’m giving instructions, I think I’m asking for something, I think I’m begging. He takes it all and turns it into magic. I cling to him and go stiff as lightning, arching toward the afterlife, held to earth by Miles, brought all the way there and all the way back by the man saying my name into my hair.
I fall back to the bed, laughing into my hands, curling onto my side, dimly aware that the world still turns. Miles is sitting on his heels, breathing like he’s been running and studying me. The second I start working my underwear down my legs, he strips them off me. He’s pulling my knees open, situating his shoulders.
“Look at me.”
I follow directions immediately, up on my elbows.
“I’ll always take care of you, Lenny.” He kisses my thigh. “Tell me you know that.”
“I know it. I swear I know it.”
He open-mouth kisses me between my legs and I’m a goner. I writhe and plead and tell him everything I want. He’s got me so close again, with that persistent, patient mouth. But this time…
“Miles.”
He lifts up. He looks heavily drugged.
“I want that, ” I say, pointing between his legs. “Here or here.” I point to my top half and then my bottom half. “Take your pick.”
He looks seriously torn but then he’s lying out over top of me to reach the bedside drawer. He produces a condom and we momentarily battle for it.
“Please.” I say the magic word and he closes his eyes in pain. He hands me the condom and leans up, bracing two hands on the wall behind me while I shimmy his underwear down and carefully, lovingly sheathe him.
I’m coming back for you, buddy, I silently promise his dick, but then I get distracted because he’s laying me down, guiding my legs around his back so that I can hold him with my entire body.
He kisses my mouth open, uses one hand to guide himself to the right place between my legs. He holds my eyes. Please. He pushes in and it’s everything, everything, everything.
I stretch and slide and open to make way for him and he doesn’t stop pushing his way in. His eyes are reading me, his body powerful and gentle, demanding and giving. Our temples press together. When I think he’s fully seated I gasp and let my head fall back to the pillow. And then he sinks in the final inch.
“That’s right,” Miles groans against my throat. His praise has me flushing, proud, I want more of everything. I tell him so and am rewarded with a slicing smile, his eyes on mine, one strong arm scooping my hips even closer.
Thump goes Miles’s body against mine.
Thump goes the headboard against the wall.
Thump goes my heart in my chest.
His style of sex is slow and steady and thorough and patient and of course this is how he has sex.
Some people are Ferraris. Miles is a Mack truck. He seems to want to restrain himself and he almost can, until his body forces him to thrust and he gives me everything he can’t hold back. I hold him as tight as I can, I ask for more, I grab the headboard when he gives it to me.
He’s methodically working me up the bed and finally, his protective hand is the only thing between my skull and hardwood and I’ll bet his knuckles will end up bruised because he can’t stop giving. Giving in. Giving it up. Giving it all to me.
I climb with him and reach between us to use my own hand, free-falling before he does. He pulls back from my shoulder to watch me and then goes rigid against me, still pumping, volcanic, inexorable.