Chapter Nine
“Oh god…” My breath came shakily and I bent double again, really focusing on the sneakers now, afraid they’d start flickering the way the people on the platform had just moments before. I rocked back and forth, hand tight around my phone as I stared, not even daring to blink, for what could have been thirty seconds or thirty minutes.
“Are you gonna, like…throw up?” The kid standing at my shoulder was weedy in his MIT hoodie, his face and body both twisting with horrified fascination as he stared.
“No. I’m…No.” I shook my head, sat up, finally convinced that my sneakers remained my sneakers. “I’ve gotta go.”
I hurried along the platform, desperate to be out of the stifling, trapped air beneath the earth. Aboveground, the tight band compressing my lungs, squeezing every breath, loosened slightly, and by the time I made it across the plaza to a cluster of bistro tables, the black border at the edges of my vision had dissipated. Hand still shaking, I clicked my phone to life, frowning when I saw the Museum of Natural History site. That was World D, right?
But there was one surefire way to know which world I was in. I went into my text messages, and there, at the top, was the one I had hardly dared to hope for, the one that could only exist in one world. I clicked the phone icon next to the name, fingers trembling…
“Lo? What’s up?”
It was Ollie.
“Ollie…are you…Where are you?”
“At the apartment…where you left me twenty minutes ago.” His voice was wary. “Are you okay? Did they cancel your appointment?”
“No, I…I just…”
And then I burst into tears.
“Lo? Lo, where are you, I’ll come get you.”
“No, I’m…okay. Just…stay there, yeah? I’ll be home soon.”
“Okay. Yeah, okay. But call an Uber if you start feeling weird. Promise?”
“I promise,” I choked out, then hung up, practically running the mile from the station to our apartment, looking down at every intersection to confirm I was still wearing the sneakers, still this Laurel, that my life hadn’t slipped sideways again when I wasn’t paying attention.
When I got back to the apartment, Ollie was waiting in the living room, pacing. I collapsed into him, sobbing, the relief at finding him there—where he was supposed to be, where I was supposed to be—liquefying my legs. I hadn’t realized until I’d somehow made it back here how much I’d missed him…and how much the strain of performing a life, rather than living it, had been compounding.
“It’s okay. I’m here. You’re okay,” he murmured as he held me tight, rubbing my back in slow, regular circles. I breathed him in, a hint of cedar beneath the spicy notes of his bodywash. I could feel my shoulders loosening at the smell, so familiar I’d almost stopped noticing it.
After a few more seconds, he placed his hands on my shoulders, gently holding me just far enough away that he could fix me with his dark, concerned gaze.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“It was…I was…I wasn’t here, Ollie. And I couldn’t get back.” I bit my upper lip at the widening of his eyes. He was doing his best not to react in a way that would freak me out more, but I could hear how I must sound to him, halfway to a nervous breakdown. I drew in a deep breath and shook my head slowly. “It doesn’t matter, I just…I was having an extremely anxious moment and I needed to see you. I’m sorry.” I wrapped my arms around him more tightly and lowered my head to his shoulder, as though enough physical contact could keep him from flickering out of my life again.
“You never need to apologize for that, Lo.” His arms tightened around me protectively, and I sighed. My body ached as the tension I’d been holding since the previous morning—every nerve and muscle and sinew on high alert, my animal brain expecting the threat to be physical—slowly dissipated.
Ollie bent to press a soft kiss to my temple.
“Are you feeling better?”
“A little,” I murmured into the juncture between his neck and shoulder. I inhaled him again, deeply. Heat stirred at the base of my belly, and I pressed my body closer to his, enjoying the low, lazy ache between my thighs that was growing with each passing second in the comforting circle of his arms. I hadn’t felt a desire this insistent in ages, my need to connect with him approaching hunger. I turned my face to kiss the side of his neck, making my way slowly up its length until my mouth met the base of his jaw, the stubble there tickling my lips in a way that made my breath catch.
Ollie’s hands drifted apart, one moving up between my shoulder blades, the other sliding down my back to rest at the base of my spine. He pressed me to him, rolling his hips against me lightly, and I pulled back just enough to meet his waiting kiss, my lips parting with a soft sigh, inviting him in. His tongue caressed the inner curve of my top lip and I moaned against his mouth.
“What about your appointment?” he murmured, kissing his way along the curve of my jaw to nibble at the lobe of my ear. I sucked in a sharp breath, arching into him, as electricity shot straight to my core.
“I’ll reschedule,” I said, voice breathy, then wove my hand into the curls at his nape, guiding him down the column of my neck, breath growing shorter with each new touch of his lips to my skin, the heat of his breath sparking embers of desire that flickered through my body, tiny conflagrations that merged at the pit of my stomach in a blaze of hot need.
“Should we… mmm. ” Ollie’s eyes closed as I slid my free hand around his hip to rub my palm roughly against his fly, the growing evidence of his desire sending a thrill through me, too. “Move to the bedroom?”
“No,” I said, smiling against his mouth. “If someone wants to watch, let them.”
Ollie growled deep in his throat, then pushed me back, reaching for the hem of the thin sweater I was wearing and pulling it over my head, leaning in to kiss me once more, his appetite for me palpable, before he stepped away to tug his own shirt off. The sight of his bare chest and stomach, curls of dark hair trailing down the center line of his abs to disappear beneath the waistband of his jeans, sent a fresh pulse of heat through me. When was the last time I really looked at this spectacular man? It was amazing how you stopped seeing the things that you lived with every day, or at least appreciating them.
I bit my lower lip, grinning slyly at him as I reached for the buckle of his belt, tugging him closer as I undid it, then popped the button on his jeans and pulled the zipper down with a rough jerk. Ollie grinned back at me, eyelids lowering in a way that turned his always dark gaze impossibly sultry. I slid my hand into the opening of his jeans, holding his gaze with my own, and lightly curled my fingers around his length, throbbing now with desire.
He groaned again, bending to take my mouth in his, drawing my lower lip between his teeth in a way he knew drove me wild. I closed my eyes, dissolving into the kiss, blindly pulling his pants down over his hips. He hooked his thumbs into either side of my waistband, tugging my leggings down over my ass, stopping only to squeeze its soft curves before he pulled them all the way to the floor. We broke apart just long enough to pull our pants the rest of the way off, then he was on me again, pulling me against him, pressing my now throbbing core against the insistent erection straining against the front of his boxer briefs. His free hand traced the runnel of my spine, starting a shiver that spread out through me all the way to the roots of my hair. Bending to kiss me again, rougher now, his stubble scraping my chin, he deftly loosed my bra with one hand. His hips rolled against me again, in time with his tongue, which moved along the inside of my mouth, then he pulled away, exhaling heavily through his nose as his eyes drifted slowly down the length of my body.
“Fuck, Lo. You just keep getting more beautiful.” He shook his head slowly, a soft, almost pained smile on his face as he slowly pulled my bra down the length of my arms—the slender silk straps leaving goosebumps in their wake—then tossed it onto the coffee table. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re really mine.”
“I am. Only yours,” I said, desperation and guilt whetting the edge of my desire, needing to believe that if I just held on tightly enough to Ollie, it would keep me here, with him, the man I remembered loving. “And you’re mine,” I ventured, the gut-wrenching feeling of losing him, of living in a world where we were nothing to each other, still waiting in the wings.
“Always.” He reached up to cup my jaw in his hand, guiding me gently to his waiting lips, and when they pressed against mine, the need that swirled through me felt different, both sharper and softer than it had before. Thin, glittering threads of tenderness, and history, and being really known by another person shot through the cord of want that was pulling me toward him.
God, when was the last time I’d really slowed down and felt this? Realized that our love wasn’t just an ambient warmth but a fire, the flames lit in each of us by the other impossibly beautiful as they danced around and between our bodies, flickering over our skin, changing and shaping us by their burn?
Had it felt like this recently?
But there was no time to wonder about that, because Ollie’s arms were wrapped around me, his lips still locked on my own as he guided me backward to the couch, low and narrow, upholstered in a deep red velvet that I’d loved and he’d gamely agreed to. I lay back along it, feeding on the intensity of his gaze as it slid over the curves of my breasts, down along my stomach, over the lacy underwear I had no memory of putting on that morning. I thrust my hips up to pull them off, throwing them to the side as I stared at Ollie, my chest heaving. Eyes locked on mine, Ollie pulled his own underwear off and took himself in one hand, stroking slowly as he moved over me, using his free hand to position my leg along the back of the couch. He knelt between my legs, a gleam of desire in his eyes as he bent to put his mouth on me.
“Oh… god, ” I moaned as Ollie’s tongue moved over me with a slow, gentle pressure, the fingers of his free hand slipping inside. Until Ollie, I’d never been able to let go enough to really enjoy someone going down on me. But he’d been so persistent, asking me what felt good, trying different techniques, completely unflustered when the feeling-good-so-good-even-better built to the point where, teetering on the edge, I fell back into overthinking things instead of letting go. He’d taken the time not only to learn what I liked, but to make me feel comfortable lingering in my own pleasure.
“I love the way you taste,” he murmured, the hum of his words buzzing over my most sensitive parts, banking the fire that was already raging through me. I threw my head back as his tongue flicked over me, faster now, and my hips bucked against his mouth of their own accord. I could feel myself coiling tighter, building toward a release…
“Ollie… please …I want you inside me,” I said, voice breathy.
“You’re close? Because I don’t think I can hold out long,” he said, running his tongue along my folds in a way that made my entire spine arch.
“Now, Ollie. Please .”
And then he was lifting my other leg over one arm and thrusting into me, the fullness and pressure in all the right places making me gasp, and I was lifting my hips to meet him, matching his rhythm, faster faster faster, each movement twisting the spring tighter, my skin going hot all over, every part of me clenching around him, holding him against me, urging him deeper, until…
“ Fuuuck! ” I could feel Ollie shuddering against me, into me, the pulse of his orgasm triggering my own. My breath hitched in my throat, every part of my body caught up in the earthquake of my release, the tremors building to an impossible height before they slowly started to recede.
I collapsed into the couch, still trembling as Ollie slid his body behind mine, wrapping an arm around my waist and nuzzling his mouth into the crook of my neck. Even after the last aftershock had long since faded away, we lay there, his body wrapped around my own, warming me.
“I love you, Lo,” he whispered against my neck, the words seeping into me rather than heard, like a spell written on my skin.
“I love you, Ollie,” I murmured back.
And somehow, even though I’d said the words thousands of times, even though we’d held each other this way in dozens of different beds, and couches, and cities, and countries, the moment felt entirely new.