15. Emma #4
Later, I do not know what time, the clock is behind me and I cannot see it, he sits against the headboard and I straddle him, my knees on either side of his hips, my arms around his neck.
He enters me and I sink down until he is fully seated inside me, and then I just stay there.
Not moving. Just holding him. My forehead against his shoulder.
His hands tracing lazy paths up and down my spine.
“Why do I feel like you’re saying goodbye?” he murmurs against my hair.
My heart stops. Then restarts harder.
“I’m not.”
“Then what is this?”
“I don’t know. I just— I couldn’t wait for you tonight. That’s all.”
He does not push. He holds me and I hold him and eventually I start to move again, slow and deep, and we find our way to the edge together and fall over it in silence this time, nothing but breath and the grip of his hands and the clench of my body around his.
We do it again in the bathroom, against the cold tile wall, my legs wrapped around him and his hands under my thighs, and I come so hard I see white.
We do it again on the couch in the living room, me bent over the arm, him behind me, one hand in my hair pulling my head back, and the sounds I make echo off the high ceilings.
We do it again in his bed, back in his bed where we belong, with me on my side and him behind me, one of my legs hooked over his arm, and it is slow and deep and almost unbearably intimate, a position where you cannot hide from anything, where every gasp and whimper is heard and felt and answered.
“What time is it?” I whisper at some point.
“I don’t care. Tonight, I am here. That is all. Tonight I am here with you and there is nothing else.”
And by the time the city begins to pale with the first suggestion of dawn, I have lost count.
My body is sore in the most satisfying way.
There are marks on my skin, his fingerprints on my hips, a bruise on my collarbone from his mouth, a rawness between my thighs that I do not mind at all.
He has taken me in every way I can think of and some I had not, and I have taken him too, I have climbed him and consumed him and pulled sounds from him that I have never heard before, and I think I could do it all again if he asked.
But he does not ask.
He falls asleep.
It happens gradually: his breathing slowing, deepening, his body going heavy and loose against mine.
We are on our sides, facing each other, and at some point during the last time, he simply stopped moving and his eyes closed, and he was gone.
His arm is draped over my waist. One of my legs is hooked over his hip.
And he is still inside me, not fully, not the way he was at the peak of it, but enough that I can feel him there, a warm presence, and I do not want to move.
I do not want to shift or adjust or separate in any way.
I prop myself up on one elbow, carefully, so as not to wake him, and I look at him.
Alexander Hartley is not a man who looks peaceful.
Even in sleep there is a tension in his jaw, a furrow between his brows, as if his dreams are just another negotiation.
But right now, in this gray half-light, with his dark hair falling across his forehead and his lashes casting shadows on his cheekbones, he looks younger.
Softer. Like the weight he carries has been set down, just for a few hours, just long enough to rest. This man right here is my Alex.
I trace my fingers along his face. Starting at his temple, following the line of his cheekbone, the curve of his jaw. His skin is warm and slightly rough with stubble. I drag my fingertip along the edge of his lower lip — fuller than his upper lip, slightly parted, breathing slow and even.
He does not stir.
I move to his hair. I have wanted to do this for so long: just touch his hair, run my fingers through it, feel the texture. It is thick and soft and too short, and it falls through my fingers like dark silk. I comb it back from his forehead. Twirl a strand around my finger. Let it go. Do it again.
I am playing with him. Like he is something precious. Like he is mine.
You are mine tonight, I think. You are mine right now, in this bed, in this light, with your body still inside mine. Tomorrow you will be the world’s again. But right now you are mine.
Bee appears in the doorway. She stands there, perfectly still, watching us with those knowing green eyes. Then she turns and disappears down the hallway, unimpressed by all of it.
I smile. A small, private thing.
I settle back down beside him, my forehead almost touching his, my hand still in his hair. I can feel his heartbeat against my chest, steady and slow, and I match my breathing to it. In and out. In and out.
The dawn creeps closer. The city wakes. Out there, his brother is waiting for a conversation.
And his family is planning their next move.
Somewhere out there, the real world exists, the one where I do not belong here, where this is temporary, where the mirage will eventually clear and I will be left standing in the sand.
But not yet.
Not right now.
Right now, he is warm and heavy and inside me, and he is breathing my name in his sleep, just my name, just Belle, soft and slurred and unguarded, and I close my eyes and I hold on.
I hold on with everything I have.