62. Addicted To Love
FLORENCE + THE MACHINE
My spine hits the wall,
and he catches my hands, lifts them,
pins the backs to the tile,
pressing us palm to palm.
The tile’s cold against my knuckles.
His hands are hot over mine.
Water runs between our fingers.
Then the rest of him crashes in hot—
chest, hips, mouth,
his clothes soaked.
Andrew’s everywhere.
His lips—full, open—slide against mine,
his tongue moving so fucking x-rated,
a whimper rasps up my throat
with the way he licks into me,
thick and obscene,
and I feel it so deep,
as if his tongue’s dragging my clit.
He has me nailed here,
crucifix-wide, as I shatter,
wet steam rising up around us.
“God, Andrew,” I groan,
my knees stuttering,
my stomach flying,
my blood humming, buzzing, undone.
My hands slip out from under his, begging for his soaked sweatshirt to come off.
I grab the hem, sliding under it
until I’m touching hot skin,
his hard stomach,
his waist,
sliding around his hips,
dipping down his spine,
into his jeans and boxers,
his ass, pressing him into me.
He peels his sweatshirt and undershirt off his body fast at once, only breaking our kiss long enough to lift it over his head.
His elbows slam into the tile, his mouth slams back into mine, the soaked clothes still tangled around his forearms and wrists above our heads.
The shower beats against his back,
water running down the center of him,
collecting at his waistband.
I grab his jaw, kiss him deeper,
pull his chest flush to mine,
pull a groan out of him.
The sweatshirt and shirt slap the tile at our feet.
His hands come over my face.
Mine slide down his body,
landing on his waistband, pausing.
“Allison,”
he breathes hot into my mouth.
“Lower.”
My fingers work fast, unbuckling,
unbuttoning,
unzipping,
jeans dragging,
cock flashing.
Every inch, fucking starved for me.
Then he hoists me into his arms,
my legs wrapping around him,
my back slamming against tile.
We can't get a grip on each other.
It's torture as we move frantic, animal,
too wet to hold, too desperate too let go,
trying to get closer,
but every touch slides,
every kiss misses, then lands harder.
Chest punching into chest, we’re two stupid hearts beating themselves bloody.
My need for him’s a blinding fever behind my eyes, a thing so savage and loud, a frantic clawing in my blood, crying out, I will literally stop breathing if you don’t tear into me right now.
A wild sound leaves him when I yank him closer by where his jeans split open, our breath’s hot, shredded, and he’s looking at me with that Allison-obsessed, fuck-me stare.
Like if he’s not inside me right now,
he’ll fucking die, too
In the same filthy second,
both our hands dive down to his cock,
and that’s where we meet,
our fingers crashing together—
hot, wet, frantic, both of us needy and gasping, both of us grinding the head of his cock into my tight entrance.
Until finally—
I drag down on him raw,
his thick shaft crawling hot inside me,
spreading heat through every limb,
melting every bone.
Slow at first,
until I'm stretched and full,
all of him pressing into all of me.
We buckle together, kiss falling apart.
His tongue falls heavy in my mouth
as a tremor runs under his skin.
“Fuck, Allison...” he chokes on a moan.
His lips drag across my cheek.
Before I can stop it,
my throat’s closing up,
my eyes are burning.
I’ve been with men who were hungry for my body, who’ve taken from me… but I’ve never wanted this for myself before.
I’ve watched this fever in movies,
traced this heat across paperback pages,
fantasized about this kind of madness, wondering why my own skin always felt so barricaded. Sex has always been sketched with caution, checked for safety, run like a routine, while I clocked out for someone else’s pleasure. Intercourse was done for them.
But this is a demolition of the self.
And I’ve never held onto someone so bitingly,
so fiercely,
a scream to never let me go.
He fists my ass in one hand,
the other wrapping the back of my neck,
forearm braced against my spine.
Then he fucks into me deep,
his cock sunk to the base.
Warmth puddles, then ripples there,
like a hot stone sinking to the bottom.
My lips unzip, a moan bleeding out.
His next breath tears out of him, choked,
gets caught up in his teeth.
When he opens his heavy-lidded eyes,
they’re black and blown,
the whites rimmed red.
My hands slip at his shoulders,
claw at his back,
fist his hair for leverage.
He holds me down, nailing me to him,
and his tongue sweeps my mouth,
hot and wet as he thrusts into me.
My hard, tender nipples graze his chest.
Goosebumps flare across his shoulders,
down his arms.
My legs fall weak,
my heel slipping halfway down his ass,
landing at his waistband.
And it reminds me all over again how desperate he was for me that he didn’t even have time to take off his pants.
A hot tear bursts from my eye,
streaking my cheek,
sinking into our kiss.
And then I’m kissing him and crying.
And he doesn’t know,
can’t tell from the shower.
He only kisses me deeper,
fucks me deeper.
And I’m pinned here, bound to him—
soaked, split open,
and shaking.
And fuck—
he holds me so tight I can feel his heartbeat trying to sync with mine—fast, panicked, trying to keep his feet on the ground.
“Don’t come,” I say through a raw throat, half-teasing, half-begging.
“Allison…” he lets out this broken little laugh. “I’m too fuckin’ emotional to come right now.”
My legs wrap him tighter,
my heel pressing him deeper,
my forehead meeting his.
“I don’t want it to end.”
My words tumble into his mouth,
water droplets hanging from every sharp angle of his face.
His breath snaps off. “What?”
My eyes drift between his.
“You said I couldn’t know,” I say. “But that’s how I know I can’t be addicted to you.”
He nudges my nose with his.
“You’re sure, huh? How you so sure?”
“I’m addicted to the climax,
“but with you, I fight it.
“‘Cause I never want it to end.”
His face breaks, his eyes fall heavy.
“You’re all of it,” I tell him. “Since day one, Drew… the climax is the consequence of us, not the goal. And that’s how I know.”
His lips twitch, a grin threatening,
his fingers tangling in my wet hair,
curling into my scalp.
Then he kisses me fiercely and far-gone,
fucks into me deep and desperate,
water pounding down on us,
the steam fogging around us,
until we’re two piles of nothing but feeling.
“Stop, Allison. Stop.
“I ain’t fuckin’ movin’, so just stop!”
I give up, the door hanging open, and my knees crash into tile as I hurry to lift the lid. The taste of vomit burns up my throat, my eyes straining, but it’s all dry heaving from eating nothing all day.
Andrew crouches down behind me,
gathers my wet hair off my face,
pulls it back into a hair tie,
his knee knocking against my side.
Then his face falls into the middle of my back, right between my shoulder blades.
“My stubborn fuckin’ girl—
“Mi fai impazzire, you know that?
“You drive me fuckin’ crazy.
“Tryin’ t’puke your guts out and push me away all at once. That’s insane, baby—io resto. I stay.”
He presses a kiss between my shoulders.
“I’m yours the whole way through.”
I groan, sitting back on my heels,
wiping the drool from my mouth.
“You’re so annoying.”
He chuckles into my skin.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m the worst.
“Wanna be by your side.
“Sit on the bathroom floor with you.”
He leans over me, flushing the toilet.
“What a monster,” he murmurs, lowering the lid, then falling back against the open door, ass on the floor, pulling his legs up ‘cause it’s so tight in here.
That’s when I realize
he slipped on gym shorts.
I pull the towel tighter across my chest,
lean back against the adjacent wall.
For a while, we sit like that,
my finger tracing the bones in his foot.
He has pretty feet for a guy.
Except for this stray black hair.
It’s an inch long. On his middle toe.
Sprouted alone in no man’s land.
I pluck it.
Andrew winces, yanking back his foot.
“The fuck was that for?”
I look at the hair lying on my finger.
“I don’t know,” I mumble, trying to see it in the light. “But now I feel bad. I just ripped you two apart.”
His exhaustion fights a chuckle, then he breathes out the aftermath of a day that nearly broke us.
We’re both thoroughly fucked—
days without sleep,
emotionally spent,
physically drained.
He tips his head back,
looks at me through slits,
his eyes bloodshot and heavy.
I lean my temple against the wall and stare right back, neither of us making a move to stand.
He won’t get up ‘cause I’m here. I won’t get up ‘cause I don’t want him to leave. We are trapped in this stupid, beautiful deadlock of our own making.
I pinch the hair between my fingers.
“Andrew,” I whisper, my eyes bouncing between his, too tired to fight myself on this any longer.
So I just say it, “I throw up ‘cause… there’s this gross feeling I feel inside me…”
His gaze caves in on itself,
but the rest of him doesn’t move.
“Other times I throw up ‘cause… after the climax is over? After the high fades? All the feelings crash back into me—if I was raging, scared, sad, overwhelmed, whatever I was hiding from.”
I curl my knee to my chest.
“I never learned how to fuckin’ deal, so my body only knows how to get rid of it. At least, that’s what Brooke tells me.”
His eyes dim.
“You feel gross with me?” he asks.
My next breath shakes when it leaves as I find the words.
“The first time I ever had sex, when that guy used me, and after he’d already left, I still felt him inside me, like he was still using me, and I didn’t want him inside me anymore,” I say, voice raw from the dry-heave.
“So I stuck my fingers down my throat, like I could get rid of him that way.” I lift a shoulder.
“It’s like… bulimia. Over time, it became a reflex.
I don’t even think about it anymore. Used to only happen with intercourse and other weird-as-fuck triggers, like people used as objects.
“That changed after I met you.
“Like… my body’s confused.
“It’s happening all the time now.
“Not ‘cause I feel gross with you…
“It’s different. With you.