30. Priya
PRIYA
The bras are off and she pulls me against her and I stop thinking.
Her breasts against mine. The weight, the warmth, her nipples hard against my skin. Her hands on my waistband. Mine on hers. Pulling, kicking, my elbow on the cabinet. One shoe still on. I kick it free and it hits something. Nobody is in charge. We are just reaching.
Everything is off. We are on the floor.
Her thigh between my legs. Mine between hers. The first roll of hips, the friction building, and every time she shifts, the pressure sends heat straight up through my chest.
As we move together she speaks, breathless.
“Oh fuck, Priya. There.”
My brain leaves my body for half a second.
Did Margot just say fuck? God, she did. I make a sound, raw, full of desire.
My brain snaps back in my body and the heat hits me everywhere at once—chest, stomach, between my legs—and my hips slam harder into her.
I press my mouth into her neck and I want to live inside the words she just said.
“Say that again.” I barely get the words out.
“What—”
“My name. Like that.”
A breath. “That wasn’t —”
“I know you didn’t mean to. Margot.” My mouth against her throat. “I want it again.”
She pulls closer. Her hips press into mine and her mouth is near my ear and—
“Fuck. Priya.”
The way my name breaks in the middle. I will hear this sound when I am eighty. It cracks something open in my chest that I didn’t know was closed. I want to press my whole body around her like a shield. I want to keep her making that sound forever.
My eyes are wet. Every nerve in my body is lit and aching. And I am grinning. “Margot Voss just said fuck.”
She laughs. Naked, pressed against me, she laughs, the vibration moving through her chest into mine and down to where we are pressed together.
I look at her face. The red eyes. The tear tracks still drying.
Twenty minutes ago she was sobbing on this floor telling me about the worst morning of her life and now she is here, naked, saying fuck, saying my name, and every one of those things cost her something, and I can see the cost and the courage in the same face.
I love her.
The words are right there in my mouth. I don’t say them. Not yet. The moment is already holding so much and the words will keep. They have been keeping for weeks. They can keep a little longer.
“Margot.” Against her mouth. Barely a voice. “I want to touch you. Can I–”
“Touch me. Please.”
The please. The word goes through me like a current. I slide my hand between us, between our stomachs, the warm press of skin, finding the space, finding her.
My fingers find her and her gasp is sharp and real and moves through her whole body into mine. I am not precise. My hand is clumsy with wanting, and the clumsiness doesn’t matter because her hips are rocking into my hand and the rocking is not about technique.
I find the rhythm. How her breath changes when I press here. The way her thigh tenses when I circle there. The way her hand grips my shoulder when the pressure is right.
And I am still grinding against her thigh. I almost forgot. I was so focused on the touching and the fuck and the please, that I half-forgot how close I am, and the remembering is a shock. My hand on her and her thigh against me and both of us moving and I look at her face.
Five months of longing burst out of me. “God, I want you.”
My fingers on her. Her thigh against me.
Both of us moving and the rhythm is shared, built together, and I am touching her and I am close—I have been close since the second fuck Priya, and my hand on her is making it worse because feeling her this way, feeling her wet and open under my fingers while her thigh presses against me, is the hottest thing and the tenderest thing and they are the same thing and—
I come.
I wasn’t ready. The wave hits me and my hand stutters on her and my hips press hard against her thigh and the sound I make is her name—Margot—said with my whole chest, and the orgasm is almost an interruption, almost beside the point, because the point is her, and even as I’m coming I don’t stop.
My fingers keep moving. My hand keeps the rhythm because she is close, I can feel how close she is.
I am breathing hard against her throat and my hand is still on her, still moving—