Chapter Twelve #2
Julian leans in until his face becomes a blur, until the tip of his nose brushes mine, until his eyes merge and fill my entire field of vision. They flicker in the shifting light: brown, green, amber. Pupils pinprick small.
“Fascinating,” he repeats. His voice is frayed, more wind than sound, and I inhale it in. He shouldn’t smell so good, taste so good, right now—should be stale and sickly instead of smoky and sweet—and yet he does. I want to be immersed in him. To burrow under his skin and make a home.
“Why,” I ask, as he wraps his arms around my waist to tug me closer, “do you keep saying that?”
Julian smiles like he’s just told a joke that I’m not privy to. And then he slides his hand to the nape of my neck, pulls his body up to meet mine, and kisses me.
I thought I’d gotten used to kissing Julian, to the way I turn punch-drunk and liquid in his arms. But though the mechanics fit—his mouth clashing hot against mine, hand weaving into my hair to keep me locked in place—what Julian is doing to me should not be described as a kiss.
This is conquest. This is his body staking claim to mine, a flag lodged into my lands, an invasion that goes deeper than a plundering of mouths.
Julian nips and pulls and sucks and I unravel, the spool of my thoughts spinning loose and free around a center that is him, always him.
“I just want,” he says, dragging his lips down my neck, “a little taste.”
I feel his words ring through my chest like a gong, echoing.
All my thoughts, of his sickness and mine, the despair I felt over the last several days in his absence, vanish.
I’m empty, and I want him to fill me, to merge us together until I don’t know where he starts and I begin.
This taste he wants, I want to give it to him.
I smooth my hands over his shoulders, drag them down his chest, reach behind for his back and revel in the solid ripples of muscle that greet me.
“Please,” I gasp.
Julian’s answering groan is guttural, and suddenly everything burns, and my world goes dark.
It is four in the afternoon, but my kitchen is flooded with early morning light.
Seated at one of the barstools of my island is Julian.
He’s dressed comically in a white undershirt and my favorite leopard print robe, with sleeves that only reach halfway down his forearms, and is blowing over coffee in my favorite “Boss Bitch” mug.
His getup tells me that we have been sleeping together for long enough for him to feel comfortable borrowing my clothes, but not so long that he’s earned a drawer in my dresser.
Strange as the sight is, it feels familiar and comforting in its banality.
Except he should not be familiar, because Julian has never been inside my apartment.
“Interesting,” he says, lowering his mug to the counter. “You’ve got the real thing out there right now, but you’re still in here with me.”
“What?” I ask, discombobulated, and Julian smirks.
“I’m just saying that I was right,” he says. “You do like me more.”
I’m still looking at him with confusion when suddenly my vision tips, and I find myself slipping into darkness.
But this is not the bottomless darkness of sleep, but something more dynamic, with shifting light and heightened awareness.
It takes me one heartbeat to realize that it’s because my eyes are squeezed shut, and then another to realize that I’m not at home at all.
The instant I do, I’m wracked with a thousand sensations at once—shuddering, electrifying aftershocks, the feeling of being catapulted out of my own body, pleasure that pulses through me in waves.
I’m coming, I realize, though I’ve never come like this, all at once with no clear buildup.
The rasping cry that pierces the air is from my throat.
My arms are wrapped around a strong neck, holding on for dear life as my knees buckle underneath me, and searing, soothing kisses are raining down the side of my face.
“Shh,” Julian says. “It’s okay. I got you.”
There’s a sloppy, slurping sound, and with it, an absence. Julian’s fingers, withdrawing from where they’d been. Inside me. He brings them to his mouth and sucks.
“Oh god,” I say, stuck somewhere between pleasure and consternation. Hazily, the memories return, patchy and disjointed; I went to Julian’s apartment…to check on him? To yell at him for ignoring my texts?
The rest is a blur. The surface behind my back is unyielding, not plush, and we are upright—a door?
Julian crowds my vision, his body blocking my view of the space, but I can tell by the furniture that it’s likely his bedroom.
He’s still mostly dressed, as am I; my panties are still on, just shoved to the side, and my leggings are halfway down my thighs.
Another memory returns to me, one that makes my face turn even hotter. Julian asking me if I want this, me answering by dragging him back to my mouth. Pushing him against the door, only to be flipped back against it myself after Julian decided he was done being manhandled.
“What are you doing to me?” I gasp, still catching my breath. Julian smells intoxicating, a mixture of soap, sweat, and sex that, despite everything, I want to wrap myself in.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he says. He reaches behind him, unlatches my hand from its vise grip around his neck, and lowers it to his bare chest. Under my palm, his heart is galloping.
“That’s…” He bends to kiss my neck, and I bite down on my cheek, trying to maintain focus. “That’s not what I mean.”
Julian hums, only half interested in helping me reach the epiphany I seek.
“What do you mean, then?”
I try to divert my focus from his overwhelming presence to the lightness of my limbs, the fact that my head no longer throbs and my body no longer aches.
I know better than anyone that healing is a slow process, done over days to weeks to months, not instantaneous.
But this isn’t the first time this has happened, is it?
It feels like something out of a fairy tale: Julian touches me, and I become whole again.
“I mean that I feel good,” I manage, clumsily converting my jumbled thoughts into speech. “Why do I feel good?”
Julian chuckles, then brushes his lips over mine in a caress.
“Should I be insulted?” he whispers.
“No, no,” I say, shaking my head. Julian gives me an indulgent smile, then, unceremoniously, drops to his knees and drags my underwear over my hips. “No, I don’t mean it like…oh.”
Julian presses his face into the valley between my legs, and I reflexively tilt my hips forward to give him better access.
He rolls the pearl of my clit around his tongue before probing deeper, and whatever ideas I’d been formulating are gone to the wind, chased away by a desperate need to stay standing amidst this siege.
And that’s what it feels like—like he’s waiting me out, unbuilding me brick by brick.
When he pushes his fingers inside me again, my body welcomes his intrusion as much as it pines for more.
They curl, find a spot that makes my toes clench.
It seems impossible that I could be having a second orgasm on the heels of the last, but Julian is relentless, employing mouth and nose and hands to drag me, caveman style, to the cliff edge.
When he throws me over, I have to bite down on my tongue to keep from crying out.
It doesn’t work—the moans escape my throat like they’ve been sucked out, filling the quiet evening air with illicit song.
I become boneless, my teeth chattering, knees buckling, and Julian tightens his hold to keep me from crumpling to the floor.
What could be seconds or minutes or hours later, I finally stop shaking.
Julian places a reverent kiss on my mons.
He rests his head against my thighs and sighs, kneading my ass like a sculptor working clay, and the waft of his breath against my still sensitized skin sends shock waves skittering down my legs.
I drop my head backward against the door, chasing down the breath that he’s stolen.
“This is so unfair,” I groan through gritted teeth. “Do you have a manual or something?”
It’s supposed to be a joke, but Julian doesn’t laugh.
“I’ve wanted this for so long,” he says, in lieu of an answer. His voice is unexpectedly ragged.
“It’s been maybe two months,” I tease.
“Two months too long.” Julian unfurls himself to his full height, then twines our fingers together. “If I’d had my way, I would’ve been on my knees for you right there at that piano at the mansion. Figuring out what other sort of music you could make.”
My god. My mind has liquefied into soup, the thoughts I’d tried so hard to hold on to floating out of my grasp.
Julian guides me to his bed, and I hobble after him, knock-kneed, my movements restricted by my half-doffed clothes.
He sits on the edge, runs his hands up and down my sides, his eyes weighed down by a question I am already answering in my head: Yes, please, now.
Our clothes come off in a frenzy. I peel off my shirt, nearly tip over dragging my leggings off my remaining ankle, and Julian mirrors me, standing to drop his pants in an unceremonious swoop.
My eyes snag on the tent in his boxers. I’ve seen him hard through his clothes before, grinded against him until I was quivering in his arms, but this is different.
More immediate. He lowers his boxers and my eyes widen into saucers.
“Oh,” I say.
“Oh?” Julian repeats. He wraps a hand around the generous base, strokes up and down his length as if to further demonstrate his virility.
“I just…” I whisper, trying to keep the trepidation out of my voice because good lord I am far too out of practice for this. “I understand where you get your confidence.”
Julian laughs breathlessly, but his eyes are almost black with desire. He reaches for his nightstand, pulls a condom from his drawer, and makes a show of pulling it on.