36. Tilly #2
Whatever he has been holding on to since I walked in goes out of him all at once. His mouth finds the spot under my ear that he learned in a rented villa on the other side of the world, and my head tips back for it on reflex.
I inhale his scent, and my center goes immediately wet for him.
It takes me until his teeth are at my throat to understand what is different. When I do, it goes through me hotter than his hands are managing.
Nobody is asleep down the hall. Nobody is going to knock.
There is no villa gate to get back through before the sun comes up, no brother in Spain we are lying to, no word we are refusing to put on this.
It is four in the afternoon on a Friday in his kitchen with the blinds wide open, and the only two people with any say in what happens next are already in the room.
I pull his shirt up over his head and drop it on the floor. He hums against my collarbone, and stops cold when I get my hand under his waistband.
He takes my leggings off me in one long motion and puts his mouth where he wants it before I can say anything about the counter being cold.
He pushes my knees wider with his forearms and puts his mouth on me. The first flat drag of his tongue from bottom to top takes my voice with it.
My hand is in his hair, holding him there, wanting more friction, more pressure. The marble is freezing under my thighs, and his mouth is the opposite of that. My body can’t process both at once, so it picks his mouth and my eyes roll to the back of my head.
He works me in tight circles until I start to climb. Then he goes flat and takes it away from me. He does it again, and then a third time, and by then I am saying his name in a voice that is not a nice voice.
He hums against me. It travels all the way up through my stomach. Two fingers push into me. That crooked left pinky of his spreads and lightly touches the other spot that lifts my heels off his back.
Then he stops moving them. He keeps them exactly there, working me open on nothing but pressure, and puts his tongue precisely where I have been begging for it without using any words.
My thighs clamp around his head, and I say something that isn't language. The sound bounces off his cabinets. He works me all the way through it and out the other side, slower and slower, until I have to push at his shoulder because every nerve I own is standing straight up.
Standing, with his mouth wet from me, he drags me to the edge of the counter by my hips.
My hands will not do what I tell them, but I get his jeans open anyway, and I have him in my palm before he can help me.
The sound he makes when my fingers close around him is worse for me than anything he just did with his mouth.
“Condom,” he says against my mouth, and I taste myself on him. “Back pocket.”
I get my hand into his jeans and find his wallet, and I have it flipped open one-handed while he does something with his teeth just under my jaw that makes it take twice as long as it should. The foil is worn soft at the edges from riding around in there.
He watches me notice that.
“Since you kissed me in that shed,” he says. “I've been carrying it around for a week like a sixteen-year-old.”
I tear it open with my teeth because my fingers have quit on me. He takes it out of my hand and rolls it on slowly with his eyes on my face the entire time. I have to grab the edge of the marble again just to stay upright.
He lines himself up and pushes in one slow inch at a time. There is nothing in my head except the stretch of it, my body giving and catching and giving again. A year is a long time and he is not a small man.
He stops halfway, forehead dropped against mine, one hand spread hard at the small of my back to hold me still until I quit shaking around him.
Then he pushes the rest of the way in. I make a noise against his throat that I will be embarrassed about tomorrow, and he watches my face through every second of it.
"Say it again," he says.
"Say what."
"That you want this."
“Are you waiting for an engraved invitation?” I press my center into him.
He gets one arm all the way around my back and holds me against him so there is no space left anywhere. He doesn’t close his eyes once.
It builds again faster than it has any right to, low in my center where our bodies meet.
Every time my eyes start to close, he says my name until I open them.
This time, it isn’t his hips or his hand working between us, but his face six inches from mine and the fact that he will not let me hide behind my own eyelids.
I come apart around him, saying words I’ll have to repent for in church this weekend.
He says my whole name, all three syllables of it, as he finishes off. There’s something so hot when he says my name as he empties into me.
Afterward he stays exactly where he is, breathing hot on my neck with his face in the crook of it. Nothing about us is settled. I’m not moving back in, and I’m not telling him this is forever. Every hard thing between us is still sitting out there waiting on us to deal with it in daylight.
And I am not sorry about one single second of this.
He pulls out carefully. I make a noise I did not authorize. He deals with the condom at the trash can by the back door, and then he comes back and puts both hands on my waist and lifts me down off the counter. My legs don’t entirely agree to the plan, but he steadies me.
My leggings are on the floor by the dishwasher. He crouches down in front of me with them bunched up in his hands so I can step in one foot at a time. He works them up my legs slowly, and doesn’t make a single joke the entire time.
He pulls his own jeans up and leaves them unbuttoned.
"So when’s our first date?"
I smile.
“Let’s survive dinner first.”
“How about dinner tonight?”
“I can do tonight. It's Friday, after all.”
His grin comes easily. “About damn time.”