Chapter 35
Chapter thirty-five
My apartment was warm with late afternoon golden light slanted through the kitchen window, catching on the espresso cups I’d left out from that morning.
I made a mental note to deal with them tomorrow.
Then Ellis was shoving me back against the refrigerator and none of the practical thoughts mattered anymore.
His hands fisted in my hair. His mouth was desperate and still inexperienced in the way that made my chest ache, because it was three weeks later and his body remembered mine but not enough, not enough.
I kissed him back, trying to apologize for the silence.
Like my mouth could say what every witty text message had failed to.
“I missed you,” he breathed against my jaw. “I missed you. I missed you.”
“I know, baby. Come here.”
His knee pushed between mine. He was already hard against my thigh. My hands dropped to his waist, under the hem of his shirt, flat against the warm skin of his back. The magnet for the grocery list clattered to the floor.
“Bedroom,” he managed.
“Yeah.”
We didn’t quite make it in a straight line. His jacket came off in the hall. My shirt ended up draped over the back of the couch. By the time his knees hit the edge of the mattress, his fingers were shaking so badly he couldn’t get my belt open, and I covered his hand with mine and did it for him.
The bedroom was dark except for the streetlight through the blinds, silver striping everything. I pushed him gently back onto the bed and followed him down. He pulled me flat against him, skin to skin, his mouth on my throat, and a sound tore out of me I didn’t know I’d been holding.
I put my palm over his heart. He put his hand over mine.
“Slow,” I urged. “Slow this time.”
“Yeah.” He pushed me gently back against the pillow. “My turn first.”
“Your turn?”
“You don’t get to do all the giving tonight. I missed you, too.”
He kissed his way down my chest. Lingered at the Libre tattoo, his mouth pressing to her handwriting like he was apologizing to my mom for leaving when he’d said he wouldn’t, even though she’d never know. His tongue traced the letters. My breath caught at how specifically he was being.
He kept going. Stomach. Hip. The soft place on the inside of my thigh.
I knew before he said anything where he was going.
“Ellis.”
“Let me. Please.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” He looked up at me. His eyes were dark and certain in a way he’d been carrying for three weeks. “I want to. I’ve been wanting to. Three weeks of missing you taught me how much.”
That hit something I wasn’t braced for.
“Yeah.” My voice barely there. “Okay.”
He shifted me fully onto my back. Drew my knees up. Looked at me once for permission, and when I gave it with the smallest nod, he lowered his mouth to me.
The first touch of his tongue made my hips jerk off the bed.
Not gentle, not tentative. Direct, the way he did everything when he finally committed to a thing.
His hands held my thighs open. His mouth worked me with a focus that was so specifically Ellis, like he was learning a system from the inside out.
“Oh.”
“Tell me how.”
“How?”
“How you want it. Tell me. I want to know.”
“Slower at the. Yes. Yeah, like that. God.”
He found a rhythm. Slow press of his tongue, the curl of it, the way he listened to my breath and corrected by feel. My hand fisted in the sheet. The other found his hair and stayed there, gentle.
Three weeks of distance had sharpened him. Tonight he was doing it like he’d been thinking it through.
“You missed me,” I managed.
He hummed against me, didn’t lift his head. The vibration traveled everywhere.
“Ellis.”
He kept going.
“Ellis, I, you have to stop. I’m going to…”
He stopped. Lifted his head. His mouth was wet. His eyes were so soft I almost lost it before he could come back up.
“Come up,” I rasped.
He came up. Put his mouth on mine. Let me taste myself on his tongue and the three weeks he’d carried in his chest.
“I missed every part of you,” he said into my mouth. “I needed you to know that.”
“I know.”
“Now your turn.”
“Yeah?”
“Stay close. I want to feel you behind me.”
He turned in my arms, his back to my chest, and pulled my arm around him. We curled together on our sides, his shoulders against my chest, his hips against mine, my mouth at the back of his neck.
“This?” I asked into his hair.
“Yes.”
I reached for the drawer. Found the lube. Slicked my fingers behind him, where neither of us could see, but my body knew the shape of him by now and his body knew mine. I pressed one finger in slow. His breath caught.
“Took the body a minute to remember.” My mouth at his ear.
“Yeah.”
I went easy on him. Slower than the first time, even, because three weeks was three weeks, and I wasn’t going to rush the reintroduction.
Second finger when he was ready. Third, when he was making the soft sounds I knew, the ones that meant his body had remembered everything his head hadn’t quite let itself.
“Please. Jett. Please.”
My throat closed on something. I blinked, and the tear slid out and landed in his hair, and I didn’t bother wiping it. He caught my hand on his chest, pressed it harder against his heartbeat, and held it there.
“I thought I’d lost you.”
“You didn’t.”
“I thought I wasn’t going to get to have this again.”
“You’re having it.” His hand tightened on mine. “You’re having it, Jett.”
I slicked myself slow. Lined up against him, my hand on his hip, my mouth at the place between his shoulder blades.
“Tell me if…”
“I will.”
I pushed in slowly, so slow. The angle was different here. Shallower. Closer. Every bit of the metal pulled a small breath out of him, familiar by now, the shape of a sensation he’d learned to want. Tonight, it landed deeper. Tonight, everything landed deeper.
“Jett.” His voice came cracked.
“I know.”
“Don’t let me leave again.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
I moved in him deliberately. One arm stayed wrapped around his chest, palm spread over his sternum, the barbells warm against the side of my hand.
His hand locked over mine. My other hand reached down between us, slicked itself on the lube still wet on my fingers, and found his cock.
Started stroking him slow, in time with my thrusts, the way he liked, the way he’d taught me.
We breathed in unison. He turned his face back toward mine.
“I love you,” he said, wrecked. “I love you, don’t leave me.”
“Never.”
He came with his hand clamped over mine on his chest and my name in pieces in his mouth. I followed him over the edge; one, two strokes later, my mouth pressed to the back of his neck, both of us shaking.
I stayed inside him. Didn’t move. Couldn’t. His hand stayed locked over mine on his chest.
“Stay,” he whispered.
“I’m staying.”
I eased out of him and he turned in my arms, pressed his face into my chest, his palm finding the Libre tattoo and resting there.
The sheets smelled like my detergent and the memory of the last time he’d slept in this bed.
My arm wrapped around him. His palm stayed flat over my heart, like he needed proof that it was still beating.
The city sounds came through the window. Distant sirens, the rumble of the subway, the ambient hum of Brooklyn carrying on without us. Inside that room, inside that bed, inside that moment, there was nothing but the two of us and a darkness that felt softer now that he was in it.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered into the dark.
“I know.”
The truth was, I didn’t know. But knowing wasn’t the prerequisite anymore. Choosing was.
His breath deepened as he drifted toward sleep, and I lay there awake, afraid that if I closed my eyes, he’d disappear again. Afraid the pause would resume without warning. Afraid I was still in some version of the space he’d needed, and he’d wake up and remember he’d been the one who had to leave.
I forced myself to breathe. Let my eyes close. Trusted that if he needed to go, he would. He was still here.
Morning light came through the windows slow and deliberate, taking time to be gentle.
Ellis was still there. That was the first thing I registered when I woke up.
His presence. The solid weight of him. The way the light hit his profile, and he looked younger than he had the day before, like sleep had been something he needed, like coming back to me had been exhausting and his body was collecting the debt.
I didn’t move. I watched him. His eyelashes created shadows on his cheeks.
His mouth sat slightly open. His hand had found my hip even in sleep, gripping like his body knew better than to let go.
Some part of him, the part that lived below conscious thought, still sat terrified I’d disappear if he relaxed his hold.
I lay there and breathed him in. Under the detergent was his skin. Warm and close and real. I dragged my fingertips across his shoulder blade, feather-light. He made a small, waking sound and pushed closer.
“Still want me?” I whispered. Vulnerable in a way I hadn’t let myself be vulnerable since the beginning.
He didn’t answer right away. Eyes stayed closed.
His hand tightened on my hip. He shifted closer, pulled me into him, breathed me in as if that was answer enough.
His legs tangled with mine. His forehead found the space between my shoulder and my neck.
His whole body molded into mine, trying to become something we shared.
It was answer enough.
His morning cock pressed warm against my thigh. I let my hand skim down his back, slow, mapping the familiar dips and ridges. He hummed. His mouth found my collarbone, lazily. Not urgent. Just certain.
“Mm.”
“Mm,” I echoed.
Brooklyn moved outside the window. The city did its Sunday morning thing.
Traffic. Sirens. The ambient thrum of millions of people existing in proximity to each other.
Somewhere out there, my mom was doing whatever she did on Sunday mornings.
Living a life that didn’t include me. A life that had been cleaner, simpler, less complicated since she decided I was too much of a contradiction to hold.
But Ellis was here. Real and warm and actual against me. His breathing uneven because he wasn’t quite awake but wasn’t quite asleep either, existing in that in-between space where you didn’t have to perform wakefulness yet.
I could’ve woken him properly. Talked about the future. Made plans. Made coffee. Done any of the practical things you were supposed to do after a pause like ours ended. Instead, I stayed in that moment, in that bed, with that person, his hand on my hip and his breath on my neck.
Ellis stirred. His eyes opened. He looked at me, half expecting me to disappear, the past three weeks having trained him into believing in impermanence.
“Hi.” His voice came rough with sleep.
“Hi.”
He reached up and touched my face, checking that it was real, to verify last night hadn’t been something he’d dreamed in a moment of weakness.
“You’re real. You stayed.”
“Always.”
He pulled me closer. We just lay there in the morning light, not moving, not talking, not needing anything but that.
The coffee could wait. The plants could wait.
The city could wait. The world could wait.
For now, we were there, choosing each other in the morning when it would’ve been easy to leave.
In a small square of light and warmth, in bodies that remembered how to fit together, that was everything.