But the moment I look into his eyes in the shadows, there is no choice at all.
“Tell me to stop,” I demand. “At any point.”
He smiles. His skin is all gilded in the lighting and his black hair is half falling over his shoulder where he’s bent towards me and he’s unutterably, diabolically beautiful.
“I know,” he whispers. He pulls at my collar. “Right now, I don’t want you to stop.”
I whimper, a cavalcade of falling apart, and my hand slips beneath his shirt as I scoop him up, maneuvering us so we’re lying on the pillows. His hips curve into me with the pull of my hand on his lower back and I try to relax my fingers but I am all stiffness helplessly bound to disbelief, how did I get this lucky, how is this man unfurling his body for me.
“Keep talking to me,” he whispers.
My mouth is dry. “I’m going to take off your shirt.”
He nods. A frantic bob against the pillow.
My fingers fumble the buttons, but I work my way down, bowed over him with my thighs on either side of his. The last button slips free and he sits up, lets me guide both his vest and shirt down his arms, off. And my god, this would be enough. Just to see him half bare like this, ripples and rises of smooth, pale skin, it might need to be enough, it might be too much.
He kisses me. Rocks up against my body and his fingers work at the buttons on my shirt just as clumsily. It’s a small comfort knowing he’s shaking too. We’re falling apart together—that word binds us, holds my vibrating pieces into one cracked whole.
I tug my shirt off and wrap my arms around him, holding him to me, skin on skin on heat on shivers. My fingers climb and descend the mountain range of his spine, his long hair tickling my cheek as I lick the contours of his shoulder, all lean, ropey muscle, collarbone protruding when he tips his head back and gives himself over to my exploration with a contented moan.
Every moment of touching him has left me rattled like I don’t know what I’m doing, but no one else mattered before him, no one else could have prepared me for him. There is power, such power inherent in desire, and in this moment, I’m playing out the creation of a whole new origin story with him. It’s so easy to create gods or monuments of importance or cruxes of joy, and I’ve done that for him now, I am his most fervent steward. But he looks at me like he’s created a god of me too, and that’s the clash I can feel buildingup around us, isn’t it? What happens when two monuments fall together. What’s left behind after the impact.
“I want to taste you,” I whisper into the curve of his neck.
“Where?”
Draw me that map again. Take me beyond the edges. And then, and then, and then—
“Everywhere.”
He nods, brows in a deep furrow, eyes shut, lips parted a slit to let his shuddering breath through.
I press him back against the bed and work my lips down his collarbone, to the plane of his chest. The low prismatic light paints him red and gold as I lick around one nipple, and he fists the comforter with a sharp inhale. I move over, repeat the motion, and he bears down more and I’m an earthquake in human skin.
My fingers go to the fasten of his jeans. I rest my open mouth against his stomach, inhaling the rise and fall of his quaking breath. Sugary citrus, spice, the musk of sweat—I pull at the button, free it.
“I’m going to take off your pants,” I say, and he’s looking down at me already, black hair splayed on the pillow.
I should be saying more. Waxing on about what he’s doing to me, but all I can manage are these sharp, instructive warnings, and it sets a mood over us of intimate focus.
He shifts up and helps me work off his boots, socks, pants, boxers, until he’s naked in my bed.
He’s naked in my bed.
I dive back down over him, not giving myself a moment to come undone. I start all over again. I have to. Collarbone, lips there, hand on his pec, tracing lines; he shivers, I work lower. Nipple, one, then the other, he comes off the bed with a moan. Lower, the taste of salt and the smell of sugared oranges on his stomach. I pause at his navel and lick and kiss until he’s wriggling and he hisses something that sounds like “Ticklish,” and I smile against his skin.
Lower, hair leading in a trail down, down, leaving kisses like offerings.
I run a hand across his thigh, lift his leg so it bends, and put akiss on the inside of his knee. He trembles, and I reel, giving myself a beat to feel his subtle reactions, controlled slips because he’s still holding himself taut.
Another kiss, the inside of his thigh, skin getting progressively softer against the violent tension winding through my body, his body too, concrete and glass.
“I’m going to—” I can’t find words. There aren’t any. All the constant nonsense I spew, and in this moment, the only thing I have to give him is minimalism in its rawest form. Just me.
But he shudders out, “Yes,” and then, “Please,” and that might be better than all the whines and cries I’ve heard so far.Please,a groping word.
I take him into my mouth. Slowly, to savor it, and because finally, finally, he breaks with a swerving moan that rises from the deepest part of his chest and ends on a quake-like wail, his hands grasping up into his own hair.
