But the noise of the ripping of a condom packet cuts through my haze of pleasure.
I turn my head to look at Jared, who’s flushed and breathing hard. His dark hair falls across his forehead in that way that makes him look younger and softer.
“Do you…? I mean, we don’t really need to use a condom, do we?” My voice sounds breathless and hopeful and more vulnerable than I want.
My heart thuds in my ears as I wait for his reaction.
Jared and I both got tested when we started hooking up, and we’re both on PrEP. We’ve never talked about exclusivity, though, because that’s not a friends-with-benefits thing. But I’m almost certain he’s not been hooking up with anyone else. He spends nearly every moment he’s not working either with Emmy and Sophie or me.
He just stares at me for a few seconds, and I’m about to take it back, make a joke about safety first, when he finally speaks.
“No, we don’t need to use a condom.”
I’ve never been in an actual relationship where I trusted someone enough to skip the latex layer, and I’ve definitely never had a friends-with-benefits situation where I would contemplate suggesting it.
But I trust Jared implicitly.
He drops the condom on the bench, and then he’s suddenly turning me around for messy kisses that are all teeth and tongues and the kind of hunger that makes my knees weak.
I wrench my mouth away from his.
“I need you,” I pant.
“You’ve got me,” he says.
And I’ve never believed it more as he spins me around, pressing me against the counter with his whole body, like he needs every possible point of contact between us.
His body brackets mine as he pushes inside me, slowly, and I have to grip the counter because feeling him like this—nothing between us, just skin and heat and trust—is almost too real.
“Oh my god, that feels…” His forehead rests on my back, and he doesn’t finish the sentence, but he doesn’t need to. I can feel him trembling, trying to stay still, to give me time to adjust, even though I can tell it’s killing him.
“Yeah,” I moan because single-syllable words are probably the extent of my vocabulary right now.
I push back against him, letting him know that I need him to move before I lose my mind.
There’s nothing else in the world that feels like this. Nothing like feeling Jared’s body blanketing me, inside me, with nothing between us.
The physical sensations don’t feel that much different to me than with a condom, but the intimacy of it makes my chest so tight I can barely breathe.
From Jared’s groaning —a deep, guttural thing that rumbles through his chest and into my back—I can tell he’s barely holding it together.
And that turns me on more than anything.
But he’s still focused on me, still the person who has taken the time to learn my body completely, to learn that hitting myprostate at the right angle while his hand is wrapped around my cock will turn me into a trembling mess.
Who knows me well enough to know that when I tilt my hips and push back like that, I want it rougher and harder and faster.
Who knows that when my breath hitches and I make a particular whimpering sound, bringing a hand up to tweak my nipple is what will send me over the edge.
My orgasm crashes over me in waves, each one pulling me deeper until I’m drowning in sensation.
Jared gives another few thrusts, and then I feel his body tense as he spills inside me.
His chest is heaving against my back, his arms wrapped around me.
I can feel him everywhere, inside me, around me, his breath warm against my neck, his heartbeat thundering against my spine. It’s like I’ve been claimed in the best way possible.
“You are the most beautiful man I’ve ever met,” he whispers in my ear.
