He was only wearing a t-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts, and it was easy to pull down the elastic and take him in my hand. Squeezing him, I asked, “This much?”
He groaned, baring his throat at the ceiling. “More.”
I stroked him harder, and he fell back on the rug, breathing fast, his hips lifting to my touch.
“How about this much?”
“More,” he repeated, ecstatic, on the verge of release already.
Then before I could stop myself, I whispered, “What if something happens?”
Slowly, as if it required great physical effort, he rose to his elbows and looked at me. “Nothing will happen.”
I moved over him, covering his body with mine, my hand still between us, touching him. “What if I forget again?”
With an arm around my waist, he pulled me down next to him before rolling on top of me and pinning me to the floor, his hips pressing between my thighs, the tip of his cock resting under the hollow of my navel.
“Then I’ll remind you,” he said, lowering his mouth to my collarbone. “Again and again I’ll remind you.”
A hot, raw pressure built inside my throat, like wanting to cry, to scream, to articulate something inarticulable. There were no words to define all that he was to me, how he made me feel about myself, about the world, about my place in it. And so I uttered the closest thing there was. “I think I love you.”
Again he gazed at me, eyes dark and steady. “I’m certain I love you,” he said, and when he pulled my underwear aside and touched me, I cried out and told him we’re insane.
“We can’t be in love already.”
“No?” he hummed against my mouth, his fingers inside me moving so fast I could not only feel but also hear how wet he was making me. “Tell me who knows you better than I do.”
“Kai—”
“Tell me.”
“No one,” I breathed out, a pure, accepting feeling flooding my body. Every time he touched me was like that, so intimate I could almost recall everything that was lost from me.
Panting now, shaking with need, he asked me again, “Who else can make you feel like this?”
“No one,” I repeated faithfully and felt his other hand come around my throat, possessive, his thumb flicking up my jawbone.
With a low, ragged moan, he buried his face in my neck, his lips hot, confessing, “I’m only like this when I’m with you.”
“I know,” I whispered, because I did. Because our way of knowing and understanding each other entered a space beyond language and common sense.
Some nights, he let me do whatever I wanted with him, lying back on the bed while I sat on top of him, my hands on his chest or on the headboard if I was moving really fast. And if I told him how much I liked having him like this, I could make him come in a matter of moments, which made him feel embarrassed and me very powerful. Like all the times he dragged me to the edge of the bed, got down on his knees, and buried his face between my thighs. More than the act itself, more than the sensations of his mouth and tongue and his soft hair between my fingers, it was the idea of me being so comfortable and euphoric up on the bed while he was on his knees on the hard floor doing everything he could to pleasure me that brought me the greatest satisfaction.
Other times, he was the one with all the power, making me take it, making me tell him how much I liked it when he was like this with me. He would be kissing my neck, already panting after a few thrusts inside me, and then rasp in my ear,“I want to feel you deeper. Is that okay?” And I would always mumble, “Yes. Please, yes,”and he would turn me on my stomach and raise my hips the way he liked so that my knees were up against the mattress but not my hands. Then he would curl his fingers into my hair and stretch back my neck, my throat coming flush with the pillow in a way that made it hard to breathe, which gave me an intense, out-of-body sense and made me come within seconds.
I realized that the level of satisfaction you experienced during sex was inextricably correlated with the amount of power you were willing to give to the other person. And the way they handled this exchange told you everything you needed to know about them and the quality of the relationship you were building with them.
These were the moments Kai was most revealed to me, when he was too vulnerable for self-consciousness. In the pure honesty of his desires.
One night, with his face and neck still flushed from the things we’d done, he held me very close to him and asked, “Are you okay? Was that alright?”
“It was perfect,” I told him because it was, because he always asked for permission before doing something even if we’d done it before, because he always talked me through it, because there was no amount of passion that could erase his underlying tenderness. Because he was Kai.
“I really like that hair thing you do,” I admitted bashfully, my face half-buried in his shoulder.
“I know.”
“Oh, do you?”
