“Of what it feels like to be so deep inside of you that I never want to leave,” he spoke into my skin, his tongue caressing the soft, vulnerable flesh between my breasts.
His words set me on fire. In an almost violent movement, Maxx ripped my jeans and panties down and threw them aside. I reciprocated by doing the same to the rest of his clothing.
Soon we were naked and panting and kissing and touching every inch of each other as though we’d never have the opportunity to do so again.
Maxx fit himself between my thighs, and I felt the tip of him against me as he pressed a soft kiss to my mouth. The hot pressure teased me as I moaned loudly.
I was so close to losing my head completely. All I could think about was experiencing that perfect moment that I had only ever experienced with him. Being so close to someone that you didn’t know where you ended and the other began.
Maxx slowly started to push himself inside of me. Tentative, almost, but with careful precision.
And then, suddenly, some of the fog lifted from my lust-addled brain and I pulled my hips back slightly, stopping him.
Maxx lifted his lips from mine and looked down at me. Sweat dripped from his forehead, and his hair matted at the sides from the effort it took for him to stop.
“What is wrong?” he asked, his voice rough.
Something hit me with the force of a freight train. A realization that I had never,everthought about until just now.
“You’re not wearing a condom,” I told him, hardly able to believe that I had never, in all the times we had been together, thought to ask him to protect us. How could I have been so stupid? I knew Maxx’s history, so how had I never stopped to ensure something so vital? I had let my desire and my intense feelings for him overshadow absolutelyeverything.
Maxx pulled out of me and reached for his pants that hung halfway off the side of the bed. “You’re right, I’m not. I’m... I’m sorry,” he said, sounding contrite and almost embarrassed. His fingers were shaking as he found his wallet and produced a foil packet from the folds inside.
He sat there, staring down at the tiny square in his palm, looking strangely lost. I sat up and pulled a blanket over my chest. “I’ve never worn one with you before,” he whispered, and I could tell he was hurt and confused by my insistence that he wear one now.
I slid over until I was pressed up against him and placed my hand over the one that was holding the condom. “No, you haven’t. I never asked you to. But you and I have never even talked about past partners and whether we were clean and safe. That’s a little scary, don’t you think?” I asked.
Maxx looked up at me, his face flushed, the sweat drying on his skin. “I’m clean. I’ve never been with someone without one. I get tested regularly. I had to,” he said quietly, empathetically.
“I’m clean, too,” I said, just as quietly. “And I’m on the pill.”
Maxx nodded, chewing absently on his bottom lip. “I can’t believe we’ve never talked about this. Seems pretty fucked up, right,” he stated rather than asked.
I didn’t say anything.
Because itwasfucked up. We had been so willing to get lost in each other, even at the cost of common sense and reason.
It was a scary sort of crazy.
“I just think if we want stuff to be different this time, thenwehave to be different. And that includes things like this,” I said, lifting the wrapped condom from his palm.
“Are we trying to do it differently, then? Are you saying you’ll give me another chance to make things right with you?” Maxx asked in the barest of breaths.
I thought about what he was asking me. Whether I was willing—whether I wasable—to throw myself back into his world. Back into the messy chaos that had dominated our relationship in the past.
I knew I couldn’t.
I couldn’t be the girl living in denial. Or even worse, the girl living in a constant state of anxiousness waiting for him to fall off the cliff.
But I also knew that I didn’t have the strength to pretend that he could exist on the periphery of my life. That he wasn’t the center of it. That he wasn’t the steady, thumping pulse at the heart of who I was.
I ran trembling fingers through his hair, feeling the soft texture of his curls as they tickled my skin. “We can’t go back to who we were. Towhatwe were. But maybe... we could try to be something better,” I offered hesitantly, hardly able to believe that I was doing this.
That I was back here again. Loving him beyond sanity.
Maxx leaned into my touch, his lips curving upward into a smile that was blinding in its brilliance. “Something better,” he murmured before leaning in and kissing me softly but with more passion than any kiss I had ever experienced before.
Maxx pulled the blanket away from my chest and pulled me flush against him. Skin to skin.
