Heaving, I closed my eyes, letting myself feel Oliver everywhere he touched and every piece of skin he freed as he continued to another part that yearned for his touch.
My hands were holding his neck, raking in his hair as I felt him sliding to his knees, his arms wrapping around my waist, his mouth now at level with my stomach, kissing, licking, grazing his teeth over my untucked flesh. I arched my back, knowing where he was heading next.
I had been pulsating from the moment I first allowed my tongue to taste his skin out there in the garden, and that had become an excruciating throb the more clothes he removed from me, the more his hands and mouth reached, and now I was about to lose it.
A gasp left my throat as Oliver grasped my thighs and pushed them farther apart, his mouth trailing to my lower belly. With my fingers clutching his hair, I pushed him farther down, feeling his breath right where I needed his tongue.
My head was thrown back, my eyes closed in ecstasy, as if he were already doing what I had incoherently begged him to do, with the only word recognizable being, “Please.”
But then his palm closed on my shoulder, his thumb on the dip in my throat, forcing me to straighten up.
“Open your eyes,” he graveled.
I opened my eyes and slowly bent my head to look down at Oliver between my legs.
“I want you to watch.”
I thought I knew Oliver. He had been commanding back then, too—untie your hair,open your eyes,look at me—but I didn’t know this one. He was right. I didn’t know him.
But,God, I wantedthisOliver, too. The Oliver who had twenty years of life experience gained since he’d been inside me, and sixteen years since he had asked me to leave with him. My heart pounded, and the throb between my legs ached.
“I’m watching,” I managed to exhale. I wanted this unfamiliar Oliver who didn’t break eye contact to do what I had asked the familiar one to do—fuck everything out of me.
Without taking his eyes off me, Oliver angled his face so that his eyes were still on me, even with my breasts and belly in the way, and his open, hot mouth covered my core.
I could see my own chest rising and falling under my labored breathing.
With his mouth on me and his eyes still holding mine, Oliver grazed his tongue, slowly first, from my apex all the way down, then up again, and down, licking and sucking and increasing the pace until I moaned so hard, I felt lightheaded. He was right again, because watching him do that, and watching him watch me while he did, was killing me, and the only thing that now stopped me from falling back was his iron grasp on my clavicle and the need to hold on to his gaze. Within moments, he brought me so high that I called out something that might have been God’s name.
“Oliver,” I moaned as I began shattering against his mouth, clamping around his tongue that had penetrated me.
And just as suddenly, Oliver pulled himself up. With one hand, he freed himself from his briefs, circled his other arm around my back for support, and pushed into my fluttering walls.
His palm groping my breast, his cheek against mine, his lips at my ear, Oliver groaned as he pummeled into me. “I need to be inside you when you come. Now come hard for me again, January.”
He smelled of me. He drowned in me. And I could tell he needed it just as much as I did. He was no longer out of reach or unfamiliar. He was the Oliver who knew me, who gave me what I needed, what I craved, who absorbed my waves of pain, rage, and pleasure like the shore I needed to crash against.
With one hand I gripped the edge of the table and with the other Oliver’s back as he continued to thrust deep into me, until I did as he asked. I came hard, my arms clasping his neck, my lips rolling his name over and over into his ear. I felt him spilling himself inside me.
The small space of the pool house was filled with our uneven breaths. Even moments after, we were rocking slightly, trying to gain our breaths, holding each other, Oliver’s head resting against mine.
When he took a step back, I remained with my eyes closed. I didn’t want this moment to end and for the world to resume turning on its axis. I opened them when I felt Oliver’s hands on me again. His jeans were back up though open. He enveloped me in his arms, lifted me as if I didn’t weigh what I knew I weighed, and walked with me in his arms to the bedroom.
He put me on the bed, straightened up and, hesitating, remained to stand. His bare chest glimmered like warm whiskey in the light that flowed in from the garden and into the darkened room.
“Take those off,” I said, limply pointing at his open jeans.
“January.”
“I don’t want to talk, Oliver. Not tonight. I just needed you to fuck me, and I might need you to do it again.” Oh, the liberty to say what I wanted. I never had that with any man.
I saw the twitch in his jaw, the tensed way it pulled even the corded tendons in his neck. I knew what was coursing inside him now—fight or flight. I might have given up the fight tonight, but while he had given me what I needed, he still gave a duck.
I still didn’t.
Wetting his lips, Oliver sat on the bed, then slowly, as if he was handling an explosive, lay himself next to me, still in his jeans.
“Kiss me, Oliver,” I half-whispered.
