“I like looking at you.”He stares, running his fingers gently over me.“I’ve dreamed this a million times, but I never capturedyou.You’re art, Venus.Fucking beautiful.Always have been, but now it’s… it’s…”
“Real,” I finish, breathless and teary again.
“Real.”He agrees, but our smiles dip simultaneously.Real, but temporary.Only temporary.
He takes my hand and brings it to his face, kissing my fingers one by one around my rings.He thumbs over the mood ring he gave me, and I wonder if he remembers it.He slips my bracelets off, setting them aside, and kisses the underside of my wrist.Softly, sweetly, teasingly, he moves along my arm.Then, he exchanges it for the other and does the same.
With my bracelets and his glasses on the bedside table, he returns to me, kissing my lips and nibbling my chin as he moves down the length of me.He watches me as he explores, lips, tongue, teeth, and I’m swept into the past again, memories that always make me smile whenever I latch onto them.
The first time I tapped on his bedroom window and the relief when he let me in.
In high school, when he pulled me behind the stacks in the library and kissed me against the sad romance section until we accidentally knocked over an entire row.“They’re just jealous of us,”he said, smiling, as we set them right again.And I laughed because books don’t get jealous, but it was a cute retort.
That night on the Jeep’s tailgate, when we watched the most mesmerizing sunset between talk of engineering and environmental impacts.His anxiety over asking me to the prom was endearing, until those nerves transferred to me.Normal couple things.Normal seemed an impossible feat—for me, nothing had been.Not my family.Not my education.Not even us.Normalcouldn’t exist for us, not the way he wanted or deserved.Thatnight proved it.
Come back to me, Venus.Be with me.Here.Now.
His lips trail across my stomach.His beard tickles my skin, and a moan escapes as his hands grip my thighs, forcefully pulling me to his mouth.I cry out, “Henry,” when his tongue circles the same place he left his fingerprint.
“Be as loud as you want.It’s just us here,” he whispers, his breath hitting my clit enough to make me moan again.My back arches as arrows of delight seem to shoot from his hot tongue through the rest of me, hitting me in the loveliest places—the small of my back, the hollow of my throat, the tips of my toes, and the length of my spine.
But then, he stops.“I want to see you better.”
He repositions us with me on top, my hands tight around the slats of the headboard, his face under me.Watching me.As I arch and writhe, and he undoes me all over again.The last orgasm was good—this is better.Stronger.Closer.Heart-stopping.Brain-rewiring.Muscle-memory reshaping around it.I won’t be the same again.
I’m still trembling and calling out his name when he eases out from under me and says, “I love watching you come.God, I wish we could’ve done this all along.”
Sadness swoops in again, but I shove it away.Not now.My hand goes to his rough cheek.“I need you inside me.”
“Fuck, please,” he says, leaning away to reach his bedside table, presumably for a condom.
I pull him back to me, draping my leg over his hip to hold him close.“Henry, wait.I want you bare… if you’re comfortable with it.I haven’t been with anyone since my last check, have an IUD, and I’ve never gone without a condom before.”
He smirks, pushing hair away from my eyes.“I haven’t been with anyone since I was last checked, either… If you’re sure.”
“Yes.”I take his bottom lip in mine, sucking it gently.“Only with you.”
“Only with you,” he repeats, kissing me.“Nothing between us.”
A moment later, we both cry out when he pushes into me.The remnants of my dying orgasm flare again with his thrust, like when we billowed hot embers to reignite our campfires back then—steady, strong breaths making it hotter and hotter.I lean up, kissing his chest from underneath him, and hear a gentle wheeze behind his quickening breaths.Worry spikes in me, but I don’t want to draw attention to it.
“Henry, trade places with me,” I say, and he readily agrees.
He rests against the headboard while I climb on top of him.I ride him deeply, but slowly, as he watches, his side-smile etched on his cheek.He grabs my thighs, guiding me, but when he sees that I’m doing fine on my own, his hands roam softly over my back, through my hair, across my chest, and then slide down my arms.His fingers intertwine with mine, locking us together.
“You feel so good, Venus,” he says, breathless but no longer wheezing.“This is what I’ve always wanted.You and me, like this.”
“Exactly like this.”I battle the fresh tears cresting in my eyes.I want to tell him that I still love him, to cry over how good it is and how much I’ve missed him, to trap him inside me and never let go.
Instead, I hold his hands tightly, smile easily, and bring him in deeply until we both cry out.A hard pulse and a desperate moan from him, and I see it on his face, his exquisite pleasure.His eyes stay open, fixed on mine, as I come again, and he finishes with me.
I smile as he bites his bottom lip and relaxes inside me.“I love watchingyoucome.”
He growls and laughs, leaning up to kiss my nipple and tug me close.“Ah, that was… so fucking good.”
With his head against my chest, I wrap my arms around his shoulders and rake a hand through his soft hair.I feel his heavy breaths on my skin as he tries to settle down.
“Let me get your inhaler.”
