“Max.” I breathe his name more than say it, arching up off the couch like something’s shot through my spine. Electric. The pleasure of the act, both the simple fact that he’s doing it, and also that he’s doing itso well,ricochets through my body, making me laugh, then sob, then clamp my legs on either side of his head.
“Tell me what you like,” he says, his lips brushing over my clit, and I barely stop myself from saying something cliche like,you.
“I want you inside me,” I plead, thinking I should be embarrassed about being so direct, but not finding it within me. All I can focus on is the desire.
Max laughs, and I feel the breath of it against my core, which makes me whine again.
“Don’t worry,” he says, a dark tone to his voice. “I’m getting there. But first…” Gently, he eases a knuckle into my opening, pressing his lips to my clit for a second before saying, “Tell me what you like.”
I’m two seconds from coming apart already, just from the delicious, stretching pressure of his fingers, and the whispered promise of what he’s going to do with his mouth.
But, instead of telling him that, I manage, barely, to whisper, “Okay.”
With my hesitant coaching —faster, harder, there, just like that —Max brings me to the very edge with his mouth and fingers, then draws out the moment for as long as he can, pulling back each time I think I’m close, so I laugh and sob, gripping onto the couch and begging him to let me come.
“I like it when you say please,” he murmurs, his lips against the inside of my thigh, and it’s that — even without his tongue on my clit — that makes me come, hard and fast, body jerking around the stretch of his fingers.
I’m still quaking from the orgasm when Max’s hands find my hips, turning me, adjusting our bodies so I’m kneeling over the arm of the couch, my ass in his hands. He lets out a low noise, then, just loud enough that I can hear him, “This okay?”
I nod. “Yes. I’m— I’m on birth control.”
“I’m going to fuck you now, Lacey,” he says, his hands tightening on my hips like a punctuation mark. I rock back against him, heart in my throat, mind and body clouded in a haze of tangled desire.
“Please,” I choke out, and Max delivers exactly what I ask for.
I wakeup slowly the next morning, immediately aware of the fact that it’s Max with his arms around me, his breath in my hair, his nose nuzzling at the nape of my neck. We’re in my bed — one of the guest beds, really — curled together like we could be washed out to sea and want to make sure we aren’t separated when the water comes.
There have been times in my life that I woke up not knowing quite where I was, opening my eyes, trying to orient my body with reality. Especially when traveling for work. But now is not one of those times — throughout the night, I’d wake slightly when he moved to get closer, his hands anchoring on my hips and pulling me in tight.
I’ve been aware of him the entire time.
He doesn’t talk in his sleep, but he murmurs, and the sound of it was almost soothing, a gentle, low sound reverberating through my skull. Especially when he pressed his lips to the top of my spine, his hands skirting over the curve of my waist like the gentle, fluttering movement you do when you find something special and you’re not quite sure if you should touch it.
“Good morning,” he murmurs, and I can’t stop a smile from spreading over my face as I blink against the early morning sun, flooding in through the blinds.
“Good morning,” I return, twisting in his arms to face him, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Back in San Francisco, when I went on dates — when I slept with men — more than once, I woke up in a situation like this, either the one trying to sneak out or the one being snuck out on.
But when I face Max and take in his expression, it’s clear that he’s content being right where he is. He smiles sleepily down atme, lines on his face from the pillow, and I run my fingers over his beard, up into his hair, remembering how I tugged on it the night before.
“What’s this from?” I ask, tapping the thin white scar over his left eye. It’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask since I first noticed it days ago, and now the curiosity has slipped out.
Some of the heat dies in his expression, and once again, I’m the subject of that searching gaze, like he’s assessing me for something, and I don’t even know what I’m being tested on.
My hair is probably crazy right now. I haven’t brushed it since we were together last night and didn’t put it up to sleep. I surely have morning breath and could use a quick rinse, and for a brief, fleeting second, I wish I’d slipped out to freshen up before snuggling in close to him again.
Then, he says, “I was in a car accident. When I was a kid.”
I realize the thing he was searching for had nothing to do with appearance or smell. It had to do with trusting me — whether or not to share this thing with me.
And, apparently, he’s decided that he can.
“It was a head-on collision on the highway,” he says, lowering his voice. “I was ten when it happened. Both of my parents died, and I was trapped in the car for over two hours while they tried to get me out. A couple of live electrical wires had collapsed on our sedan.”
I’m holding my breath, and I try to let it go, alternating between feeling like I need to make eye contact with him and not wanting him to feel too much pressure.
This explains a lot. The nervousness about road safety. His insistence on the roads being dangerous at night. Not only did he go through a terrible experience, but he lost both of his parents in it, too.
