She rolls her eyes. “Based on my predecessors, there’s only one way I can procreate, and it’s not this.”
“Right, but shouldn’t we be safe?”
“Ican’tget pregnant, James.”
“But how do you know for sure if you’ve never tried?”
Nelle’s brows furrow. “Are we having sex or an interrogation? Iknowthe laws of my existence.”
“You’re right,” he says, his mountain of worry dissolving like a sandhill. “I believe you.”
He dips down, his top lip brushing hers.
“I love you,” he says.
A leg folds around his ass, nudging him in.
He hesitates, teasing her wet entrance.This, he thinks,is the right moment.
She takes him slow at first, nails digging into his neck. Further in, a whimper.
He loves her wondrous spirit. The strength she grew to survive her childhood. Her brain, how it ticks and plots and argues and wishes. How she dreams.
Their stomachs connect in a touch of hot skin. Her other knee bends around his waist, locking him to her. Nelle’s jaw gleams as her head falls back to the pillow. Her hands lock around his neck.
James knows he won’t hold out for long, so he makes his second, his third, his fourth thrust intentional and slow. He tries to ground himself in the motion of his hips, but he is already spearheading into oblivion.
Nelle rocks against him. “Faster, James.”
Sheets hiss. Throats make involuntary pleasured noises, back and forth, until they blur into one. Sea, skyline. East, west. Five seconds or an hour, he doesn’t know. But he can feel the cliffside now, edging.
“I wish,” he says, breathless, “that we could stay this close forever.”
Eyes lidded, Nelle cries out. Her calves tremble as her claws sink into James’s shoulders. Her abdomen arches up, hot against his. He slows his pace, but it’s too late. He’s already gone ...
Fireworks crackle through his body.
His brain,off. Darkness, hot pleasure, and Nelle.
Her fingers fall from his sweaty hair to his lips, lingering.
“I love you, too,” she says. The words hang, light as a glass ornament.
He slides out, utterly out of breath and amazed and in love and ready to duck between her legs and pleasure her again. His lust must read on his burning face, because Nelle’s hand tightens on his jaw.
“Can you hold me?” A tear spills down her cheek.
Hovering over her, he leans down to touch the tip of her nose with his. “Always.”
Nelle is giggling under the bedsheet with James like they are at a sleepover, flashlight holding them in a dome of light, when she hears a groan from the living room floor. Too loud to be an old-house noise. Too precise. She snaps her finger to her lips, slicing James’s whisper mid-word.
With a trembling hand, she pulls the bedsheet down. James cuts the flashlight.
In only his T-shirt, she grabs her journal and pen and slides off the mattress.
James stands, shirtless, in only his boxers. “What are you doing?”
Nelle writes for herself. “Checking on that noise.”
