I’m trembling when I feel him grip the zipper on the back of my dress, but he captures my stare. I nod in approval as he draws it from my upper back, down my spine, to the edge of my panties. I feel him skate his fingertips back up the sides ofmy arms and stop as his right hand slinks beneath the strap of shimmering fabric, dropping it down my side.
The dress falls in a heap at my feet.
A puff of an exhale escapes his lips as he gazes down at my bare chest. “You are so beautiful.”
His eyes lift to meet mine again. “You always have been. The brightest light in my orbit, Teddy. The only thing that I see.”
I blush and bite my lip to keep from grinning. I reach for the buttons on his shirt next, undoing them one at a time. Slipping my hands beneath the fabric and running my fingers over the hard ridges of his chest, he shudders.
There were so many times I wanted to this, to touch him when his shirt wasn’t on. Now, I get to, and it all feels like a dream I don’t want to ever wake up from.
I rest my hands over his heart, feeling its steady beat, and a part of me wants them to stay like that. They belong there. But an even bigger part of me wants his shirt to meet my dress on the floor.
I take my time working it over his shoulders, feeling the places where his hard lines meet his soft ones. He unfastens the button on his pants, then slides down the zipper, the sound filling the tight space. When we’re both left in nothing but our underwear, he guides me by the small of my back to the edge of the bunkbed and lays me on top of it with enough room so he can fit beside me.
“Tell me this is real,” he says. “Tell me I’m gonna wake up tomorrow, and you’re still gonna be here.” His desperate eyes search my face.
“I’m here,” I say, covering his heart with the palm of my hand again so he’ll feel it,believeit. “I’ll always be here.”
I feel his touch lower from the place where it seared my neck, down my chest, until he’s cupping one of my breasts in the palm of his hand. His mouth replaces it, and I forget to breathe. Heworks my underwear down my legs, pulling them free, before I reach for his. I get them halfway down his thighs before he works them the rest of the way. As we explore each other with nothing left separating us, a mountain of sensations crest and fall over and over again.
I don’t hear the condom wrapper tearing or see when he slides it on. I just feel him push inside of me. It burns at first, and he stops when I stiffen.
“Are you okay? I don’t know what I’m doing.”
His voice is quivering.
“You don’t?”
“Of course not. It’s always been you for me,” he says.
Searching beyond the chocolate brown of his eyes, I find the reason it’s always beenhimforme. It’s taken loving more than one person in my life for me to know that when you give your heart to someone and put their needs above your own, it comes at a risk of losing a part of yourself. The part that serves to protect who you are at your core.
But with Miles, I don’t lose myself in him at all, I findme. I find my reason to live. I find where I belong.
I pull him in to kiss me, and he groans when he pushes inside of me a second time. This time it doesn’t hurt as much. We fumble through awkward positioning and clumsy movements, but we never stop. Neither one of us slows down for a single second. We dive headfirst into the most intimate moment you can share with another person, and I discover I was wrong before. No amount of thrill-seeking can ever compare to this.
Loving him sets me free.
A beam of golden light shining through the glass doors wakes me. Sprawled out on my stomach with my arms stretched like a starfish, I lift my head.
I scrub my eyes as the bunkhouse walls drift into focus, along with the memories of last night… the gentle hands that caressed every part of me, the strangled sound of Miles’s voice as he told me how beautiful I was.
I remembered him.
I melt back into the sheets in a happy yawn until my hand feels nothing but the empty pillow next to me, and I shoot up. Without the sheets pressed to my ear, a muffled call echoes from outside.
“Teddy? Teddy?”
My parents!
I wrench my dress from the floor, shimmying it up my waist and over my shoulder. In one swift movement, I zip up the back and barrel out of the sliding glass door. I shield my eyes with my arm, scanning the yard.
Miles’s truck is gone.
“Teddy? Teddy?” my parents call again.
I leap over my abandoned shoes in the grass and bound up the cabin steps.
