I pull back, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and look up at her.
She's wrecked. Hair everywhere, chest heaving, eyes glazed.
She looks at me like I just dismantled her piece by piece, and I haven't even started.
"Get up here," she says. Her voice is ruined.
I strip off my jeans.
She watches me and her eyes go dark, and the way she looks at me makes every rational thought I have left evaporate.
I grab a condom from the nightstand drawer—still there from before, and I'm not going to examine the expiration date right now because some things are better left unquestioned—and she takes it from my hand.
"Let me."
She rolls it on slowly. Deliberately. Watching my face the whole time, and the control it takes not to lose it right there is borderline superhuman.
I lower myself over her.
Forearms on either side of her head, my body aligned with hers, skin to skin for the first time.
She wraps her legs around me, pulls me closer, and I press my forehead against hers.
"Leah."
"I'm here."
"I haven't— it's been?—"
"I know." She cups my face with both hands. "I know. Me too."
I push into her slowly. Inch by inch. Watching her face, reading every micro-expression the way I read every room I walk into—looking for pain, for hesitation, for anything that says stop.
I don't find any of it.
What I find is her eyes going wide, half-closing, then falling shut completely as she exhales and tilts her hips to take me deeper.
"Oh—" she breathes. "Oh, that's?—"
"Yeah," I manage. "It is."
She's tight, warm, and perfect. Every nerve in my body is firing at once. I can’t believe this is real. I can’t believe this woman is in my bed, under me, around me, making these sounds, looking at me like this.
I start to move. Slow at first—long, deep strokes that let me feel every inch of her.
She meets me thrust for thrust, her hips rising to match my rhythm, her hands running down my back and gripping when I hit the right angle.
I find it. That angle, the one that makes her nails dig into my shoulders and her mouth fall open, and I stay there.
Consistent. Deliberate. Because that's who I am, and if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right.
"Harder," she whispers. "Coin—please?—"
I give her what she's asking for.
Harder. Deeper.
The headboard taps the wall and I don't care.
