When he drops down to his knees, my breathing goes thick and slow. He skims his thumb across my freshly painted toenails.
“Red,” he says. Like he is cataloging every detail.
He grazes a kiss against my pinkie toe, then climbs up my body. He hooks his fingers around my underwear, fisting the fabric before pulling them down. He runs his hands along the backs of my legs and props my feet on the bed, my knees bent.
And then I am bared, split open in front of him. He lets out a littlehmsound, and his hand kneads the back of his neck. His pause is just long enough that I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking. But then he drops his head and presses a kiss to my inner knee, another on my thigh, and the pulse between my legs intensifies with each touch of his wet mouth against my skin.
Our eyes meet, and any kernel of insecurity dissipates when I see the sincerity in his face, his jaw tensing.
“I’ve wanted you for so long.” His voice comes out with a serrated edge.
“Me too.”
“I want you again, Lili. All of you.”
And then he dips his head and tastes me, with the kind of single-minded focus that threatens to tear me apart. My feet press against his shoulders, and my heels dig into the soft material of his shirt as my eyes flutter closed, every ounce of my attention zeroed in on where his tongue laps at me, where his fingers begin to move inside of me. I open my eyes long enough to see that he’s palming his cock through his jeans, and the fact that he’s hard from this, from the taste of me, is too much for me to bear. My orgasm rushes out of me, like it was hovering too close to the surface. I go lightheaded as the shock waves subside, and I need him on me, against me, in me. To ground me. To bring me back to us and keep me there.
I claw at the back of his head, tugging him up to meet me. He presses himself entirely against me, our torsos lining up. Still fully clothed, he bucks against my pulsing core, and with the friction, the weight of him, the desperation in his expression... I’m so close to coming again. If he grinds against me one more time, I will.
“I need to be inside you,” he says into my mouth.
“I have never needed anything more in my life.”
I feel his laugh vibrate against my chest. Quickly, he scrambles out of his pants, I slide off his shirt, and then I lie back again. I reach into the space between us to strokehis hard cock once, twice, and he lets out a deep, strangled groan. Before I can guide him into me, he shifts back onto his heels, bracketing my ribs with his hands.
“Are you... can we do it this way?”
“I’m honestly not sure. The joys of perimenopause.”
Reid drops a kiss on my temple. “Give me a second.” He retrieves a condom from the minibar. He smirks. “When I saw these in there, I actually laughed out loud.”
When he positions himself over me again, it’s as though the anticipation has had a chance to redouble.
“OK, I... fuck,” he breathes.
“I know.” I lift my head to catch his lip between my teeth and draw him down to meet my mouth. I taste myself, mixed with bourbon and mint, on his tongue. I taste everything he’s trying to say but can’t seem to find the words for: The loneliness, the longing, the years of wondering. The relief. The pure, unadulterated joy.
Then he rests his forehead against mine and moves into me with a single, perfect thrust. There is a finality to the fit of him. This, us, is inevitable. Nothing about how it feels for us to join is surprising—we have been together before—yet somehow, it’s still exactly the same and so, so much more. I grasp my hands on either side of his jaw and tilt his head to make eye contact with me, silently seeking verification that he is as dumbstruck as I am by this moment, by the implausible familiarity and intensity of it. His small, silent nod is my answer.
Reid grips the undersides of my thighs, pulling me wider as he moves steadily inside me. My hands explorethe surprisingly soft skin of his back, relishing the power of his movements. The ache builds and expands inside me, scrabbling for release. I press my mouth into his neck, taking his sweat onto my tongue. His thumb drops between us to my clit.
“I think I’m going to come again,” I hear myself sob into his skin. For some reason, I feel like I need his permission to let go this time.
With one hand, he holds the side of my face, coaxing it away from his neck so he can look at me. He keeps a light hold of my chin with his forefinger and thumb, keeping my gaze fixed on him. His movement slows.
“Yes, baby,” he says, with a brutally slow thrust. He slips his thumb into my mouth. “I want you to come for me.”
He picks up a steady pace. My thighs squeeze around him, and my back arches against the bed. My vision goes white, and I break apart underneath him, completely overcome with the fact that this is him, this is Reid. My dream boy.
And from the way his gaze searches for me, I sense he’s thinking the same thing. In the intensity of the moment, this shattering of the timeline between the past and the present—and between now and a murky, unknowable future—I feel that fearless part of myself threaten to close down again.
I hold his face in my hands and try to wrench myself back open, to stay in the present. I am exquisitely, painfully aware of all my warring emotions as Reid comes inside of me with a few final thrusts. He collapses into me and hishands tangle in my hair, his fingers playing against my scalp in gentle, subduing strokes. When our breaths begin to slow, he peels himself off me and props himself up on his forearms. His gaze is clear and bright and steadfast against mine.
“Hi,” he says.
My chest floods with warmth, but that tiny, warning voice that retreated when Reid opened the door for me rears back into my head.
This is a fiction, it says.This cannot last.
