‘Shit. Do you really want my cum all over you?’
‘Yes… yes!’ she pants, gaze locked on mine, glassy and wild. ‘Please.’
The drawn-out please destroys me.
The base of my spine catches fire. My balls tighten, and my orgasm builds behind my navel. One more stroke and I fracture. I spill hot and white across her stomach in thick, pulsing streaks. My whole body jerks into each one. She doesn’t look away. She watches it happen, watches me happen, as the aftershocks rack my body.
‘Oh my god.’ Her voice is barely there. ‘Scottie…’
I collapse and bury my face in the curve of her shoulder, breathing her in while my heart pistons against my ribs.
‘Jesus suffering Christ,’ I breathe.
‘Yeah.’ She strokes my hair. ‘We’re good at sex.’
‘So good it’s scary.’
She kisses my temple. ‘Not with you, it isn’t.’
Seriously, I don’t deserve this woman.
My body is trying to reassemble itself around the shape of what happened, and my pieces don’t fit the same way they did before. Something has shifted. Something load-bearing. I’m trained for impact. For the collision, the sprint. The aftermath of this… I’ve no conditioning for it. My hands want to be useful – straighten the sheet, check the time, reach for a glass of water. Anything to bear the rawness of what she gave me.
Herself.
I clean us up with the T-shirt I discarded earlier – classy, I know – toss it aside, and curl up behind her, tugging the duvet over us.
She fits.
Her hand doesn’t even span my forearm. ‘You’re insanely large, you know that?’ she says.
‘Is that a complaint or a compliment? It sounded like you were enjoying it.’
‘That’s not what I mean. Although…’ She smirks. It’s beautifully free and cute and breathtaking. Everything about her is. ‘You know you’re ridiculous, right? The shoulders. The arms. It’s like sleeping with a custom-built, oversized sex fantasy.’
Flames rise up my torso all the way to my face. Me. The utility player – a sex fantasy. The mismatch blindsides me.
‘Och, just big, heavy bones.’ I look away, fighting the grin trying to take over my face.
‘And a big, heavy boner.’
I laugh. ‘You’re quite mouthy for a wee dancer, you know that?’
She beams at me and squeezes my arm. ‘It’s not my fault you’re so sexy. I could climb you all day long and never get enough.’
Each word finds a part of me that’s been dark so long it can’t handle the light. I want to deflect. To make a joke. Do what I always do – pass the ball so someone more deserving can score. But she won’t let me. She’s looking right at me.
I kiss the damp hair above her ear. Every wall I’ve ever built is leaning, and they aren’t worth a damn against this tiny person and the dangerous ease with which she strips me bare.
Be my girlfriend.
The word surfaces, and I turn it over. Too teenage, too small, too much like claiming something I haven’t earned. Ava isn’t a label. She’s a demolition and a reconstruction. There’s no word for what she is.
One thing I know for sure: She has me in the palm of her hand.
The thought winds me. If she walks away after this, she takes the bolts holding me upright with her.
‘Scottie?’ She half-turns and examines me with perceptive eyes. She sees too much. ‘You went somewhere.’
