“Vi—”
“Stop talking. Stop thinking.”
Not here. Not in a corridor where anyone could walk by. That thought comes from whatever part of my brain is still functioning, which isn’t saying much.
I pull back. She makes a noise of protest and tries to follow my mouth. I grab her hand and walk down the corridor, pastthe residential turn, to a door she’s never been through because she’s never been in my private room.
Nobody has, to be honest.
I open the door, pull her inside, and close and lock it.
She looks around for maybe half a second. I don’t like anybody’s eyes on my space, but I don’t have time to think about it.
Her mouth is on mine again. Hands everywhere. She shoves my pants down while I pull her shirt off over her head. I get her jeans off and she kicks them away. Bra unhooked, shrugged off.
I push her onto the bed and she pulls me down on top of her, her legs wrapping around me. I can feel her heat through the thin cotton of her underwear and whatever kept me civilized for so long is now gone.
I pin her wrists above her head with one hand, not because she’s fighting me but because I need her to be still while I look at her. She’s breathing hard, flushed to her throat, her eyes wide and locked on mine, looking at me the way she did at the club when she pulled my mask down. Like she wants all of me, all the good and all the bad, leaving nothing out.
That’s a first for me.
I let go of her wrists and drag her panties off. She reaches for my shirt and pulls it over my head, and then I’m on top of her, skin to skin, her fingernails running down my back. Her pussy’s soaked, and the sound she makes when my fingers slide inside her is something I want to hear every day for the rest of my life.
I don’t make her wait. I can’t. I pull my hand away and push my hard cock inside her.
This isn’t the club. There are no masks, no audience, and no performing. This is my bed in my room with the door locked and a woman I almost lost today underneath me, alive, hot, gripping me with her whole body. Every time I thrust into her, I feel her inmy chest. Not just the sex. The relief. She’s alive. She’s here. She came back bleeding but she came back.
I fuck her hard. Harder than I mean to, but she doesn’t tell me to stop in fact, she asks for more. Her hips meet mine, her hands pulling my head back so she can see my face.
“Look at me,” she says.
I do, leaving myself completely exposed. It’s just me, on top of her, inside her, wanting her.
I bury my face in her neck and drive into her with everything I’ve got.
She comes first, clenching around me, her whole body locking up, a sound torn out of her that’s raw and real. This is Vi with nothing left, and it drags me over my own edge.
After a while, she says, “So this is what your room looks like.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s very tidy.”
“It was.”
She laughs and I finally breathe. She’s lying in my bed after everything that happened today and she’s laughing.
“Next time, you come with me,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Next time, you tell me where you’re fucking going.”
We stay like that long enough that her breathing slows and evens out and I think she might be falling asleep. In my room. In my bed.
32
VI
I spreadeverything out on the floor of my room because the bed isn’t big enough.
