I shudder with the delicious aftershocks, feeling his heart slam against my back, murmurs escaping my lips that I’m not even sure are supposed to be words.
“I guess that worked,” he says, and he’s a little breathless too, and I think maybe some of those moans were his. I let out a shaky laugh and roll over to face him, my body still pressed against his.
“Yeah,” I say, and I can’t stop grinning, and I see that he can’t, either. “That definitely worked.”
Then I reach down and stroke along that hardness again. I’m definitely starting to feel like I’m getting pretty damn good at handling the hardware, so to speak, by the way his eyelids flutter closed and he groans deep in his throat. I would keep going, but he draws me close and kisses me again. He rubs against me right there—oh god, right there—but not inside yet.
I so desperately want him inside.
As one, we roll so he’s on top of me.
“Are you ready for this?” he asks quietly.
“Yes. Please, yes.”
He kisses me softly again, and then reaches over the side of the bed for the box of condoms, getting one out and opening the wrapper with way more skill than I managed with the coconut bra (seriously, did he take some Boy Scout knot-tying class?)
I stare at him, marvel at him. At the slight curve of his eyelashes, at the shape of his lips. At the line of his jaw and the blue of his eyes. At the light in those eyes, the intelligence and hilarity and bravery and sweetness behind them.
All things I had thought I’d memorized, for all the time I spent trying not to openly stare at him and probably failing. But I know now that he loves me and he wants me and it’s like seeing it new, all over again.
He rolls the condom on and is back on top of me again, where I think he should always, always be.
He grins and I grin, and there’s this moment where we’re just looking into each other’s eyes, and everything around us has disappeared and all I can see is him. All I ever want to see is him, looking at me like this, forever.
There’s this long, brilliant, moment of anticipation, of love and need like I’ve never thought I’d know—andTHIS IS ITTHIS IS IT I’M HAVING SEX WITH BRENDAN—and then he’s inside me and it’s pure light and perfection andus.
Iguide myself into her, and my whole body shudders with pleasure. I’m seeing stars, and I can’t find my breath, and then we’re moving together and crying out together and my mouth finds hers and we’re connected, she and I, locked in sync in a way I’ve never felt in my life. I’m with Su-Lin, and that’s exactly how things are supposed to be, how they were always supposed to be. We whisper and moan each other’s names, and promises of love and desire and need that I never imagined she could feel for me the way I do for her. My whole body ripples with waves of ecstasy, and Su-Lin urges me faster, harder, pulling me deeper, and everything drops away that isn’t me and her, and this incredible thing building between us.
“I love you,” I whisper. “I love you, I love you.”
“Brendan,” she responds.
Then we’re coming together, her frantic cries echoing mine as my vision explodes in a flash of bright light. We collapse together, and Su-Lin giggles the most miraculous of giggles, one I’m not sure I’ve ever heard before this moment. I wonder how many other variants of her laugh there might be. I want to spend the rest of my life discovering them all.
Twenty-seven
Brendan
Mmmm,” Su-Lin says against my chest. “Yeah, okay.That was intense passion.”
“Right?” I ask. I tickle her side, and she squeals and holds me tighter, our bodies pressed together as we both come down from the rush of being together. “That was everything I imagined it would be and more.”
Su-Lin sighs softly, and I kiss the top of her head. We breathe for a few more moments, and then she speaks so quietly I almost don’t hear her. “Do you think you’ll panic in the morning again? Need to pretend this didn’t happen?”
I dig my fingers through her hair, combing out the tangles. “No,” I say. “You’re my girlfriend, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise ever again.”
Su-Lin makes a happy whimpering sound. “You can say that word now.”
“I can,” I say. “Took me long enough.”
“And not, like, a ‘casual’ girlfriend, right? Because I really hate that word now.”
I grin.That feeling is mutual. “You are definitely not my casual girlfriend. You are my very serious girlfriend.” A tremor runs through me, a tiny slice of fear that cuts through the glow of lying here, holding the woman I love. “I still might have panic attacks about it—I mean, I probably will, because it’s me and I have panic attacks about everything.” I take a deep breath. “I’ve put you through hell, and I’m sorry. But do you think that’s something you can put up with?”
Su-Lin shifts on my chest to squint up at me. “Put up with?”
She says this in the same tone that I used when she suggested I might not feelpassionfor her, which was thoroughly ridiculous. But this isn’t: “I’m always going to have these problems, you know? I’m always going to have an anxiety disorder. And the truth is, they can’t kill me, no matter what they feel like. And they don’t change that I want this, I want to be your boyfriend and be with you, but I know it’s a lot to ask of you. My life isn’t something I would want to live with, but I’m stuck with it and you’re not and—”
