It’s the most intimate thing I’ve ever experienced, and we’re not even doing anything. Just existing in the same space. Breathing in the same rhythm. Being still together in a way I’ve never been still with anyone.
Then Leo presses his lips to my forehead—my forehead, not my mouth—and resumes the slow, devastating path down my body.
And I can’t make a joke because something is happening in my chest that I don’t have a quip for. Something is expanding, pressing against the inside of my ribs, making it hard to breathe.
The silence is deafening.
I hear my own breathing. I hear his. I hear the rustle of sheets and the soft sound of his mouth on my skin and nothing else.
Just me. Unnarrated. Exposed.
“Still with me?” Leo murmurs.
I nod. I don’t trust my voice right now.
He takes his time preparing me. An obscene amount of time. His mouth and his hands work together with the same focused patience he brings to everything, like he won’t cut corners, like my pleasure is the only item on his agenda tonight.
He responds to every involuntary reaction I have, adjusts to every gasp and shiver, and gives me exactly what I need before I know I need it.
When he finally enters me, it’s slow. So slow. Inch by inch.
His forehead drops against mine, eyes closed, a rough exhale against my mouth.
“Look at me,” I say.
I don’t know where the words come from. I’ve never asked anyone to look at me during this. I’ve always preferred eyes closed, the safety of darkness.
But I want to see him. I want to see what his face does when he’s inside me and not hiding anything.
Leo opens his eyes.
Oh god.
Oh god, I shouldn’t have asked.
Looking at Leo while he’s inside me, while his face is soft and open and full of something I can’t— Something I won’t?—
“Archie,” he says, and the way he says my name sounds like a confession.
He begins to move. Slow rolls of his hips that send sparks up my spine. He’s watching me. Not my body, my face.
This doesn’t feel fun or light, or like a good time between two people who know the boundaries.
This feels like being unwrapped.
Leo shifts the angle and finds the spot that makes my back arch. He continues to hit the same point, relentless, his pace still controlled.
I want to say something. Anything. A joke about his technique, a rating, a quip about the headboard. Something to break the intensity, to remind us both that this is just sex, just fun, just two people who are attracted to each other and nothing more.
But when I open my mouth, what comes out is his name. Just his name. Quiet and broken.
Leo’s eyes go bright. His thumb traces my cheekbone. He kisses me—softly, so softly—and keeps moving.
My hands roam his back, his shoulders, the damp skin at the base of his spine. I can feel the muscles working beneath his skin, the controlled flex and release of each thrust, and my fingers dig into the ridges of his shoulder blades like I’m trying to anchor myself to something solid. My good leg hooks tighter around his hip, changing the angle fractionally, and we both groan.
His mouth is on my neck, and I can feel the vibration of his breathing against my pulse point. I can feel the slight tremor in his arms where he’s bracing himself above me, and everything isstarting to blur—where his skin ends and mine begins, what’s his breathing and what’s mine, whose heartbeat I’m feeling.
I pull him closer. I want to be closer. I want to climb inside the warmth of him and stay there.
