Squeezes.
"Spread."
I spread.
I hear him reach for something. Foil. Tear. The weight of him shifting behind me.
His cock nudges me. Thick. He rubs the head along the length of me. Coats himself. Lines up.
"Green?"
"Green."
He pushes in.
Slow. Long. Not all at once. Gives me every inch in a way that makes me feel it stretch me and open me and settle.
When he's all the way seated he holds there. One hand on my wrists. One on my hip.
"You're okay."
"Yes."
"Tell me."
"I'm yours."
His breath shudders out against my shoulder.
"Good girl."
Then he moves.
And the first stroke is deep and slow and the second is deeper and the third is not slow at all, and I bury my face in the pillow and I let him have me.
And I finally remember what my body is for.
9
GRAYSON
She falls asleep with her cheek on my chest and her hand flat over my heart like she's taking a reading.
I don't move.
Haven't moved in an hour.
The lamp is low. The blanket is half off the bed because neither of us pulled it up before we stopped caring. Her braids are a mess across my shoulder. She's warm and heavy and her breath is the steady thing that comes after a body has been wrung out properly.
I held her afterward in the shower. Washed her with the kind of attention I haven't given anything in six years. Rinsed her off. Carried her back to the bed. Dried her. Got water in her. Got her into one of my shirts because she said it was soft and I did not say no to her once.
I'm in bad shape.
I can feel it.
Not regret. The opposite. A man doesn't hold a woman the way I'm holding this one and then go back to being the kind of man who was fine alone.
Six years of alone just got a hole punched in it the size of a woman named Simone Baptiste.
