We undress. Same fluency we’ve built up over a year, except his hands have a small tremor that wasn’t there at breakfast. I notice. Don’t comment.
I push him back onto the bed.
He goes.
I kiss him slow. His mouth opens. Toothpaste, coffee from earlier. I work down. Throat. Sternum. The freckle, the hair, the soft place under his navel.
His cock is half-soft when I get there.
I take him into my mouth before he can negotiate it.
He breathes out, sharp. Hand in my hair.
I take my time. Taste of him, the way he gets harder under attention, slow rise of him against my tongue. His hand grips, releases, grips. His head tips back. Grey-blue eyes shut, then open. The bad-machinery laugh from this morning is nowhere in this. The body remembers what it’s for when no one’s asking it to perform.
When he’s fully hard I pull off. Wet sound, his exhale, relief on his face that has more in it than the obvious relief.
‘OK?’
‘Yes.’
Drawer. Condom. Lube. He hands me the bottle before I’ve finished asking, way he always does when this is the direction we’re going. Hands of someone who knows the sequence and is choosing it.
First finger. Slow. His body opens for me the way it’s opened a hundred times. I’m careful tonight because of where we’re standing, not because the body needs it. He doesn’t need patience. He needs me to know I’m being patient. There’s a difference.
Second. He swears under his breath, Lancashire, fond.
Third. He’s pulling at my forearm. ‘Get on with it.’
‘Demanding.’
‘Always.’
I push his thighs up. He helps. Condom on, fast. The slick. I push in slow, the give, the heat, the whole familiar thing nothing else has ever been able to replicate, no matter how many bodies I tried it on first.
His hand on my face.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
I move. He moves with me. Angle we found in October, rhythm that took us a week of getting wrong before we got it right. He swears at it because it still gets him, the way the same trick still gets him.
‘There—’
‘I know.’
I get my hand on his cock. Stroke him in rhythm. He comes first—easier than he has any right to, his hand on my face the whole time. I follow a few strokes later. The same private spot. The one it’s always been.
I drop. Forehead against his shoulder. His arm comes around my back.
‘Thank you,’ he says into my hair.
‘For?’
‘For making the day end like this.’
I don’t answer. There’s nothing to answer.
