“No, now is good,” she assured him. She turned to kiss his neck. “Now is great. It’s just—” She attempted to gesture at herself, but found her control of her limbs had gone a bit loosey-goosey. “I’m wearing sweatpants and a Wisconsin Badgers T-shirt. Objectively the least sexy outfit I own.”
“I don’t give a shit what you’re wearing,” Dell said, before he pulled back an inch. Assessed her with a frown. “Actually, I change my mind. The shirt has to go.” And he was pulling back even further, hauling the shirt over her head.
“Ow!” She laughed as the collar got stuck on the earrings she’d forgotten she was still wearing, and it shook her back inside her body just enough. Just enough to catch her breath. “Hold on a second.”
She was still disentangling herself from the fabric when she heard Dell say, “Let’s go blue.”
Mae slapped the T-shirt to the floor, mouth gaping in disbelief.
“Dell,” she said, “did you really just saylet’s go bluewhile attempting to have access to my vagina?”
“Accept me as I am or don’t have me at all,” Dell answered, a clearly disingenuous statement as his lips were already back on hers by the time he’d finished it. She laughed into his mouth, heart swelling at the look in his eyes she’d just glanced—light, sparkling, playful—before her pelvis found a rhythm again and her laugh turned into a gasp once more. But this was the Dell she wanted. The Dell that challenged her. That laughed, sometimes, just for her.
Dell’s hands found her breasts, bare now to the air, nipples smarting against the soft-roughness of his flannel shirt until he covered them with his palms instead, kneading, gripping, the calluses of his fingertips rasping against the smoothness of her stretch marks, and Mae was so very, very gone.
“Dell,” she rasped. “Dell, let me touch you, too.”
She broke away from his mouth, concentrated on the buttons of his shirt; he moved the attentions of his tongue to the side of her neck. Her fingers faltered, head lolling to the side, eyes fluttering closed. Thighs cinching around Dell’s body even tighter, clenching him even closer as she found a rhythm again, until Dell had to pause to curse against her clavicle.
“Mae. If we don’t slow down?—”
“I know, I know,” she breathed, opening her eyes to focus on his buttons again. “Fuck, it just feels so good.”
She managed to shuck the flannel off his shoulders, but he was still wearing a thin T-shirt underneath. She paused as long as she could manage to admire the way it hugged his stomach, how it molded around his thick, strong arms, until she shoved the hem up to find skin.
Dell sucked in a breath when her fingers found his belly.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “If you remember, I’d been holding ice cream.”
He chuckled against her skin, mouth still attached to her neck, and she needed it, that little rumble of laughter, to rein herself in again, before she rubbed herself to completion in the next five seconds. It was possible she’d already come a few minutes ago. It was possible her body was simply in a rolling cycle of freefall. She decided to smooth the fabric back over his stomach. She liked Dell in a thin T-shirt. She wanted the friction of it against her tits.
Her hands moved to the front of his jeans instead.
He mumbled something incoherent against her shoulder as she worked at the top button.
“Okay,” he breathed once she reached the zipper, pushing his palms against the edge of the counter. “Okay, give me a second.” He reached a hand into his back pocket, passed her a condom. “Hold onto this for me.” And then he was bending down as the packet crinkled between her fingers, kissing the tops of her breasts, the sides, taking her nipples into his mouth as those calloused fingers inched beneath her underwear, spread over her ass, pushed her sweatpants over her hips. She wriggled on the counter, undignified and shivery, attempting to help the process, until, with a last kiss of Mae’s hip, Dell straightened again, and Mae pulled him close by the belt loop of his loosened jeans.
Distantly, she knew the counter was cold against her ass, that neither of them were the most limber people for this kind of situation, that there had to be a more comfortable way to do this for the first time together, that there was so much more she wanted to examine about this person between her legs when she could take her time. But mostly, as she shoved down Dell’s jeans, his navy briefs—and oh, those weregoodbriefs on those thighs—and ohshit, oh god, there was that tree tattoo on his thigh that she had never once forgotten about, and it wasglorious; she was going to have to examine it in so much more detail later—as she wrapped the condom over him, all she felt was hot and urgent.
Dell moved a hand between her legs but she slapped him away. If he touched her clit now she’d come on the spot. “Later,” she said, grabbing his ass, lifting her stomach, helping position him. And then: “This is extremely unsanitary, you know.”
“Don’t care.”
“Oh, me neither,” Mae said breezily. Or, as breezily as she could. Which, at the moment, was likely not very breezy at all. “I was just making conversation.”
Dell paused to drop his forehead onto her shoulder, another small laugh tumbling onto her skin. “Jesus.”
“What?” she asked, but she was laughing, too. Until, suddenly, Dell pushed into her and the air was plum stolen from her throat, laughter cut short. Other words flitted through her mind:fuck, oh shit, FUCK, but out loud, all she could manage was a feathery whimper.
Dell’s face had that focused look again, brow furrowed, hands gripping her hips as he pushed in, and in, and Mae dipped her back, one hand clutching the counter to hold herself there, the other holding onto his forearm, because she could, and she wanted to. She wondered if she could ask him to put those safety goggles on for her, next time.
He took one pause, one second to close his eyes, and then he was moving, and Mae simply went blank for a while, no thoughts just Dell, no thoughts just skin and muscle, no thoughts just heat and breath, until her head started to smack against the cabinet behind her.
Without breaking rhythm—god, Dell was an impressive fuck—his hand was there, calluses scratching into her scalp, cushioning her skull, his knuckles taking the blows instead.
“No head injuries,” he gusted out, “on my account.”
Mae could only manage another whimper in reply.
