“This is everything,” he whispered. His hand on my hip moved up under my T-shirt to the bare skin at the small of my back. I jolted a little because I hadn’t been ready for the temperature differential, and he stopped immediately.
“Too much?”
“No. Just… different. Keep… please… ”
“Yeah.”
He kept going. His hand on my back, hot. His hips rolling against mine in a rhythm we had apparently negotiated without speaking. The denim was rough. The heat under it wasn’t. I could feel him through the fabric. For half a second, I was aware in a clinical-detached-narrator way that the hardness against me was Dane Rourke’s erection and that I had Dane Rourke’s erection pressed against me, and then I pulled him closer and shut my eyes.
“Stay with me,” he said.
“I’m here.”
“Chip.”
“Yeah.”
“Open your eyes.”
I opened them. He had stopped moving. His face was very close. His hand on my back was still.
“I want you to know it’s me,” he said. “I want you to know who you’re with.”
“I know who I’m with.” My voice came out rough in a way I hadn’t known it could come out. “Dane. Dane Rourke. Station Eight. Pretty blue eyes.”
He smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s me.”
“Please move,” I said.
He moved.
He pressed his forehead harder against mine when I made the noise I made. His breath stuttered against my mouth. His hand at my back fisted briefly in my T-shirt as my orgasm hit me. Dane followed me over and then held very still on top of me while I came down. He didn’t laugh or make a joke about it.
I dragged him down with my hand at his lower back, so he wasn’t holding any of his own weight up. He buried his face in the side of my neck. He was warm and shaking just slightly, his breath was hot against my collarbone. His hand at my back never moved.
I put my other hand in his hair.
He let me.
We stayed like that for a long time.
He moved off me eventually because he had to, though I made a small noise of protest. “Two seconds, hang on.”
He went to the kitchen and returned with a damp towel and a dry one, then handed me both without saying anything, turning his back to give me privacy in his own living room. I cleaned up, handed the towels back, and fretted a little over him touching the things, but surprisingly, I got over it. When he came back and sat down beside me again, I lay down with my head on his chest, and his arm came around me and stayed.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“God, yes.”
He pressed a kiss to my hair. “Pulse?” he said after a minute.
“Don’t know. Haven’t checked.”
“Want to?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
