The tears, they come again, just as this pleasure pushes past its break—sobs she swallows back, buries her face against his shoulder—she needs to stop crying, she can’t keep crying—before it spills, light spills over her—clarity and heat and loss of language. A surrender.
As she comes, Aleksandr breathes deep against her warm, flushed skin. “Missed that, the way you fucking come for me,” he says. “Nobody else—nobody else comes fucking close to that.”
Nobody else—which means somebody else has been here with him—and she knew that, a specific she can almost recall, another name, another woman—but she only holds him closer, gaze awash with tears; crying from pleasure released, and pain felt, and unknown growth, and changing days, and moving forward—ceaselessly moving forward, into the future becoming present, the past becoming accepted, hurts becoming calmer things.
“One more time,” he murmurs, low rasp. Breathless, he’s breathless for her. “You can come, one more time—”
“Sasha, I don’t—don’t—”
“Trust me,” he groans. “Fuck, just—Lili, justtrustme—”
And oh, that—that.
Across this last stretch of gray, this distance between her and the world, she reaches—across it, for him.
“I do,” she gasps out. “I trust you, I do,I do—”
Hands on her thighs, he pushes her legs higher; her hips protest, body already so sore, but it’s the soreness of exertion that brings health. Her head falls back, a moan running thinner and thinner as the rhythm of his hips grows deeper still, the work of his shoulders, braced over her, like he’s looking for something in her, like he’d break her open to get it—like he is finding it, and he will stay to put her back together, after.
This is real,she tries to tell herself.
He is here. He is holding her through this, and he is not leaving.
His hips roll into hers again—and she is crying, with his name—Sasha—his name, hers to say again, as he kisses her, as the break starts to come, as she holds him closer still, as her body washes through again: with potential, heat, and possibility; all these glimmering, fruitful things—what she wants so badly it hurts even to consider having, for the chance of losing it—but she lets go, held in his arms—she lets it be this inseparable, terrifying mess of her heart, and the man holding her, and the woman she’s becoming; and this is trust, she thinks—to breathe through the fear of loss, to surrender through the uncertainty of where this might go, and how this might all end—and when he finally comes inside of her—hot and heavy, so deep it pushes the last of her breath free—Lili closes her eyes, and feels only light.
As he stills, the blur of her own vision settles.
The slick slide of skin, hands tangled in his hair.
He breathes against her neck. Caught in freedom, she’s coming down. Familiar, she feels the oncoming rush of uncertainty, hopes inverting back into fears—
But he’s with her, now; still.
Against her chest, she feels his own pulse, a thud that’s rapid and hard.
And she finds some strength to claim it.
I want this.
And I will not let it go.
“You’re tan.”
Quiet, his voice.
Aleksandr traces her skin. Bright sunlight filters in from the windows. The white sheets, tangled around them.
His hand skims down her collarbone. His fingers brush her breast, theline of her tan separating paler skin from the sun; where her bikini was, long days on the boat.
“France,” she supplies. “We spent time on the water.”
“Where were you?”
“Paris, first,” she says. She shifts onto her stomach, nestling closer into him; she kisses his bare shoulder, before propping her chin on his chest, looking at him. “Then in the south for most of it.”
“Where in the south?” He brushes her hair back from her face, tucking strands behind her ear.
“Cassis, Amina’s family has a place there.”
