She was crying.
Big, fat tears rolling out of her eyes as we watched each other. I put one hand on her breast and squeezed and the other over her heart so I could feel it beat out my name in code. I slowed down the pace I was moving in and out of her. I slowed my fury down by lightly touching my lips to hers. I slowed my heart down by realizing those tears were the ice she was forever encased in melting. There was hope. It was small. It was fleeting. It hid behind so many other things that felt so much more important. But it was there and it wouldn’t be ignored.
I kissed her for real. Kissed her with everything I had. Kissed her with the desperation and fear that I had felt the first time our lips touched. I kissed her with enough force and fury that I knew she had to make room for it. She kissed me back the same way. It was a collision of lips and teeth. It was a duel of tongues and pounding hearts. It was slippery and messy in all the best ways, and when I mimicked the motion my hips were making as I drove into her harder and harder, she groaned into me and clutched at the back of my head like I was her lifeline.
I wasn’t. She had to save herself, but I would be around waiting on the shore to scoop her up when she did, when the storm she was caught in subsided and the howling winds that were whipping her emotions back and forth died down inside of her.
I rolled her puckered nipple between my fingers and then circled it with my thumb. She panted into my mouth and one of her hands fluttered over mine where I was still holding on to her heart. I caught her free hand and dragged it over the flat plane of her stomach until we were both at the apex of her thighs. I knew how to touch her now, how to make her go off and wilt with just the barest hint of pressure. I knew all her secret spots of pleasure and how to manipulate them to make her break for me.
“I still want to watch, but not today. Today I just want to feel. I want you to feel us together and understand what you’re giving up.”
She made a strangled noise in her throat as I told her to spread her fingers around where I was driving in and out of her body. The added stimulation from her touch and the gentle squeeze she added had my eyes rolling back up in my head as I used my index finger to circle her straining clit. Everything between us was coiled so tightly and ready to snap that neither one of us really needed the extra stimulation, but fuck if it didn’t feel good.
Her fingers had her spread wide and everything was wet and warm as I felt my heart rate kick up and as pleasure almost took me to my knees. I applied even more pressure, used a firmer touch than I normally would on that sensitive little nub that was singing under my fingers, and continued to eat at her mouth like it was my last meal.
Her fingernails raked across the back of my skull and she jerked her head back so that she could scream my name. She wasn’t much of a screamer when we had sex, usually just urging me on with soft little mewls and whimpers that made me feel like I was king of the sheets. But the scream . . . God . . . the earsplitting, brain-rattling, throat-breaking scream was the prettiest sound I’d ever heard. My name never sounded better. She owned it now and I knew there was no way she could deny it after coming apart like that.
I let her go and she folded back over so that I could reclaim my maniacal hold on her hips and ride her hard. It didn’t take long, not with my name still singing in my ears and her body pulling at me with desperate tugs.
I came so hard my vision went black.
I came so hard my knees shook and I almost fell across her back.
I came so hard I felt it in my back teeth.
I came so hard that I knew that she would be feeling me for days and days after I was gone because I would be feeling her.
When my breathing regulated itself and I could see again, I ran both of my hands up either side of her spine and through her now ridiculously tangled hair and shifted so I could pull out of her and kiss her on the back of the neck.
The despair was there again when I separated our spent bodies, but this time it didn’t feel like it was going to crush me. I took a step back from the edge of the bed and hefted my pants back up as she rolled over onto her back and stared straight up at the ceiling. She was so pretty and mussed up and messy from my hands and mouth. Her chest was flushed, her breasts still had pink imprints from my hands, and where her legs were slightly spread we both glistened shiny and real as our good-bye leaked out of her body.
She lifted her hands up and wrapped them around her throat as she continued to stare at the ceiling. It was like she was trying to hold that scream in. But there was no going back. We both heard it.
“What almost happened today . . . I can’t ever be the reason that little boy loses you. I can’t be the selfish, thoughtless person my father spent my entire life trying to convince me I was.”
I blinked, a little bit stunned at her quiet revelation, and bent over so I could pick my shirt up off the floor.
“You could never be thoughtless or selfish, Sayer. You don’t have an ounce of that inside of you.” I shoved my hands through my hair and stopped to tug on it hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. “You want to be the emotionless robot you had to be to survive your father and your mother’s death, that is a choice you are consciously making when you know there are other options. That is what you are choosing when instead you could choose me, could choose us. I know it’s a risk but it’s a risk we would take together.” I sighed at her as I yanked on my shirt, not even bothering to try and find my T-shirt. “I love you and you know it. What you choose to do with it is also your choice.”
I saw her hands tighten reflexively where she was still holding her neck and I wondered if all those emotions she kept bottled up and trapped inside were rising up to choke her.