Page 109 of IRL: In Real Life
When he finally pulled out, slow enough to make me flinch at the loss, he handled the condom, came back with a warm cloth, and cleaned me with the same attention he had touched me with, like after mattered too.
That got me almost as badly as the sex.
When he lay back down and pulled me against him, I went easy. My head found his chest. His heart was still going hard. Mine too.
We stayed like that for a while, music still moving low somewhere in the condo, the city outside carrying on like people weren’t crossing all kinds of important lines above it every night.
Finally, he touched my shoulder once and asked, his voice rough with use, “You still with me?”
I smiled against his skin. “Barely.”
That got a laugh out of him, low enough to feel in my cheek.
Later, when I lifted my head and looked at him, his mouth still looked used. His eyes were still dark. That diamond stud caught one last strip of low light when he turned toward me.
“You all right?” he asked.
I smiled, slow and already in trouble again.
“No,” I said softly. “This made it worse.”
His mouth curved.
“Yeah,” he murmured, pulling me closer. “Me too.”
And lying there in Micah’s bed with his smell still on my skin and his music still in the air, I knew there was no putting this back where we found it.
Not now.
Not after this.
sixteen
. . .
Morning camein pale gold pieces across Micah’s bed.
Not all at once. Just enough light slipped through the gaps in the curtains to turn the room from shadow into discovery while I lay there with one arm tucked under the pillow and one bare leg tangled in cool sheets that still smelled like him.
For a minute, I didn’t move.
I just stayed where I was and listened to my body.
Tender. Warm. Satisfied in that deep, heavy way that only came after sex so good it reached places in me I had been neglecting on purpose.
Damn.
My lips still felt used. My thighs still carried the pleasant ache of being spread, held, pushed open, stroked through until my body had given up every elegant idea it started the evening with. And lower still, there was that soft, worked-over soreness that told me the night had not ended where most nights did.
Because it hadn’t. Sleep had come in pieces.
So had the night.
At some point after the first time, I had ridden him slow and deep while his hands spread hard over my ass, holding and guiding and admiring all at once, until one sharp slap made me gasp and lose the rhythm for half a second. Later, somewhere deeper in the dark, he had taken my nipple into his mouth while his hand moved between my thighs, and I learned exactly how little the body cared for clocks once wanting got fed properly.
I smiled into the pillow.
Then the smell hit me.
