Page 70 of Love All
He doesn’t say anything. He’s letting me get there.
“I’m sorry for the things I did,” I say. “I’m going first, because Indie told me one of us had to, and because you already went first — in a gym, in front of everyone, for a mess that was half mine — and asked me for nothing. So. I love you. Not the version of you I built.You.The one who lost his shine and stood up straighter without it. I love you, and I’m not managing it, and I’m not bracing for it to end. And if it ends, I’ll survive that too. But I am not going to spend the survivable years alone in a cold house because I was too scared to say anything.”
For a second he just looks at me. Then he steps in and takes my face in both hands, careful, like I’m a point he waited the whole match for, and he says, “I love you. God, Charlotte. I’ve loved you since you told me I’d earned nothing and meant it.”
And he kisses me in the doorway where I broke us both, and it undoes the doorway completely, and I pull him inside by the front of his shirt and kick the door shut on every ghost in it.
***
It’s different this time. The first time, he took me apart on purpose, all control and edge, a battle I was thrilled to lose. This time there’s no battle. There’s just the two of us, guards down, finally with nothing left to prove or hide. It’s slower.
It’s so much more.
He undresses me in the half-dark like he’s learning me, not claiming me. He pulls my shirt over my head and just looks, both hands sliding up my ribs to my breasts, thumbs finding my nipples and circling until they go tight and I have to hold onto his shoulders. “I love watching this happen to you,” he says against my throat, rolling them between his fingers, and I feel it drop all the way down between my legs. He gets my sports bra off, then his own shirt, and I drag my palms down his bare chest, and neither of us is performing anything. We’re just two people who finally stopped running, undressing each other in the dark.
He walks me back to the bed and lays me down and gets my shorts and underwear off in one slow pull, and then he kneels on the floor and draws me to the edge of the mattress and puts his mouth on me. No warning. No games. Just his tongue, flat and warm, dragging up the length of my pussy and settling on my clit, and I arch off the bed with a sound I did not authorize. He holds my thighs open with both hands and works me slow, long even strokes, then his lips closing around my clit and sucking — and I get both hands in his hair and stop pretending I’m in charge of any of it.
“Ben—” His name comes out wrecked.
He hums against me, pleased, and slides two fingers into me while his tongue keeps going, curling them up into the spot that lights my whole spine, and I’m climbing already. Fast. Embarrassingly fast. I don’t care.
“Let me watch you,” he says, lifting his mouth just enough to say it, fingers still moving, his chin wet. “All the way. Don’t hide it from me. Not tonight.”
I don’t. I usually go quiet at the end. Lock it down. Keep it mine. This time I let him watch my face do the whole thing, the tension, the crest, the fall — and I come against his mouth with my fingers tight in his hair and his name breaking apart in the air. Loud. Undefended.Seen.He works me through it, gentlenow, until I’m shaking and pushing his head away because it’s too much.
Then he comes up over me, and I reach down and get my hand around his cock, and he groans into my neck. He’s hard and hot in my palm, and I stroke him slow, base to tip, thumb sliding over the wet head, learning what makes his breath catch.
“Charlotte.” My name, ragged. “You don’t have to—”
But I want to. I push him onto his back and move down and take him in my mouth, and the sound he makes is worth every wall I ever built and finally tore down. I take him deep, cheeks hollowing, my hand working the base, and he props himself up on his elbows to watch me, one hand cradling the back of my head, not pushing. Just there.
“Look at you,” he breathes. “Lookat you. God, I love you.”
I feel that everywhere.
But I don’t want it to end like that. I come back up his body and kiss him, and I can taste both of us, and I reach for the drawer and get what we need and roll it onto him. And then I straddle him and sink down slowly, taking him inch by inch until he’s all the way inside me. We both go still and just breathe. He fills me completely. His hands come to my hips. Not gripping. Just holding. His eyes find mine and stay.
“Hi,” he says. Stupidly. Tenderly. Buried inside me.
“Hi,” I say back. And I start to move.
It’s slow. I ride him slow. He meets me, and we keep our eyes open, which we have never done, which is the most exposed thing of all. No hiding in the dark. No game. Just my body moving over his and both of us watching what it does to the other. He reaches up and thumbs my nipples, then slides one hand down between us to circle my clit in time with me, and I feel the second one building. Deeper than the first.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you.”
And this time, letting go doesn’t feel like losing the wheel. It feels like finally trusting someone else to have a hand on it.
I come around him with my forehead pressed to his, saying his name, and he follows a few strokes later, hips lifting into me, my name in his mouth like the only word he has left — both of us holding on through it. Both of us watching. Nothing performed. Nothing hidden. The realest thing I have ever done with another person, and I do it with my eyes open.
***
Afterward I lie on his chest in the dark, and I do not do the math on the exits.
There aren’t any I’m looking for.
“I lost the biggest match of my life today,” I say into his skin.
“I know.”
