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Ezra was looking at her again. She could feel it. She was Mei’s maid of honor and lots of people were looking at her. Mei’s cousin Karen was currently glaring in her direction, still angry that Candace had apparently taken her place. Miles’s creepy childhood best friend was also looking at her — staring, more likely — as if he wanted to maybe kidnap her and tie her up. But it was Ezra’s gaze she could feel on her skin like a cashmere blanket; soft, warm and arousing. It always had been. His deep blue eyes always felt as if the pads of his fingers were coasting over her skin. It made the hair on her arms stand up and her nipples hard and after three years apart, it made her wet.
Ever since they’d all arrived in Napa for Miles and Mei’s wedding, Candace felt as if Ezra had been just on the edge of her peripheral vision as they stood by their best friends at the rehearsal dinner and for all the pre-wedding activities. Their hotel rooms were in different wings of the hotel, but Candace could have sworn that every time she stood waiting in the lobby at the East elevator bank and she looked to her right, there was Ezra, waiting at the West elevator bank.
She’d turn and there he’d be, not looking at her. But her skin would still be tingling as if he had been. Or maybe that was just her heart and imagination playing tricks on her.
Still, everywhere she turned, Ezra was right there. He hadn’t spoken more than a few words to her since she’d first arrived. To be fair, there really hadn’t been much time for a casual catch-up about their lives for the past three years because Mei had scheduled her wedding weekend down to the second and she was a ruthless taskmaster. No one was going to ruin her schedule. And while Miles didn’t care nearly as much about the itinerary besides the ceremony and reception, he adored Mei and so stood next to his future wife and glared at everyone, making it clear that anyone who threatened her plans would have to answer to him.
But now the ceremony was seconds from starting and there was Ezra. And while he wouldn’t have to talk to her, they would have to touch. And this time there was no confusion; Ezra was watching her. The other bridesmaids and groomsmen were pairing up. Miles’s mother was putting them in the correct order and checking the men’s ties and suits, making sure they looked their best.
“Come on Candace, Ezra. You’re next,” Mrs. Jefferson called to them.
Candace smiled, trying to ignore the fact that her stomach was doing flips. She stepped into line behind Karen and Miles’s favorite cousin, Devonte. Karen turned to glare over her shoulder at Candace one last time. Candace smiled smugly at her in return. But then the sleeve of Ezra’s tuxedo grazed her forearm and Candace shivered. She turned to him. He wasn’t looking at her now, but his left cheek and ear were bright red. He was blushing. About her, probably. That was the Ezra she knew. She smiled at his profile and he turned to her — almost as if he’d been watching her in his peripheral vision — and they locked eyes.
“Alright,” Mrs. Jefferson said, “it’s time!”
Candace and Ezra turned to watch her cup Miles’s face in her hands, beaming up at him. Candace smiled at the sweet tableau. Miles bent down to let his mother kiss both of his cheeks and then smile up at him one more time, before walking into the hall to her seat. Once she was out of earshot, Miles turned to them, the glare back on his face.
“Alright people, you heard my mama. It’s showtime. All y’all gotta do is walk semi-on beat down the aisle and stand still while me and Mei do all the hard work. If you mess this up, you’re dead to me. But I love you all. Let’s go!”
They all watched him with opened mouths until the music started and the first couple began to walk down the aisle.
“How was that?” Miles whispered to her and Ezra.
Candace grimaced at him.
“Terrible,” Ezra said.
“You said we’d be dead to you,” Candace added.
“If you can’t walk kinda on beat,” Miles shrugged. “That’s a low bar.”
“I really hope you and Mei go back to normal after this,” Candace said.
Miles smiled at them and clapped Ezra on the shoulder. “So do we. This bridezilla thing is weird. And apparently contagious. Anyway, make me proud,” Miles said, shooing them forward.
She and Ezra shook their heads and turned around. They inched forward slowly, waiting for their turn to walk down the aisle. Together. When Karen and Devonte were off, Ezra turned to her and held out his arm. Candace tentatively moved her hand to his forearm. She held her breath as they touched and she ran her hand from the inside of his elbow up to his bicep. Her touch was light, tentative, but she heard him hiss at the contact. She did the same.
“Go,” Miles whispered behind them.
They stepped forward and began to walk mostly on beat down the aisle. Everyone was watching them but for Candace, it was all a blur. The entirety of her focus was on the solid presence of Ezra to her right, his hard bicep — much harder than she might have expected — under her hand and the spicy scent of his cologne. It was near overwhelming.
They hadn’t seen each other in three years. And over the past few months her happiness at watching their friends get married had warred with her apprehension about what it would be like to be face-to-face with him again. She worried that he might be cold; that he might not blush when he saw her anymore. She wondered if her response to him would change as well. If she would feel the same flutter in her chest when she saw him. The good news was that he still blushed adorably and the bad news was that she still loved it.
“You look beautiful,” Ezra whispered to her at the head of the aisle, just before they separated.
Candace gasped. Her hand dragged down his arm and she stepped left as he stepped right. She walked to her place at the head of the line of bridesmaids and then turned, her mouth still open, to look at him and found him aiming that small grimace at her; that level one smile that she loved.
Three years and it was as if nothing in her heart had changed at all.
***
Ezra’s knee was bouncing. He was sitting at the head table, listening to Miles’s creepy childhood friend, Bobby, talk about his collection of sword replicas, but watching Candace across the room. She was standing in line with Miles and Mei’s moms for more dessert, chatting excitedly at them. It was adorable. She was adorable. She was beautiful. He’d missed her.
All he’d been thinking about for months was seeing her. Sure, he’d been ecstatic to see their friends get married, and true to form it was a beautiful production, but nothing was more beautiful than Candace. Especially not Candace in her bridesmaid’s dress. He’d been a tense wreck all day watching her, her sparkling dark brown eyes glassy with tears as Miles and Mei said their vows; the sheen of her gorgeous skin in the sunlight as the wedding party took pictures, and the sound of her laughter.
He hadn’t been sure what he would do when he saw her again after all this time. Probably nothing. Ezra might have been older. He might have let Miles force him into the gym so he didn’t have to lift weights alone and had accidentally developed a few more muscles than he’d had in college. He might even have been on the verge of securing his first funder. But with Candace in front of him, he had to face the uncomfortable truth that he was still the same eighteen-year-old kid who could hardly think in her presence.
But it had been three years since they’d seen one another and his excitement was doused with fear. What if they left the wedding and it was another three years before they saw each other again? What if it was longer than that? What if they never saw each other again? He realized that that kind of doomsday thinking didn’t make any sense and yet there had always been something about Candace that reminded him of the passage of time. Unfortunately, it never spurred him into action. He never asked her out like he wanted to and when he’d finally almost mustered up the courage, it was too late. That was the lesson about time that Candace taught him again and again; that there was never enough of it.
“You know what I mean?” Bobby asked.
Ezra turned to him and frowned. He shook his head. “Nope. Excuse me,” he said hastily and stood from his chair.
“Where you going?” Miles called out to him.
“Dessert,” Ezra said, when the right answer was Candace.
“Ooh, can you bring us some cupcakes?” Mei asked, leaning over Miles to smile at him.
Ezra sighed. “Yeah, sure,” he said and then slipped off the raised dais.
He walked through the crowd toward her. His path was direct. Normally, he might have skirted along the edges of the ballroom but he was worried that if he took his time, someone might intercept him or whisk her onto the dancefloor or maybe she’d simply disappear. He couldn’t take that chance. Not this time.
He let out a relieved huff of a breath when he made it to her.
“Ezra,” Mrs. Jefferson exclaimed.
Candace turned to him.
“There you are,” Mrs. Barnes said. “We were just talking about you.”
He frowned. “You were?” His eyes darted to Candace. She looked quickly away.
“Yes,” Mrs. Jefferson said. “We were saying how sad it was that your parents couldn’t make it.”
He hid his disappointment well. “Yeah, they sent a gift but they’re on a cruise to celebrate mom’s official remission news.”
Mrs. Barnes reached up to Ezra. He stooped down to let her pat his cheek softly. “So lucky,” she whispered at him.
He smiled at her and then stood up straight to smile at Mrs. Jefferson who rubbed his other cheek lovingly.
“How’s your mom doing?” Candace asked.
Her voice made his stomach clench. He turned to her, nodding. “She’s good. Really good. She misses you,” he said. It was maybe underhanded. He didn’t want to guilt-trip her, but his mother had missed her. And he’d missed her too. But he couldn’t quite say that to her face, even if he was forcing himself to be bolder than he’d ever been. To tell her that he’d missed her, that he’d thought about her nearly every day, and maybe even ask her if she remembered their last night together? That was too much for the dessert table at their best friends’ wedding in front of the mothers of the bride and groom.
But as he was internally spinning, Candace just smiled at him, “Yeah, I’ve missed her too.”
“Are your parents here?” he asked.
Her smile widened and she turned to the dancefloor. Ezra followed the shift of her body but his eyes lingered on her profile a few seconds longer than was probably appropriate. When he did turn to look, he laughed. He wasn’t sure how he’d missed Candace’s parents slow dancing to a fast song in the middle of the dancefloor, but she was so beautiful there could have been a fistfight next to him and he might never have known.
“They’re cute, huh?” she asked, turning to him and lifting her eyebrows.
He smiled and nodded.
“Are you single, Ezra?” Mrs. Jefferson asked.
He and Candace turned away from one another quickly. His ears warmed. “Um, Mei and Miles said they wanted cupcakes.”
It was a cheap fake, but it was the exact thing he needed to get the older women’s attention away from him and his pathetic love life.
“Did they say what kind?” Mrs. Barnes asked.
Ezra shrugged.
“We’ll just grab one of each,” Mrs. Jefferson said.
“Good idea.”
Candace and Ezra stepped back and watched as they filled two plates with every dessert on the table and ferried them across the room to their newly married children.
“Smart,” Candace whispered to him. “Meddling elders need a definitive target for attention.”
“They did ask for cupcakes,” Ezra said.
“So everyone’s happy,” she shrugged, turning back to the dessert table.
Not everyone, he wanted to say. Not yet.
“There’s gonna be a fireworks show,” he said abruptly.
“Yeah, I know. I got the itinerary too. All five single-spaced pages of it,” she said around a laugh.
“Are you going to stay for them?” he asked, swallowing thickly.
“Yeah, of course. Where else would I go?”
“My hotel room,” he blurted out.
She turned to him with a frown and then shifted her weight to her right leg, putting her left hand on her hip. “Excuse me?”
Ezra’s entire body felt as if it was overheating. Had he really just said what he’d said?
“Are you propositioning me, Ezra Posner?” she asked with a soft, unsure smile.
He shook his head. His throat felt as if it had closed. He didn’t think he could say anything else. He wasn’t even sure if he was breathing.
“No?” She raised her eyebrows at him.
He started nodding his head.
“So you are propositioning me? I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”
And maybe it was that he, too, hadn’t thought he’d had it in him. Or that now that he’d said the words, there was no taking them back and he didn’t want to. Or maybe it was the way she said his full name. He’d always loved that. The way it sounded on her lips. The way her voice crawled under his skin and made him feel strong and weak all at the same time. The shock he felt — even after all this time — that Candace Garret knew who he was.
He swallowed thickly and clenched his fists. “We can watch the fireworks from my room.”
Her lips quirked. “The show doesn’t start for another hour. What do you think we should do until then?”
He swallowed again and decided to be as bold as ever because, even though his entire brain felt as if it had shut down, he was older, slightly more built and on the verge of bringing his Gilder Prize project to reality. So he wasn’t entirely the same person he’d been three years ago.
“We can do whatever you want,” he said in a slow, hesitant voice. And then he stepped forward, closing the distance between them. “But I was thinking we could finish what we started last time we were together.”
“You remember that, huh?” she asked, and her eyes were bright, her pupils dilated.
“Of course I remember that,” he said, his eyebrows bunching. And then he smiled. “I hope we didn’t traumatize Teddy.”
Candace’s peal of laughter was deep and husky and it made his balls ache. Then she licked her lips and lifted her hand. Her index finger grazed the top of his bow tie, her nail just barely pricking the underside of his chin.
“Lead the way,” she whispered in that dark honey voice she’d used when she was teaching him how to eat her out.
It took a few seconds for him to process her words, but when he did, he smiled at her in relief. He grabbed her hand and led her from the ballroom.
They’d done all their maid of honor and best man duties. Miles and Mei probably wouldn’t even miss them for the rest of the evening. And knowing those two, they’d probably slip out of here soon anyway. Whatever guilt Ezra felt about leaving early disappeared in front of the West elevator bank. He pressed the call button and Candace pressed her body to his side. Every part of him became rock hard and hot. He hadn’t felt like this in years. Three years to be exact.
The elevator doors opened. He led her inside and pressed the button to the twelfth floor as he squeezed her hand in his.
***
For the past three years, Candace had travelled from Ecuador to Nicaragua, Jamaica, Mexico (to get to Cuba without having her passport stamped), Puerto Rico, New York, Toronto, Vancouver and then home. She hadn’t planned any leg of that travel except the last part. Mei had asked her to be her maid of honor over Skype. She’d emailed Candace’s official invitation. Candace had sent her measurements by email to Mei and Candace’s cousin Lisa — who was a similar height and weight — had stood in at her fittings. Mei didn’t care as long as Candace made it to the wedding. That was her only request. And she’d only had to ask once, because there was no way Candace would miss Miles and Mei’s wedding. There was no way she could bear to miss seeing Ezra one more time.
But she’d thought all she’d do was look, because that’s all she’d really been accustomed to doing in college. Except for those three nights when there had been hugs and a little light making out, and that one time when they’d defiled Teddy. But now Ezra was holding her hand, leading her down the hall to his hotel room, turning every now and then to smile at her as if to reassure himself that she was still there. She squeezed his hand and their warm palms pressed together, because she needed to be reminded that this was real too.
When Ezra’s hotel room door closed behind them, the quiet was deafening. She blinked into the darkness and gasped when she felt his soft breath on her skin. His lips tentatively touched her back just at the top of her spine. She moaned as his wet tongue traced the skin over her right shoulder before his forehead pressed against her skin and his big hands settled on her waist.
She’d had dreams like this, but she’d never believed they’d come true.
His breath was ragged against her skin. This wasn’t the Ezra she knew. The boy who’d been blushing at her longer than she could remember right up until a few hours ago. This new Ezra was more like the Ezra of her dreams. The Ezra she’d been carrying around with her all over the Americas. The Ezra she sometimes conjured to mind when she touched herself or even when she fucked her ex-boyfriend. The Ezra she’d wanted so desperately she could taste him on her tongue, imagining what he would feel like in her hand and mouth and pussy since she’d never gotten the chance.
But she didn’t have to settle for dream Ezra, she realized. For the first time in so long, he was right behind her. Holding her.
She turned in his arms and he stepped back just enough to let her move. But he never let her go. She swallowed a groan as his hands rubbed along her waist and over her stomach, his hard body still so close. His eyes were focused on her mouth and she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth.
Ezra groaned.
Candace smiled. God, she’d missed him. She raised her hands to his chest and lifted her right eyebrow. “You been lifting weights, Ezra?”
His chest hitched before he spoke. “Miles made me start going to the gym with him.”
She smiled. “Just like he used to make you come to our dorm room freshman year?”
His fingers flexed and dug into her hips. “He never had to make me come to your room,” he whispered.
It was her turn for her chest to hitch. She leaned into his body, the smell of his cologne engulfing her as she pressed herself to him. The hard points of her silk-covered nipples touched him first. Her mouth fell open on a soft sigh. Her hands moved up his chest to glide around his neck, and then her fingers sunk into the hair at his nape. “God, Ezra,” she whispered just as he captured her mouth with his own.
Candace wouldn’t have said that Ezra had been her best kiss ever, especially not that first kiss. But what she could say was that every kiss with him was always better than the last. And this kiss was by far the best. Not because it was perfect, but because they poured themselves wholeheartedly into it. Candace loved Ezra’s awkwardness, his blushing, all that nervous energy and banked intensity, and this kiss was that times infinity. He plied Candace’s lips open with his own and slipped his tongue into her mouth, groaning when her tongue eagerly met his. She smiled and he kissed her deeper, gripped her hips tighter and pulled her close. Candace sighed and wrapped her arms around his neck, meeting every thrust of his tongue and press of his lips with equal fervor, reveling in a kiss she’d been too scared to hope for. As Ezra kissed her, she let her bruised heart imagine that he’d missed her almost as much as she’d missed him.
But he never contacted you, some poor bitter part of her mind reminded her. She pulled back from him sharply and Ezra immediately stepped back, letting go of her waist.
“Did I do something wrong?” he asked quickly.
She shook her head. “No, I just...”
The light blinked on and Ezra turned from the switch on the wall to peer at her with worry in his eyes. She blinked at him. She wanted to ask him why he’d never emailed her during that final semester or in the past three years. She wanted to ask him if, errant New Year’s Eve behavior aside, she’d completely made up their friendship, because that was the only thing that made his complete radio silence make any kind of sense. She wanted to ask him why she only ever heard about what he was up to through Facebook or secondhand from Miles via Mei. She wanted to ask him how it was possible that he could look at her right now, dilated pupils, flushed cheeks and a prominent mound in his pants, as if he’d been waiting for this as desperately as she had, but not once even put a message on her Facebook wall.
But if she asked him that, she knew he could throw those questions back at her and she felt too fragile to even consider the answers. Because if he asked her, she was certain she’d spill all of her hurt and sadness out to him and not just about the last three years, but all those mixed signals when they were in college. And if she did that, then he’d know how much she’d loved him from the very minute she’d first seen him. And if he knew, she was terrified that her greatest fear would come true; that Ezra would frown at her and tell her that he didn’t feel the same. That she’d made meanings from all that blushing, and those kisses, and The Teddy Incident based on her own deceptive heart instead of reality. And she couldn’t handle that.
She couldn’t bear to be rejected by Ezra. Not again. She’d just barely survived the last time. So she swallowed all that emotion, shook her head and forced herself to smile at him. And then she turned to look over her shoulder at the bed. When she turned back to him, his eyes were still worried, but his jaw was set and there were beads of sweat at his hairline. Candace moved her hands to the back of her dress. She walked slowly backward toward the bed as she unzipped her dress, her gaze locked on Ezra’s warm blue eyes.
The metallic rasp of the zipper bounced off the walls. Ezra gulped at the sound, following her as if it was a beacon. At the foot of the bed, she held her bridesmaid’s dress loose against her body.
“Do you have condoms, Ezra?”
His eyes widened. He gulped again and nodded.
“Did you come here prepared to pick up someone from the singles table?” she asked, pretending it was a joke even as her heart shriveled at the thought.
He grimaced and shook his head. He turned to the desk against the far wall — trying and failing to subtly adjust his hard cock as he walked — and moved to a basket on the table.
She smiled when she saw it. She’d recognize Mei’s handiwork anywhere and there were near-identical baskets in all the bridesmaids’ rooms as well.
Ezra rifled through the basket and then turned to her, a box of condoms in his hand.
Candace frowned. “We didn’t get condoms in our basket.”
“I feel like this was Miles’s contribution,” Ezra offered.
Candace pursed her lips and rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe he took all those Women’s Studies classes with Mei and learned nothing.”
Ezra shrugged. “I don’t know about nothing. He made me go see the new Stepford Wives like twice when it came out. It was not good,” he said with an awkward laugh.
Candace smiled at him and then dropped her dress. Ezra’s laughter cut off on a strangled groan. She pushed it over her hips and let it pool at her feet, never taking her eyes from him.
“Ezra,” she whispered.
He nodded.
She smiled. “Come here.”
He nodded again.
She laughed. “You have to walk, Ezra.”
His eyes lifted to hers and he grimaced, still nodding, and finally moved.
Candace’s heart felt as if it might beat straight out of her chest as she waited. When he stopped in front of her, he had a death grip on the box of condoms. She plucked it from his hands and he sighed in relief. She threw the box on the bed and then put her palms flat on his chest.
His breath hitched again and she loved the feeling of it under her palms. She moved her hands under his lapels to his shoulders and then pushed his jacket from his body. It fell to the floor and was soon followed by his bowtie, shirt and belt. Ezra toed off his shoes and socks and then waited for Candace’s direction. She smiled at him and trailed her fingertips through his chest hair, down his stomach — his abs flinching under her fingertips — to the top of his pants.
Candace licked her lips and marveled at how much she loved touching Ezra. She was happy she’d never gotten to experience this while in college because she knew she’d never have been able to stop herself. The way his body heated and flinched and melted under her hands made her feel powerful and so horny her skin felt like it was covered in electricity. If she’d known Ezra would be like this, she was certain she’d have flunked out in a semester. Happily.
She wedged her finger into his belt buckle and began to pull it loose. She locked eyes with him as she pulled it slowly from his pants loops. A part of her wanted to yank it free quickly and push his pants just barely down his hips, just enough to get his dick free. But she hadn’t waited three years to rush through this. Who knew if it would happen again?
She slowly unbuttoned and unzipped his pants, leaning forward to push them over his hips. He dipped his head to brush his mouth against hers, but she pulled back before he could pull her into a kiss, smiling wickedly at him as her gaze dipped.
And then there he was, just the thin cotton of his underwear between her and her greatest regret. There was nothing worse than spending years of your life having a singular, but incomplete, masturbatory focus. Of knowing the intimate feeling of Ezra’s mouth and tongue, but no clear image of his dick. She knew what it felt like to desperately ride the hard mound of his erection but she had no idea of the weight of him in her hand, his girth, or the way that silky steel tasted. More than once she’d gotten herself off on her own fingers or her ex-boyfriend’s tongue trying to imagine all of that.
She slipped her fingers into the waistband of his underwear and his own hands followed. They took off his underwear together. He straightened, his hands at his sides as he waited. For her.
“Get on the bed,” she whispered, her voice hoarse with need.
There was no hesitation this time. He scurried onto the bed so fast Candace couldn’t help but laugh as she followed. He turned onto his back, his legs spread and she crawled between them. He groaned and his head fell back to the pillow, but only for a second. He lifted his head, unwilling to look away. That realization made her feel powerful in a way she’d always longed for with Ezra, as if the life she wanted with him was just at her fingertips.
She thought about reaching into her underwear, knowing that she’d find herself wet and warm. But she wanted to wait. She wanted his fingers to be the first to touch her in so long. So, she sat on her knees between his legs, her hands on his thighs.
“Candace,” he moaned.
She smiled and leaned over him, pressing a firm, closed mouth kiss to the center of his chest. She felt the deep rumble of his groan against her mouth and her sex clenched. She kept her eyes on his as she kissed her way down his chest and stomach as all of his muscles twitched and tensed. She smiled up at him as she settled onto her stomach, making sure she was comfortable and her cleavage looked amazing from this angle.
He huffed out a laugh that sounded like a moan and his hands gripped the sheets at his side.
And then she indulged herself. Finally.
His abs jumped when she wrapped her hand around his half-hard cock. She bit her bottom lip as she stroked him gently, just testing his weight and girth with her right hand.
“Candace,” he hissed, when her left hand moved to massage his balls.
She smiled up his body and then lowered to lick the head of his dick with the flat of her tongue.
“Shit,” he said, and so she licked him again.
She dragged her tongue up the underside of his growing erection and then let the tip of her tongue flit through the slit at the head. It was her turn to moan as she tasted him after so many years of dreaming about this.
“Oh my god,” he groaned, and let his head fall back onto the pillow.
She smiled and stroked him just a bit faster with a tighter grip, enjoying the way he hardened and grew in her palm. She suckled on the head, stroking him up and down as he squirmed underneath her. She pressed her thighs together just as she swallowed as much of his dick as she could. She was rewarded with a loud, incoherent cry at least an octave higher than Ezra’s regular voice.
It was amazing. Maybe even more amazing than she’d ever imagined. So good that she lost track of her own desire and began to suck him with deep strokes and pressure, licking and pumping his shaft, massaging his testicles, living for every moan that fell from his lips. His hips lifted from the bed momentarily and he bunched more of the sheets in his fists. She clenched her sex as the room filled with his cries.
Her eyes closed in ecstasy. Giving Ezra a blowjob was everything she’d ever hoped it would be and more.
“Fuck, wait,” he hissed suddenly. His thigh muscles went rigid and his strong hands grazed her shoulders.
She lifted her head, the head of his dick popping from her mouth obscenely. He groaned and shivered, gently pushing her away.
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked, even though she was certain the answer was no.
He shook his head quickly and rolled to his side. “Don’t want to come in your mouth.”
“What if that’s what I want?” she asked with an arched eyebrow.
He moaned and grabbed his erection, burying his face in the pillow beneath him.
She laughed and waited for him to get himself together.
When he turned on his back, his hand still gripping his shaft tightly, she almost worried that it might hurt.
“Next time,” he ground out.
Her smile faltered for just a second. She wanted to ask him if he meant that they would be having sex multiple times tonight — which she was very much into — or if he meant tomorrow or the day after or the day after that — which was what she really wanted, but was too afraid to tell him. So she sat back on her heels, put her hands on her hips and smiled down at him.
“So what do you wanna do now?” she asked, sounding cocky even though she felt just as off-kilter as he looked.
When Ezra looked at her, Candace felt as if the world had shifted. Sometimes when he looked at her, she could have sworn that his eyes were filled with awe and something like love. His gaze made her feel beautiful and desired, but it was so fleeting. It never came with declarations of love or action. And over the past three years, she’d convinced herself that what she thought she’d seen in his eyes wasn’t real; just a reflection of her own desire for him. But even she couldn’t explain this look away. When he lifted his eyes to hers, Candace shivered as his eyes traveled from her face and then up and down her body as he licked his lips.
“My turn,” he whispered absentmindedly.
It was Candace’s turn to groan.
***
Ezra was the king of nervous energy and it usually presented itself in the obvious flush of his neck and face. But the reddening of his skin when he was around Candace hid a deep clenching in his gut, a rapidly beating pulse, an almost painful pounding of his heart, a constriction of nearly every muscle in his body as he fought a marrow-deep longing to be closer to her, touch her, taste her or just hear her say his name. He was always shy and maybe a little socially awkward, but around Candace, Ezra hardly knew up from down or left from right.
He’d been thinking over the past three years that the next time he saw her in person he would be more in control of himself, and on some level he was. There was a time when looking into Candace’s eyes was impossible to imagine and there wasn’t a fantasy world that he could have conjured where Candace’s hands and mouth stroked his aching dick and he didn’t come prematurely. He’d held out as long as he could, but he had to stop her before he came so hard he passed out. That wasn’t the image he wanted Candace to have of him after so long.
Besides, she was in the sexiest black lace underwear he’d ever seen and all he wanted to do was rip them off.
He struggled to his knees and faced her. She watched him and licked her bottom lip, making his dick throb. He flexed his hands and she laughed.
“You stretching before you touch me?”
He raised his eyes to hers and not for the first time today, she took his breath away. He’d missed her so much. He smiled shyly. “Don’t wanna get a cramp before you come.”
Her mouth fell open in shock. “Ezra Posner!”
“I love the way you say my name,” he finally admitted to her, six years too late, as he reached out and slipped his hand behind her neck and pulled her face forward. He could taste himself on her tongue and he groaned into her mouth. She shivered against him.
His other hand moved slowly to her collarbone. He reluctantly let go of her lips because he wanted to see her face as his fingertips tickled the fragile bone there, moving down her chest to the edge of her strapless lace bustier and over the soft cleavage that spilled over the top of her bra in a way that had been distracting him all day. He hadn’t been ogling her — of course he never would — but the amount of effort it took not to stare at her face or drool at her cleavage had actually made him miss his cue to give Miles Mei’s ring during the ceremony. He’d been embarrassed, but feeling that soft skin under his fingertips soothed the awkwardness of that memory. And when he looked at Candace, her eyes closed and eyelashes fluttering as he dipped a finger into one of her bra cups and grazed her hard nipple, he knew that he wouldn’t remember that gaffe, not after tonight.
She moaned.
His body tensed and he accidentally gripped her neck harder. She didn’t open her eyes but she did smile, that knowing haughty smile that he’d always loved.
“I want to tear all this lace off you,” he whispered.
Her eyes opened quickly and she stared at him as if she was seeing him for the first time.
“You’ve changed,” she whispered to him.
He didn’t know what she meant by that or if it was a good or bad thing, but she was right. He wasn’t the inexperienced boy who’d happily — if nervously — knelt at her feet and had his first taste of her. He wasn’t the same Ezra who’d let himself hope they were on the precipice of something real. And thankfully, he also wasn’t the guy who’d spent the entire summer after she didn’t come back sad and moody. The man who’d lost his virginity to a girl he met at his cousin’s wedding but whose name he couldn’t even remember. Who’d hated himself after it was done because he didn’t feel more mature, he just felt regret, because he’d always wanted Candace to be his first. His only. He was older and a touch more confident. And even though Candace still made his throat dry, he wasn’t as inexperienced as he used to be and he wanted her to know that.
“In some ways,” he said and pressed his lips to hers. “But not totally.”
He kept his eyes locked on her as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled apart each small clasp of her lingerie.
She exhaled heavily when she was free of her bustier. “I don’t know what that means,” she whispered.
He cupped her breasts, a bit of flesh spilling from his hands. And then he lowered his mouth to lick across each mound and up her neck. He placed a chaste kiss on the corner of her mouth as he rolled her nipples between his fingers. She moaned.
“I’ll show you,” he whispered against her skin. And then he lowered his mouth to her breasts to kiss, lick and suck at the soft flesh.
“Oh god,” she moaned when he sucked her left nipple into his mouth on a hard tug.
Her hands plunged into his hair, her fingernails scraping along his scalp. He wanted to grab his dick again and squeeze, but he also didn’t want to stop touching her, not even for a moment.
He lifted his head from her breasts. She whimpered and frowned at him. He smiled. She moved one hand to cup his face, running her thumb over his lips. He tried to decipher what that look on her face meant. Maybe on another person it might have reminded Ezra of reverence. Maybe on any other woman whose breasts he was currently holding, thumbs gently stroking her nipples, he might have read this look as something like love. But not with Candace. Simply because he wanted to see love in her eyes, made him certain that it must be something else.
So he blinked and looked away, pressing his lips to the pad of her thumb as he helped her lie back onto the bed. He swallowed the loudest groan of the night at the image of her lying beneath him, her soft hair fanned out around her head like a halo — just like that first New Year’s — naked but for a pair of lacy underwear, her breasts drooping slightly to her sides and the gentle rounded slope of her stomach. He felt the prick of tears at the back of his eyes and he had to swallow hard to hold them back, his hands shaking as he reached for the waistband of her underwear.
It wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be enough. He could fuck her tonight, all night, and he planned to. He could wake up tomorrow and fuck her again and again and he would if she would let him. But the problem with him and Candace was that she’d leave. The wedding was over. There was a brunch tomorrow, but after that she’d go back to wherever she lived now and he’d hop on a flight back to New York. And no matter how good the sex was sure to be — no matter that he’d been waiting for this moment for years — a world where he couldn’t keep Candace with him for longer than a few hours would never be enough.
She lifted her hips from the bed and he pulled her underwear over the curve of her ass, down her legs and off. He leaned over her to press his mouth against her soft stomach, letting his mouth sink into her flesh, the smell of her surrounding him. It wouldn’t be enough, but he’d remember every second of this night for the rest of his life. And that would have to do. For now.
Candace’s hands moved back to his hair. She stroked his strands slowly and let him stay like that, pressing his face into her stomach. If she felt the wetness of the few tears he couldn’t stop, she was kind enough not to mention them. Or maybe she thought it was his tongue, because eventually it was. He licked his salty tears from her skin and then circled her belly button. She giggled. He moved his mouth to the apex of her legs and she opened for him automatically.
He crawled between her legs and ran his hands under her thighs, spreading them more.
She moved one hand from his hair to her sex, reminding him of three years ago. He unconsciously thrust his hips into the bed as her fingers moved through her slit, becoming slick with her own arousal. He looked up her body, over the peaks of her stomach and breasts to find her staring back at him with hooded eyes.
“Did you miss me, Ezra?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
“Every day,” he admitted honestly. “Did you miss me?” He held his breath as he waited for her answer.
She laughed. It sounded soft, maybe even sad. “Every minute,” she said.
He couldn’t have hoped for a better answer. It might have been a lie, or not in the same way he’d meant it — like love, not friendship — but he’d been waiting so long for this that he decided to let himself be seduced by the perfection of her laugh, her body, those words, her scent as he lowered his mouth to her sex.
She moaned loudly and scratched his scalp with one hand while the other spread her lips open for his tongue. She tasted better than he remembered and he lost himself in the sweet salty taste of her. He sucked her from clit to opening and pushed her legs higher and further apart.
“Oh god yes,” she whispered.
He could feel her orgasm nearing. Her thighs shook in his hands, her moans becoming a beautiful melodic song even as the words that flew from her mouth grew filthier. He wanted her to come on his tongue again. But there was something he wanted more.
She growled when he took his mouth away and sat up on his knees. She pushed up onto her elbows only to return to her back when he pressed her left knee to the bed with one hand and then slipped two fingers of his other hand inside her.
“Oh fuck,” she said, shivering beneath him.
His eyes focused on her face, watching the minute details of her facial expressions as she came fully undone on his hand. He pumped his fingers into her forcefully, the wet tip of his dick resting against her thigh.
She grabbed her breasts and he moved his thumb to her clit. He fucked her like that, watching her moan and gasp and shiver underneath him, bringing her slowly to the brink. Candace’s back arched when he added a third finger and increased the pressure of his thrusts as she fell over the edge. Ezra’s palm filled with her release and he shifted next to her on the bed. He covered her sex with his wet hand, cupping her as he fucked her with his fingers. She spasmed again and her back arched from the bed as her sex clenched with an obscene squelch around his fingers.
Ezra gritted his teeth to keep from coming with her.
He slowed his hand, stroking her through the aftershocks of her orgasm. He ignored the fact that his dick ached, or at least he’d planned to.
Candace wasn’t interested in that. She pushed his hand from between her legs and practically ripped the box of condoms open with her teeth.
He laughed and then slipped one of his wet fingers into his mouth.
“Ezra,” she squealed at him with a smile.
He smiled back and sucked her essence from another finger as she tore open a condom wrapper.
He jerked when her hand covered his dick again. He held his breath as she rolled the condom on and threw a leg over his body to straddle him.
“You might want to breathe,” she said, that beautiful smile spreading across her face.
He let out the breath he was holding and moved his hands to grab her hips again. They locked eyes and the room filled with their mingled moans as she lined his erection up with her opening and then sank down onto his length.
She threw her head back and laughed as if everything was right with the world and for him, it was. As Candace started to move on top of him, rotating her hips in slow circular motions, he dug his fingers into her waist and thrust his hips up to meet her. They rocked slowly into his every fantasy. She was as warm and wet and tight and shuddering as he’d always hoped she’d be. And when she started to move faster, her palms planted firmly on his chest, their eyes still locked, she smiled down at him. It was even better than his fantasies, he thought, as he smiled up at her. The distant sounds of fireworks spurred them on. It was all so familiar and new at the same time that it caught him off guard. In that moment of vulnerability, he let himself imagine that this wasn’t the culmination of his college dreams but the start of something new.
They changed position.
She turned on her side and he moved behind her and re-entered her slowly. She contorted herself so that their mouths and tongues could meet and he fucked her slowly, as if there was no rush, as if they had all night and the next and the next. He let himself imagine that this felt as good and right to her as it did to him; that each stroke only strengthened her resolve to never let this feeling go. He let his imagination conjure an infinity of days for them, where they could have this and their old friendship and so much more. He let himself hope.
And maybe that’s why it hurt so much when he woke up the next morning in his hotel bed alone, an empty box of condoms and Candace’s smell still clinging to the sheets and his skin. That and the debris from the now empty box the only signs that last night hadn’t been another dream. Maybe that’s why when he rushed downstairs to the brunch reception only to find the seat next to Mei — Candace’s seat — filled by Karen, he felt a kind of foreboding he had no idea what to do with.
Finally, Candace’s dad put him out of his misery. “She had to leave. She starts a new job today. Mei didn’t tell you?” Mr. Garret asked.
Ezra swallowed a lump in his throat that was certainly full of tears and confusion and regret. “No. She didn’t tell me anything. She never does,” he said. But he meant Candace, not Mei, because not telling him that she was leaving felt a whole hell of a lot like telling him that she was coming home for graduation, and then not.
So he guessed Candace had been wrong, he thought to himself. He hadn’t changed at all. And neither had she.