He pops another of my buttons with one hand—the other is spread flat against my stomach—rocking us side to side down the hallway. Hums in my ear.
“What’s that song?”
“Shhh.” Kisses the skin between my neck and shoulder.
“Is it Disney again?”
“Miles is obsessed with Disney movies, I can’t help it. I’ll be texting you while one of them’s playing and before I know it, one of the songs becomes a you and me song. Beyond my control.” His fingers are making quick work of my buttons, shirt gaping open at the front. We wander into the kitchen, where he breaks out the strawberry salad and scoops some into a bowl. Slips a bite into my mouth.
He dabs a speck onto my upper lip just to watch my tongue dart out, lick it off. Slides my shirt down until the sleeves are at my elbows. Presses a kiss to my left shoulder, across my collarbones, to my right. Feeds me another spoonful. I can’t move my eyes from his face as he goes about his ministrations, touching and kissing, savoring. There will be times we don’t savor, when we don’t go slow. But I’m glad tonight is feeling like forever, winding me up with anticipation.
He tips another bite past my lips, our eyes locking. His mouth kicks upward, and I think, I love him.
Loving Alex is innate language. I don’t remember how I learned it because by the time it dawned on me to consider the concept, I was already fluent. I didn’t stop loving him, I didn’t forget that I loved him, either. All I did was put the words behind a door to prevent them from escaping into conscious thought. They’ve been waiting there all this time, alive, just as loud, just as strong, as they ever were.
He licks the back of my spoon. Stronger, I think, mouth dry as I watch his tongue twist. He slants me a hungry look.
Leaving the bedroom, with that big, intimidating bed, has busted a levee and we’re flooded with want. I grip his shoulders, dragging him closer. He kicks my knees apart, standing between them. He cups the back of my head and kisses me, kisses me. How did I survive living without him? How am I going to unpeel myself from his side ever again? I suck his lip between my teeth, drag my nails down his arms. Divest him of his shirt.
I’m in a bra and shorts, then only my shorts, his hands scalding, the weight of my breasts in his work-roughened hands incredible, calluses smoothing over flushed, sensitive skin. His eyes blaze, and I’ll die if I don’t watch him come looking exactly like this. Hot liquid pumps to every pressure point, a fluttering in my breastbone where an emotion flowers bigger and bigger, uncontainable. I can’t get close enough, body rubbing against his, a brush of mouths; first a feathering, then a bruising. Closer, closer. “I want to wrap you all around me,” he says, timbre rough and low, uneven as each word slides a different way through the blood that pounds in my ears.
I feel a hand splaying across my back and I instinctively recline, legs hooking around his hips. He drags me off the counter like a meal to be devoured, bringing my mouth back to his.
A belt of wind slaps the windowpanes, reverberating. It howls beneath the cracks in the doors, but I only feel Alex, carrying me back into the bedroom, bulbs in the living room ceiling fan sputtering erratically. This can’t possibly be the same room that we sat in only minutes ago—this one is darker, delicious, impossible not to lose ourselves in. He tosses me onto the bed, chest rising, falling deeply, watching me as I lie naked from the waist up in the space where he tosses and turns at night, stroking himself to thoughts of me. Which I know because he’s admitted it, in the dead of night while we talked on the phone about all the things we weren’t yet brave enough to say to each other in person.
I hold out my arms and he falls into them, hips pressing me down, down. I hum with pleasure, eyelids lowered to half-mast. My fingertips slip into his shorts, easing them down his thighs. He’s hard and ready, listing slightly to the left with each thudding pulse. “Yes,” I whisper.
He yanks down my shorts. Looks long at me, spreading my thighs. Runs a tongue up the seam of my underwear, right where it’s wet, and I spasm, back bowed. And then I’m fully naked, his hands brands on my calves, touching me reverently right up until his teeth find my hip and sink in. I half yell, half moan. Curl my hands around either side of his throat.
His pupils blow wide like windows showing me the deep, dark bottom of him, his heartbeat swift, jumping against my palms. I squeeze, only a little, not enough to hurt. His cock twitches. He swallows. Manages hoarsely, “Please . . . please keep doing that.” I grasp his throat in one hand, and do the same to his cock, gliding my hand up and down, grip tight, pumping until he’s breathless, perspiration breaking out on his forehead. The muscles in his legs tremble.
He rolls us without warning, grasp secure on my arms, reaching onto the nightstand for the box of condoms. While still thrusting into my hand, he tears a condom wrapper with his teeth, rolls it quickly over his length. Tree branches tap the windows persistently, and I’m seized by the inexplicable thought that he and I are responsible for this weather, ebbing and flowing with our emotions.
My hands on his shoulders, he bucks beneath me, helpless not to roll his hips, cheekbones glistening. I kiss his chest, traveling my way up, tilting forward until my breasts are close enough for him to taste. He closes his mouth around a hard nipple and tongues it, sucks, eyes shut, forehead furrowed in ecstasy that he wrestles under control—Not yet. I sink down onto him, inch by inch, muscles clenching. “Ohhh,” I sigh, taking a beat to accustom myself. “You feel so good.”
“You moan like that and this won’t last long,” he warns, guttural. Then I move, he moves, a slow, euphoric drag that makes all the blood rush from my head. I hold on to his throat as we rock, careful not to apply too much pressure. The skin beneath my hand is ruddy, a spreading blush in his swollen lips. Stars appear one by one in his glassy eyes.
I’m searing hot everywhere—eyelids, the backs of my knees, shells of my ears. My hair sticks to my neck, damp. Alex grips my hips, moving me, holding me down harder, harder as I rub against him, friction wicked, and it’s watching where our bodies meet that tightens every sensation until I think I might snap. I hear him panting and look down, watch him throw his head back.
“Are you close?” he grits out.
My response is a breathy moan.
His hands are clamps; he spreads his knees, digging his heels into the mattress, and tilts me upward so that we fuck each other, hard, while he dips his head forward and runs a tongue up my breast, twisting around a nipple. Teeth lightly biting, then sucking. “You like this?”
I can’t speak, can only nod.
Biting. Sucking. His stomach clenches, body shuddering, thrusting and then grinding, tight, tight, tight against my clit, and when I come it wipes all the sound from the earth. My vision is a black-purple field. There’s no noise, hearing collapsed.
It’s forty seconds to a minute before sounds return: the rattle of the air conditioner, wind chimes clanging, gales upon glass. Alex is staring up at me, lips parted on a silent groan, still coming, still clenching. My release is on its journey back down but there is such a fierce pressure building up inside me in tandem, so staggering that I’m going to fly apart and become the walls around him, fragments of Romina embedded in his dresser, his mirror, the roof, the floor. Irreversibly ingrained. No matter what, I’ll never be able to leave him, I’ll be his home wherever he goes.
His undulating hips are slowing down, calming, until he falls still against the sheets. I have the strange, manic desire to lick him everywhere he gleams. This is new. This is beyond me. I don’t know myself, at all, in this moment.
“Alex,” I rasp. “I . . .”
Over in the corner, the small Amazon robot winks back to life and replies, Hm. I don’t know that one.
I forget what I was going to say, if I even had the words to thread my thoughts together. It’s a good thing we both already came, because we’re laughing again, and I think—
I love this man. I’ll never love any other.