“WHAT MAKES SENSE?” Fin, still straddled across Tyler’s lap, poked at his chest. He gritted his teeth because she was extremely wet and extremely warm and even through their two pairs of underwear he could feel her in excruciating detail.
“You,” he told her honestly. “No wonder you had no interest in me pursuing you. No wonder you distrust guys who want you so badly. Because they pursue you relentlessly, usually insulting you if you turn them down, and when you do say yes to one of them, apparently he’s not even patient enough to get you off? Jeez, I’d have kicked my ass to the curb too, if that had been my experience.”
Her brows were down, watching him like he was some alien creature who was trying to communicate in another language.
“You say that now...” she said after a minute. “But forty minutes of fruitless canoodling later, and you might be singing a different tune.”
He sat up so that they were nose to nose. “Absolutely zero canoodling is ever fruitless. If I wanna canoodle you, trust me, I’m doing it for the sake of canoodling. And orgasm should not be viewed as the only destination. That’s a total orgasm killer.”
She cocked her head again to the side as if she were still actively trying to figure out what language he was speaking. “You’re serious.”
“Dead.” He brushed his nose over hers. “Something I learned as I got older and got better at sex is that pressure to perform is not sexy. Ever. Dudes usually figure this out in relation to their boners.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean a watched pot never boils.”
She threw her head back and laughed and he silently thanked God that the furrow between her eyes was gone. “You mean that if everyone is just sitting around and waiting for the boner to rear his head—”
“Then six more weeks of winter it is.”
She laughed again before her smile gave way to an inquisitive look. “You think the same theory can be applied to my orgasm?”
He gave her a droll look. “Fin, if you’re counting down the seconds to when I’m going to get frustrated and give up on your elusive orgasm, you are literally never going to have said elusive orgasm. Also, if the only reason I’m touching you or going down on you is to get you off, then I’m probably going to get frustrated if you don’t get off. The point is that we’re supposed to be enjoying each other. Reveling in each other. And if we’re doing that, pressure free, then usually that leads to the happy fireworks times.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And if it doesn’t lead to the happy fireworks times?”
He shrugged. “Then you get yourself off during sex. Or we use a vibrator. Or I give you ten minutes alone in the shower to take care of business. I dunno. I’m just saying that if we’re actually considering having sex with each other regularly, relationship-style, then there’s gonna be times that you don’t come or my boner takes a coffee break or whatever. If we just kind of accept that we can still have good sex even if we’re not checking every box every time, then we’ll actually have good sex. Where I’m not praying for boners and you don’t have one eye on the clock waiting for me to tell you there’s something wrong with your hoo-ha.”
Her face changed from one emotion to the next, but Tyler wasn’t sure he was accurately interpreting any of them. She looked confused. And hopeful. And trepidatious. And excited.
“That actually makes a lot of sense.”
He propped his hands behind his head. “You know, I’m not the worst.”
She rolled her eyes and rubbed herself against him. “So, what happens now?”
He gulped and pressed his eyes closed for a moment against the image of a topless Serafine St. Romain straddling him. He deserved the medal of honor for having that conversation while she was naked.
“Uh,” he grated out. “We have sex?”
She laughed. “Good idea.”
And then the weight of her was gone as she scampered to the bathroom and back, condoms in hand.
She held out a hand to him and he took it. She yanked him up to his feet. “I like your theory about pressure. Beds are a lot of pressure. Let’s go to a less sex-havey place.” She tugged him a few feet to the side, and they both sat down hard on top of the chaise longue that took up one wall of her bedroom. It was romantic and curvy and entirely too small for two people. It was perfect. Her body was jammed up between the wall and his body, her breasts in his face, her legs twisted with his.
Tyler leaned forward and took one of her nipples in his mouth, testing her, suctioning, nibbling. He kept his promise and reveled. He lost himself in the piano keys of her ribs, the plush paradise of her breasts.
She kissed at his ribs, dragged her hands through his chest hair. Just when he was about to ask her if his chest hair bothered her at all, she rubbed one cheek against it and bit his pec. That was a yes to the chest hair, then.
They grappled together, sweaty and cramped on the chaise longue. She dragged her foot up the back of one of his legs, pushing her toes underneath the leg of his boxer briefs. He grunted and tucked his thumbs into his waistband, tugging them down over his hips. She reared back and helped him get them the rest of the way down.
Her eyes landed between his legs, and she surprised him by breaking into a wide, lustful smile.
“You look like you have some very evil, very dirty plans in store for me,” he said, unable to keep from tracing the shape of her hourglass with his hands.
“I’m just smiling because your dick kind of looks like you.”
“What?” Tyler laughed and looked down at the appendage in question. “What are you talking about?”
She was sitting on his thighs, her hands on his hip bones. Before she answered, she leaned down and pressed a kiss to his tip, almost chaste. Tyler’s hips jutted upward of their own accord and, holding his eye, she gave him one hot, glancing lick before she lifted her head again and answered his question.
“I’m not sure how to explain it. But he looks like you. Preppy. Masculine. But with all this desire he keeps on a very short leash.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Tyler said, unable to keep himself from reaching a hand down, readjusting himself.
Fin batted his hands away and reached for a condom, opening it and expertly sliding it down his length. “Sorry,” she grimaced. “I’ll get bigger ones next time.”
“These’ll do,” he grunted, counting backward from nine thousand at the feel of her tight, confident grip against him.
The very second she was done fussing over him, he reached up and toppled her back down, over him. He tipped them to the side again so that she was pinned between the wall and him, his body on the chaise longue just far enough not to fall off. Her leg was over top of his hip, her eyes snagged on his, her breasts smashed against his chest. She was completely pinned and open to him with the exception of her underwear.
Pulling them off of her would require him to disentangle the two of them, and there was not a penguin’s chance in hell of that happening. So, Tyler simply reached down and yanked her underwear to one side, baring her to him. Fin’s pupils dilated and she jutted her hips forward, her light eyes almost hypnotizing him. Tyler found her with his fingers first, and she was the same heaven she’d been over on the bed. Warm, impossibly wet, ready for him. Open and tight and perfect. He guided his hardness straight toward the promised land, pressing himself just half an inch inside of her and waiting, his entire world trembling like those first disorienting few seconds of an earthquake.
“More,” she whispered, moving her head so that their mouths were pressed together, not kissing, just smashed together and breathing, her arms around his rib cage, their chests pumping in and out. He planted the flat of his palm against her ass and held her still as he pushed himself forward.
Not too fast, not too slow. Tyler pushed in halfway, pulled back out and then thrust forward and let himself sink to the hilt.
He said words. Lots of them. He felt like she was pulling them out of him with those eyes of hers. He had that familiar hypnotized feeling as he felt himself get lost in the light blur of her gaze. Her arms were a hard cage around him, their noses and mouths smashed together. He placed one hand between her back and the wall, reared back and thrusted again. And again.
The chaise longue scratched her wooden floor as it moved an inch or so at a time. Tyler was dimly aware of planting a foot against the wall for leverage. On their sides like this, they didn’t have a huge range of motion, but neither did they seem to need it. He could feel her pleasure point smashed against his pubic bone, the same way her breasts were smashed against his chest. He could hear her voice, begging directly into his mouth. He reveled in the tight, almost unforgiving clasp of her body. He felt her begin to rhythmically clench around him as she rose, chased her own fire, lost herself the way he was losing himself.
“Ty,” she chanted. “Ty. Oh, God. I’m gonna—” And that was all the warning he got before her fingernails raked across his back, her arms clamping hard around him, her head getting thrown back as her entire body went tight and writhing and pressure, pressure, pressure around where he needed her the most. White light spread into the corners of his vision as he endured the most pleasurable pain of his life. There was nothing like this. Nothing better than this moment right here.
He stopped thrusting and just held inside of her, letting her feel him there. He’d been close, but hadn’t come yet and suddenly, he found he wasn’t quite ready to. Though pulling out of her heat went against every law of nature known to mankind, Tyler did just that.
“Mmm,” she groaned, tossing one arm over her eyes. “That was—” She cut off and looked up when he gripped her knees and swung her around on the chaise longue, opening her up to him where he knelt on the ground. “What? You don’t have to—Oh, shit.”
He knew he didn’t have to. Which was part of why he wanted to so badly. He hoped that one day she would understand this. That sex without unwritten sexual obligation was the highest plane of adult fun that anyone could ever reach. It was like the secret hidden level at the end of an old Nintendo video game. Not everyone knew it was there, but once you found it, you refused to settle for less.
He opened his mouth over her wetness, kissed her there like he had her mouth. Slow and unbothered and joyful. He could still feel her aftershocks from her first orgasm and he chased them, used them like a roadmap, let himself find where she was sensitive, where she was too sensitive and which places made her yank his hair. He held her open with his hands and let himself lose track of time. He wasn’t completely converted on this whole energy thing, but he did his absolute best to nonverbally communicate to her that he was having a blast, that she should forget about time, that this was perfection.
He nuzzled and kissed and nipped. But it was the suckling she liked best. The no-nonsense, concentrated, he-didn’t-come-to-play suction that had her in that crescent-moon shape again, nonsense words that dissolved into a kind of hoarse scream as she trembled, vibrated, clamped down on the two fingers he’d slipped inside.
She reared up and he barely recognized her. She’d never looked more like Cleopatra than she did in that moment. She was fierce and glowing with whatever the nonangry version of anger was. She had it in spades. She tumbled forward, off the chaise longue, and knocked him back onto the floor. He caught himself on the heels of his hands, his legs spread out before him with Fin kneeling in the triangle they made. She aggressively ripped the condom off of him, leaned forward and swallowed him down.
Apparently she hadn’t come to play either. Because did she tease him? She did not. Did she experiment? She did not. Did she play? She did not. She merely attempted to get the roof of his head to blow off in cartoon steam.
He collapsed backward onto his elbows, thrust his hips up into the fisted hand she’d brought into the mix, and simply stopped holding on to reality. White claimed his vision then as pleasure, needle-sharp and ruthless, was summoned forth from him in an unstoppable cyclone.
He was shocked to feel echoes of that same palm energy she’d encouraged him to feel earlier. This was like that but multiplied by the earth. This was grounded in pleasure, in giving. He knew, without question, that he was giving something of himself to her. Not just his ecstasy, but a piece of who he was. He was riding on the impossible euphoria of handing himself over to her. Hers for the taking.
I’m yours.
The words popped into his consciousness out of nowhere as she sucked him through the most life-altering orgasm he’d ever experienced. And when he huffed and fell backward, and she continued to lap at him affectionately, he knew another truth: wherever this static-shock-having, possibly psychic, magic-doing, potion-brewing witch woman wanted to lead him, he was going. He’d go with her into the beyond. The next world. The next life. Beyond, beyond, beyond.
TYLER WOKE UP alone on the floor of Fin’s bedroom. The sky outside the window was a deep blue but he lay in a triangle of orange light glowing in from the living room. There was a pillow under his head and a sheet tossed over his hips. He moved one hand down and confirmed that he was still very much naked.
He didn’t usually enjoy sleeping on a floor, or really anywhere but his Serta mattress and Egyptian-cotton sheets. But so far with Fin he’d slept a night on a crappy antique couch and taken a very satisfying catnap on the rug on her bedroom floor. Had he ever felt more refreshed? He didn’t think so.
He sat up and something rolled off his forehead. Squinting in the dark he found it with a soft grin. It was a clear, almost round crystal that she’d laid there. He held it in the palm of his hand and gazed down at the little rock. It was warm from his forehead, but he almost felt like it was warm from her. Like although she’d gotten up, she’d left a piece of herself behind. He stood, stretched and found his pants, remaking her bed from the mess they’d torn it into earlier. He took one last look around the room that he was quite certain had changed the path of his life before he went to look for Fin.
He found her in the kitchen. Her hair was knotted in a huge pile on top of her head, and she wore his button-down shirt and her purple socks. There were miles of leg in between. Her back was to him as she slid something chopped up and orchid-purple into a pot on the burner. He heard her say something but couldn’t quite make it out. Something moved over him, almost like a static shock without the shock.
He watched quietly as she chose herbs from her drying rack and those went in the mixture too. Almost instantly, a fragrance curled out into the air, riding on the back of the steam.
“Smells good in here,” he said, stepping toward her.
She jolted under the touch he smoothed over one of her hips, but softened immediately, leaning back into him, letting her head fall back onto his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her front.
Holding her like this just felt right. It had fond memories attached to it, considering he’d held her like this the first time he’d touched her naked body, just hours ago. But there was something about them sandwiched together like this, both of them facing forward, that made him feel allied with her. Like they were staring down the future together.
He kissed her temple, rested his chin on top of the messy pile of her hair. “Whatcha makin’?”
“Uh, it’s a kind of celebration tea.”
He knew instantly that she wasn’t telling him the whole truth. He leaned forward, over her shoulder and sniffed the pot. “Smells...sexy.”
It was true. Something about the scent was romantic, made him think of dark rooms and whispers and warm, smooth skin.
She said nothing, just turned the heat down, put a dash of something in the pot and put the lid on.
“What’s it called?” he urged her, catching a view of one pink cheek of hers and feeling beyond intrigued.
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. And look at that, he had nervous Fin in the circle of his arms, her breasts resting on his forearm, the cradle of her head pressing into his shoulder. He suddenly felt giddy with holding her.
She turned all at once, her light eyes defiantly on his, but her cheeks still tantalizingly pink. “It’s...it’s called love tea, okay? It promotes relaxation and calm, but also celebration for when—” She mumbled the rest, but he didn’t need her to say it clearly.
He twisted a fallen strand of her hair back into her bun and finished the sentence for her. “It’s for when you’ve just made love to someone.”
She nodded tersely, her eyes on the notch between his throat and chest. “For when you’re happy about it. It sort of seals it all in.”
He jolted, as she had, when she landed one palm on his chest. He knew now that she was showing him her energy, her palm energy. But she was also messing around with his chest hair. He felt giddy and nuzzly and ridiculous.
“Some people smoke cigarettes after sex. You brew magic tea.”
She smirked up at him.
“I want a glass,” he told her.
She frowned, but he could tell that it was simply to hide her pleased smile. “It’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
“Are you hungry?” He glanced around then, realizing he had no clue what time it even was. “Jeez, your house is like a wormhole where time bends and means nothing anymore.”
“It’s 6:45 p.m.,” she told him.
He shook his head and laughed. “It’s so weird to spend time with another adult at this time of day. Well, not so much right now, but we started hanging out at like two in the afternoon. On a weekday.”
“Yeah.” She scratched at her head and made the whole mess of her hair move as one organism. Tyler felt obscenely charmed by this. “I don’t know anyone else who’s freelance.”
“Our weird schedules mean we’re going to start eating dinner at five every night.”
“At least we could benefit from the early-bird specials.”
He smiled. “I wonder how Kylie will feel about that.”
His smile faded as he considered his own question and truly did wonder how Kylie would feel about that. About all of this.
Fin, one eye on him, tilted back toward the stove and lifted the lid. “One thing at a time, Ty. Tea’s ready.”
She poured two cups of the tea, which was a surprising shade of pink. Tyler eyed it somewhat dubiously the moment her back was turned, smiling wide and innocent when she turned back. She led him into the living room, where they piled onto her couch, their limbs tangling, most of her weight on his lap. He winced and lifted and yanked one of her heels out from under his thigh. He liked how uncareful she was with him. She was womanly and graceful as she moved through the world, but get her alone and she was suddenly coltish and slightly clumsy. It felt like a secret that only he knew and he could feel himself locking it tight within him, somewhere that no one else would ever find it.
He eyed the tea. “So, do we say a prayer or something?”
“A prayer?” she asked, looking confused. “Like, bless me, father, for I have—”
He cut her off with a loud laugh. “No! And that’s not exactly a prayer. That’s what you say when you go to confess your sins. I meant, like, is there a spell we’re supposed to say?”
Now she was the one laughing and rolling her eyes. “No, Ty. The magic is in the sitting and drinking. You and me together. There’s nothing hocus-pocus about it.”
Holding her eye, he leaned forward and took a sip, readying himself not to wince against the flavor. But to his surprise, it actually tasted good. A little like taking a bite out of a flower bouquet, but there was cinnamon in there. It was warm and light and she’d made it for him. Love tea. He’d have drunk a gallon of it if she’d asked.