“West,” she says.
Yeah. I know. She wants me inside her, and if I don’t get there in the next thirty seconds, the world might as well end.
“Hold on. Don’t move. Not one inch.”
I get up, grab a condom from the desk, rip it open, and roll it on with my eyes on Caroline on my bed, legs spread open, wet and ready, her body, her mouth, her smile, her eyes.
“I’m getting cold.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Then I’m back over her, my dick sliding over her warm, soft pussy, our mouths meeting, her arms around me. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
I reach down. Find the right spot, the right angle.
I ease into her. Inch by inch. Slow, because I don’t want to hurt her, because it’s been a while for both of us, because I don’t want to embarrass myself and come before we’re even hardly started.
Slow, because I want to watch her face, and, fuck, it is romantic. It is special.
It’s Caroline.
When I’m all the way in, her knees spread wide, her eyes right with me, I kiss her. I just stay there, not moving, because I’ve wanted to be here, with her, for so long, but I didn’t think I ever would.
It’s torture. The worst best torture of my life.
This is what deeper feels like.
This is what sex feels like, if you’re doing it right.
If you’re in love.
It’s incredible.
I frame her face between my palms, smooth her hair off her forehead. “You okay?”
I thought this couldn’t get better, but it does when she smiles. And when she moves, rocking her hips experimentally into me, then back away—Christ Jesus. I suck in a breath and close my eyes.
“I’m great.”
“Good.”
I’m not ready to move yet. I’ve been told I have amazing stamina, but it’s obvious now that this is only true when I don’t give a shit. With Caroline, I’m going to have to work hard just to not be the king of the premature ejaculators.
“West?”
She rocks again.
“Hunh?”
“Are you going to fuck me or what?”
“I ever tell you I don’t like bossy women?”
She slithers away beneath me, then thrusts up. Her mouth falls open in a soft O. Then she smiles and looks at me, like, I’m such a genius.
She does it again. “You—oh—like me, though—oh my God.”
Whatever tiny piece of control I was holding on to, I lose it. I start to move, and she’s right with me. I suck her tits, kiss her neck, behind her ear, everyplace she likes. I drive into her, savoring every stroke, the tight clasp of her cunt, the way she moans, the slide of our bodies, the sex stink better than any perfume, the taste of sweat at her throat.
“Can you come like this?” I ask.
“I don’t … know.”
I get a hand under her ass, angle her up. She squeaks.
“Better?”
“Oh, wow.” After a few seconds, she says, “Harder.”
Music to my ears.
I speed up, stop banking my thrusts, let her have more of my need, more of my greed, and she takes it. She wants it. She gets her legs around me, digs her heels into me on every stroke, lifts up into me, and says, “West, yeah, oh, God.” I didn’t think she’d be like this, this open, this loud, but she is and I love it.
“This gonna work?”
I don’t have to ask, though. She’s tossing her head, heels back on the bed, digging in, getting restless and desperate. “Please,” she says. “Please.”
She always begs me when she’s about to come. I love that, too. I love making her so crazy that she loses her pride and just begs.
“So fucking sexy.”
Then we’re moving fast and frantic, and I don’t have any way to describe it that’s worth anything. I push into her until there’s nowhere to get to, until I’ve already got there, and there’s no her or me, just us, our bodies, our heat, this gathering pleasure white-hot and dangerous, too dangerous, but I don’t care. I can’t think.
I can only move with Caroline, deep, deeper, all the way toward the center of something bigger than either of us.
She tightens. I groan. She grips me. I kiss her.
She moans and her voice breaks, a beautiful cracked-open sound. My balls tighten, the joy searing through me, her eyes closing, her arms clenching, my heart open as I watch her light up with pleasure.
MARCH
Caroline
We got five weeks.
I’d teased West for counting the days of our separation, even though I spent them dragging around, doubting myself, wrecked with missing him. But when we were together—the last two weeks of February, the first three weeks of March—it was so good that every day felt like an anniversary. Every day felt special, worth pressing into a scrapbook, sealing in amber, tucking away.
Nights at the bakery. Showers at the apartment, a snack in the quiet kitchen, trying not to wake Krishna, laughing behind my hand. Mornings in West’s bed, hands and mouths and the slow, beautiful rhythm of his body rocking into mine.
The way he moves has always made me crazy, but there is nothing like the way he moves inside me. Nothing.
I didn’t know it could be like that. So dirty and so good. So gorgeous and perfect.
For five weeks, we were always together. I went back to my vampire schedule, napping in the afternoons, waking up in the middle of the night and meeting him at the bakery for his shifts. I studied at the library when he was working there, set myself up in a carrel on the fourth floor and waited in the quiet for him to find a cart of journals that needed shelving. I pushed my fingers into his hair when he dropped to his knees beneath my chair, bit my thumb to keep from crying out, came against his fingers and his tongue, scandalous and forbidden and happy.
He kissed me in the dining hall. I took his hand when we walked across the quad. We raced each other down the train tracks, one on each rail, balancing with our arms out, pushing at each other’s hands to see who could stay on the longest, who would fall off, who would win.
Those were the best weeks. In the dead of February, the frozen cold, I had West, and we were beautiful and bright, friends and lovers, laughing all the time. Laughing until my cheeks ached and my stomach hurt and I had to ask him to stop, because it was so good, it hurt.
I loved him.
I didn’t tell him, but it was obvious. Obvious to me, obvious to West.
Obvious to anyone who was paying attention.
West is sitting on the edge of the mattress, bent over his phone. He’s got an eight o’clock. I don’t have to be up for another hour, but I’m up anyway. West had ideas.
Or, okay, West’s penis had ideas. I woke up to his mouth on my neck, his hand heavy and hot against my stomach, his erection pressing against my ass.
“Good morning?” I said. Because I wasn’t all that sure. That it was good, or that it was even morning.
“Mmm.”
That was pretty much all it took to convince me. He has this way of humming under his breath, this low, delicious sound that vibrates right up against my clit. It’s so sexy. It’s so West. One mmm, and I’m in.