Dark Wild Night

“I want to see you.”


Oliver withdraws, rolling me onto my back again. His hands slide from my ankles to my knees and he cups them from behind, bending them to press them to my chest. His elbows come underneath, hooking, holding me open as he stares and then slowly eases back into me with a groan. The sound is pain and joy, his relief dragged along the edge of a knife.

He fucks me tender then brutal, hips circling to make me scream before my hands are pinned at the side of my head and he hits deep in tiny, sharp stabs that shove the breath from my lungs in these blissful forced gusts.

I am mesmerized watching him like this: my calm, gentle friend unleashed. My lover now, so tender with me, so brutal in his drive to make it good. He waits until I’m shaking, until my cries are cut apart by relief, and then he lets himself come again with his mouth open and groaning against mine.

Sweaty, chest heaving, Oliver lands heavily on me.

As soon as he rolls me to my side and tucks in behind me, exhaustion hits me like a physical blow. His lips press to my neck, voice thick with the approach of sleep. “I’m fucking exhausted, but I don’t know how long I can sleep knowing you’re in my bed.”

I hum, smiling into the arm he’s tucked under my neck and wrapped around my front.

“I’ll wake up wanting more,” he whispers with a tiny catch in his voice, part preemptive apology, part warning. His cock is still half-hard, pressing warm against my thigh.

“Me, too.”

I fall asleep feeling my breaths synchronize to the easy rise and fall of his chest behind me.



* * *




THE WORLD INVADES first with the sound of a car horn, then the wind, then the distant sound of waves. I open my eyes and relish the slow appearance of the sun in the eastern sky.

I stretch in Oliver’s arms, too warm. Somehow I’m curled up facing him now. He was an octopus in his sleep, endless arms that gripped me deliciously when I tried to move even an inch away.

I feel when he wakes—that tiny startled twitch in his arms around me—and quietly wait for it to become awkward: we left nothing hidden last night. His room smells heavily of sex and still we’re entwined, completely naked. There’s a condom wrapper somewhere near my left foot, another visible behind Oliver at the edge of the mattress.

Last night comes back to me in scattered flashes of sound and sweat and sensation: the low hiss he made when he pushed inside. The rise and fall of his shoulders as he moved above me. The way his mouth covered mine, tongue skilled and urgent.

I ache between my legs. My skin still feels the friction of his hands and mouth all over me. I knew sex could be like that, I just never knew it could be like that for me.

He’s so solid beside me, so vital. The idea of moving out of the circle of his arms is almost as appealing as cutting off an arm or leg.

What happens when emotion is too big, when it fills the chest and the veins and the limbs? I imagine sunshine filling me until I shatter—leaving starburst-coated girl shrapnel strewn across this bed.

I close my eyes, mentally drawing the way the sun slants across our bare legs instead. I count to ten, and then twenty, focusing on pulling air into my lungs. It will never be what it was before. Oliver and I are forever changed. Something clicks inside me, something permanent and concrete, and it’s both thrilling and terrifying. . . .

I’m wildly, deeply in love.

He lifts his head from where it was buried between my neck and shoulder, kisses me, and whispers, “Good morning, Lola Love.”

I pull the sheet up over my mouth. “Morning.”