I nodded. His hands came to rest on my hips, and he lifted me off the chair. I wrapped my legs around him and he carried me to the bedroom. I’d always imagined it on the kitchen table, or the desk at the garage, but a bed was good, too. Everything I needed was there. His shirt off quick, his arms cool with rain and his chest sticky with sweat. I ran my hands over him and found a long puckered scar that split the skin over his ribs. Something they had done to him in prison.
I was eager to rub my tits against his, to show him mine were finally bigger. His hands were all over me. My hands everywhere else. His mouth laughing, even while he tried to kiss every part of me.
“Goddamn, these are some boots. How do you get ’em off?” he said.
“Slowly.”
He gave up on unlacing when I slid my feet over his shoulders.
His tongue felt good, going into where I was already wet for him. I’d been wet there for him for seven years. His tongue was good but not enough. Pulling him to me, I found less belly to slip my hand past to reach his belt.
“Orion.” The same buckle, the one I knew how to open, and he was in my hand. We could go fast now. He shoved his pants down only as far as we needed. That was how much he wanted me, he wasn’t even going to take his boots off.
He was so heavy my breath caught in my chest. That was pleasure, being pinned under him, where the air was thin. His cock was as hot as I remembered pressed between my legs.
We could move time. Go back to that day. Undo seven years. I opened my eyes, to let him into me everywhere.
That first moment, when he pushed against me, hardness against softness, was wonderful. The next moment, when he pushed into me, burning pressure and a tearing pain. It hurt more than I thought it would. Kellen was in me everywhere. Inside my nerves. He moaned against my ear.
“Oh, Wavy. I love you all the way.”
I pressed my face into his neck and held on, not breathing, thinking the pain would stop, the way it had when he put his fingers into me. I waited for it to go to burning pleasure, because it couldn’t go on being unbearable. But it did. The pain cauterized my throat. I thought I might choke until the seal broke open, let out the sob I’d been keeping in.
Kellen stopped. I knew he was looking at me, but I couldn’t look back.
“Are you okay?” he said.
I nodded but the tears I’d been holding back escaped. He jerked out of me, as painful as the going in.
“Oh, Jesus, Wavy. You waited for me?”
“Who else?” I said.
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d wait for me. I never thought—after all that mess, I never thought you’d want me. You didn’t come to my parole hearings, and I figured I’d ruined everything.”
He was pulling away from me, but I dug in, my nails into his shoulders, my heels into his thighs.
“Hold on tight. Don’t let go.” I learned that from him.
“I’m hurting you, though. And we shouldn’t be doing this. You don’t under—”
“Yes.” I held him tighter, reached between us, found him sticky and still hard. He groaned when I pressed him into me. I only had to guide him there and he stopped arguing. My stomach clenched and my legs shook when he sank into me. Kellen stopped again.
I clawed at his back.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“All the way.”
He started again, slowly, and as much as it hurt, I could see how eventually it would stop hurting. The next time and the time after. Given enough time there would be burning pleasure where my softness and his hardness met.
In the end he was pounding into me, panting, saying my name. I was lying on the tracks under a train I was in love with. To not cry, I sank my teeth into his chest. I was a vampire and he had invited me in. He moaned and for a moment all of his weight was on me. Between my legs was an expanse of pain, but my lungs burned with pleasure, breathing him in.
After, his eyes were full of me. I’d imagined he would have so many things to say, but he only lay beside me and looked at me. He was thinking of other ways for me to be his. The ring was on my finger, and I waited for him to see it and remember the one way I already belonged to him.
“Wavy, what are we doing? What am I supposed to do?”
“You love me?” Hearing him say it was like stolen food, to stuff in my mouth when no one was looking. If he said it a hundred times, I would ask him to say it again.
“I love you. I love you with my whole heart.” He took my hand, pressed it to his chest, and saw the ring.
The front door opened—click, swoosh—and filled his eyes with other things than me. Anxiety. Obligation. Guilt.
“Jesse? Are you h—” A woman’s voice, then a puff of air, surprise. I hadn’t just invaded Kellen. I’d invaded his home. As the woman crossed the kitchen floor, he stood and pulled up his pants. I stayed where he left me on the bed. We were that way when the woman walked in.
“I’m sorry, Beth.” Kellen fastened his pants while she watched. Orion’s belt buckled again. Always someone to walk in on us.
“Do you love her?” I said.
He didn’t make me wait for the answer: “No.”
Beth’s mouth twisted, angry and hurt, but she didn’t say, “Liar.”
Kellen loved me. Only me. I stood up naked in my boots, something hot running down the inside of my leg. I wasn’t embarrassed. I didn’t care what anyone but Kellen thought.