Holy frack.
For what feels like an eternity, his fingers move over my skin – a bow over strings, pulling notes of pleasure from my body until I’m shaking with it. He’s the conductor and I’m his private symphony, crying at his command and singing at his touch until the melody of passion he’s been playing with his hands builds to a crescendo and I can’t take another moment of torture without him inside me.
“Nate,” I whisper, a chord of desperation in my tone. “Please.”
“Are you sure?” he mutters, control hanging by a thread as he stares down into my eyes. “We don’t have to do this, if you aren’t ready. If you want to wait…”
“We’re naked. There’s a condom on your dick. Your hands are on my boobs. I just licked your abs with my tongue.” I glare at him. “What possibly gave you the impression that I don’t want to do this?”
His forehead drops to mine. “I just want you to be sure. This isn’t the kind of thing you get to do-over.”
“Nate.” I kiss him until we’re both shaking with need. “You keep saying I’ve been waiting — don’t you know what I’ve been waiting for?”
He stares at me with a question in his eyes.
“You,” I whisper. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Phoebe.” His voice vibrates with electricity and emotion. “Phoebe.”
In the space between two heartbeats, he drives into me and changes my life forever.
***
Not long ago, I thought of Nate and me as a natural disaster that would kill us both. Two opposing landmasses whose collision would cause catastrophic damage to both sides if they ever gave way beneath the tension building between them.
I was right; we are an earthquake.
We shift and sigh and shape each other with fingertips and lips — until the ground shakes and boundaries fall, until fault lines are crossed and every bit of terrain is left unrecognizable.
Nate makes love to me and it levels us both to rubble.
But there’s beauty in the wreckage. Pleasure in the pain. Because, in the end, his ruins are indiscernible from mine. We’re together when the dust settles and the shakes subside, holding each other so close I can’t tell my soul from his.
***
“Do you remember the first day we met?” I ask absently, running my fingers down the length of his bare chest.
He goes still. “Of course I do.”
“Do you remember the prayer you came up with to bless the bird funeral?”
A chuckle moves through him. “I think it was I Believe I Can Fly by R. Kelly.”
“I thought you were so cool.” I laugh lightly. “So grown up and original. Had I known you were just plagiarizing sub-par R&B songs, I wouldn’t have been half as enamored with you.”
He tilts my head up so our eyes meet. The soft look in his makes my heart turn over. “You were enamored with me, huh?”
“Yep.” I nod. “Thankfully I grew out of that nonsense.”
He leans in and nips my bottom lip in punishment. “Bullshit.”
I laugh and kiss him until my blood is pounding in my veins. My laughter dies as I hold his stare.
“Do you remember what we vowed? After we buried the bird?”
His hands slide up the bare skin of my back. “I said you’d never catch me falling in love,” he whispers, voice rough around the edges. “Because I wasn’t going to risk dying of a broken heart.”
I nod slowly. “And I agreed it wasn’t worth the risk.” A small grin tugs at my mouth. “Then again, I would’ve agreed with almost anything you said — you were much older and wiser, with vast life experience and extensive song-lyric knowledge.”
“What do you mean were?” he jokes. “I’m still older and wiser and my music collection has only expanded, through the years.”
I snuggle closer, until my chin rests on his chest, just above his heart. I know if I turn my cheek a few inches, I’ll be able to hear it pounding beneath the skin.