“Jonah,” she gasped. “Come here. Please…”
I let my mouth fall from her, leaving her shuddering and wet, then stripped off my shirt and jeans. Her shaking hands helped me roll on a condom—Christ, had I ever been so hard in my life?—then I went crawling up her body.
She held me around the neck, pulling me to her and kissing me, kissing the taste of her off my lips, while her thighs spread wide for me.
“I want you hard,” I said.
She nodded mutely, her lips pressed together. They flew apart in a cry as I thrust deep inside her.
“Yes….” she hissed. “Oh, God, yes…”
Yes, my body agreed. Yes to how I fit so perfectly within her heat. Yes to how fucking good she felt around me. Yes to how sweet her mouth tasted. Yes to the push and pull of our bodies toward the edge. And God, yes to her, this woman who’d burst into my life like a wrecking ball, smashing through my routine, bringing me back to life when I had already resigned myself to death. Yes to her chaos, her raw emotion, her desperate need to be touched and held and loved. And yes, more than anything, fuck yes that it was me she wanted, that she unleashed herself in all her messy imperfection on me.
“Yes,” I whispered. To all of it. To us. To her. “Yes…”
I felt the slow build in her, heard her cries take on a rhythm, each louder than the last. Her hands clutched my neck, her legs wound around my waist. I thrust deep, hard and slow, caught up in my own rhythm but holding on for her. She was coming around again, building another orgasm from the first, stoking the fires back up. It took everything I had to wait but finally she threw her head back and raised her hips to mine like an offering. I gripped her hard and plunged deep and if we didn’t come together it was damn close.
The rain finally stopped a little after noon, and Kacey and I packed up the tent and our belongings. Our eyes met as we worked. The air was thick between us, full of the love we’d made. And my heart was growing full with her.
We texted Theo to let him know we were alive and dry, then drove back to Las Vegas. I kept my right hand on her thigh and she twined her left hand through my hair. We talked and laughed as usual, but in between were thick, warm silences that didn’t need to be filled with anything at all.
We’d hardly shut the front door of my apartment when she was in my arms again and I had her up against the wall, kissing her, my hands tearing through her clothes. She still smelled like rain and hot coffee from our lunch stop. I wanted to wash the road off me. Off us. We were an us now, and it fueled my lust almost as much as Kacey’s body.
Somehow, we made it to the bathroom and showered, hardly able to get clean as we couldn’t stop touching each other. We kissed between swipes of a soaped-up washcloth. I tried to take her against the wall, but she slipped through my arms and dropped to her knees. My shoulder blades hit the tiles. I stared blankly at the steamy ceiling as her luscious mouth unraveled what was left of my sanity.
Out of the shower, I dried her skin as I had in the tent, then set her on top of the vanity so I could pull her thighs apart and put my mouth on her. I went down until she was knocking things off the sink, her cries making the medicine cabinet rattle. I wanted to go deeper and harder so she would go louder. I needed her to fill my mouth and ears, wanted as much as she could give to me. As many moments as I could grab before they slipped out of my fingers. Before I slipped through her fingers.
Ravenous, we ordered in from a Japanese place and managed to stay dressed long enough to eat it.
“Now come to bed,” she said.
I lay back on the pillows, and she crawled on top of me. She gripped the bedframe above my head, her hair falling toward me like pale rain, her breasts swaying as she rode me, coming down hard as I rose up to meet her. And that time, without a doubt, we came together.
I woke wrapped up in him. My head pillowed on his shoulder, my arm thrown across his chest. I stirred and peered up to see he was already awake. He hardly slept much, my Jonah, but he never seemed tired. Even last night, he’d been short of breath after our lovemaking but he’d recovered quickly.
My Jonah, I thought. He’s mine now, and I’m his.
I traced my finger along his scar. In the morning light, bare to me, I could examine it for the first time. It ran the entire length of his sternum, to just above the faint lines of his six-pack that had been more prominent before he got sick. I’d seen a picture of him in South America, shirtless. Possibly at the very same spot where he’d caught the virus. His muscles had been more defined then but they were still there now.
Because he’s strong, I thought fiercely.
Jonah took my hand that touched his scar. “Not too pretty, is it?”