A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (87)
He fixed her with adoring eyes. “If there’s another sight worth seeing, I don’t know what it is. And I’ve seen everything.”
Before she could respond, he scooped Ricki into a heated kiss. Everything about Ezra was so unruffled and easy, until he kissed her. Then he went torrid. Plunging his hand into her hair, he tugged her head back and positioned her how he wanted her, sucking her tongue into his mouth, practically devouring her as he drew his knee up between her legs. She moaned, grinding against his thigh. He kept at it, kissing her deeply, but slower now, bringing her back down to earth. Lightly, he nipped her bottom lip and drew back a little, just enough to tease her with closeness.
“Who was in your dream?” demanded Ezra, a wicked quirk to his mouth. The timbre of his voice was lust blown, filthy. He pressed further, her heat scorching his skin. She was pinned to the bed, at his mercy.
“You,” she breathed. “Only you could do this to me.”
He held his hand over her heart. It was pounding. “For me?”
Eyes glazed, she nodded.
He slipped his hand into her panties, cupping the heat of her. “For me?”
Gasping, she nodded.
His lips brushed hers. “Prove it.”
Ricki looked up at him. Before he knew it, she’d ripped off his boxer briefs and was straddling his thighs, his dick huge in her hand. With an impatient growl, he ran his hands up under her shirt, cupping her breasts.
Bottom lip caught between her teeth, she positioned herself above him and lowered down till she was flush against his lap. They both groaned through gritted teeth.
Sex break, over.
“In my dream, it was just us two,” she panted out, her palms flat against the corrugated muscles of his belly, rolling her hips excruciatingly slow. “Just us, in the woods together, back home. We were like this in the dream. I was doing this to you.”
Leaning forward against his chest, she lifted herself up to the tip and then sank back down, over and over, taking him unfathomably deep until he moaned openly and uncontrollably, his fingers bruising the soft flesh of her hips.
“And all around us was our song. My song. I don’t know… where it was coming from, but it was perfect, and all around us, and I knew then… I knew…” Ricki lost her words then, because Ezra dragged his hand down to her center, rubbing his thumb over her clit in slow circles. She shuddered and cried out, the friction driving her insane.
“What did you know?” he rasped, barely holding on.
“I… I knew I could listen to it forever. I knew you were music I could listen to forever.”
The cresting simmer of arousal was unbearable now. And that was the thing about closeness, about being in sync, because then Ezra and Ricki dissolved into each other, moving together with instinctual fluidity.
He flipped her onto her back. In one fluid, decisive motion, he doubled her up and thrust into her. It was so good, Ricki blanked out for a moment, muffling her cries against Ezra’s neck. He kept at it until they broke—too soon and almost simultaneously. They gripped each other in an airtight embrace as dizzying cascades of pleasure crashed over them.
Nothing had ever felt so exquisite. Fucking nothing.
Slowly, they floated back to earth, lost in a languid haze of lips and tongues and hands brushing against hot, sweaty skin. And Ricki realized it was always like this with Ezra. End-of-the-world sex. Catastrophe sex. High-stakes sex. They’d never have the chance to have everyday sex, like a long-term couple who’d been in love for ages. Sweet, paint-by-numbers sex on one of their birthdays, because it was expected. A fumbling “this’ll do” quickie cut short by a kid toddling into the room. That normalcy would never happen for them.
She wept then. Silently at first, and then full-bodied, racking, grieving sobs. Ezra gathered her in his arms, sealing her to him as she grieved for a love story stopped short and a life that had never belonged to her at all.
“Thanks for calling me back. This story is going live at four p.m., so you caught me just in time,” gushed Clementine Rhodes over Zoom. She was an entry-level reporter for New York magazine’s The Cut. “Dying to hear more about Wilde Things. Your floral designs have literally taken over Harlem.”
It was now hours later, around 1:00 p.m., and Ricki and Ezra were still in bed. Too lost in the drama of her life, Ricki had only recently noticed that her DMs were flooded with reporters trying to contact her about her Harlem nostalgia floral pop-ups. Her heart leapt at the recognition of her work, but her first instinct was to ignore it. What was the point of doing an interview now? Why spend time engaging a stranger while her fate hung in the balance?
But Ezra, peering over her shoulder at the gushing comments, encouraged her to call at least one reporter back. No one knew more than him the importance of legacy, what it meant to leave a mark.
“Living in the world’s tough right now, don’t you think?” Ricki asked Clementine, balancing the laptop on her knees. She’d thrown on some powder, gloss, and a cute top, effectively masking her postcoital haze for Zoom. “The healing power of nature is real! My goal was to celebrate Harlem’s hidden history and to brighten anyone’s day who walked by them. But the community that’s risen around it, of people taking the flowers and decorating their own neighborhoods with them—it’s an honor. It’s my way of leaving a small mark.”
“Love that. Community building is so important,” agreed Clementine. “So, uh, I read this statistic that less than two percent of all floral designers are Black. Crazy. How does it feel to be a Black-owned floral shop in a white-dominated industry?”