The Pairing(85)

“I want to change the rules,” Theo says.

“The rules?”

“Our rules.”

“Oh.”

“I think,” Theo says, “we should be able to use our rooms.”

I find my smile impossible to resist.

“I did say I would remind you—”

“Don’t be a shit,” Theo says with a pure affection that wraps tight around my heart. “Yes or no?”

Easy. “Yes.”

Our clothes fall to the floor as we tumble across the bed, grasping and grinding and tonguing skin. Theo pushes my shoulders into the mattress and climbs on top of me. They bite my neck, leave a mark on my shoulder, rub the whole front of their body against mine as if they can’t get close enough. I gasp and moan when they palm me through my underwear, and they bare their teeth at the sound.

“I missed you,” they say, like they said last night in Florence.

“I missed you too,” I breathe out.

They pull back to kneel between my legs.

“You know what else I missed?” they say.

They hook their hands behind my knees and shift me into a position that makes my breath hitch. It’s an old favorite: my legs spread apart, their hips between them, the soft-hard swell of flesh over their pelvic bone pressed against the cleft of my ass. Like this, it would usually go one of two ways. Sometimes, when we’d had the time and foresight to prepare, Theo would push into me with blunt, slicked silicone until the buckles of their harness met the backs of my thighs. And sometimes, they would take me into their own body, pound their hips into me at such a smooth, relentless pace that it became impossible to tell which of us was fucking the other.

But neither of those things is on the menu tonight. It doesn’t matter if I can feel how wet they are through our underwear, or that I’d happily accept whatever they chose to give. Fucking can encompass a thousand different things that aren’t fucking, and our rules permit so many of them.

As if they can hear my thoughts, they say with tight, meted remove, “I want to propose another amendment.”

“I’m open to that,” I say, just as taut.

“I would like to get your cock out.”

Something like a solar eclipse happens inside my brain. I stare directly into it and go momentarily blind.

“But,” they go on, “I’m not going to touch it.”

“You’re—you’re not?”

“No,” they say, “you are. And I’ll tell you how.”

“I—I think that was already allowed, technically.”

“Don’t be such a fucking priss.”

I smile, tipping my chin up.

“Don’t like it so much, then.”

Theo’s grip hardens, but their expression does the opposite.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes. Fucking—yes, but I’ll need lube.”

At the exact same moment, we reach for our toiletry kits on opposite nightstands. We stop, then burst into laughter.

“What’s yours?” Theo asks. “Fucking organic unrefined coconut oil?”

I feel around my kit for its familiar shape, tossing it on the bed as Theo tosses theirs.

“Coconut oil can cause yeast infections,” I say. “I’m a more considerate lover than that.”

Theo eyes my travel-sized, fifteen-mil vial of lube. “That’s not a lot.”

“I packed refills.”

“Hm.” They nod thoughtfully, as if they’re not currently bending me up like a Bavarian pretzel. “Sustainable.”

I read the label on Theo’s much bigger, sapphire-blue pump bottle, feeling lightheaded. “Aloe based? And you called me bougie.”

“Shut up,” they say, and I do.

True to their word, they don’t touch me. I lift my hips at an instructive raise of their eyebrows, and they tug my underwear down until it cups the bottom of my ass, leaving me heavy and hard and exposed to the honeyed lamplight and the mild breeze carrying distant, wine-loose conversation through the open windows. They stare down at me, at the bright, wet glisten of anticipation already showing.

“Still so pretty when you’re needy,” they murmur, like I’m not meant to hear. I respond anyway, hitch a low whine in the back of my throat to make them claim it.

They look up then, directly into my eyes, and take their hand away.

“Hands on the pillow. Don’t move them until I tell you.”

Again, I do as I’m told. Theo shifts, widening their knees, then takes a small, blunt thing from their kit and slips it into their underwear. A pause—their teeth dig into their lip in a moment of disorientingly adorable concentration—and then comes the low rumble of their little vibe switching on.

A short huh punches out of them. They roll their hips forward, using my body to pin the pressure where they need it, and through the single layer of fabric separating us, the hum resonates into me, into the muscle they once trained with their fingers.

“Fu—uck,” I exhale.

For a while, I’m happy to simply watch, pacified with how gorgeous they are grinding against my ass, making themself feel good. But it’s hu?tres gratinées for apéro, too rich and too filling to prime the palate and not enough for a meal. I pitch my voice up, rut uselessly against air, heart-wrenchingly untouched.