“Done.” He sounds impatient. “Can I—”
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “Now, please, unblock your number.”
A pause. Then: “What?”
“I blocked your number. Because I . . .” I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand, but there’re more tears coming. “Because I couldn’t bear to . . . Because. But I think you should unblock it.” I sniffle again. Loudly. “So if you decided that you don’t mind the fact that sometimes I can be a total lunatic, and if you want to give me a call and give the . . . the thing we were doing another chance, then I’d be happy to pick up and—”
I find myself pulled into his body, hugged tight against his chest, and I should probably insist on apologizing properly and offer an in-depth debriefing of everything that has occurred, but I just let myself sink into him. Smell his familiar scent. When he smooths my hair back, I bury my face into his shirt and melt, soaking in the silence and the relief.
“I think I just really suck at one-night stands,” I say, muffled into the soft fabric.
“We didn’t have a one-night stand, Sadie.”
“Okay. I mean, I don’t know. I’ve never . . .”
“I’ve had enough for both of us, and then some.” He pulls back to look at me, and repeats, “We did not have a one-night stand.”
I don’t make the conscious decision to kiss him. It just happens. One second we’re looking at each other, the next we’re not. Erik tastes like himself and a late-spring night in New York. He holds my head in his palm, presses me into him; he groans, bends down to push me into the wall, and licks the inside of my mouth.
“So we’re good?” he asks, coming up for air. I want to nod, but I forget when he bends down for another kiss, just as deep as the one that came before. Then he remembers his question and repeats, “Sadie? Are we good?”
I close my eyes and bite into his bottom lip. It’s soft, and plump, and I remember the patient way he worked between my legs. I remember coming over and over, the pleasure so strong I couldn’t comprehend it—
“Sadie.” He’s not breathing normally. He takes a step back, like he needs a moment to get himself under control. “Are we good? Because if you think this is a one-night stand, then—”
“No. I . . .” I reach up to his face. This time, when I bring his mouth down to mine, my kiss is slow and gentle. “No. We’re good.”
“Promise?” he asks against my lips.
I nod. And then, because it seems important: “I promise.”
It’s like flipping a switch. One moment he’s looking at me questioningly, the next our hands are on each other, me unzipping his jeans, him unbuttoning my blouse. There is a heat growing between us, a heat that has us work frenziedly, clumsy and too eager. When I tug down his jeans and briefs, his cock springs out, straining and leaking and so hard, it has to hurt. I wrap my hand around him, pump up and down a couple of times, and he groans, a soft, guttural sound. Then he pulls me away, pins my wrist to the wall, and attacks my pants.
His fingers brush under the elastic of my underwear, and when his knuckles graze the damp cloth of my panties it’s all I can do not to spread my legs as far as they’ll go. “Purple,” he rasps out when my slacks are pooled around my ankles. “Finally.”
“Pitch today. Yesterday,” I amend, helping him get rid of my top.
“By the way,” he says, voice scratchy, “last time you left your bra at my place.” He traces the line of the one I have on but doesn’t take it off. Instead, he lowers the lace cups, tucks them under the curve of my breasts. When my exposed nipples harden to points, we both make choked, breathy noises.
“Y-you can keep it.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
His thumb moves back and forth across my nipple. “It’s not exactly in a . . . pristine state.”
I laugh, breathless. “Why? Have you been using it?”
He doesn’t reply. Instead he lifts me up until my legs are wrapped around his hips, pinning me against the wall next to the door even though there’s a bed, a couch, a dozen pieces of furniture just a handful of feet away—and then stops abruptly. “Do you— Are you feeling trapped? Is this—”
“No, it’s good. Perfect. Please, just—”
He hooks his fingers in the crotch of my panties, haphazardly shoves them to the side, and he tries one, two angles that can’t possibly work, but then he adjusts me, he tilts me like I’m no larger than a doll, and on the third try he just . . .
Slips inside. The pressure is enormous, stretching and burning and familiar and inexorable and lovely, and all I can think of is how much I missed this, the sharp feeling of something too big that’s somehow meant to fit inside me, the way he mutters sorry, please, more, almost there.
“I missed you,” he breathes against my temple when he’s reached a full seat, sounding like he’s under great strain. “I only knew you for twenty-four hours, but I’ve never missed anyone so much.”
I moan. An embarrassing, mewling sound that cannot possibly come from my mouth. “For the record.” I feel so full, I can barely speak. “I thought the sex was good.” It’s an understatement. It’s as much as I am physically able to say right now.
“Yeah?” He bites me on the flesh between my neck and my shoulder—not hard enough to break my skin, enough to suggest that he’s not fully in control. It reminds me of our night together, the way he kept me still for his thrusts, the way he made me feel at once powerful and powerless. “That’s good. Because I can’t think of anything else.” He moves inside me. Once, twice. Once more, a little too forceful, but perfect. My forehead leans against his, and he pants into my mouth. “Three weeks, and I could only think of you.”
It lasts less than a dozen thrusts. His mouth is by my ear as he tells me how beautiful I am, how he wants to feel all of me, how he could fuck me every second of every hour of every day. The spasms bloom inside me, drive me mindless, and I cling to his shoulders as my orgasm explodes through my body, wiping my mind clean. Erik, I mouth against his hair. Erik, Erik, Erik. He stays still while I ride it out, a near-silent growl in his throat, the tension in his arms nearly vibrating. Then, when I’m almost done, he asks,
“Should I— Fuck, should I pull out?”
“No,” I exhale. “I’m—we’re good. Pill.”
He comes inside me before I’m done talking, burying the sounds of his pleasure into the skin of my throat.
We stay like that, after. He holds me up, like he knows that I would wobble on my legs if he were to let go of me, and kisses me for long moments. Chaste pecks wherever he can reach, long licks up my sweaty neck, soft hickeys that have me squirming and giggling in his arms. I never, ever want this moment to end. I want to paint it and frame it and hang it on the wall—this wall—and treasure it and make a million more and—
“Sadie?” Erik’s voice is even deeper than usual. I am happy and pliant and relaxed.
“Yeah?”
“Do you still have your hamster?”