“Some promo shoots.” His thumb and finger close over my nipple in a soft pinch. “A fan meet-and-greet and signing at around one thirty, I think.” He straightens, looking at me, and finally lets me get his shirt off. “Do you have an office you have to go to?”
I shake my head. “I have a desk, but I’m rarely there.”
“Are you working tomorrow?”
“I’ll probably make calls,” I say. “Follow up on a few things.” I don’t say Josef Anders’s name but it penetrates the space between us like a dark spot in a photograph anyway. My heart begins to thrum in anxiety. The pressure to do this right is intense.
He unbuttons his jeans, distracting me from my impending panic by kicking them off, and then pulls me back onto the bed, guiding me over him.
I look down at him, tracing his jawline with a fingertip. His eyes fall closed, he hums, and from this vantage point, I register how much I like being on top of him because I get to witness how he gives in to pleasure so absolutely. Alec’s eyes drift open and he watches me watching him, and the silent moment of understanding makes me ache. Reaching down, he shifts under me to get his boxers off.
I feel like I’ve been hungry for this since he grew hard against me underwater, arching in futile weightlessness as we bobbed in the deep ocean surf. The hunger grew with him sleeping silently next to me on the hot sand and on the quiet drive home where he resumed his wandering exploration of my thighs—occasionally pressing a firm hand between my legs and then sliding away, teasing—and somehow reached a frantic peak as I saw how easily he integrated into my life with Eden.
I come over him now, trapping him between us, sliding over his length. Not taking him in, just rocking. “I’ve been worked up like this all day.”
Eyes closed again, he smiles at this, mumbling a soft “Me too” as his hands come up over my breasts. I want to capture this view on film, burn it into my long-term memory: Alec on my bed, Alec underneath me. The long line of his neck, the sharp point of his Adam’s apple, the masculine curve of his collarbones. He has a small bruise on his chest that looks like a bite mark, from yesterday or the time before. I don’t even know. It would easily be hidden beneath a shirt, but it’s there in front of me like our perfect little secret, and the knowledge of it lights me up like sunrise inside.
“Gigi,” he says, eyes drifting open. “Take me in.”
He licks and sucks at my chest when I lean over him to dig in my nightstand. I feel him go still for a fraction of a second when he hears me open a new box of condoms. And I see the smile in his eyes when I look at his face as I tear the foil. He’s still looking at me as I turn my attention down, as I put the condom on him with less grace and speed than when he put one on himself our first time.
“Why are you smiling?”
“You know why,” he whispers.
I can’t help it. I love the weight of him in my hand. If I didn’t feel the gravity of my own need, I would play and tease and touch with fingers and tongue, but I’m impatient and he is, too, arching his hips, hands urging me forward and over him.
It’s only the second time he’s been inside me, and the moment I sink down I have to cup my hand over his groaning mouth, bite down on my own lip so I don’t cry out.
He presses his head back into the pillow, neck corded with restraint, and it feels like every part of my brain turns on. My body becomes a precision machine, working the hard length of him into me again and again, moving against him, finding what feels good. After we find a rhythm together, he stares up at me, eyes black, mouth moving in silent speech. His mouth forms a silent, Like that?; a soundless Fuck spoken through a smile. I stare at his lips as I move, watching him lick them. Watching them make quiet sounds of pleasure. Watching as he pulls them back in a dirty little growl.
This focus means pleasure comes at me sideways, rising like a ship out of darkness until it’s there in the deepest part of me, climbing up my spine and filling my chest with a cry I trap there, lips sealed and head thrown back. For a second I lose track of what he’s doing while I’m falling; all I can do or feel is my own relief and what seems like a streak of wild silver tearing through me.
Just as I start to come down, he sits up, almost like he can’t take it anymore, digging a hand into my hair and coming for my mouth. Alec rolls us over, taking charge again, and I have a thought that feels almost like a brag, a betrayal, that if anyone ever saw him like this, they might fall into madness knowing he’s exactly what the world wants him to be behind closed doors.