I lifted one side of my mouth in a smile as I worked that finger slowly. Moving in, moving out. “Oh, yeah?”
She nodded lazily, already sated and drifting toward bliss. “I had a dream.”
My head dropped to kiss her collarbone, her neck, her ear. “A dream, huh?”
Ray writhed beneath my body, half covering hers, and she spread her legs further. “Yeah …”
“About what?” I tasted her earlobe, drawing it into my mouth.
“Oh God,” she moaned, elongating her neck, granting me better access. “It was about … about you.”
“Yeah? And what about me?”
Her laugh was breathy and exasperated. “Come on, Soldier … you know …”
I added another finger and nipped at her neck. “Was I eating a sandwich?”
That made her giggle as she turned her head and brought her hand up to cup my bearded cheek.
“You definitely weren't eating a sandwich.”
I lifted my head to find her gaze with mine. I smiled when I saw her looking up at me with a monumental amount of affection. So much that I had to remind my heart to keep beating for her. Always for her.
“Was I … was I riding my bike?”
She shook her head, giggling again past her bitten lip. “No … but you were definitely riding something.”
“Was I riding something”—I raised one brow and widened my grin—“or were you?”
Ray’s elated smile filled the darkened room with sunshine as she laughed and pulled my mouth to hers.
“Both,” she whispered before capturing my lips in a kiss that forced the breath from my lungs.
In a flurry of tangled tongues and lips, we moved in the hazy glow of the rising sun, barely peeking through the blinds on her window. Her shirt was lifted and thrown to the floor, and my pajama pants met the same fate shortly after. I rolled to my back, giving her the freedom to take back the reins, and she did. Straddling my lap, guiding my throbbing, single-minded dick to the one and only place it ever wanted to be.
“Fuck,” I hissed through clenched teeth as her body joined mine and sank lower, taking me deeper. “Jesus, Ray.”
She answered with a muffled hum, smiling as if she were dreaming, and then she began to move. Rocking against me like the waves sloshing against the shore, lulling me toward the edge with her steady rhythm, before drawing me under to drown in a euphoric sea.
“Sol … Soldier,” she gasped, clawing at my chest and clinging tight to whatever she could grab. “I’m … I’m going to …”
“Yes,” I urged, encircling her waist with my greedy hands. “Let me feel it, baby. God …”
Ray had given me so much in the months since we'd gotten together.
The promise of good, home-cooked meals every night; the chance to be a positive role model for her son; another form of transportation; a warm body to sleep with every night we were able. And the realization that sex and orgasm could be anything more than a simple means to an end.
With every gift offered, I accepted and fell deeper into everything I felt for her, and the quick descent only continued as we collided in a chorus of quiet moans and gasps and heavy breathing. Our foreheads kissed, our eyes locked, and our hearts hammered with every pulse given and taken until there was nothing left to do but collapse in a heap of sweat and elation.
“Okay, I can go back to sleep now,” I muttered, wrapping my arms around her bare shoulders and holding her tight.
“Mmhmm,” she muttered with a nod, smiling against my chest. “We could probably get a solid hour or two in before we have to get up.”
I stroked my thumb against her cheek. “I like the way you think.”
The seconds ticked by to remind me I was still exhausted, and before I knew it, my limbs had grown heavy, and my breathing had slowed. I was moments away from comfortable sleep when my thumb grazed over a new wetness against her cheek, and I frowned.
“Hey,” I whispered, my voice rough and groggy. “Why are you crying?”
Ray released a shaky breath and swallowed. “I just … I really like you.”
My heart ached just beneath her ear as I replied, “I really like you too.”
“No.” She sniffled. “I mean, I really like you, Soldier.”
I furrowed my brow, uncertain if I had said anything different or misunderstood. “Okay … and I really—”
She scrambled to lift onto her elbow, and I opened my eyes to stare into the watery green abyss of hers. God, how the hell could she look so sad, so worried, when we had just shared the most incredible, intense orgasm of my life?
“I have never liked someone as much as I like you … ever,” she said, and I began to wonder if she intended to say a word other than like. “I have never had something as good as this before.”
I gently nodded. “Neither have I,” I whispered as my eyes searched hers for the things she wasn’t saying, unsure of why I was whispering at all.
“And I’m just so”—her tears startled me by falling harder, faster, as her hand flattened to my chest—“so scared of losing it.”
“Ray …” I shook my head, lifting my hand to collect her tears in my palm. “I’m not going anywhere, okay? I have nowhere else to go, and even if I did, I’d only want to be here. With you. And Noah. Okay? So, don’t ever worry about that.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, pushing more tears between her lashes as she nodded rapidly. “I-I know. I b-believe you, but …” She shuddered with a quiet sob. “I’m just s-s-so worried, and I can’t st-stop worrying, and … and I d-don’t know w-w-why.”
“You’re worried because you think, just because you’ve never been allowed to have something this good before, that means you should never be allowed to.”
She sniffled again and nodded.
“But, baby, don’t you think it’s possible that, after losing so much and so often, it’s about time you won? Because I do.” I laid my hand over hers, pressing her fingertips over my frantic heart. “It’s about fucking time I won, Ray, and if I get to win, then you do too. Okay?”
She pulled in a deep breath, quelling her sobs as she nodded. “Okay,” she whispered. “If you win, I win.”
She calmed. Laying her head back against my chest and drifting quickly toward sleep with my thumb stroking her cheek and my fingers running through her hair. Her body grew heavy against mine as her breathing evened out, and I knew she was asleep. Maybe to dream about me again. Maybe to dream about whatever had spiked her fears enough to make her cry. But wherever she went, she didn’t take me with her, and for that extra hour I could’ve been sleeping, I stared at the sunlight streaking across the ceiling. Wondering if it was really, truly, honestly possible for me to win at all or if I was always ever destined to lose.
***
“So, what video games did you play when you were a kid?”
“Oh, uh … hand me that screwdriver over there.”
Noah reached with his free hand and grabbed the Phillips head from a nearby shelf.
Once it was in my palm, I tightened the mounting bracket to the wall and continued, “I liked a lot of games. You know … Super Mario Bros., Tetris, uh … Legend of Zelda …”