The sound she makes when I fill her is something I am going to carry for the rest of my life. Soft and low and completely unguarded, her mouth open, her head back, her nails going into my shoulders. I hold still for a second with my forehead against hers just to feel it — the heat of her, how tight she is, how her body adjusts around mine like we were designed for exactly this specific geometry.
I fuck her the way I've been wanting to since I stopped pretending I didn't want to. Deep and hard and steady, my hand under her lower back tilting her up to take more of me, and she takes it, all of it, pushing back with her hips to meet every thrust, her legs locked around my waist.
I go harder.
She gets louder.
Her nails drag down my back and I don't mind. I get a hand between us and find her clit and her whole body jolts.
"There," she says, urgent. "Right there!"
"I've got you." I work her with my fingers and my cock and I feel her building again, feel her getting close, the way she tightens around me and her breathing changes and her voice goes high. "Look at me."
She looks at me.
Her eyes are wet at the corners. Not crying — just overwhelmed, just full, just here, and she is looking at me like I am the only solid thing in the world and something in my chest cracks open along a seam I didn't know was there.
This woman.
I have been alone a long time. I have not minded it. I mind it now, looking back at it from here, from this bed, from inside the specific gravity of this woman underneath me.
I am not going to be alone again.
I don't say any of it. Not yet. She knows some of it already and the rest I will tell her when we are on the other side of tomorrow and there is time. What I do is keep my eyes on hers and keep moving and get my mouth to her ear.
"You're mine," I say. Low and even, not a question. "You know that."
She makes a sound that is almost a sob. "Yeah," she says. "I know."
"After tomorrow. You and me. Whatever that looks like."
"Yes." Her arms come around my neck and pull me down closer and she says it again against my jaw: "Yes. Rafe. Yes!"
I get a hand in her hair and turn her face up and kiss her while I work her clit and she comes on my cock with her mouth open against mine, shaking, saying my name into my mouth, and I feel it everywhere not just in my body but in the part of methat has been locked shut for eleven years and has apparently decided, without consulting me, that it's done being locked.
I let go. Finish deep inside her this time, my forehead down against her shoulder, her hands in my hair, both of us breathing hard into the quiet of the room.
Neither of us moves for a long time.
Her fingers trace slow up and down my spine. The lamp throws gold across the ceiling. Outside the owl is going, two notes and a pause, two notes and a pause.
Eventually she says, quietly. "You and me."
"Yeah."
"After tomorrow."
"After tomorrow."
She shifts under me, turning onto her side, and I pull her back against my chest with my arm around her waist and my face in her hair. Her hand comes down and covers mine.
“Thinking you were going to kill me,” She laughs, soft. "That's a terrible meet-cute."
"Yeah. But it's ours."
She goes quiet after that. Her breathing slows. I stay awake and hold her and listen to the owl and watch the window go from black to deep blue to the first grey edge of dawn.
I am going to get her through tomorrow and then I am going to keep her.
