“My hero,” she deadpans, plucks it out of my hand, tosses it onto the bed, and pushes me down after it.
She takes the reins, and I am overjoyed to let her. She climbs over me, rolls the condom on with a focus that’s going to live rent-free in my skull for the rest of my natural life, and sinks down, and this time she lets me sit up enough to kiss her. This time I get a hand between us and rub circles on her clit. She rocks on me slow and devastating with her forehead pressed to mine.
“I came in my pants this morning,” I tell her, because if all the guys are going to know, then she absolutely needs to. I keep no secrets and have even less shame.
She goes still. “You did?”
I nod. She giggles.
“Don’t laugh.”
She laughs anyway. “I wish you’d told me. I could’ve cleaned it up for you.”
I look at her lips and briefly leave my own body. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Like it’s nothing. Like she didn’t just retroactively rearrange my entire morning.
I have no idea how I got this lucky with this girl. Months ago, she was hostile. I had no idea this is what was hiding under that. I kiss her on the nose and then I lie back and let her ride me. I watch her perfect tits bounce. I rub circles on her clit and watchher come undone. After she’s orgasmed, I flip her onto her hands and knees, enjoying my view. Face down, ass up.
“Fuck,” I breathe.
She laughs into her pillow when I run a palm over her, and then I press into her from behind, and the laugh turns into a long, low groan I feel all way in my toes. I move, and she cries out, so I get a hand around to her and rub her swollen clit.
“Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Stan-ley.” My name in broken pieces. “Erm-ing-ton.” She’s slamming back into me, hips bucking. I work her faster, and she comes so hard around me that I’m gone right behind her — no chance, no control — pulling out so fast I nearly injure myself, heart going with the terror that I’ve ruined it, that I’ve come inside of her and broke my promise. But the condom held. Everything held. She’s collapsed flat and boneless, moaning into her pillow, and the relief goes through me so hard it’s almost funny — and somewhere under it I know that I’ll check, every single time. Make sure she’s safe. Make sure she never has to feel that old fear again. And I’m completely fine with that. I’d check a thousand times.
We lie together after, both of us flattened, breathing like we just ran suicides.
And then she stretches and says into her pillow, “I think I can come again.”
I turn my head and look at her.
I grin. “Wanna find out?”
She nods.
So I reach for her pussy, rubbing her again, and her breath catches. Her eyes find mine, and I settle in to make good on the exact thing I promised her this morning, which is to take my time, and to listen to the most contained, careful, buttoned-up person I have ever known come undone for me as many times as she’s got in her, loud and shameless and begging and mine.
I just finally found the only number I ever want to be counting.
Chapter 42
Aspen
I have watched Stanley Ermington skate my whole life.
From the good seats at the tournaments our fathers dragged us to. From the third row at the glass all this season, phone in my hand, thumbs moving, typing him into reports for my father — the dangles, the grin, the whole golden-boy display aimed at the cheap seats. I have watched this man skate more times than I can count, and not one of those times was mine. I watched him because I was told to, because he was an assignment, an asset, a name in a report my father was reading. Watch, don’t feel. Sort, don’t fall. Hold the whole thing at the exact arm’s length I held everything, and never once let myself just look.
Tonight I’m in the stands at a home game, my phone zipped in my bag, and I catch myself reaching for it anyway.
It’s reflex. A habit older than I’d like to admit to. Stanley takes the puck behind his own net and my mind takes notes without asking — reading the gap, tracking the weak-side winger, he’s got a half-second before the forecheck and he always waits ahalf-second too long — the analyst groping for a phone that isn’t in my hand, ready to sort him into a spreadsheet.
And I stop.
I leave my phone in the bag. Because I’m not scouting an asset tonight, or pricing a risk, or holding one thing at arm’s length. He isn’t my father’s investment, and he isn’t a name in a report. For the first time in a whole life spent watching this exact man skate, I’m doing it because I want to, and nobody assigned me a second of it.
The phone stays in the bag. It’s staying there for good.
I’m not at the edge of things anymore, either.
