We don't say much on the drive back to his place. There’s nothing left that needs saying, and for once, the silence between us is not something I need to manage. It’s something I’m sitting inside of on purpose, his hand warm over mine on the gearshift, the whole impossible day finally behind us both.
His apartment looks the way it always looks, bare and half unpacked, the single lamp burning low in the corner because he figured out months ago to leave the hard overhead light off for me. But the moment he shuts the door and turns the lock, something settles over me that I cannot name at first. Then I can. It’s the door.
For the first time since I started coming here, I’ve walked into this room without quietly mapping a way back out of it. No one is going to call. No one is climbing the stairs. There is no morning on the other side of tonight where this gets taken away from us for being caught. We’re not a secret anymore. We are two people, alone, behind a locked door, with a season ahead of us that finally belongs to nobody but us.
“You went somewhere,” he says, leaning back against the door, muscular arms folded, watching me. He does not come closer. He has never once hurried me across a room in his life.
“I'm looking at your door.”
“My door?”
“It's locked, and there's nobody behind it who can take anything from us. I’ve never once stood in a room like that with you. I'm letting myself feel it.”
Whatever crosses his face then pulls his voice down low. “Then come here and feel it next to me.”
There was a version of me, not very long ago, who needed the gap closed for her. She is not the woman walking tonight. I cross the entire room to him so fast, I barely feel my feet underneath me.
I reach him, and I put my hands on his face, and I bring his mouth down to mine before he can offer to do it first.
He goes still for half a second, caught off guard, and then a low sound breaks out of him and his hands close over my hips and haul me flush against him, and the kiss stops being gentle almost at once.
“Look at you,” he says against my lips when we come up for air, his voice gone rough. “Starting shit.”
“I've gotten brave lately. Somebody said it looks good on me.”
“It does. It really does.” His forehead drops against mine. “You have no idea what you crossing a room does to me. It means you want me. You love me.”
“I crave you,” I say, “all the time.”
He growls, low and undone, and then he’s kissing me again, walking me backward toward the mattress on the floor that I’ve somehow come to think of as the most comfortable place on earth.
He draws my sweater up and over my head and drops it, and then he just looks at me, too long, all of me, the look that used to make me want to fold myself smaller and now makes me feel like a Disney princess, simply beautiful.
“How long has it been?” I ask because I already know, and I want to watch him not know.
“Too long.” His hands travel slowly up my bare sides, relearning the shape of me. “Felt like the better part of a year.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” I tell him. Then I turn myself over, straddling his hips on the mattress. “I think I want to ride,” I say.
That dismantles something in him. He sinks down onto the mattress and grabs my hips, and the rest of what we’re wearing comes off between kisses that keep getting interrupted because neither of us can stop smiling…and moaning.
“But first come here, Dixon. I want to taste you.”
He pulls my hips forward, over his face. It’s embarrassing at first, this position, but all that self-consciousness flies out the window once he slides his tongue between my folds.
He laps at my core and massages my ass with his hands, and it feels so amazing, I’m not sure what to do with my hands.
“Clasp them behind your back,” he says against my clit. “Stick out your tits.”
I do as he instructs, and it helps me get out of my own head and just enjoy the sensation of his wet mouth on my warm vagina.
“That’s it,” he says. “Now move your hips anyway you want. Ride my tongue so I can make you come for me, baby.”
My head falls back as my hips rock back and forth. This feels amazing, and I didn’t even know this was a thing.
“Caleb,” I call his name because my climax is creeping up on me, and my hips seem to be finding a faster rhythm.
“Whose pussy is this?” he grunts between my folds.
