“Tell me again,” he whispered.
I lifted my mouth long enough to say it.
“I love you.”
I said it against the inside of his thigh. The skin there was soft and pale, and I left a small bite mark as proof I’d been there.
And then I took him back into my mouth and let the words finish themselves there, in pressure and rhythm, in the small noises I let out around him, in the way I kept his hand in my hair so he’d know I wasn’t going anywhere. He was longer than I was used to, and I had to learn his angle. The curve up meant the head of him kept dragging against the roof of my mouth. The slick of him kept building. I let spit run because I didn’t have a free hand to be careful with, and the wet of it slicked his whole shaft and pooled at the base, and my chin caught some of it. He watched.
“You look.” His voice cracked. “Jett. The way you look right now.”
I hummed around him in answer. His hand tightened in my hair.
He came with a broken sound and my name. His hand tightened in my hair, then loosened, then opened entirely, palm flat against my scalp like a benediction. I stayed where I was through the last of it. The first spill hit the back of my tongue and I swallowed it without thinking. The secondI let pool because I wanted to taste him. Salt. Skin. Him. The third was a slower pulse that ran wet over my lower lip and down my chin. I didn’t move until he tugged me up.
I crawled up the line of him and collapsed half on top of his chest. His heart was going fast under my ear. His breath was wet and uneven. The tears at his temples had soaked into the pillow.
“I love you,” he murmured. “Like, really. The frightening amount.”
“The frightening amount.”
“Yeah.”
We didn’t move for a long time. His breath hot at my collarbone. My hand somewhere in his hair. The candle wick popped once and went quiet. The light from the blinds had shifted to the wall and bled into something close to lavender, the slow turn from sunset to evening. The scent of the sandalwood candle had thickened in the room until it felt like something solid. The cum on my chest where his cock had rested for a moment was still warm.
Eventually, he laughed. Quiet. A little surprised at himself.
“What.”
“I forgot we were making dinner.”
“Yeah. We abandoned the dinner.”
“Was it the I love yous, or the kissing?”
“Both. Team effort.”
He pressed his face into my shoulder.
“Hey.” I tipped his chin up. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” He swallowed. “I’m so okay.”
I kissed his forehead. The bridge of his nose. The corner of his mouth, where the salt of his own cum and mine had mixed and dried.
He pulled on a pair of soft cotton shorts and tossed me one of his t-shirts. It smelled like his detergent and the basil he’d been chopping an hour ago. I tugged it on over my head and followed him barefoot back down the hall.
The pasta was overcooked by the time we got back to it. Ellis reheatedit with the disappointed precision of someone who cared deeply about al dente, and I sat across from him at his tiny kitchen table with my knees touching his and ate every bite like it was the best thing I’d ever tasted.
The food might have been transcendent. Hard to separate dinner from the feeling underneath it.
He twirled linguine around his fork. “What happens now?”
“What do you mean?”
“We said it. The big thing. What comes after?”
I considered this. “More pasta.”
