I put her hands back above her head and keep them there. Her pulse goes hard under my fingers. She watches me decide what to do with her, and her breath gives her away before her face does.
I get the condom from the drawer one-handed. She does not tell me to hurry. She watches me do it slow, like she wants me to know she could wait all night and is choosing not to make me.
Then I am over her. Then I am in her.
There is nothing controlled about the way I want her.
There is control in how I love her.
I move slow on purpose. Make her take it. Her legs come up around my hips and her wrists pull against my hand and I give back neither.
“Ryan.”
“I know.”
Each stroke pulls a sound out of her, and I want every one. I want her loud in a building where no one can turn it into a headline.
“Tell me again,” I say.
Her eyes open.
“I love you.”
It lands somewhere I do not guard. My rhythm breaks on it. I let it break. The version of me that keeps the beat clean left on the sidewalk and does not get to come back for this.
“Again.”
“I love you.”
“Fuck.”
I do not use that word. She knows it. She smiles under my mouth even as she starts to come — the smug curve of it, the win she will never give back. That is what takes me. Not her body. The look.
I let her wrists go. Her hands drag down my back and dig in. I follow her down hard and bury the sound in her neck.
I do not move.
No call waiting. No clock. No apology already forming for the morning.
Just Peyton, gone heavy and slow against me, her breath leveling out in the dark.
She drifts first.
I have skate in the morning. I watch her instead.
The city gives me enough light. A freckle high on her shoulder. The mark my mouth left on her hip, going dark already. Her hand open on the sheet where I let it go.
Mine is the wrong word.
I know that.
Peyton belongs to herself in a way I am not fool enough to touch.
Here is the word I get.
She is here.
She turns in her sleep and puts her back to my chest and does not wake.
