Page 129 of Wreckage and Rain

"You set the pace."

"I'm setting it. On the bed. On your back."

He gets up. Pulls his shirt over his head. Unbuckles his belt. He's being careful about the order. He's letting me see each thing happen. He drops the jeans. The boxer briefs. He's hard. I've seen him hard a thousand times, but tonight is the first time I'm looking at him with both knowledge of who he is and curiosity about who he's become.

He climbs onto the bed. Lies down on his back. The yellow lamp on the nightstand throws warm light across his chest.

He's harder than I've ever seen him. The tip of him is an angry red, slick with precum, and he's trying to hold himself together. He wraps a hand around himself and strokes once, slow, to take the edge off the pressure.

I get on the bed. I'm the one moving now. I straddle him at the hips. Not over him. Sitting on his thighs, close enough to feel the heat of him against me, not yet taking him in.

"Hands at your sides."

"Hands at my sides."

I put both my hands on his chest and I look at him. His pupils are blown. His mouth is open. He's doing exactly what I told him to do, and the obedience is its own language between us, the new vocabulary we're inventing as we go.

"I want to know something," I say.

"Anything."

"Did you miss this."

"Every day."

"What about it."

"All of it. The way you move when you're on top of me. The line of your back. Your head tipping just before you come. How yousay my name, and how you stop saying it when you're too far inside it to make words. Your hands. The small noises you make when you aren't thinking. The smell of your skin in the morning. I missed every piece of it. Every single piece. That's one of the reasons I'm sure of you."

"Tell me more."

"I missed the texture of you. The small of your back, the softest skin I've ever touched on anyone. The inside of your thigh, soap and salt and you. Your eyes going dark right before you ask me for something specific. The way your voice drops when you give an instruction, the half-step lower, so I have to lean in to hear you. I've spent all this time haunted by the texture of you, Summer."

I lean down and I kiss him. Long. Slow. His hands stay at his sides like I told them to. He's kissing me back without claiming me. He's letting me have him. I've never had him this thoroughly in my hands, and the truth is I never wanted him this thoroughly until tonight.

I reach down between us. Take his cock in my hand. He inhales.

"Can I put my hands on you," he says against my mouth.

"Yes."

His hands come up. One to my hip, warm and shaking slightly. The other to my breast, and he plucks my nipple between two fingers. The sound I make is helpless, and I grind down against him to find some relief.

He goes still under me. "Do I need to get a condom?"

"No," I say. "I'm on the pill, and I want you with nothing between us. All of it."

His eyes do something I feel in my own chest.

"You're sure."

"I'm sure. Nothing between us, Colt."

I lift up. Position. Lower onto him slowly. How he stretches me is something I've missed so much. This is how he fits, exactly,how his hips angle up to find me, with no anger in it and no door I'm going to shove him through after. The body remembers him without being asked. I take him in inch by inch and we both make a sound that has no word.

"God."

"Yeah."