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I give her the rest of me by degrees, until I am buried deep enough that both of us need a second.

She moves first. Her hips press back into mine and take whatever caution was left in me. I pull out and drive back into her with more force, and her head dips, but she meets the next stroke, my hands directing her hips while she pushes back into everything I give her. My pace builds, deep and steady. When I change the angle a broken sound leaves her and her hips chase mine, and she reaches back and pulls my hand around to the front of her, and I find her clit with two fingers and feel her clench around me.

“Right there.” Rougher than her voice started.

I keep the pressure she gives me, and her other hand finds mine and our fingers lock, and she pushes back harder and I give her more until her breath breaks and my name follows it. When her legs start losing strength I bend over her and take her weight, keeping the pace, and she comes in waves I can feel all the way along my length, and I stay with her until her body begins to loosen.

She turns her face toward me. I kiss the back of her shoulder. Then I ease out and turn her and bring her farther onto the bed, and she reaches for me immediately, and when I come over her the look between us slows everything down.

Her hand comes to the side of my face. Same place as the kitchen floor. I nearly look away before I know I’m doing it.

Her fingers sweep against my cheek. “Stay.”

I hold her eyes. Then I push into her again.

Her legs wrap around my hips, slower now because she is sensitive, and she kisses me while I find a rhythm that belongs less to the frustration and more to us. Her nails go down my back. I feel the sting and drive deeper. My control slips by degrees instead of going all at once. Her body tightens around me, her mouth at my ear when she says my name, and by the time I come I’ve stopped trying to hold anything except her.

Afterward I stay over her a while with my face in the curve of her neck. Giselle runs one hand slowly along my back. I listen until my breathing evens out with hers.

I get up to deal with the condom, then come back to bed. Giselle has turned onto her side. I fit myself behind her, and she draws my hand against her chest.

“I still want San Antonio,” I tell her.

“I want you to get it.”

“Even if it’s Friday.”

She turns her head. “Even then.”

I kiss her shoulder. She settles back, holding my hand. In the morning, I’ll call Von. Tonight, when she asks me to turn off the television in the other room, I get up and do it.

Chapter 15

Giselle

By Newark, Trina has changed our dinner reservation twice and decided the actor playing the landlord is fine.

“You can’t tell that from a cast page,” Rae says.

“You can’t. I have gifts.”

She holds her phone across the aisle for me to inspect. The photograph is smaller than my thumbnail. I enlarge it with two fingers.

“Ma.”

“I’m checking her work.”

Rae takes the phone from me, studies it, then gives it back to Trina. “His biography says he enjoys hiking.”

“I enjoy him enjoying it. We don’t have to do everything together.”

I laugh hard enough that the woman across from us looks up from her book. Rae apologizes to her, and the woman waves it off.

“Let me see him when you’re done,” she says.

Di thinks I am home working. We have been careful about that. Yesterday, Rae called her to ask a question about something she could easily have asked me, establishing that none of us had a particular interest in going to Brooklyn today. Trina bought the tickets under her own name. I have spent the last hour resisting the urge to send Di a picture from the train.

“You’ll ruin it,” Rae tells me when I pick up my phone again.