Chapter 16
ARLIER TODAY, IN A HUSHED conversation, we told each other that it wouldE be best not to have sex, not until we got back to Seattle and got our hands on some condoms. In the end, though, we cannot resist.
I have an IUD. Neither of us has ever had unprotected sex before. Maybe it’s a little foolish, maybe we’re irresponsible.
Fine—we are irresponsible.
Nevertheless, it’s a conscious choice that we make. Jesse licks me until I’m pink and raw, stretches me open with his fingers, and even waits for long moments before sliding inside, rocking against my folds while holding himself on top of me with trembling arms. He seems to hesitate, like he’s afraid to hurt me, like he thinks that if he lets himself do this I’ll disappear.
I find it maddening, his restraint. Adorable, too. So I whisper, “Let me get you started,” right in his ear, and wrap my legs around his hips to force him to sink deep.
“It’s okay,” I say, a little out of breath, because I can tell that he’s about to ask. He looks worried and feverish and a little wild, so I press a kiss into the chiseled line of his jaw, then another, and repeat, “I’m okay.”
“Good,” he says, though it sounds airy, like he’s mostly exhaling.
“Good.” And then he attempts a thrust—just pulls back less than an inch, pushing in to the hilt again, and—maybe I’m not okay after all.
“Wait. Wait.” I arch, trying to make more room inside, afraid I’ll burst at the seams. I’ve never been this…I don’t even know how I feel.
“Want me to pull out?” His voice is strained. I appreciate the offer, especially because of how costly and earnest it sounds.
“Is that an option?” I ask with a smile.
He frowns. “Of course. If you ask me to stop, I’ll always—”
“Here.” I push at his shoulder, sweat-slick and rock-hard. “Let me be on top.”
It helps. I can adjust the depth and angle of him, and the burn is suddenly nice. Jesse likes it, too: He pushes my legs apart to stare at my shiny folds, open around him. His fingers tighten around my thighs, and he groans a noise that’s low and animallike. I lean forward to kiss him sweetly on the mouth, and he quiets down, his muscles losing some of that trembling tension.
“Is this okay?” I ask. “This position?”
He nods without opening his eyes. His hands slide up to my waist, my rib cage, and then move down to grip the flesh of my ass. He might be leaving bruises. I hope he is. “I don’t know how long I can…” His jaw clenches. “Next time I’ll probably last longer. Maybe. But this first…”
“Don’t worry about it.” He is so deep, I can almost taste him in my mouth. But I’m getting used to him. “You can come, if you need to.”
Jesse squeezes his eyes shut. The muscles in his stomach ripple, tight and restless. “If I need—oh, fuck.”
He probably wasn’t ready for me to start moving, but I can’t help myself. I roll my hips, looking for a good rhythm, for the pressure against that place deep inside me. The burning stretch of him aches so deliciously, I cannot contemplate stopping. I lower myself to him, and can feel his heart, a beating flutter against mine, as the heat begins to tingle in my abdomen and push up, then down, then up again. “This way, Jesse? You like it like this?”
He doesn’t reply, but his yes reverberates throughout my body nevertheless. Because his hands swallow my hips, and then he’s the one taking charge and moving me around his cock, and it’s so good, I forget how to breathe. He grunts, bites my shoulder, and when his control is on the verge of snapping in two, he slides his hand between our bodies and begins circling my clit with his thumb, making my orgasm rise and swell in powerful waves.
“Viola.” He breathes against my mouth, and all I’m aware of is his touch, his scent, his voice, the heat spilling in my belly. “You are the best thing in this entire fucking world.”
I don’t hear the rest, because my body begins to contract around him, and I’m coming in a wash of burning pleasure. I sag on top of his chest, trying to stifle my whimpers into the skin of his sternum, and that’s when Jesse must come, too, because I feel him rock desperately, babble a few swear words, and then clutch me even closer as he pulsates deep inside me.
Afterward, we’re a mess. The space between us is sticky and wet with come, sweat, and something that could be my tears, but I don’t ever want to clean up. The last thing I can hear before falling asleep atop Jesse, his fingers fisted in my hair, is the slowing tempo of his heart.
“ARE YOU HUNGRY?” HE ASKS a couple of hours later after the lodge has finally gone quiet.
I yawn into the curve of his throat. “No. Not really.”
“Tell me if you are.” He nuzzles the crown of my hair with his nose, and I decide that he’s the most comfortable mattress in the universe—a perfect
mix of soft and hard.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
“Thinking?”
“Yeah, you know…Pondering. Ruminating. Contemplating. Musing.
Cogitating.” I kiss a spot at the base of his neck. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
I snort softly. “You can’t say nothing.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a felony.”
“It’s true, though.” His smile widens against my temple. “I usually think about work, or what needs to be done, or whether I forgot to book my dental cleaning. Tonight, with you, I…this. Now.” His fingers are still drawing patterns on my lower back. We’ve been so close, for so long, I should be all touched out, but with Jesse it’s never too much. “What are you thinking?”
I grin into his skin. “About whether Otto and Mike are doing the same thing we’re doing, right now.”
“Christ.” I can imagine Jesse’s horrified expression. “Thank you for the mental image, Viola.”
I giggle and fall asleep again, with a smile on my face.
I WAKE UP THE FOLLOWING morning, when it’s no longer dark. Jesse’s behind me under the covers, one of his hands curled around my breast. It’s a pleasant weight that has even my bone marrow feeling warm and happy.
“Good morning,” I tell him, wondering if he can hear the delight in my voice.
“Morning.” His breath tickles the hair on my neck. A moment of hesitation, then his fingers tighten on me. “You smell unbelievably good.”
It’s because I smell like you, I think, though I doze off before the words make it out of my mouth.
When I wake again, Jesse’s hand is pressing against my abdomen, and I’ve never been more turned on in my life. When I exhale a needy sigh, he easily eases inside me. He gets about halfway in, doesn’t continue, and arousal wells up with every inch, an unstoppable tidal wave that makes my skin heat and tingle.
I hear an odd, foreign sound, and realize that it’s my own moan.
“Okay?” Jesse asks, a gentle kiss over my shoulder. When I rasp out a “Yes,” he shifts me until I’m lying half on my belly, his chest flush to my back. “Still okay?” he repeats, breath hot against my ear.
I bury my face in the pillow, confused by the pleasure. “It feels—” He pushes just half an inch deeper, hitting something soft and tender inside me.
The feeling is devastating. Nuclear. “Sometimes I’m afraid that this might be
too much for me.”
“But it’s not.”
I nod, breathless. “But it’s not.”
He kisses the pulse at the base of my throat, and then lets his teeth graze against the vein there, as if to find the essence of me. “Hold tight. I’m gonna fuck you properly this time.”
Last night seemed very proper to me, but I think I know what he means.
He’s in charge now. Taking his time, savoring every stroke, unhurriedly moving in and out. I’m tempted to push back against his cock, but instead close my eyes, stay still, and let the pleasure drift through me, breathing in Jesse’s spectacular scent, thinking of dark green pine trees and fallen snow.
“Did you use to think of us?” I ask him. “Of doing this? With me?”
His breath is loud, but even. He slides an arm under my head and pulls
me closer. “All the time.”
“What did you—oh—what did you imagine?”
“I don’t know.” His fingers slide lower, draw slow circles around my clit. “That you’d be soft, and warm, and wet. Beautiful. Funny. Good.” He nudges a little deeper, and our breaths catch. “I expected a lot. But not… never this.”
A perfect thrust, and pleasure tears through me. Jesse keeps moving through my messy, mind-addling orgasm, and when I’m done he gives in and grabs his own. All throughout I hold his forearm, pressing soft, light kisses to the back of his hand.
“WHEN DID YOU FIRST READ the Limerence series?” I ask him after tucking my cheek against his chest. His palm sweeps lazily up and down my spine, over the small of my back, around my ass. I’m sure that he has counted my ribs twice already, and he let out a teasing smile when I confessed to being ticklish—as if storing up the anatomy of my body to reproduce a near-perfect
replica inside his brain.
“About three years ago.”
“That recently?”
“Yup.” He turns his face just enough to press his nose into my hair and inhale deeply. In response, I rub my cheek into his skin.
“What made you pick it up?”
“A friend recommended it. Said I might like it. And it might help me.”
“Help you?”
“Process my…feelings.”
“Oh.” I lift my head, propping my chin on my palm. My chest feels heavy when I try to imagine what was going on in Jesse’s head for the past few years. I know he didn’t just sit around and pine for me—he had girlfriends and friends and colleagues who love him, hobbies and interests and professional victories—but I cannot help regretting the misunderstanding of it all. “Did you tell them about…?”
“Not the specifics. Just that there was someone I’d been liking for a while. That I wasn’t in the position to make a move, and all I could do was… wait it out until it would fade.” He smiles faintly. “She’d read the books when she was in her early teens and loved them. She recommended them to me, and I read them all in less than a week. And once I got to the end, I immediately restarted them.”
I nod. “They’re so different, once you know. Once you understand what the author was trying to do.”
An ode to the enduring power of love. That’s what Jesse said the other day, isn’t it?
He lifts his hand and runs it through the length of my hair. I’m reminded of the care he took while undoing my braid last night. And of the pull on my scalp a few moments ago. “What about you? When did you discover the books?”
“My dad used to read them to me. When I was probably a bit too young for them, but I adored them anyway. Even the scarier, darker parts. I kind of forgot about them for a decade and a half. Then, when I was in college and he got sick, I read them back to him. And now…Well, he’s gone. But Limerence was our thing, and since I inherited from him both my love for the series and my love for video games, and I think he’d be proud to know that his daughter might be the one who…” I swallow against the sudden obstruction in my throat. It takes me a moment to gather myself, but Jesse’s warm hand stays, anchoring me. “That’s why I need to get it right. It has to be absolutely
perfect, but…”
“But?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been going through my ideas…” I shake my head.
“I’ve seen your ideas, Viola. They look fantastic.”
“I know they do,” I say without conceit, and then briefly hesitate. Forty- eight hours ago, I would have gouged my eyes out before confessing any doubts to Jesse. But today he feels like my closest ally. I simply cannot imagine hiding anything related to Limerence from him. “Aqualuna was both Dad’s and my favorite character. And I want to do her justice. But the stuff I’ve written so far hasn’t quite captured her essence. I’m missing something, and I can’t figure out what it is.” I shrug. And then laugh, fully aware of how ridiculous I sound. “I’m overthinking it, right? I’m too attached to her.”
Jesse cocks his head on the pillow. “I don’t think you are. I feel protective of her, too. And of Noham.”
I smile. “So nice of you, to pretend that I’m not a total weirdo.”
“Anytime.”
I pinch him lightly in retaliation, but the conversation is reminding me of something I would have considered earlier, if I hadn’t been busy stuffing approximately a year’s worth of sex into two days: Jesse’s proposal to have Noham as a playable character.
Or, more exactly, my own reaction to it.
I can’t believe that it had never occurred to me. Not that I would ever dare cut Noham out completely—Mike and Otto are unbelievable—but I’m starting to wonder if in my obsessive search for the real Aqualuna, I…“You know, I think I may have been neglecting him,” I tell Jesse, suddenly serious.
He understands immediately what I’m referring to. “Noham?”
I nod as I work through my reasons. “The thing is, Noham and Aqualuna’s love felt so…so beautiful, and powerful, but also doomed.
Which, it is. Literally cursed. And the ending of the saga, it hurts. Knowing that everything Noham and Aqualuna go through together culminates in grief, it hurts.” I’m talking to myself as much as to Jesse. Combing through mats of ideas and possibilities. “And since I love Aqualuna so much, since I want her to be happy for more than a handful of minutes, since it’s a foregone conclusion that Noham’s loss will break her heart, I’ve been…sidelining him.
As if by reducing his role in her life, I could reduce her suffering. But her openness to loving him is such an important part of her character. If I take that away…Yes. That’s it. That’s why she fell flat. That’s what’s missing.”
Jesse looks at me like he gets it. And it makes me want to kiss him even more. “You know, maybe what we should do is—”
The knock at the door startles us. We exchange a long, silent glance.
Then Jesse gets out of bed to pull on his plaid pajama pants and answer the door, while I duck under the covers and make myself as small as possible.
“Hey.” From under the comforter, I can hear Mike’s muffled voice.
“You sick or something?”
“No.”
“Oh. You look like you just got out of bed.”
“I did. Slept in.”
“Cool. You’re still good with driving your car back, right?”
“Of course.”
“Great. So, the streets look fine, at least as long as we go slowly. We’re
planning to leave at five.”
A pause. “Okay.”
“Thanks, dude. And oh, have you seen Viola?”
Jesse doesn’t miss a beat. “Is she not in her room?” I’m starting to notice that he has mastered the art of sidestepping and non-answering questions.
“Nope. Maybe she went for a walk or something. I’ll text her. See you later.”
I wait for the sound of the closing door. A few seconds later, the mattress next to me dips. I emerge from the tangle of sheets and comforter, sitting upright while Jesse eyes me silently.
“I really enjoyed your performance as ‘shapeless lump,’ ” he says, pushing my hair back from my face.
“Thank you. I hope to take it to Broadway soon.” I force myself to smile, even if my cheeks object. “So I guess we are going home today, after all.”
Jesse nods. He looks…yeah.
Exactly how I feel.
It’s ridiculous that the prospect of returning to my quiet, empty apartment weighs in my belly like an iron boulder. And it’s not that I think that this thing between us will be over once we go home, or that Jesse will ghost me as soon as we’re back in Seattle. I know him better than that. But
for the past two days it’s been just us, suspended, locked away from reality, and now… Well. Change is part of life, and all that shit.
“Guess this means I have to go pack,” I say, fidgeting with a corner of
the sheet.
Jesse nods, again.
“And you have to pack, too.” I push the covers back. “I’ll get out of your hair, so you can—”
His hand on my wrist pulls me back to him. He kisses what’s left of that sentence out of my mouth—and kisses me, and kisses me, and kisses me, not stopping until I force myself to twist out of his embrace, even if it makes my heart heavy and my eyes prickly.
