Eight
Three weeks ago
We haven’t touched all night.
Not at the restaurant. Not in the car. Not even in the elevator up to his Brooklyn Heights apartment, which is larger than mine but doesn’t look it because Erik is standing in it. We’ve been chatting like we did over dinner, which is fun and great and kind of hilarious, but I’m starting to wonder whether when I fooled myself into believing that I was bravely hitting on Erik, he actually thought that I was inviting myself over to play the FIFA video game. He’s going to say Come, I want to show you something. I’ll follow him down the hallway jelly-kneed, and once I’m at the end he’ll open the door of the Xbox room and I’ll quietly die.
I stand in the entrance while Erik locks the door behind me, shifting awkwardly on my feet, contemplating my own mortality and the possibility of making a run for it, when I notice the cat. Perched on Erik’s spotless living room table (which appears not to be a repository for mail piles and take-out flyers; huh). It’s orange, round, and glowering at us.
“Hi there.” I take a few steps, cautiously holding out my hand. The cat glowers harder. “Aren’t you a nice little kitten?”
“He isn’t.” Erik is taking off his shoes and hanging his jacket behind me. “Nice, that is.”
“What’s his name?”
“Cat.”
“Cat? Like . . . ?”
“Cat,” he says, final. I decide not to press him.
“I’m not sure why, but I pegged you for more of a dog person.”
“I am.”
I turn and give him a puzzled look. “But you have a cat?”
“My brother does.”
“Which one?” He has four. All younger. And it’s clear from the way he talks about them, often and with that half-gruff, half-amused tone, that they’re thick as thieves. My only-child, “Have this coloring book while Mommy and Daddy watch The West Wing” self burns with envy.
“Anders. The youngest. He graduated college and is now . . . somewhere. Wales, I believe. Discovering himself.” Erik comes to stand next to me. He and Cat glare at each other. “While I temporarily watch his cat.”
“What’s temporarily?”
He presses his lips together. “So far, one year and seven months.” I try to keep a straight face, I really do, but I end up smiling into my hand, and Erik’s eyes narrow at me. “The beginning of our . . . relationship was rough, but we are slowly starting to come to an agreement,” he says, just as Cat jumps off the table and pauses to hiss at Erik on his way to the kitchen. Erik snaps back with something that sounds very harsh and consonant based, then looks at me again. “Slowly.”
“Very slowly.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you lock your bedroom door at night?”
“Religiously.”
“Good.”
I smile, he doesn’t, and we slip into a lull of not-quite-comfortable silence. I fill it by looking around and pretending that I’m fascinated with the map of Copenhagen that hangs on the wall. Erik does it by standing next to me and asking, “Would you like something to drink? I think I have beer. And . . .” A pause. “Milk, probably.”
I laugh softly. “Two percent?”
“Whole. And chocolate,” he admits, a little bashful. Which has me chuckling some more, Erik finally smiling, and then . . . more silence.
We’re idling between the entrance and the living room, facing each other, him studying me, me studying him studying me, and something heavy knots in my throat. I’m not sure what’s going on. I’m not sure what I expected, but the entire night was so easy, and this is not. “Did I . . . Did I misunderstand?”
He doesn’t pretend not to know exactly what I mean. “You didn’t.” He seems . . . not insecure, but cautious. Like he’s a scientist about to mix two very volatile substances together. The product might be great, but he’d better be extra sure. Wear protective equipment. Take time. “I don’t want to assume anything.”
The knot tightens. “If you have changed your—”
“That’s not it.”
I bite into my lip. “I was going to say, if you don’t want to—”
“It’s the opposite, Sadie,” he says quietly. “The exact opposite. I need to tread carefully.”
Right, then. Okay. I make a split-second decision, my second act of bravery of the evening: I step closer to him, till our feet touch through our socks, and push up to the tips of my toes.
The first thing that hits me is how good he smells. Clean, masculine, warm. All-around delicious. The second: his collarbone is the farthest I can reach, which would be kind of amusing if my ability to breathe weren’t shot all of a sudden. If I want this kiss to happen, I’ll need his cooperation. Or rock-climbing equipment.
“Will you . . .” I laugh helplessly against the collar of his shirt. “Please?”
He won’t. He doesn’t. Not for the longest time, instead choosing to wrap his hand around my jaw, cup my face, stare down at me. “I think this is it,” he murmurs, thumb swiping over my cheekbone, eyes pensive, like he’s processing a momentous piece of information. My pulse races. I’m dizzy.
“I . . . What?”
“This.” His eyes are on my lips. “I don’t think I’m going anywhere from this.”
“I’m not sure I . . .”
He moves so quickly I can barely keep track. His hands close around my waist, lift me up, and a second later I’m sitting on the shelf in the entrance. The height difference between us is much less dramatic and . . .
It’s the best kiss of my life. No: it’s the best kiss in the world. Because of the way he presses a hand into my shoulder blade to arch me into him. Because of the scratch of his stubble against my cheeks. Because it starts slow, just his mouth on mine, and stays like that for a long time. Even when I loop my arms around his neck, even when he leans into me and pushes my thighs open to make space for himself, even when we’re flush against each other, my heart beating like a drum against his chest, it’s just his lips and mine. Close, brushing, sharing air and warmth. Achingly careful.
And then I open my mouth, and it becomes something else entirely. The soft press of our tongues. His grunt. My moan. It’s new, but also right. The scent of him. The way he holds my head in his hand. The delicious liquid heat spreading in my belly, rising up my nerve endings. Good. It’s good, and I’m trembling, and it’s really, really good.
“If . . .” I start when he comes up for air, but immediately stop when he buries his face in my throat.
“This okay?” he asks before inhaling deeply against my skin, as though my Target body wash is some kind of mind-addling drug.
My “Yeah” is faint, breathless. When he bites my collarbone, I wrap my arms around his shoulders and my legs around his waist, and the pleasure of being so close slices through me like the sharpest blade.
He is hard. I can feel exactly how hard. He wants me to feel it, I think, because his hand slides down to my ass and pulls me into him. I squirm, twisting my hips experimentally, and he groans ruggedly into my mouth. “Be good,” he chides, stern, a little rough. He grips me tight, holds me still against him, and I unexpectedly shiver at the command in his words.
It escalates quickly. For me, at least. There is a stretch of seconds, maybe minutes, in which we just kiss and kiss and kiss, Erik leaning even closer and me following his lead, liquid heat flooding inside me. And then I start noticing them: the soft groans. The sharp hiss as his cock rubs against my inner thigh. The way his fingers dig hungrily into my hips, the nape of my neck, the small of my back. He alternates between clutching me to his body as tight as he can and avoiding touching me at all, hands white-knuckled against the edge of the shelf as he puts some distance between us. I think he might be trying to slow this down. Pace himself, maybe.
I think he’s not managing to, not very well.
I pull away, and his eyes slowly blink open. They’re glassy, unfocused, a nearly black blue fixed on my lips. When he tries to lean down for another kiss, I stop him with a hand on his chest. “Bedroom?” I gasp, because he looks like he could just fuck me in the hallway, and I’m afraid that I’d gladly let him. “Or if you want . . . here is . . . fine, if you—”
He cups a hand under my ass and carries me all the way down the hallway, like I’m no heavier than his cat. When he flips the light switch on, the bed is huge and unmade, and the room smells so much like him, I have to briefly close my eyes. He sets me on my feet, and I’m about to ask him if this is necessary, if we could please do this in the semi-dark, but he’s already unbuttoning his shirt, eyes fixed on me. My mouth goes dry. On second thought, light’s fine. Probably.
Erik is a mountain. A giant dome of flesh and muscles—not GQ-cut, ridiculously defined ones, but solid, oak-tree big, and I might have gotten absorbed into staring and catastrophically lost track of time because:
“Take off your clothes,” he says, no, orders, and I shiver again. There’s something about him. Something commanding. Like his first instinct is to take charge. “Sadie,” he repeats. “Take them off.”
I nod, shrug out of my jeans first, then my sweater. I’m frantically looking for the courage to continue when I hear a low, hoarse, “Not purple.”
I look up. Erik stands in front of me, naked, tall, big, and like . . . like a minor deity from some Norse pantheon, a reserved one who likes to keep to himself but would still get a couple of Baltic Sea islands named after him. He is gloriously unself-conscious about his nudity. I, on the other hand, am apparently too embarrassed to take off my white tank top or to glance any lower than his belly button.
Not that he seems to notice. His eyes are glassy again, staring at the way my black panties stretch around my hips like he’d like them burned into his retinas. I am tempted to put my jeans back on. “What?”
“They’re not purple.”
“I don’t . . . Oh. I went home and changed. And . . . is this considered a pitch meeting?” I still should have worn something nicer. Maybe a matching bra. Problem is, if five hours ago someone had told me I’d end up in Erik Nowak’s bedroom by the end of the day, I’d have blamed a fever dream and handed them some Advil. “And it’s not purple, it’s—”
“Lavender,” he says with the bare twitch of a smile, and then I don’t have to think much anymore because one of his thighs slides between mine and he’s walking me backward to his bed. There is a down comforter under my back, and a pretty intimidating erection I still cannot bring myself to look at against my stomach, and hundreds of pounds of Danishness above me. Erik is eager, and determined, and clearly experienced. He groans into my neck, then my sternum, muttering something that could be fuck, or perfect, or my name. The way he’s been thinking about this all day during meetings, all fucking day. His hands slide under my top and travel up: soft kneading, more groans and a few soft fuck, Sadie, fuck, a light pinch on my nipple and greedy bite through the fabric, and it feels perfect, scary, exhilarating, new, filthy, right, good, wet, embarrassing, exciting, fast—all these things, all at once.
Then, in the next breath, they all dissolve. Except for one: scary.
Erik has hooked his fingers in the elastic of my panties, taken them off. He’s kissing down my hip bones, full lips pressed into my abdomen, and I know exactly what he’s planning to do, but I cannot stop thinking that he’s . . .
He is really very big. And his forearm is laid out across my stomach, pinning me to the bed, and I met him—shit, I met this guy this morning, and even though I did briefly google him to make sure his real name wasn’t Max McMurderer, I don’t know anything about him and he is much larger and stronger than I am and am I even good at this? and he could do whatever he wanted with me he could make me and I feel hot I feel cold I cannot breathe and—
“Stop! Stop stop stop—”
Erik stops. Instantly. And I instantly squirm out from underneath him, dragging myself to the headboard, legs drawn up and arms around them. His eyes are on me, once again light blue, once again seeing. What is he going to do? What is he—
“Hey,” he says, pulling back on his knees as if to give me even more space. His tone is gentle, like he’s approaching skittish, injured wildlife. A good chunk of my panic melts, and . . . Oh my God. What is wrong with me? We were having a good time, he was being perfectly fine, and I had to go and be a fucking weirdo.
“I’m sorry. I just . . . I don’t know why I’m freaking out. You’re just so big, and I barely ever— I’m not used to this. Sorry.”
“Hey,” Erik says again. His hand reaches out to touch me. Hovers above my knee. Then he seems to think better of it and pulls it back, which makes me want to cry. I ruined this. I ruined it. “It’s okay, Sadie.”
“No. No, it’s not. I . . . I think the problem is that I have only ever done this with my ex, and I . . .”
“I see.” His face turns stony in an impersonal, scary way. “Did he hurt you?”
“No! No, Oscar would never. It was good. It’s just he was . . . different. From you.” I laugh nervously. I hope I don’t burst into tears. “Not that it’s bad. I mean, everybody’s different. It’s just that . . .”
He nods, and I think he gets it, because his expression clears up. Which in turn helps me feel a little less anxious. Like I don’t need to be huddled away from him as though he’s a contagious rabid animal. I take a deep breath and scoot up closer, toward the center of the bed.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Why are you sorry?” He seems genuinely puzzled.
“I just didn’t think this would feel . . . scary. I figured I’d be way cooler. Smoother, I guess.”
“Sadie, you . . .” He exhales and reaches for me again. This time he doesn’t stop and pushes back my hair, tucking it behind my ear like he wants to see my face in full. Like he wants me to see him. “You don’t have to be any way. I didn’t bring you here so you could perform for me.”
I swallow against the lump in my throat. “Right. You brought me here because I propositioned you, and then—”
“I brought you here because I wanted to be with you. I’d have kept on walking around the city till dawn if that was what you wanted. So, here’s the deal: we can spend the night fucking, and I won’t lie, I’d greatly enjoy that, but we could also play Guess Who?, or you could help me give my brother’s cat his flea medication, since it’s a two-, maybe three-person job. Any of the above works.”
I really, really don’t want to tear up. Instead I let myself fall back onto the bed, my head on his one pillow. “What if I wanted to play the FIFA video game?”
“I would ask you to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because I do not own any gaming console.”
I laugh, a little watery. “I knew you were too good to be true.”
“I used to have a Game Boy in the ’90s,” he offers. “Maybe my dad kept it.”
“Partial redemption.” We’re both smiling now, and my fear of him liquefies, like snow in the sun. Only to ice all over again in another form: fear of not having him. “Did I fuck this up?”
“Fuck what up?”
I gesticulate in his direction, then in mine. Us, I want to say, but it seems premature. “This . . . this thing.”
He lies down next to me, facing me. He purposefully left a few inches between us, but of their own volition, like vines twining around tree trunks, my legs travel across the sheets and tangle loosely with his. This time the contact is not scary, only right and natural. He’s still big and different and a little awe-inducing, but he’s not on top of me, and I feel more in control. Like I could step away whenever. And I know now that he’d let me. “Maybe I can unfuck it up?” I ask hopefully.
He sighs. “Sadie, I want to tell you something, but I’m afraid you won’t like it.”
Oh no. “What is it?”
A pause. “You are a brilliant engineer who knows the Premier League stats of the past three decades off the top of your head. Physically, you are the uncanny combination of every single feature I’ve ever found attractive—no, I will not expand on that. And you saved me on your phone as Corporate Thor, even after I gave you my full name.”
“I wasn’t sure about the spelling and—you saw that?”
“Yup.” His hand comes up to cup my cheek. “This is it, Sadie. I don’t think there’s any fucking this up.”
A million hopeful fireworks explode in my head. My heart squeezes in my chest, heavy and sweet. Okay. Okay. “So I have not turned you off sex forever?”
He huffs out a laugh. “I doubt me not wanting to have sex with you is something we’ll ever need to worry about, Sadie.”
“Even if I’m bad at it?”
“You’re not.”
“I didn’t think so. I thought I was okay. I mean, average. But maybe—”
“Sadie.” With a hand on my waist he pulls me a little closer. Just enough for his eyes to meet mine and for my entire world to narrow to him. “Let’s take it slowly. We’ll get there,” he tells me, like he knows, he just knows that this is the first night of many.
“Are you sure?”
“Strong suspicion. Would you feel better if I put my clothes back on?”
I shake my head, and then, on an impulse, close the distance between us. The other kisses he led, which I loved, but with this one I’m in charge, and it’s exactly what I need. He doesn’t try to deepen it till I do. Doesn’t come closer till I shift toward him. Doesn’t try to touch me till I take his hand and set it on my hip, and even then it’s gentle, fingers skimming up and down my thigh, tracing my rib cage ridge by ridge, my spine knob by knob.
I feel myself relax. Drift away. Expand and contract and forget. Become wet and pliant, a beautiful, delicious heat spreading into my stomach. When my thigh accidentally brushes against Erik’s erection, my breath hitches and he makes a noise, deep and low in the back of his throat.
“Sorry,” he rasps, starting to arrange me so that I’m turned away.
I stop him with a hand on his biceps. “I like this, actually.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. You?”
He exhales. “You have no idea, do you?”
“Of what?”
He doesn’t elaborate. “I’m happy to do this until sunrise.”
“Really?” I let out a laugh. “You’d be happy channeling your best high school self and making out?”
He shrugs. “I’m probably going to come at some point. But I can warn you. You don’t have to be part of it, and there’s a bathroom across the hallway.”
“No! No, I’m—” dying of embarrassment. “I’d like to. Be part of it, that is.” I clear my throat. “I think we should try again. What we were doing before I freaked.”
I see it play out on his face: a split second of eagerness, then a mask of bland skepticism. “I think we should wait for that. Take it slow. Go out a few more times until you get used to the fact that I’m . . . so big, apparently.”
I flush. “But I was thinking . . . what if I go on top? That way I won’t feel trapped?”
Erik goes still. For a moment, he stops breathing. Then he asks, “Are you sure?” His pupils are dilated.
“I think so. Would you like to?”
“That would be . . .” He swallows. His fingers are gripping my hips like he simply cannot let go. “Yeah. I’d like that. If that’s even the word for it.”
I don’t immediately realize the misunderstanding. Maybe because I’m busy, first shifting on the mattress and climbing over his hips, then basking in the fact that I’m on top of him. I do feel much better this way. Okay, I think. Yes. I can do this after all. I love this, actually. I love straddling Erik, looking down at his pale skin, tracing his muscles. I love his eyes on the spots where my nipples push against my top. I love the feeling of my thighs being split wide by his torso, the hairs of his happy trail against my folds. I can have sex with him after all. I want to have sex with him. I might die if I don’t have sex with him, because right now I want us to be as close as we humanly can.
But then his hands close around my waist, and he shifts me up. And up. And up. Until my knees are pressing into the mattress on each side of his neck, and I remember what exactly he’d been about to do when we stopped. Big light bulb energy. Oh my God. He thinks I want him to—
“Erik, I—”
He starts with a long swipe across my core, parting me with his tongue. I make an embarrassing animal sound that’s half gasp, half whimper, and fall forward, catching myself on the headboard. My core flutters. My entire body shakes, electric.
“Fuck, Sadie,” he says gutturally right before licking into me again, thorough and impatient in a way that redefines the word enthusiasm. His tongue plays with my entrance, pushing past squeezing muscles. The thumb of the hand that’s not caging my ass comes up to draw circles around my clit. I’m trembling. Spasming. Clenching. All of a sudden I’m agonizingly empty.
“Oh my God,” I whisper into the back of my hand. Then I bite it, because if I don’t, I will scream. Maybe I’ll scream anyway, because he grunts and arches his throat to lick up into me, pressing my pelvis against his mouth, and the noises he makes—the noises we make—are wet and filthy and obscene. “Oh my God. I—” I’m out of control. My thighs are starting to tremble. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I cannot stop rocking, rubbing myself against his mouth, his nose, and his face, squirming for more contact, more pressure, more friction, wanting to be full—
“You’re doing so well, Sadie,” he murmurs into my core, and the words vibrate all the way up my spine. His fingers grip my ass bruisingly tight and he’s ruthless, keeping me still, angling me better, letting me know that he knows what I need—for me to let him do his job. Then he starts using his teeth on me, and I break down.
I scream.
“Can’t believe you thought you were bad at this,” he tells me, laughing, and I feel each and every syllable travel through me like a knife. I force myself to breathe deep, to stay upright, to look down at him. And that’s when his eyes meet mine and he starts sucking hard on my clit.
I come so hard, it’s nearly painful. I’ve always been quiet, silent in bed, but the pleasure is like a dam bursting, cutting and searing and so violent, my body has no hope to contain it. I sob and whimper into the back of my hand, powerless, confused. All through my orgasm Erik is there, holding my hips, murmuring praises and groans against my swollen folds, licking at me until it’s just on the other side of too much.
Then his kisses become lighter. Gentle. He turns to suck on the inside of my left thigh, and I wonder if it’s enough to leave a mark. Erik Nowak was here. “I’ve been thinking about eating you out all day,” he says against my skin, which is sticky and drenched and—I cannot believe this is happening. I cannot believe this is sex. “All. Fucking. Day.”
Somehow, he seems to know that I’m too boneless to move. He slides me back down his body, and maybe I’m imagining, but I think he’s breathing as heavily as I am, and I think his hands are trembling. I want to investigate, but he wraps his arms around my torso and holds me to his chest till we’re as close as we can be. The racing beat of his heart reverberates through my skin, and this, this, this moment couldn’t be any more perfect.
Until he kisses me. And kisses me. He kisses my mouth with the same single-mindedness he used for my core, and as my heartbeat quiets down, as my limbs slowly stop twitching with pleasure, I begin to smile into his lips.
“Erik?”
“Yeah?” His hand curves around my ass.
“Why did you buy it?”
“Buy what?”
“Faye’s croissant. If you knew it was so gross, why did you buy it?”
He smiles into the line of my shoulder. “I’m part of it.”
“Of what?”
“The money laundering scheme.”
I giggle and hug him tighter while it swells inside me, a surge of happiness and adoration and something hazy, something hopeful and young that I cannot quite define yet. His cock twitches against my inner thigh. He shifts me higher to pretend it didn’t happen and pulls me in for another lazy kiss. Hmm.
I try to wiggle and reach between us, but he stops my hand by twining his fingers against mine.
“Do you not—?”
“Ignore it,” he says, nuzzling his face against my throat. He bites me, firm, playful, almost distracting. Almost.
“But you—”
“Shhh. It’s fine, Sadie. We should quit while we’re ahead.”
I frown, propping myself up to look at him. “We’re not ahead. I am ahead. It’s a firm one to nothing.” Probably more like twelve-blending-into-one to nothing. But.
He laughs softly. “Believe me, it did not feel like nothing—”
He closes his mouth so abruptly, I can hear his jaw click. Because I’m sliding back, and his erection is nestled against me. First, the curve of my ass. Then, right under my core.
He inhales, harsh. Fingers dig into my waist. “Sadie—”
“I thought you said I could be in charge,” I tease him, rocking on his cock like I did on his mouth. The lips of my core surround his shaft, plump and puffy. We look down at the scene at the same time. The sound he lets out is feral.
“We need to stop,” he grunts out, but his hand splays on my lower back and he presses down to get better friction.
“Why?”
“Because—” The head of his cock hits my swollen clit, a sharp stab of pleasure up my spine. Erik arches up, hugs me tighter to him, and closes his eyes. “Fuck. Oh, fuck,” he slurs. “I’m going to fuck you, am I not?” His breath catches, and we’re almost aligned. Then we are aligned, him hard against my entrance, and I bear down because I want to, I want to feel this delicious, immense pressure that will split me at the seams, and it feels good, so good, floodingly, druggingly, overwhelmingly good—
“Condom,” he gasps in my mouth. “If we’re—we need a condom.”
I still. Shit. “I—” I try to scramble off him, but Erik holds me right there. He’s still kind of inside me. Just the tip. “Do you . . . Do you have one?”
“I think so. Somewhere.”
Somewhere is right in the drawer of his bedside table, underneath a bottle of allergy pills, a phone charger, and two books in what I presume is Danish. He holds the condom out to me and I accept it without thinking.
The foil is golden. Trojan, it says. And underneath: Magnum. Which maybe explains a lot.
“Should I . . . ?”
He nods. We’re both flushed and clumsy and out of breath, and I have no idea how to put on a condom. But I don’t want to say, Please, do it yourself, because my school didn’t really do the banana part of sex ed, and my mom put me on birth control on my third date with Oscar. Erik is staring eagerly at the foil in my hand, like it’s a gift of myrrh for the newborn king, and I think he’s more than a little into the idea of me doing this for him.
I grin. I have a Ph.D. in engineering: if I can build sophisticated machinery, I can figure out how to put on a damn condom. And there’s some trial and error, but Erik doesn’t seem to mind, spellbound by the way my small fingers work on him. When I’m done, his breathing is shorter. More stilted.
“Come back here.” He pulls me down to him.
“I— Do you want to be on top this time?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? I think I’m okay with—”
“Sadie. I want to fuck you, and I need you to like me fucking you. So you’re on top for now.”
I have no clue what the parameters for the magnum size are, but I do get why he needs it. I’m as relaxed and turned on as I’ve ever been, but it still takes a while to work him in, with small increments and false starts and lots of careful maneuvering. By the time he’s in as far as he’ll go, I’m sweating, and Erik is drenched. He smells delicious, like salt and soap and his intense skin. So I lick the place on his jaw where the drops have been collecting.
“Can you . . . ?” He arches experimentally into me. We both let out a groan.
“What do you want?”
“I want to feel your tits.”
“Oh.” I’d forgotten about my top. I straighten to take it off, which involves some twisting and grinding that has Erik gasping and trying to still my hips again. They’re not much, I almost warn him. But I remember something he said earlier. Uncanny combination of every single feature I’ve ever found attractive. “Did you mean it? When you said I’m your type, physically?”
His pupils track the progress of my hands, blown wide. “I noticed you.”
“Noticed me?” I undo the clasp of my bra. He twitches inside me. His jaw ticks with restraint.
“In the building. The lobby.” He closes his eyes. Then opens them. “Once in the elevator.”
I take off my bra, feeling stupid to have been worried. He’s staring at my body like it’s somewhere between holy and utterly, deliciously pornographic. “What did you notice?”
“Sadie.” His throat bobs. “A lot.”
“And . . .” I push down on my knees and circle my hips twice, working him a little deeper. A fraction of an inch, but the friction, the sense of fullness—my eyes roll back in my head. I didn’t know anything could be so far inside me and feel so good. Couldn’t have imagined. “And what did you think?”
“Oh, fuck.” A desperate sound comes out of Erik’s throat. “This. This, and more.” He swallows. “Lots of other things, and—Sadie, you’re going to have to give me a minute to adjust or I’m going to—” Erik sounds just as astonished by this as I feel. His eyes are screwed shut, and his hands grip me so hard, and his teeth sink into my shoulder. “Sadie, I’m about to—”
“Don’t worry,” I pant against his ear, fluttering like I’m about to go under. “You’re doing so well, Erik.”
I come like an avalanche, and then he does, and when I squeeze my arms around his neck, I don’t ever mean to let go.
In the morning, I watch him shave in front of the mirror just because I can.
He uses a razor that looks like the ones I buy for my legs (i.e., cheapest at the supermarket). If he minds the bleary-eyed girl who had less than two hours of sleep and is currently sitting wrapped in a towel on his bathroom counter, he hides it well. But I’m almost sure he doesn’t. Mostly because he’s the one who put me here.
“You’re so tall,” I say, a little tired, a little stupid, leaning back against the mirror.
His mouth twitches. “You aren’t.”
“I know. That’s what I blame the end of my soccer career on.”
“Isn’t Crystal Dunn pretty short?” he asks, rinsing his razor. He dries his hands on his pajama bottoms, which hang deliciously low on his hips. “Meghan Klingenberg, too. And—”
“Shut up,” I say mildly, which only amuses him further. He moves closer, hands slipping inside my towel and coming to rest against the small of my back, warm and instinctive and impossibly familiar. Like it’s something he’s been doing every day for his entire life. Like it’s something he plans to do every day for what’s left of it.
I love this. The way he pulls me into him. The way he grows hard but seems to be content with this not going anywhere. The way his face nuzzles into my throat. I love this. But.
“I just think you might be too tall,” I say into his clavicle. “I foresee neck problems for both of us.”
“Hmm. We’ll probably need surgery a few years down the line.” His smile travels through my skin. “How’s your insurance?”
“Meh.”
“Mine’s good. You should go on it when . . .” He trails off. Picks up again with, “Have lunch with me today.”
“I don’t usually have lunch,” I tell him. “I’m more of a ‘big breakfast, then forty snacks scattered throughout the day’ kind of person.”
“Have a big breakfast and forty snacks with me, then.”
I laugh. Yes. Yes. Yes. “What’s the closest subway stop?”
“I’ll drive you into work.”
“I need to go home first. Feed Ozzy. Remind him of my unyielding love for him.”
“I’ll drive you home, and then I’ll drive you into work. You can introduce me to the hamster.”
“Guinea pig.”
“Pretty sure they’re the same thing.”
I laugh again, exhausted and drowsy and over the moon, and I cannot help but wonder how different this morning would be if Erik hadn’t been the one to buy Faye’s croissant.
I cannot help but wonder if this is the first day of the rest of my life.