Scandalized

Alec stills, his breaths broken and sharp. “Wait. Shit.”

In that instant, I know.

It’s just us. Just him inside me, no barrier. No condom. How did we forget? And how can such a small omission change every detail of the sensation of sex with him?

“Wait,” he says again, gentler this time, and in the single syllable I hear a different meaning. This wait doesn’t mean stop. It’s a plea for me to let him stay right here just a moment longer. He’s never felt me like this, either.

Alec holds himself still, but only under what appears to be the tightest discipline. His arms are shaking. Each wild breath moves him very slightly in and very slightly out again. With him inside me, so hot and hard, I feel every tiny detail. He’s so deep, pressed firmly against where I ache painfully for him. I know if I close my eyes and focus on the pressure of his body, just there, and squeeze him, I might come.

This is the madness talking, the delirium from the sensation of being so full—but with him swollen like this, a body so hungry he’s nearly excessive inside me, I don’t have his discipline. I dig my hands into his hair and rock up against him, slowly clenching and releasing. I drag my tongue over his Adam’s apple, tasting the salt and sweetness of his skin. I love how he tastes; I think second only to his deep, quiet voice I’ll miss the warmth of his skin on my lips the most.

Alec groans at the scrape of my teeth along the side of his neck, and I am on the verge of an explosion so huge I’m relieved he’s holding me; otherwise, my legs would buckle.

So close. I feel him swell, and my own relief rises in me, filling every empty space.

His voice is a hoarse warning; he’s a man barely hanging on. “Gigi.”

“I’m so close,” I plead, voice shaking. “I’m close.”

He groans, pressing his forehead to my neck and stilling my hips. “You’re going to make me come too if you keep doing that.”

I turn my face, resting my lips on his temple. Do I stop us? Do I say the words that are scaling my throat?

The words win. “I’m on birth control. You know I am.” He’s seen the pills on the counter, watched me take them.

“I know.”

He pulls his face away, staring at me for a long moment before carrying me into the bedroom. Alec sets me down and we peel back the covers, lying down side by side on the crisp, clean sheets. I pull him close with greedy, needy hands. He’s warm and soft and hard all over.

Just when I get my arms around him and mumble in happy, hungry relief into his neck, he reaches over and turns on a lamp. His skin is washed in muted light, muscles shadowed in perfect angles. Alec Kim’s body is the best art in Los Angeles, or anywhere.

“I’ve never had sex without a condom,” he admits, fingers curved with devastating familiarity around my breast. He bends, kissing it.

Immediately, I feel my lusty brain cool its heels. “We can get one if you’re not comfortable. I shouldn’t have pressured you—”

“No,” he says, palm smoothing down over my waist, along the curve of my hip. “Just trying to slow myself down.”

I watch his expression shift as he follows the path of his hands with his eyes. He reaches behind my knee, lifting my leg over his hip. His mouth goes slack, lips parting as he reaches between us, guiding himself into me.

And then I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. Every time we make love I think, This, this is the most I can feel. This is the climax of longing. But I forgot what sex without a condom can feel like—it’s been so long. Everything feels so astoundingly more.

He comes to a stop as far into me as he can push, his hand spread in a possessive brace at my lower back. “Do that thing you were doing.”

With his mouth on mine, distracted and open, wet and hungry, I rock against him, clenching in a rhythm that starts teasing but grows fevered until I’m gasping his name, begging for his help, bracing for an orgasm so intense I’m locked in a soundless scream. Alec watches my flush crawl up my chest, neck, flooding my cheeks, and he starts to move in long strokes, drawing the pleasure out and prolonging it until the cry bursts from my throat, hoarse and desperate.

He smothers it with his mouth, swallowing it down until I come to a gasping, breathless stop beside him. Rolling over fully onto me, Alec brushes my hair away from my sweaty forehead, kissing me. His eyes are dark, glimmering and wild, and with his big hands gripping my hips, he drags me along with him as he rises to his knees, settling back on his heels, and drapes my legs over his thighs. Gently, he reaches above my head and returns with a pillow to tuck beneath my lower back.

“Okay?”

I nod, still foggy, lips and toes tingling. When he reaches down, gripping himself, I wrap my hand around his forearm, wanting to feel the mesmerizing, tight bunching of muscle there.

Like this, he stares down in rapt focus as he teases me with the tight swollen tip before sliding just in and then out again. “Look at you.” He bites his lip, nostrils flaring in hunger. “You’re wet down to your thighs.”

He tilts his face up to the ceiling, choking out an overwhelmed exhale, pulling his focus back down to watch himself do it again. “Do I need to go down there and clean you up with my tongue?” He turns his eyes up to my face and gives me a wicked smile. “You see how wet you’re making me? Look, Gigi.”

But I can’t. I squeeze my eyes closed. Everything in my chest is tight and wild again; how does he carve me down so quickly into something primal and untamed? There’s a howling beast trapped in there with my heart, throwing punches, screaming for the full length of him. Fuck me, the beast thinks. Your tongue, your cock, your hand. I don’t care. Shove everything into me, it begs. Anything.

Instead Alec slips barely into me and out again. It’s like our first night all over again, but this time there isn’t anything but his skin, his unbelievable heat. This time there is emotion, too. Raw and fragile, but real.