Delilah anchors her hands on my thighs. She lifts up and arches back until the only part of me inside her is the very tip of my cock, and then I watch her take me in one hard stroke.
It might be the best thing I’ve ever seen. It’s even better because she moans when she does it. It’s better because of the white-hot pleasure that shoots through me, because her tits bounce, because there’s some absolute, primal satisfaction in watching the woman you love ride your cock and like it so much she can’t stop.
She does it again, harder, and this time when I meet her she gasps with pleasure. I move my thumb to her clit and stroke her in the same rhythm that we set, trying to memorize everything about this: the way she looks, breathes, sounds.
The way she suddenly slows down when she’s about to come, taking me in hard and deep, muscles fluttering around me. I stroke her clit harder and faster and she whispers fuck yes, Seth, and she comes even harder than the first time.
I follow her by seconds while she rides me, pussy clenching me like a vise as I come inside her. I feel like I’m capsizing into the sea, overturned and wrecked, like she’s destroyed me and now I need her to put the pieces back together.
When we finally stop moving, I sit up, still inside her, put my arms around her waist as she wraps her legs around me.
There’s a long, slow kiss. There are her hands in my hair, on my back, my shoulders, my arms. There’s Delilah everywhere, which is right where I want her to be.
“Bird,” I murmur. “I love you.”
She kisses me deeply. Slowly. Mouths open, tongues together.
“I love you too,” she says. “You know.”
“I do,” I tell her.Chapter Fifty-FourDelilahI tilt my head against Seth’s shoulder, warm and slightly damp against my cheek. We’ve moved, but not much: sitting up against the green velvet of my headboard, pillows and blankets scattered around us.
“Shit, I didn’t even ask if you were okay to bareback,” I say, too lazy to be properly concerned. “Sorry.”
His head is back against the headboard, and he smiles, laughs softly.
“Bird, I promise I’d have said something,” he tells me.
“I mean, I’d hope so,” I say.
For the record, I didn’t really think that he went out, got some unprotected strange, and then built me a raccoon castle and said he’d always love me. It’s just a courtesy I should have remembered.
“I’m mildly insulted that you asked,” he teases, eyes still closed. “I haven’t fucked anyone else since you moved back, you think I’m gonna start now?”
I frown at him, mentally platy his sentence back. Then I do it again.
“What?” I finally say.
He opens his eyes, looks at me.
“I”m kidding,” he says. “Asking is responsible, I’m not insulted.”
“The other part.”
“Well, it’s hard to get an STD from your hand.”
“You haven’t slept with anyone else since I moved back?” I ask. “Since Fall Fest and the weekend in the motel?”
“No,” he says, as if confirming the obvious.
I just look at him. I look at him for a good, long time.
“I told you that,” he says, his face suddenly uncertain.
“You definitely didn’t.”
“I must have.”
I just tilt my head at him, and he clears his throat.
“Hey, Bird, guess what?” he says. “I haven’t been with anyone else in the two and a half years since you moved back to Sprucevale, isn’t that cool?”
“You’re impossible,” I say, but I’m smiling.
“I’m sorry, I thought I’d told you,” he says, then leads back again, laughs. “Fuck, I felt like it was written on my skin.”
“It’s kind of a lot of text, but I could definitely do that for you,” I say.
His hand drifts to mine, takes it, turns it over. It’s my left, a band-aid still over the new tattoo.
“What happened?”
As an answer, I take the band-aid off. Underneath, the star is black and shiny, still slightly pink around the edges since it’s still healing.
“Got another one,” I say. “Well, technically, I gave it to myself. Luckily I’ve gotten better at them.”
Seth cups my hand from below and looks at the tiny tattoo for a long time, thinking.
“That one’s gonna be hard to hide,” he finally says.
“I know,” I tell him. “Fuck it.”
He leans in and kisses me on the temple.
“Vera and my dad are gonna hate it,” I say, still looking at the star. “Winona’s going to quietly disapprove but not say anything, Olivia’s going to make a face, and her husband is going to express some sort of terrible concern about me ever having a job interview, as if I don’t have a job.”
“I like it,” Seth says.
“Thanks,” I tell him. “I like it too. And I’m done letting their opinions override my own.”
He gives me another kiss on the temple, and this time his lips linger a moment longer, his hand still under mine.