I want her. I need her like I didn’t know I could need someone else. I want her to belong to me in a way that transcends possession, that transcends everything. I want to burn her into my skin just so everyone who sees me knows whose I am.
We kiss again and then she leans away, just slightly. She reaches behind herself and anchors her hands on my thighs. She rocks back and forth and I drag her into me, over and over again, as hard and deep as I can.
I watch her face, feel the way she shakes and I hit that spot over and over again. She whimpers, moans, bites her lip. Her breasts bounce, her nipples tracing circles in the air and she’s gloriously beautiful, flushed and rapturous and, unbelievably, mine.
“Caleb,” she whispers, and she reaches one hand for my face, darts a thumb across my lips.
“Thalia,” I answer, the only word I have right now.
“You’re not gonna hurt me,” she says.
I pull her onto my cock as hard as I can. Every muscle in my body tenses and Thalia cries out, gasps, digs her nails into my thighs so I do it again and she whimpers, moans, pulls me forward.
“Please,” she says, the words hardly audible. “Caleb, please.”
“I love you,” I say, and she trembles and I sink as hard and deep as I can, like maybe I can meld our bodies into one.
“I love you back,” she says.
“Come,” I tell her, the word a growl, a command, a foretelling as she flutters, clenches, her foreshocks rocking through me. “Let me feel you come, please let me feel you —"
“Caleb,” she whimpers, and she does.
I feel like the earth shakes, like the timber of my bones might crack apart. Thalia is a cataclysm, a force of nature, unstoppable and perfect as she says my name again and again and clenches like a fist around me, still somehow begging for more.
I follow her instantly, helplessly. Everything I have is hers, and I offer it over and over until she finally stops moving, warm and supple against me. I kiss her on the neck and on the cheek and then, finally, on the mouth, my arms around her as she curls herself around me.
We stay like that for a long time, my face pressed into the crook of her neck, her chin atop my head as I run my fingers up and down her spine and she traces idle circles on one shoulder.
Finally she shifts, just enough that I slide out of her, and she moves and sits on me sidesaddle, one arm slung around my shoulders as I lean back against the chair that we’ve probably just sullied.
“I have a confession,” she says, playing with my hair again.
“Go on,” I say, and can’t help but smile.
“I lied about what I was doing on your bed when I went to your house.”
I pause for a moment, looking at her.
“Were you really on my bed?” I ask, tapping my fingers against her back.
“I was,” she says. “I really did miss you. I just didn’t lie there and think of you and masturbate.”
Damn.
“You just laid there and missed me, then?” I ask.
“Not exactly.”
“Thalia,” I say, and I’m trying to scold her just a little, but my voice comes out slow and lazy. “The hell did you do on my bed?”
“I called your brother,” she says, her eyes dancing with laughter. “To see if he knew where you were.”
I can’t help but smile, start laughing myself.
“Thank you for lying earlier,” I say. “That’s the least erotic thing you could have said.”
“I’m sure it’s not the least erotic,” she says, then gives me a quick kiss and hops off my lap, heading for the bathroom.
“It is,” I call. “Seth’s a total bonerkiller.”
“Be nice, he’s letting us stay with him,” she calls back, then shuts the door.* * *The room has a four-poster bed, a plush couch, and a fireplace, not to mention a very fancy shower and fluffy, luxe bathrobes.
We sit on the couch in bathrobes and debate which founding father was the coolest, though we quickly settle on Benjamin Franklin. We talk about my future and our future and then my future again, though it’s not much of a distinction because it’s obvious they’re the same thing. We talk about a month from now and six months from now and a year from now and we both assume that we’ll still be together so easily that it’s completely unremarkable.
Then she takes a shower and obviously, I interrupt it and it turns out I like the way she moans my name when her voice is bouncing off tile.
We fall asleep together in the huge bed, and I don’t dream about a single thing.Chapter Fifty-ThreeCalebI hear the door shut downstairs and the sound jerks me from half-awake to fully awake, the springs of Seth’s sofa bed sighing underneath me. I lie there, Thalia sleeping next to me, her arm draped over my chest, and I listen.