“Coming,” I called, giving my hair one last shake.
Neil stood at the end of the bed, already shirtless, standing there in just his blue jeans. His lips parted when he saw me, and his chest rose with a jerky breath.
He’s changed his mind. My hopes plummeted.
Then, he whispered, “You’re so beautiful.”
I took a step toward him.
“No, no.” He smiled his half-smile, his eyes glittering with wonderment. “I want to remember you. Just as you are now.”
He’d said things like that before, but usually when it mattered.
Maybe tonight mattered.
Of course it does. I mentally rolled my eyes. This meant everything. He was coming back to me. Even if it was just this little piece of us and nothing more. It was the first step on a journey to being with each other again as lovers, rather than partners in tragedy and new responsibilities.
He crossed the room and reached for me. His fingers skimmed up my arms and beneath the thin straps of my chemise. He toyed with them as he leaned down to touch his lips to mine. Our kiss was brief, but hungry, before his mouth roamed over my jaw and down my throat.
I gasped and tipped my head back. The touch of his mouth set me swaying on my feet, but I trusted him to catch me. For perhaps the first time since before…
No. I wouldn’t make comparisons. Whoever we’d been, then, we weren’t the same people, now. If I clung to our past, I would never know who we were, now. And I wanted to know him again.
I gripped his upper arms, mystified that he could feel the same as the last time I’d touched him like this. His body was familiar; it was the man who lived in it who’d become a stranger.
He slipped the straps of my chemise down, and the garment slithered to my feet. I was bare for him, nakedness that was not only deliberate, but soul deep.
“Don’t think…for a minute…” he rasped against the tops of my breasts, “that I didn’t want you.”
Relief blossomed beneath my ribs, easing the ache I’d felt all these months. I’d thought I wasn’t good enough. That he didn’t desire me, because I was undesirable. Even though I’d known the true, rational explanation behind our abstinence, I’d still blamed myself.
But he had wanted me, and whatever emotions had held him back, they dissolved now as our skin touched with passionate purpose for the first time in months.
“I wanted you, too,” I moaned as he pulled me against him. Reaching between us, I found his fly and popped the button. “I wanted you so much. I always want you.”
The noise he made was almost pained.
I dropped to my knees as he pushed his jeans down. He wasn’t quite hard, yet. I wondered if he’d taken his pill, but I didn’t ask him. I didn’t want to break the mood.
Once I slipped my hand into his boxer briefs, the non-erection became a non-issue. I’d almost forgotten the feel of him in my hand, heavy and thick and ridged with fat veins under his silky skin. I stroked him with one hand, then with both, and leaned forward to take him into my mouth. Perhaps I had forgotten, but I remembered, now. Every cell and nerve ending, every chemical in my brain remembered how this would feel, how to make him feel. I held him at the entrance of my mouth, close enough that he could feel my breath, as evidenced in the way his flesh leapt up, straining. I licked my lips and bubbled some saliva between them before brushing them, closed, across the tip of him. I rolled up his foreskin and fluttered my tongue over the frilled edges, drooled into the opening and pumped him, spreading my spit over the head. I still hadn’t taken him into my mouth, but he was breathing fast, his hands clenched to fists at his side. He could have grabbed my head and pushed me down, and I would have let him, because I missed my Sir as much as I had missed this. But he let me go on, teasing him, first with sucking kisses along the underside of his length, then broad swipes of my tongue up, up, almost to the sensitive bridge between his foreskin and his shaft.
“Sophie,” he breathed, and the sound brought my blood to a simmer, the heat centered in my pelvis. I felt the satin wetness between my labia as I shifted on the carpet. I was hot and achy and wanting, but it had been far too long to rush.
I opened my mouth wide and took him in, all the way to the back of my throat, cutting off my own airway, choking on his thick length. He flexed his hips, pushing even farther, and I gagged around him, drawing back only for a second to catch my breath, then bringing him into my throat. I swallowed around his cock and let him slip free, again. What I couldn’t fit in my mouth, I plied with my hand, in a steadier rhythm than any drum. His pulse pounded against my tongue, and his hands sank into my hair, mussing it all around my head. I lost myself in the hypnotic rhythm of pleasuring him, abandoned all of my senses that didn’t involve the feel of him or the sound of his voice as he whispered, “yes,” like a prayer.
After I don’t know how long, he pulled free and helped me to my feet. He stepped out of his jeans and underwear and pulled me against him, his cock still wet with saliva and trapped between us.
He kissed me, his tongue hot in my mouth. Breathless, he raised his head. “Thank you for waiting for me.”
We fell across the bed together, hands in hair, mouths pressed to skin, and Neil slipped down my body to lie between my legs, his mouth descending over my vulva. My hips hitched up, and he held them in his hands—not holding them down but urging me to rock against his face as he sucked my clit into his mouth and swirled his tongue around it.
I lifted my head off the bed with a cry of satisfaction and need rolled into the same desperate, relieved sound. I sank my fingers like claws into his hair. The low light played off the silver strands in a faint golden patina. His fierce green eyes fixed on mine with startling intensity as I rose closer and closer to my peak. I kept my eyes open, letting our contact linger. I came staring into his eyes, a grateful moan parting my lips.
I looked for any sign of the triumphant humor he often showed after he’d gotten me off; sometimes, I was surprised that he didn’t beat his chest like Tarzan, in a spectacle of self-congratulation. But I never saw it. He stayed as focused on my responses as he would during a scene, raw desperation piercing his expression.
He moved over me, then inside of me, kissing me as he slid in. I tasted myself on his mouth; his face was wet. I licked his jaw and felt his shudder go through him. Our muscle memories took over, locking us into the rise and fall of our bodies. He threaded his fingers with mine and held my hands down above my head. It only took that amount of force, and I was done for. I needed my Sir, and though tonight, we were just Sophie and Neil, I felt him with us, and my submissive self cried out with joy. I bucked beneath him, and he stiffened as he flooded into me.
He collapsed, and I was content to lay beneath him, my legs still locked around his hips. I couldn’t believe what had just happened between us. All of the tension and self-doubt of the past weeks, all the fears that things between us might never be the same, again, melted away. I was so relieved I laughed.