Swiftly, before she came down, I climbed up to meet her. And knowing, she reached for me, made room for me, room that I filled with my body, pressing her into the bed, slipping into her with a flex and a sigh of relief. As if I had been waiting for this moment always. As if this was the place I was most right. Stripped bare and laid before her, plain as day in the darkest of night.

A roll of my hips, and she pulsed around me. Another thrust, teasing her orgasm, coaxing it to life again. The embers flamed with a cry from her lips, the sound stoking the fire in me. My name. She whispered my name, the sound dissolving into a moan as my awareness slipped away, drawing toward the place where our bodies met. Unbound, without control, my restraint falling away like shackles, I slammed into her, my body curling around her, holding her in place, where she belonged. With me.

The orgasm shuddered through me, quaking and trembling as my hips and hands and outstretched neck acted on their own, the reins gone and my pleasure careening away.

I sagged, burying my face in the curve of her neck as her arms wound around mine, her breath noisy in my ear and mine smothered by her skin, which I kissed with devoted tenderness. Our bodies were locked in a twist of limbs and necks and hands, and though our bodies languished, we didn’t let go.

We couldn’t let go.

And I foolishly hoped we’d never have to.

21

Biohazard

LILA

Morning came too soon.

A sliver of daylight carved its name on the wall, the only light to enter the room since yesterday, I supposed. Even though it was the slimmest illumination, it seemed to touch every corner of the room. After so much darkness, the light almost blazed, casting a halo on his sleeping profile. The strong nose, flat ridge. The angle and swell of his lips. The jaw made of stone, his chest made of brick. Sheets twisted around his narrow waist, the fabric thin enough to make out the shape of his hips and corded muscles of his legs, as well as the bulge that made my thighs clench around its ghost.

He woke with a noisy intake of breath through his nose and a simultaneous shift to his side, arm stretching out to hook my waist and pull me into his chest. And I curled into him, smiling at nothing, covering his hand with my own.

His lips brushed my bare shoulder. “Morning.”

I hummed like a cat in the sun. “Can it be night again?”

A chuckle as he nosed my hair from my neck and kissed me again. “In about nine hours, it sure can.”