We float together in a long glowing silence. Doze, maybe.

It emerges from me unbidden, abrupt, a raw whisper into the afterglow silence.

“I love you, Nathan.”

His chest rises and falls, harsh. A ragged breath escapes him. I reach up and brush a droplet of overwhelmed emotion from his cheek.

“Sorry, I just—”

“Try that again,” I interrupt. “This time, no apologizing.”

A not-quite, almost laugh. Another heavy sigh, this one long, an attempt to control.

“Nathan.” I brush my fingers over his cheek again, and again they come away damp. “Feel it. Don’t control it. And most of all, let me see it.”

He swallows hard—I hear it. “I never—” he pauses, clears his throat. “I never thought I’d hear that again. Or feel this way again.”

My eyes begin to sting. “I know. Me either.”

“I thought maybe I was…broken. Like I’d been wrecked beyond repair.” He’s breathing hard. “And then I met you, and…and you fixed me. One day a time.” He clears his throat. “And so I guess, to hear you say that just…I dunno. It’s a lot. Kinda overwhelming. Or, a lot overwhelming. I don’t cry much, and it seems kinda silly to cry after something so amazing.” Another sigh, another clearing of his throat. “I just never thought I’d hear that again.”

I lean up on my elbow, wipe at his cheeks. Kiss them, one and the other. “Thank you for giving me this, Nathan.”

He peers at me with a half-open eye, still embarrassed of his tears in the way men have. “Giving you what?”

“You. Fully, just…you. It’s brave of you.”

I touch my forehead to his. Kiss him. Just to taste him, the salt on his lips. But then something births in the kiss and becomes more.

I find him ready.

“Already?” I ask, surprised and pleased. It hasn’t been very long.

He laughs, nods.

We fall into the new rhythms of us that feel old and perfect as well as new and wild. Sheathed, he rolls over me. This time it’s him, his arms pillars beside my face, his body blocking out all the world, and I lift and lock my legs around him and accept him into me and this time it’s long and slow, even as we find our mutual explosion together, in unison, he loves me slowly and deliberately and drives each thrust with his eyes devouring mine.

In the moment right after we’ve come together, still stroking gently into me, arms braced, panting, sweating, he dips his lips to mine. “I love you, Nadia.”

His moment, not just a return of mine.

And the next time we lose ourselves in each other, later that night, instead of crying out or calling on god, we chant each other’s name, a song of us.

Into the dawn we slumber and we delight in each other.