“Candace,” I breathe my lips against hers. I feel the shiver that goes through her as I call her name. It’s the same way I felt when she gasped my name as she came, seemingly so out of it I don’t know if she even realized she said it. I clasp her against me, our bodies joined all the way down, mouths, chests, hips, knees. As close as we can get.
No – because it’s still possible to be closer. It’s possible to be so close that we’re like one person, joined on the inside, and giving over to the carnal instinct that tells us what to do and how to move without thought or discussion.
I bury my nose in her hair, kissing her neck, holding her tightly. She gasps and moans my name again, and I find myself desperate to be inside her again. I reach down to lift her leg, hooking her knee over my elbow, then guide my cock inside her again. She’s ready for me, the slickness of my own come lubricating us, making the second time even better than the first.
I look into her eyes as we move together and I see it. A connection so deep that it can never be broken.
I wanted to claim her. I wanted to make her mine. It was the only thing I could think of from the first moment I saw her. Now I’ve done it, left my mark on her, made her my own for now and forever.
What I didn’t expect was that she would also claim me, at the exact same time.
She may as well have put a brand on my heart, burned in her name. No one else is ever going to own me the way that she does.
I look into her eyes as I fall over the edge, and she looks into mine and I feel at the exact same moment that she reaches her climax, and whatever is between us is cemented so strongly that I don’t think anyone will ever be able to break it.
I find myself laying next to her again, both of us breathing hard, and I start to laugh. Candace looks up at me as if to ask what I’m laughing about, I manage to stop long enough to kiss her just once, and then she’s laughing too, the pair of us chuckling like idiots.
This is what happiness feels like, I think, as I settle down with my head back on the pillow, drawing her closer to rest her head on my shoulder. This is what fulfillment is like. I can imagine coming home to this every night.
I can imagine wanting to come home.
It’s later in the day already, and after such a long couple of days, I feel Candace relax against my shoulder, and then her breathing deepen. She’s fallen asleep, and I don’t want to wake her. Instead, I lay there with her in my arms, and think about the future.
I can picture it for the first time. I never thought it would happen for me, not after so long of being alone. I had always told myself that I would settle down one day, that one day there would be the one – but I don’t know if I ever really believed it. Maybe somewhere along the way, I lost faith. I started to realize that I had been alone for so long, I was always going to be that way.
But with Candace in my arms, things feel different now. I can see something, and it starts today and stretches off into the long-distance of the rest of my life.
I cradle Candace against my shoulder and I can see myself waking up in this exact position every day. I can picture her getting up and making breakfast, or dressing to go to work in some similar field, maybe even joining my company.
But taking a break, eventually, because I can see her with our children. I can see her holding them in her arms, nursing them to sleep. Walking toddlers to school. Helping them with their schoolwork. A child that looks just like me, a child that looks like her. A gorgeous family, spreading out around the breakfast table, growing year by year.
I can see her raising them into beautiful adults, the two of us growing old together as our children grow. Taking pictures of them at graduation. Helping them go out into the world, to be real adults, to have families of their own.
All of that love and beauty stretching out in front of us – and it starts right here, with Candace in my arms, sleeping off the first time we truly connected.
I find my eyes sliding closed too, lost in a dream that feels like it could really become reality. And if it does, then it’s a dream I will never want to wake up from.