Oh.
My.
God.
“So fucking hot,” he grunts against my mouth. I can’t describe the state of euphoria I’m in, and when he pulls on the waistband of his underwear, tossing them to his feet, I know it’s about to get even better. Curling his arms around my thighs, he pulls my body flush to his and slowly slides his length up and down my center, relentlessly rubbing an already sensitive spot. He’s not done with me. Not even close. I came down from cloud nine, but I’m not so far away from it that I won’t pay it another visit soon if he keeps this up.
He keeps drawing quick and strong circles on my clit, and just when I think I’m about to fall apart again, he stops. No warning, not a word, he just stops. He turns around and walks away. Baffled, my eyes follow his silhouette until I lose him to the darkness. I hear him going through some stuff. What stuff, you ask? I don’t know, but it better be a question of life or death.
After what feels like an eternity, he comes back with a condom, and I smirk. That’s my boy. He knows I never go bareback.
“Sex in a house full of people? I thought you didn’t want to risk it.” I throw the conversation we had earlier in his face.
He stretches the condom down his length and looks me dead in the eyes before lowering himself to my entrance.
“You’re the risk I’ll always take.”
Then he pushes forward and takes me completely.
Holy sh…
The intense sensation takes my breath away. We both groan when he withdraws entirely and fills me again with an even more powerful shove. We’re both too engulfed in the moment to speak, but the connection, this feeling, the way our eyes lock as he holds my legs open and moves inside me—it speaks for itself.
“It feels like it’s been five fucking years,” he groans.
“I know.” I quiver, well aware that we won’t last long.
I’m surprised when he pulls out sooner than I would’ve liked and circles my wrist with his hand to guide me down the washer. My feet hit the ground, and my still-wobbly legs almost give out from under me, but Haze catches me, spinning me around and bending me over the cold steel. He holds my leg up on the machine. My nipples press against the top, and goose bumps creep all over my skin. I mentally laugh at the fact that my mother constantly tells me I should learn to love doing chores, such as laundry.
Well, Mom, I sure like it now.
I bite down on my own hand not to cry out again when he enters me, this time from behind.
“You have no idea how much I wish I could see you better right now,” he says, continuing his fast thrusting and gripping my ass so tightly I’m sure it’ll earn me a souvenir hand print, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. He starts to tremble, his movements frantic. “Shit. Not yet,” I hear him curse. Defeated, he loses the battle. Twisting my hair around his fist, he pumps so fast my eyes roll back. Then he empties into the latex, jerking a few times.
We remain quiet for a while, high on each other and this feeling. Silence fills the dark basement, the only recurring sound our heavy breathing. I can’t believe this just happened. I just had sex on the washing machine I used to hate using, at 3:00 a.m. in my parents’ basement. What is life?
Soon, he pulls out of me, picking my spent body off the machine and into his arms. He carries me to the old couch where we both collapse, sweaty and exhausted. Pressed up against his chest, I nuzzle his neck with my nose and seek the calming sound of his heartbeat.
“I love you so fucking much, Winter,” he says in a whisper, and my heart tightens.
“I love you more.” An enormous smile spreads across my face, and let’s just say that…
In that moment,
I’m pretty damn happy I couldn’t sleep.
Hours. It’s been hours. Never-ending hours of movers knocking on our door to deliver furniture so expensive I could cry, hours of unpacking and arguing with Haze on where to put things, hours of telling Will and Kendrick “Don’t touch that” when they open boxes of my stuff and wanting to bash my head against a wall. Four days ago, I thought finding an apartment would be hard. Now I know it was the easy part.
Today marked our fifth day in Toronto. We got the keys to our apartment two days ago but could only get our furniture shipped today. I was convinced I’d be beyond happy to move out of my mother’s house, but turns out, if moving is stressful, moving on a deadline is a one-way ticket to burnout.
Standing in the middle of my apartment and admiring the now decently filled rooms, I entertain the idea of calling my housewarming party off.
It all sounded great when Allie suggested it a few days ago. But now? All I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep for the next seventeen years.
Things this whole moving fiasco taught me: furnishing an entire apartment on a budget is not easy. Even used, extremely low-quality furniture is expensive, and if it wasn’t for Haze insisting on buying a brand-new bed, I’d probably be sleeping on the floor tonight. To my greatest disappointment, Haze had to do most of the heavy lifting—cough, paying, cough—while I moped around, resenting my broke college-student status. I promised to pay him back my half of the furniture as soon as I got a job, and, in typical Haze behavior, he asked me, “What half?”
“Food’s on its way.” Kendrick enters the room and hangs up the phone. Will comes trailing behind him, empty eyes straying to the floor. He’s somewhere else. Has been since he got here. I still haven’t gotten around to asking him what on earth happened back in Florida. He’s not just moody—that’s full-on heartbreak right there.