“I’ll explain it later. When I ace a test or whatever, you’re just happy for me because you see how hard I work for it every time. Did you know I dated a guy who once told me he didn’t want to know what grade I got on a test because it made him feel bad?” It was true, and I’d dumped him almost immediately.
Andy made a face. “That’s…fragile.”
“Fragile,” I repeated. “That’s a good word for it. But you’re never like that. I feel like I can be myself—the best or worst versions—around you, and you’re just happy to see me either way.”
I glanced behind Andy, at the bookshelves bursting with his beloved collection, decades in the making. “And I feel the same way about you,” I continued, softer now. “You’re brilliant, Andy. You have so much imagination and you put it into everything that you do. I’m just…I can’t believe I got so lucky to meet someone like you.”
He set down his wine glass. “I—" he paused to pull in a deep breath, then finished what he’d been about to say. “I love you, Josie. You don’t have to say it back if you don’t want to, but I just really wanted to tell you.”
I plunked my own glass abruptly down on the wood coffee table. A few more drops of dark red wine spilled out, but this time, both of us ignored it. “You mean that?”
Andy nodded. “I needed to put it out there after that speech you just gave. But like I said, you don’t have to say it back right now. We don’t even have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
I closed my eyes against the sudden prickle of tears. Nobody but my family and a few friends had ever said that to me before, and it felt like—like a gift. A gift I hadn’t been looking for and didn’t expect, but he gave it to me all the same, that precious piece of his beautiful heart.
My eyes opened up and I brushed away a stray tear as I looked at him—really looked while I listened to the insistent murmur of my throbbing heart.
“I love you, too,” I said, my voice a little hoarse. My fingers curled around his when he set his hand atop mine, clinging fiercely to that warm, callused skin with all its little scars and imperfections. “And that’s not because you said it first, it’s because I really do love you. I think I have for weeks, but I’ve never said it to a guy before now, so I’m still figuring this whole thing out.”
Andy’s answering smile was soft and reassuring. “You’re doing it perfectly.”
He leaned in and brushed his lips against mine once, twice, then settled in to stroke his tongue against the seam. I opened for him without hesitation and shuddered when his tongue swirled with mine, touching and tasting and exploring.
I reached for the hem of his t-shirt first, when hunger flared to life inside me and I suddenly ached to press myself close to Andy’s—my love’s—skin, to drink the warmth like that amazing red wine and let it glow inside me. After that shirt, it was my top, his pants—a jumble of discarded garments until we tangled together on the couch in just our bare skin.
Andy pushed me to my back, crawling on top of me to trail kisses down my neck and chest, until he reached a sensitive nipple and tenderly sucked it into his warm mouth. His other hand slipped between my thighs, the roughened skin rasping pleasantly against the sensitive flesh of my inner thighs, until the tips of his fingers grazed my clit. My legs fell open and I sighed, gently threading my fingers through his thick hair while I enjoyed the hard press of his body against mine and the sensations he teased out of me with such heartbreaking gentleness that it made me want to sob.
When he dragged his tongue down the curve of my belly and swirled it in the damp folds of my pussy, I whimpered and arched against him, fingers tangled in his hair as he pulled my legs over his shoulders and sucked hard on the tender bud of my clit. He ate at me like I was his favorite meal—licking and tasting every millimeter of wet flesh, darting his tongue into the aching emptiness of my pussy while the tip of his nose rubbed against my buzzing clit.
“So good,” I breathed.
I fisted my fingers through his thick, dark hair again, pulling gently on the short strands. He didn’t stop, didn’t even falter, but even as his tongue fluttered against me, the taut muscles of his ass flexed and bunched as he ground his hips into the couch cushions.
I tugged on his hair again. “Inside,” I whispered, and let my legs fall away from his shoulders so I could pull him closer.
He came without hesitation and smothered me with a sizzling hot kiss as the thick head of his hard cock speared inside my pussy lips and slid against my sparking clit. Our kiss tasted like my arousal, mixed with the faint earthy notes of the red wine we’d been sipping just a few minutes before.
“Let me get a condom,” he murmured. He moved to stand up, but I held him firmly by the shoulders and shook my head.
“I’m on birth control,” I said, smiling shyly. “And I know I’m clean. I think I can ditch the condoms with my boyfriend, right?”
Andy chuckled and reached down to position the head of his dick at my entrance. I squirmed and wound my legs around his hips, eager for more. “Yeah, I think I’m on board with that.”
He pushed up on his forearms and looked down at me, his eyes and smile luminous with undisguised emotion, and slid all his considerable length and thickness inside me. When he was seated to the hilt, he stayed still for few moments, leaning down to share a few more long, languid kisses while I locked my ankles behind his back as if I could pull him even deeper.
Maybe it would never be deep enough, I thought dazedly as he started to thrust, slow and gentle and unhurried. I wanted to be closer than just the press of his skin against mine—I wanted to pull him in so tightly that the glow inside of me touched the burning light that I saw so clearly in him.
The tempo of his hips against mine quickened, and it felt so good that it took me a few seconds to process his soft murmurs as he kissed my cheek, my eyelids, my neck, my breasts.
“I love you,” he said, flicking his tongue against my nipple. “God, I love you.”
I reached between us and circled my finger around my clit, letting my head fall back into the couch cushions as a smile spread across my face. It felt so good to be here, to be in love and to share myself this way. Those gentle waves of pure pleasure rose and fell inside of me, but before I lost myself to them entirely, I raised my head again to meet his eyes and say it back.
“I love you,” I said, but the words trailed off in a soft gasp as he sat up and hauled my legs over his forearms to split my thighs wide.
His cock went so much deeper this way, every slick thrust reaching far enough that I cried out from the force of it. I rubbed frantically at my clit, so close to that precipice—
“I’m going to fucking come,” Andy groaned. In the dim lamplight, perspiration gleamed on his forehead and clung to the soft dusting of hair on his pectoral muscles. “Come with me, Josie.”
He fucked into me once, twice—three more times and went rigid, eyes squeezing shut as he slammed deep once last time. And when I looked down at our joined bodies and the taut lines of muscle that lined Andy’s firm abdomen, I followed him over the edge.
My release crashed over me like Pacific waves against the rocky shore. We shook and cried out together until those waves receded and it was just us, panting and limp and silent in our shared wonder and newly expressed love.