She came closer, letting her nose touch mine. “I can’t love anyone else, because my heart isn’t mine to give away. I gave it to you when I was nineteen, and you’ve never given it back.” She fisted my T-shirt and brushed her lips against mine. “Why won’t you give it back?”
“I can’t, Tali. It’s part of me.” I laid my hand on her trembling chest. “Mine’s part of you. It can’t be undone.”
She kissed me again, slow and sweet, her tears mixing with the taste of her tongue.
“So, this is it? We walk around like this until the end of our days?” she asked, despondent.
I didn’t have any kind of answer for her. No promises. No words to set her free. I didn’t want her to be free. I wanted her as mine, even if it was fucking impossible right now.
With my hand in her hair, I brought her mouth down to mine, kissing her for the three years I hadn’t been able to. Our kiss shot me back in time, back to when forever seemed like the truth.
She moved first, pulling her shirt over her head, and then helping me take mine off. My hands and mouth moved on their own, sense memory taking over. Touching her in the places she always liked, burying my face in her breasts, storing her scent away.
I went to move down her body, to bury my face between her legs, but she pulled me back up.
“No. Stay with me,” she murmured, shoving her shorts and panties down her legs and opening them for me.
My hips nestled between them, and I sighed at the feel of her soft thighs holding me close. Tali kept her eyes on mine, letting her mouth fall open as I touched her, sliding my fingers between her wet folds.
“Stripes…” I couldn’t really think of what to say. Couldn’t believe I was here, touching her, making her writhe beneath me. I never thought I’d have this again. I dreamed it. Fisted my cock to the thought of it more often than was decent. But it was a fantasy. “Is this real, baby?”
Her head tipped back as her inner walls clenched my fingers. Her moans were quiet, probably holding back because of where we were, but fuck if they weren’t sweet.
When she came down, her eyes focused on mine. “Jude.” Her hands worked at the waistband of my boxers, pushing them down and freeing me. Her wet heat surrounded my cock, and I rocked back and forth, not entering her, only letting myself savor the warmth of her pussy.
She pressed against my chest. “Do you have a condom?”
“Uh…yeah. Hang on.” The last thing I wanted was to move away and give her a chance to regain her senses, but my jeans and wallet were on the other side of the room. I grabbed a couple of condoms—my ass was optimistic as ever—and as I walked back to her, the reality of our situation seemed to hit us both at the same time.
I had condoms in my wallet, not for her, but the other girls I planned on fucking. And I had to use a condom with Tali because she wasn’t my girlfriend anymore. She’d fucked other people too. That was the raw, crude, painful truth of it.
She reached for me, pulled me into her arms, and wrapped her legs around my waist. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “It’s okay. I want this.”
It hurt. God, the reality of everything fucking hurt.
She was the one to tear open the packet and roll the condom on my throbbing dick. She positioned me at her opening and lifted her hips to take me inside.
I pushed in all at once, taking both our breaths away. Her velvet walls squeezed as she panted, shaking her head back and forth on her pillow.
How could this be so right, but completely fucking wrong at the same time?
I pushed her hair from her face, needing to see her as I broke my own heart for the hundredth time.
She cupped my cheeks, pulling me closer for a kiss so slow, so sweet, it was devastating down to my very core. “Move, Jude. I need you to move.”
I tried to go slow. I really fucking did. But it had been too long since I’d been inside this woman. I hadn’t been a saint since we broke up, but goddamnwas she incomparable. We were two puzzle pieces, clicking into place. We fit like nothing else.
From then on, as we both moved, rocking into each other, taking all the other had to give, our eyes stayed connected in the dark. Three years and thousands of miles were gone. None of that came between us. We were two people who had loved each other deliberately, and fell away from each other accidentally.
“You feel so good, Tali. So fucking good.”
She nodded, looping her arms around my neck, tilting her hips to meet mine. “This is where you should have always been, Jude. Here with me.”
I drove in deep, holding there, watching her chest rise and fall. “I know, baby. I know. I got lost is all.”
She shuddered, biting her lip, a tear dripping from the corner of her eye. I kissed it away, kissed her eyelids and cheeks, took her soft earlobe into my mouth, licked the sharp line of her jaw. She tasted the same, smelled the same, but god, nothing was the same. The stark evidence was between us, the latex wrapping around my cock, keeping me from her.
I slid my hand in the space between our bodies, circling her swollen clit with my fingers. Tali was a stranger now in so many ways, but I still knew how to make her come in under a minute. She responded immediately, her back arching, moans slipping from her lips.