Then his mouth replaces my fingers, biting that nipple I was so determined to torture myself.
I shudder in his grasp.
He slips even further inside.
Then he trades his teeth for tongue, bathing my nipple and earning himself an even deeper convulsion of pleasure from within me that I cannot control.
He reaches around and takes a handful of my hair, then pulls my whole body down, slipping completely inside.
An earthquake of flesh, sweat, and heat runs down our bodies as his hot breath dances over my breasts. He moves his hips now, pumping me slowly at first as his mouth hungrily works that nipple he’s made his prisoner.
I grab hold of his hair so tightly, I don’t know if I mean to keep him on my nipple or pull him away. It hurts so much. It feels so good.
“Fuck, Clayton. Fuck!”
Pain and pleasure are such close, fickle neighbors.
He moves on to my other breast, desperate for its taste. Hungry for something else too, he greedily pumps me deeper, harder, faster.
I feel myself tightening around him.
Our fingers grip tightly onto anything they’re touching—my ass, his back, my hair, his neck.
Our bodies become a unified machine of rapture pumping in rhythm.
Each breath brings another.
Each thrust inspires the next.
We’re both close. I feel his tightness and he must feel mine, because his breaths are coming quicker. He sucks that nipple, giving it his teeth as he dares to bring me even closer to the edge.
I’m spilling over.
I pull his hair hard, craning his neck. He releases my breast and looks up into my face.
“Clayton.”
“Dessie.”
And then he lets loose inside me, wave after wave after wave of pent-up passion spilling out. My mouth drops as I feel myself climax too, crying out with him.
His eyes never leave mine.
Then our lips lock, sealing the heat between us as we collapse onto the bed, the sweaty sheets embracing us as we gently descend from the unfathomable high we reached together.
His eyes on me. My eyes on him.
Breath after breath.
- Six Months Later -
The spring musical opens tonight.
I have my first lighting design credit in the program.
I have an opening night good-show gift in my pocket for Dessie.
I’m nervous and I’m excited and I’m debating whether it was a good idea to eat lunch at all, because it might end up all over the lobby floor.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I pace in front of the glass windows as the audience slowly gathers, pulling up in their cars, dropped off by taxis, students walking in. I see their smiling faces, couples holding hands, some dressed down, some dressed up.
I wipe a sheen of sweat off my forehead and breathe deep, just like Dessie taught me.
It’s hilarious, how shockingly calm Dessie is. She was calm during all the rehearsals, singing her heart out on that stage. Everyone knew she was going to get the lead this time, and it had nothing to do with her dad, or with her name, or with anything other than the fact that she had a voice that could touch every corner of the room and make everyone fall in love with her.
I think back to when she took me home with her for Christmas. Fuck, I could not keep my jaw closed when I saw Times Square for the first time in my life. It was so bright that even after the sun fell, it was like high noon. I had also severely underestimated how cold it’d be. Holy shit. She even warned me. Hell, she learned ten different ways to sign to me how frigid, freezing, chilly, bitter, icy, shivery, and otherwise horribly cold it would be that time of year.
I met her parents for the first time. Well, second time for her dad, but really, a chance meeting in a restroom pales in comparison to my getting to meet him officially at Dessie’s New York City home. The lights were drawn across the room like a fucking dream, and the tree in the living room spanned to the ceiling. It was enormous. I must’ve stood there for a full minute staring up at its awesome height. Dessie made some joke, asking with her hands if I was figuring out in my head how I’d light the tree differently.
It was in a warm, fire-lit gazebo on Christmas Eve that we had exchanged presents. She gifted me with a hot designer leather jacket that fit so perfectly, I’d swear it was handmade for me. Well, actually it kind of was. Dessie was sneaky about it. Swearing it was to practice for some costumes thing that Victoria was doing, she took all my measurements and, unbeknownst to me, sent them to a contact of her sister’s in New York—some up-and-coming fashion designer who spent eleven years in France after graduating from NYU—detailing precisely how she wanted this jacket to fit. And she got the style just right; I look like the perfect mix of up-to-no-good and sophisticated-as-fuck.
My gift to her was a charm bracelet I got for a steal at a pawn shop. It had the exact balance of beauty, fragility, and strength that I felt fit Dessie so perfectly. I’d adorned it with three charms: a musical note to represent her beautiful voice, a little light bulb to represent my visual voice, and a linked “C” and “D” that … well, they speak for themselves. I left room for more charms to be added on special occasions.