He’s also very hard for me.
I lick my lips as he slides the condom on and don’t take my eyes off his face as he settles himself behind me and starts running the tip of his cock up and down between my legs. I’m so worked up that every stroke over my clit gets me closer and closer to coming.
We both moan when he finally slides all the way in, as deep as he can go. This angle is so tight, and I arch my back at the way he fills me.
I need him to move.
“Please. More.”
I start thrusting against him, and he takes the hint. Soon we’re moving to the same rhythm, faster and faster like it’s the only thing keeping us alive. One of his hands digs into my hipbone to hold me close while the other reaches around me to start stroking my clit.
I see stars. I close my eyes, and colours and shapes burst into view behind my eyelids. Something is tightening in me, tensing as I get closer to my breaking point.
He feels so good inside me, hitting just the right spot over and over again. My whole body is jerking in time with the circles he draws on my clit, and I’m close. So close.
In the end, it’s the sound of my name on his lips that sends me over the edge. That’s always what makes me fall apart when I’m with him like this. It doesn’t matter how hard we’re going or how bossy he’s being or how rough things get; when he says my name, he says it like it’s the most beautiful word in the world. He says my name like it’s a poem, something worth remembering and writing down, something that deserves to last forever.
I shiver as he wraps me in his arms.
Zach spends the night, and I wake up a few minutes before him in the morning. There’s just a tiny bit of light coming through the gap under my curtain, and I let my eyes roam over the shadowy outline of his face.
He’s snoring a little, his mouth hanging wide open as he lays on his back, and it makes me smile. I know he hates hearing it, but he really does look like a farm boy. He looks like he passed out on a hay bale while watching the cows come home. It’s pretty adorable.
I scooch in closer to him, and his eyes flutter open.
“Oh, hey.” He matches my smile when he turns to look at me. “Good morning.”
“Good morning, sexy man.”
He moves onto his side and puts his arm around me, pulling me closer. This isn’t our first morning together, but waking up beside him makes me feel the same mix of nervousness and excitement I did when I opened my eyes and found him in my bed for the first time.
There is something intimate about being the very first thing someone sees when they wake up, no matter how casual the sex is—and our sex has never been casual.
Nothing casual about thinking you’re falling in love.
I laid awake for a long time last night thinking about that word. I’ve said it to a lot of guys. I always thought it was simpler than everybody makes it out to be, that love was an easy choice people were always trying to overcomplicate when really all they needed to do was choose it. That’s what I’d tell them as I poured them one more shot for the road.
I stared up at the ceiling at 2AM last night and wondered if maybe I had given everyone the wrong advice—because love is not simple. Not at all.
They have this phrase in English: easy come, easy go. Losing something is easy if it wasn’t hard to choose it in the first place. I’ve had lots of guys walk away from me, and sometimes it hurt more than others, but in the end, it never really mattered because I could always go out and choose somebody else. It didn’t matter if I was clingy or crazy or needed them too much. All that mattered was having someone to hold onto, someone to keep me from being alone.
I’ve always been running from the fear of being alone like it’s a wolf at my back, biting my heels and clawing at me. I can never turn around and face it. I just run and run and run.
I’m so sick of running.
“You okay?” Zach asks after a few minutes of silence.
I nod and fake a yawn. “Just sleepy.”
“You didn’t sleep?”
“I did, just not a lot.” I wiggle my hips against him. “Too busy thinking about the D.”
“Oh yeah?” he asks, making his voice all husky and rumbly.
“You sound like a lawnmower,” I tease, “and also we have to get up.”
Zach is on opener duty at the bar today, and I’m meeting Monroe at her apartment so we can video call with Roxanne before we head to Taverne Toulouse. Roxy and Cole took off to Paris not long after their wedding, and we haven’t heard much from her; she’s probably too busy getting some of the D for herself.
Valérie’s finishing her breakfast at the coffee table when we head into the living room, and we all chat while Zach and I eat toast. She came home just as Zach and I were getting our naked asses off the couch and into my bedroom last night. I think she might have actually got a glimpse of Zach’s butt, but he was so embarrassed about it that I lied and said she didn’t see anything.
I sit there listening to the two of them share stories about customers and consider how crazy it is that in just a few weeks, Zach’s gone from being my off-limits work husband to the guy I share breakfast with while rubbing the I-got-screwed-senseless soreness out of my thighs.
This is all happening so much faster than I thought it would. Things work between us so well that it’s hard to put up any barriers, like stepping into a river and getting swept up by the current so fast you’re flying downstream towards the rocks before you know it.
The three of us all leave the apartment together and go our separate ways. I do my best to act normal around Monroe, but she’s Monroe, so of course she asks me if something’s wrong five seconds after I arrive at her apartment. I dodge her questions while she makes me some tea and gets her laptop set up for the call.
Roxanne’s face appears on the screen, and we both start waving at her.
“Wow, it’s dark out there already,” Monroe comments. We can see the edge of the window in Roxanne’s hotel room. “And damn, that room looks nice.”
“This whole hotel is so beautiful,” Roxanne replies. Her voice is a little out of synch with her mouth, which makes her look kind of funny, but her face is stretched into this lovesick, I-am-on-my-honeymoon smile that makes me smile too. “I always felt kind of embarrassed about wanting to go to Paris so much, and to be honest, at first it was a bit of a letdown, but sometimes...sometimes these moments happen, and you’re just like, wow, this is it. I am in Paris.”
“Awww!” Monroe and I say together before I ask Roxy where Mr. Grim Rockstar is.
“He’s showering before we go out to dinner. We walked all day today.”
I wag my eyebrows at her. “And how is the honeymoon sex?”
She fans herself. “Let’s just say we’ve made good use of this hotel room.”
I start belting out the words to ‘Sex and Candy’ by Marcy Playground so loud Monroe covers her ears. Roxanne laughs, the sound a little tinny in the microphone.
“I thought that was the song you sing when you’ve just got laid,” she jokes.
It is usually the song I sing when I want to tell everyone I got some.
“DeeDee, are you blushing?” Roxanne leans in closer to the camera. “Monroe, is she blushing?”