“Elsie.” His body trembles around mine. On the verge of tipping over. “Can you come this way?”

“I don’t know. I—maybe?” I’m close, I think. About to snap. It’s phenomenal, the way he hits everywhere inside me at once, a masterpiece of biology that something could work so gloriously, and I just need a little more—just a little more—

“Shit.” His thrusts quicken, he buries his face in my throat, and I think he’s getting close. I think he didn’t expect it. He doesn’t want to come, not yet, but this might be fully out of his control.

And it’s what I want. To see him lost in something. “You’re good. This is good,” I urge him, and the word is such a paltry substitute when what I mean is This is the best thing I’ve ever felt and Thank you and Whatever you want, really, whatever you want, just take it.

“Fuck,” he says again, and I see it in his face, the second it’s all over for him. His hand closes around my hip, holding me to him while he presses as far as he can go, and then I feel his cock jump in quick, jerky movements. “Elsie.”

I’m moaning. He’s gasping. His skin slides against mine, sweaty, and my body clamps down on him. His back tenses into a slab, and I hold him while his hips turn erratic, then stop, then—

The heat spreading inside me comes to a halt. I watch Jack’s eyes go blank, feel him bite my collarbone like I’m his anchor, like he wants to be reminded that I’m really here. The grunts he lets out come from somewhere deep inside him, somewhere I doubt he himself knows, and I hold him to myself until his orgasm dies down to a few clumsy, involuntary thrusts.

I’m still buzzing with thrumming, unsnapped tension. And it should be frustrating—it is frustrating that he came and I didn’t, that there’s heat pushing against the seams of me, simmering from within. But it was good anyway. And after a moment he pulls out, breaths rapid and choppy, and looks down at me. His expression is shaken, a little astonished.

“Shit,” he breathes into my neck, his heart a drum against my skin. I cannot stop trembling. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I—”

He pushes my legs open with his palms, and I arch like a rainbow when he slides two of his fingers inside me, feeling blissfully full again.

He can kiss me properly now, soft, deep, hungry, and says, “Let me—I’m going to—”

He’s more reptilian brain than anything else. I’m wet with his come and my own slick, and he draws fast, beautiful circles around my clit that immediately push me over the edge. I shut my eyes tight and come in strong waves, and when I do, he pushes inside me again, something delicious to clench around, something beautiful and grounding, and when we fall asleep like that, I think that wherever it is that we’re going, maybe, just maybe, it might turn out to be a place I never want to leave.

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When I wake up, the sun is high in the sky, and shadows have shortened to little stumps. It’s the latest I’ve been in bed since that time I got the flu during freshman year and spent forty-eight hours hallucinating that my skin was an eggshell and my skeleton had finally grown enough to hatch out of it.

There are no nightmares today. Just a feeling of bone-deep rest and Jack’s big body curved behind me, arms wrapped around my torso like a cross, securing me to him. It’s not unlike the way I awoke exactly two weeks ago. Except that we’re naked, our skin tacky. This time he is going to have to change the sheets.

Something nags at the back of my skull, telling me that I can’t afford to waste time, that I should get out of bed and be productive—answer emails, clean the oven, buy a cemetery plot. I shush it and stretch in Jack’s arms. He stays asleep, hard once again. I wonder if it’s another peerection. If—

“A what?”

Oh shit. “Nothing.” Did I say it out loud?

Jack’s voice is a deep rumble. “Did you just—”

“No. Nope. I—”

I hide my face in my pillow. This is why I don’t sleep in—if I get the amount of rest I actually need, my head-to-mouth filter stops working and—

Jack’s hand slides down past my stomach. He starts grinding drowsily against my ass, and my mind blanks.

“Okay?” he asks, half-asleep.

“Please.” I hook my foot behind his shin. He presses an open-mouthed kiss on the curve of my shoulder.

“You did say that we might have to work on the sex.”

I stiffen. If it wasn’t good, I said. Was it not good? I thought it was, but—what do I know? He’s the expert here. “I’m sorry, I—”

“Elsie. Work on how little I last.” He bites the spot where he kissed me, and then his cock is rubbing against me, breaching my entrance. He makes a few soft, grunt-like noises next to my ear, then presses to the hilt in one single push. I spasm around him, and the drag against my muscles is sun-extinguishingly good. It’s still a snug fit, but I’m wet from his come, soft from sleep, and he slides inside like a dream.

He pinches my hard nipple, like he knows exactly what my body wants, even when I don’t. His palm presses against my abdomen, and I wonder if he can feel himself move within me, if he can tell how full I am. His thrusts are long and slow, at once leisurely and forceful enough to shift my entire body closer to the headboard.

“Okay, okay, I—” He laughs ruefully, breathless against my throat, and I reach behind me. To touch his cheek, to hold on to him. “Maybe you should be in charge. Before I fuck you into the mattress again.”

Shockingly, I’m still capable of blushing. “What do I—”

“Just—move.” He presses a kiss where my neck meets my shoulder. “Do what feels good. Let me see you—yes. Yeah.”

I grind my ass against his abdomen, shallow, slow, awkward at first, because the position is weird and because what even am I doing? But my hips circle in a long, sinuous move, and something hits just right, and—

We gasp in unison.

“There?” he murmurs against my ear, angling my hips to give me even more. “That’s how I make you come?”

My mind blurs. “You already made me come.”

He makes a guttural noise. “I want to feel it. When my cock is inside you.”

I moan, and then I’m not in charge anymore. The pleasure gushes inside me, scarily strong, quicker than I thought possible, unraveling like an avalanche. I squeeze his fingers and he squeezes back, and when my body clamps down on his, he does press me into the mattress, and he does fuck me like his control is not fully there, and he does say my name over and over, like a war chant. He smells like sex and our sweat and the best sleep I’ve ever had, murmurs sweet, filthy things in my ear, promises that he’ll never let me go.

The sun is high in the sky, Jack is deep inside me, and I smile into the sheets for no particular reason.

•   •   •

I think I might be happy.

Though due to a lack of hands-on experience, I cannot be sure.

But in the bathroom, while chasing droplets down Jack’s throat, my legs wrapped around his waist as he pushes me into the tiled wall, I wonder if maybe this is it. This warm, comforting weight glowing shyly behind my sternum could be something like hope.

Hope that there’ll be more days like this one.

“Stop smiling like that,” he whispers in my ear. The jet of the shower pounds over his back, and his lips taste like hot water. “Or I’ll be on you all day.”

I laugh into his neck and pretend I didn’t hear him.

The clock in the bathroom, the one I imagine Jack curses at when he runs late in the morning, reads 12:37. I towel myself dry, buzzing with possibilities, with the tenuous, burgeoning impression that for once I’m not running away, but heading somewhere.