I nod and turn her hand over. Kiss her palm. It’s corny, I guess, but I’m just so fucking happy she’s here.

“How many … partners you’ve had.”

I kiss her wrist. “Yes.”

“How you feel about me.”

“Yes.”

But I think maybe she knows that already. I think it’s there when I look at her, when she looks at me. If it wasn’t already there, we wouldn’t have lasted so long. We wouldn’t have put each other through so much when it would’ve been easier to just not.

I like her, and I love her, and I want her.

If she asks, I’ll tell her.

For now, though, because I want to and she’s staring at my lips, I kiss her neck. I find her pulse and pause there, lick it, imagining the rush of blood and heat at her throat. Flattering myself that her heart’s beating faster because of me.

I keep thinking she’s going to stop me, but she doesn’t, so I kiss all along beneath her jaw, behind her ear. I kiss her eyelids and her nose, her cheekbones, her chin.

I get my hand at the base of her spine, press up so she’ll lift her hips, ease her down onto the bed.

I kiss her mouth.

She tastes like everything I’ve been starving for.

I keep on kissing her, and she keeps letting me. Her arms sneak around my back and rake down my spine. I’m over her, hips centered above hers, hard against soft. I didn’t plan this, but her lips shape the welcome I’ve been waiting for my whole life, her arms are the anchor I need, her body is my home.

We’re right together, Caroline and me. Even if I’m doing this wrong, completely fucking wrong, it doesn’t matter.

We’re right.

“Tell me what you need me to say.”

There has to be something. I can’t just get to kiss her. Nothing in my life is this simple.

She pushes me away and sits up. I follow her, think she’s going to start making demands now. Insist on the answers to all the questions from a minute ago, which, okay, some of them aren’t pretty. The answer to that first question, in particular, might mean she never wants to kiss me again, and doesn’t that mean I have to tell her?

Does it? I’m not sure.

Caroline reaches down for the hem of her shirt, pulls it over her head, and throws it on the floor.

She’s not wearing a bra.

Fuck, this isn’t fair. I’m already having trouble with the ethics of the situation. I can’t think about right and wrong while Caroline’s tits are exposed, her nipples puckering in the cool air, her arms an open invitation.

“I should … We should. You know. Talk. If you want to?”

“I’m good. But you’ve got too many clothes on.”

She unbuttons my dress shirt, working from the bottom while I hold on to her waist and gawp at her like I’ve never seen a naked woman before. There’s just something different about Caroline. There always has been.

She takes her fingers off my buttons to snap them right in front of my eyes. “Up here.”

I blink and shake my head, breaking the spell. “Sorry.”

“And here I thought you missed me.”

I kiss her forehead. “I did.”

She yanks the last button free and says, “Off.”

“You sure?”

She goes up onto her knees, so she’s taller than me. Puts her hands on my shoulders, stares me right in the eye. “All I needed to hear was that you’d tell me. That you trust me.”

“I always trusted you.”

“No. You can’t keep everything to yourself and still call it trust. Take off your shirt.”

I shrug out of my button-up but hesitate on the T-shirt. I worked a long shift, and I had to hustle. “I stink.”

She casts her eyes at the ceiling and grabs my hem, so I lift my arms above my head and let her pull the shirt off me. When I open my eyes, her breasts are in my face, and I don’t see that I have any choice in the matter. I have to touch them.

God, she’s so fucking soft. I hold them, testing the weight in my hands. I haven’t forgotten the taste of her, the pressure of her nipple against the roof of my mouth. When she moans, I knock her over and fall on top of her, going after her with no art or plan or restraint. Sucking and licking, molding and squeezing, rubbing myself against her thigh, between her legs, over her hip bone, like a stupid kid.

Which is what I feel like. Young and dumb and lucky.

She’s just as bad, grabbing at me in fistfuls—hands in my hair, on my ass, gripping my hip, raking up my back. And still I make one more half-assed attempt to talk to her. “Listen, about the questions—”

She rubs the heel of her hand up and down my cock, and my jaw goes slack. My brain goes slack. All the tension in my body is busy flooding to where her hand is working me over.

“Later,” she says.

Later works for me.

She urges me onto my back and straddles me, centering herself over my hard-on, rubbing back and forth and swaying her tits in my face. I’m the luckiest guy alive.

I suck her and she rides me. Her skin’s so pale, one nipple swelling and softening, darkening as I twist the other between my fingers. Her eyes are closed, her throat mottled pink, her body rising and falling in a slow, even rhythm I can hardly bear. It’s been too long since I came. The first few days after she walked out of my room, I was seething with misplaced resentment. I whacked off like I was planning to make a profession of it. But after a while I lost interest, lost heart.

I’m out of practice.

Which is another way of saying I have the stamina of a fourteen-year-old.

I grab her hips and hold her still. She whimpers and rocks.

“Don’t. Baby. Seriously.”

“It feels good.”

“I know. A little too good. You keep that up, I’m gonna …”

She pulls at my wrists until I let go, puts them on her tits. “Go ahead.”

“You want me to come in my pants?”

Her eyes drift closed. When I thumb her nipples, she sucks in a breath like I’m hurting her, and it’s really, really good. Then she bears down on me even harder.

“Caro, I mean it.”

“I mean it too,” she says.

“It’ll be messy.”

“You have to wash those pants, anyway.”

“Yeah, but still.”

“I’ll clean you up. With my tongue.”

That’s the end of the conversation. My whole upper body breaks out in goose bumps—a sure sign I’ve only got seconds left. I get my hand behind her back, draw her down, stick my tongue in her mouth, and I’m kissing her when my toes curl and I have to throw my head back, close my eyes, the head of my cock unbearably sensitive, tingling fluttering clamping tightness moving up, out of me, hot against my skin, slick and slippery as she slows, kissing my neck, mouthing over my collarbones.

Jesus. Jesus.

I put my hand on the back of her head, and she giggles, tucked into the hollow between my shoulder and my neck. “That was an interesting noise.”

“Shut up.”

“Like you were dying.”

“Swear to God.”

“It didn’t sound pleasant.”

“It was pleasant. Never doubt it.”

She’s shaking against my chest, my arms wrapped tight around her.

“We’ll do you in a minute.” I sound like I’m under water. “Then we’ll see who’s laughing.”

That sets her off again, and I watch her, smiling, because we’re ridiculous.

Ridiculous and happy.

Me and Caroline.


After I catch my breath, it starts to sink in that I’m a dickhead.

Like, literally. I just let the head of my dick call the shots. Genius.

I rub my hand up and down Caroline’s back. She’s tense, her muscles twitching and tight.

“How close were you?”

She breathes a little laugh. “Um, close?”

If I was her, I’d be annoyed. First she gives me an ultimatum and I ignore her for three weeks, then I wake her up, coax her back to my apartment, and don’t even get her off?

“I suck.”

She props herself up on my chest and smiles. “I don’t know, I was kind of enjoying how completely useless you got there at the end.”

“I bet.”

“No, seriously. You’re always so in charge. You’ve made me come, like, a million times, and I’ve only …” She gets bashful, looks away.

“I like making you come.”

Caroline shifts to the side and gives my chest a shy smile. She strokes her hand over my chest, down my stomach. “I like making you come, too. A lot.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I didn’t always like it. Before.”

I’d guessed as much.

“It wasn’t—it wasn’t bad, really. It just wasn’t …”

“Like this.”

“Yeah.”

Her fingers find the button on my jeans. “So I said a minute ago that I’d, uh, clean you up.”

“You don’t have to.”

“But if I want to.”

“If you want to, knock yourself out.” I catch her chin, tip up her face so I can see her eyes. “But if you don’t want to—tonight, or if you’re still coming around next week or in a month, and you don’t want to then, either—that’s fine. I mean, I know you love lists and schedules and all that shit, but there’s not, like, a list of stuff we have to do or some timetable we have to do it on. Where we are now … it’s good.”

I laugh at myself. Good. “Okay, it’s fucking awesome.”

She pushes her nose into my neck and kisses me there. Not the kind of thing I ever would’ve thought I wanted a girl to do, but Caroline can do it all night long if she wants. It’s nice. Like when Frankie used to wake up in the middle of the night and crawl into my bed, all warm and soft. Comfortable.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Don’t thank me. We already established that I’m a dick.”

Her arm tightens around me. “You’re not. You’re great. I mean, you’re kind of also a dick. But mostly great.”