Page 105 of Run
Her glassy eyes snap open. “I’m here, Ethan. I’m right here.”
I smile against her lips. “There you are.” Placing one hand behind me to brace us, I put my feet flat against the bed and start to thrust my hips up into Ari’s core as she slams herself down onto me.
My heart hammers against my chest, blood pumps through my veins like a freight train, and my gut tightens as we fuck like animals and I feel my release nearing.
I can feel Ari getting closer as well. She’s tightening around me so fiercely I’m afraid she’s going to get hurt with the force of our thrusts, and I want to be able to stop but I can’t. It’s too carnal. Too intimate. And I explode. With violent shakes and a loud growl that rips from my chest, I heave into Ari and bury my face in her shoulder as I grind her onto me, milking the last drops. Thankfully, she climaxes at the same time I do, with a spectacular shriek, trembling and shaking with each swirl of our hips.
We stay like that for a moment before I open my eyes to find Ari’s still closed. I slide my hand from around her waist and raise it up to push strands of hair away from her sweaty forehead. “Hey, you OK?”
Her eyes open, and I see tears in them as she nods. “That was beautiful,” she whispers, trailing her fingertips down my face and over my lips.
“It was.” I turn my head and kiss her palm. But Ari can see the shadow that comes over me.
“What’s wrong?”
I could lie to her. I could tell her nothing is wrong. Everything is right—which it is. But after what we just experienced, I can’t be anything but completely vulnerable with her night now. So, I tell her exactly what’s on my mind, afraid it may ruin the moment.
“I should have been your first.” Her face falls for only a second, before I add, “I wanted to be your first. I dreamed of being yourfirst—your only. I will spend every day sick with regret that I wasn’t.”
Her own sad smile spreads across her face and she kisses me softly before pulling back. “Believe me, Ethan, you were. You are. You are my first everything. You are my only.”
I nearly choke on tears that I swallow down as the hand I was bracing us with gives way and I fall back on the bed, bringing Ari with me. We lay like that, still connected, still sweaty, as our breathing evens out and our bodies turn to putty. Ari is the first to break and slide off me. As she rolls over and I peel the condom off and move to deposit it in the trash can, we hear a clamor in the kitchen.
“Is that a penis pizza?” Fonz yells. “I’m totally eating it since you now know I eat dick!”
CHAPTER 35
ARI
Another shirt comes hurling over the partition and lands on my head. I drag it off and hold it up at arm’s length.
“What’s wrong with this one?” I ask Sophie, who’s on the other side of the little accordion wall I have in my apartment. She’s been trying on clothes for the past hour and, apparently, nothing is speaking to her.
“I just feel like they all make me look fat which, I know I am, but I would really like to find a shirt that makes me look a little more pear and a little less apple, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down.”
Before I can start in on Sophie’s poor self-esteem, she beats me to the punch. “Don’t!” she shouts over the partition as a pair of leggings go flying. “Don’t start in on one of thosebeautycomes from the insidespeeches because I don’t want to hear it. For once, I want my beauty to be skin deep, OK? Is that too much to ask?”
I wait a minute before I answer. “No. It’s not too much. But can I askyousomething?”
“No.”
“OK, well I’m going to ask it anyway.”
“Knew you would.”
“If you don’t care about Gino and you still won’t call him back, and you honestly have zero interest in what he may think about you, then why are you trying on seventy-five different outfit choices for tomorrow’s bar night?”
“Uh, hello! It’s a bar. Guys go out to bars. Meaning there will be other guys there. Maybe one ofthemwill intrigue me.”
I roll my eyes even though she can’t see me.
“Don’t roll your eyes!” she shouts over the accordion wall, and I cower.
Deciding to let up on her for now, I change the subject. “How has substitute teaching been this week?”
“Lucrative … Hey, have you thought any more about it?” Sophie comes out from around the partition in her normal leggings and T-shirt, fanning herself before plopping down on the couch beside me.
“I think I’m going to apply in the winter, after the holidays,” I answer. “By then I should be done with the daily PT.”
