Page 134 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
“You keep saying that like it changes things.” I reached past him to set my water bottle down. My body was already beingridiculous about him again, aware of the way his hand had come to rest on my hip like it belonged there.
I swung my leg over his lap.
He put his water bottle down and glanced at me. The control slipped. Just a fraction. The careful patience dropping back just far enough to show me what was underneath. A man who cared a great deal.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he said back.
I kissed him slowly, my hands framing his face, and I waited for it—that familiar pull backward. But it didn’t come. There was only quiet. And him. I wasn’t in my head. There was no low-level narration running, no part of me hovering outside the moment taking notes and looking for exits. Just this. Just the specific, present reality of choosing to be here.
This was nothing like my previous sexual relationships.
I held myself up, hovering over his cock. “I’m on the pill and clean,” I said.
He stared at me before giving me a short nod. “I am, too.” Then he chuckled. “Clean that is. If you want to see?—”
I eased myself down onto his hard dick—taking him a half an inch at a time, watching his jaw go tight with the effort of holding still—and this time the pace was mine. All of it. I set it and held it, while I watched his face.
He kept his eyes open too.
We found a rhythm that alternated between slow and deep, then urgent, and then back to slow, following a pattern neither of us was consciously directing. His hands were at my hips, then in my hair, then my face, and I let him touch me wherever he desired because I wanted him to.
I was fully, gloriously, and completely present.
When I came, this time it was quiet—not the shattering kind, just a deep, spreading warmth that started where we werejoined and moved outward until my whole body felt it. He soon followed, his forehead dropping to my shoulder, my name on his lips.
Afterward, I stayed where I was.
His arms wrapped around me. Neither of us moved to separate.
Eventually, we untangled ourselves, he cleaned me up, and we cuddled in the bed, tucked under the covers. The house settled. Chaos made a muffled sound down the hall, indignant about some travesty I was too tired to get up and investigate. I smiled into Marc’s shoulder.
“Your goat is very independent. Very opinionated.”
“He has lots of opinions.”
“So do I.” I tipped my head up to look at him. “For the record.”
“I’m aware.” He said it like he was fond of this fact. Then said with complete sincerity, “The coffee’s set for six.”
I lifted my head to look at him. “That’s—after everything that just happened—” I gestured to our entwined naked bodies. “Coffeeis what you lead with?”
“You’re beautiful,” he said, like he was mentioning the weather and not acknowledging that he wasn’t making any sense. “Tonight—was a lot. In all the best ways. I still can’t get over how good everything is between us. How things are just falling into place.”
I stared at him.
“We’d already decided you were staying the night. I thought the coffee was the practical type of information you’d want.” He pressed his lips together. Losing his battle with a smirk.
“What kind?” I asked.
“The good kind.”
“And then you’ll go run eight hundred miles.”
“Only four. Maybe five.” His lips quirked into a half-smile.
“I’ll meditate,” I said. “In bed. With coffee.”
