Page 158 of The Lies We Play

She brings my mouth to hers before I can say anything that might protect me. Her kiss is deep and a little desperate, and I feel the exact second she decides not to run from her own confession. Her legs slide around my hips. Her body lifts to mine.

I guide myself to her and pause.

Her breath stops.

“Look at me,” I say.

She does.

I push inside slowly.

Her mouth opens against mine, and the sound she makes is quiet, stunned, almost hurt by how good it feels. I stop the second I’m in, not all the way, just enough to let her body take me. Her hands grip my back. Her nails press into my skin through my shirt.

“More,” she whispers.

I give her more.

Inches. Breath. Restraint. The last of whatever distance I thought I could keep.

She takes me with her eyes open, and that is what makes it feel less like sex and more like surrender. I kiss her because I need somewhere to put the feeling.

She kisses me back like she is angry at love for arriving with my face.

I move slowly at first. Too slow for my body. Exactly slowly enough for hers. Her heels press into the backs of my thighs, urging me deeper, and I give her what she asks for without making her beg. She has spent too much of her life having to earn care. Not here. Not from me.

She pulls me down and kisses me so hard our teeth catch.

I lose the careful rhythm.

My hips drive deeper, my hand slides under her knee, lifting her open, and she cries out into my mouth. The sound takes the last clean thought from me.

This is not fucking.

It has heat. Hunger. Need. It has the raw edge of our bodies taking what they have wanted for too long.

Still, it is not just that.

This is me loving her with the only part of myself I haven’t learned how to edit.

Her body tightens around me. I feel her getting close again, feel it in the way her breath trips, the way her hands stop moving and simply hold on. I press my forehead to hers.

I slide my hand between us, find her clit, and touch her the way I learned minutes ago. Her body answers instantly. Her eyes go wide, almost panicked, and I slow my hips, keeping her right there, right on the edge with me.

“Oh fuck,” she whispers. “Creed⁠—”

“I’ve got you.”

She comes with my name in her mouth, her body locking around mine, her face turned into my neck like she wants to hide and be held at the same time. I follow her a breath later, buried deep, my own release tearing through me with a quiet violence that leaves me stunned.

For a long moment, neither of us moves.

She is wrapped around me, one hand still in my hair, the other flat between my shoulder blades like she is making sure I stay.

I do.

I stay inside her. I stay over her. I stay in the quiet after the confession, after the damage, after the pleasure, after every door we opened without agreeing what to do with the rooms beyond them.

Her lips brush my temple.