Page 145 of Raven

Her naked body is half a foot away from me, and it’s too far, so I push her legs apart with my knees, lower myself on top of her, and slide right into her.

Her lips part as I do. A tiny gasp escapes them, and that’s the last straw. They are mine. She told me so. I kiss her, and finally, finally, this is my fucking Gestalt, and all the broken pieces of our fucked-up deal now snap into place as she slides her tongue into my mouth and her fingers into my hair. This was how it was meant to be, after all. Both of us, naked, together. Nothing between us anymore. No air. No useless inches. No rules. Nothing but unspoken words that we will get to later.

Her kiss is delicious, soft and deep. I move my hips slowly and try to fight whatever holds my chest in an iron grip. I only realize in a moment that those are emotions, a whole storm of them rising inside me as I fuck her with increasing speed, not able to hold back, knowing that she is in my arms and no one gets as close to her as I do.

She turns me inside out, makes my heart pulsate with so many feelings, and the words start repeating in my mind as I thrust inside her.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I thrust, thrust, thrust inside her, trying to dissolve in her, calm the storm in me. I love storms, but this one might kill me and needs a storm-whisperer. I don’t know how to tame it, but I don’t want to stop it either.

It’s so overwhelming. Her hands get urgent. Her mouth is ravishing. Her tongue is fucking me with the same speed that I fuck her. Feelings bleed through my pores, and I can’t handle them. It’s too much. I fuck her harder, and she rolls her hips to take more of me. In a minute, we are both panting into each other’s mouths. She moans loudly. I grunt, burying my face in her hair, and the room finally dissolves around us as we come. It’s just her and me, skin against skin, our emotions tangling together just like our bodies.

There are almost no universal truths. Everything is subjective. But I worked out a few, and here’s one of them.

The best sex of your life is not with the most expert person. The best sex is with the person you are madly in love with. Just pressing your body against theirs feels like ecstasy. Sharing the heat, being naked, touching, caressing—the simplicity and power of attraction is in the hormones.

That’s Maddy and I right now. We are both motionless. I’m still on top of her. She runs her fingertips along my shoulder. My face is still in her hair, and I breathe her in, my eyes closed, as I hold on to this moment.

She is the hormones shooting through my bloodstream. The oxytocin leaking through my pores. The need clenching my body when I’m next to her. The Earth doesn’t have gravity. She does. The one that fucks me up and makes my head spin but grounds me, too. Oxymoron. She is that, too. Go figure.

But that’s how the universe works lately. Me. Her. Us. Just like Earth, Maddy simply exists, while I am a tiny human unable to resist the force of nature. Fucking Einstein. He was a genius. Why couldn’t he work out a formula for love?

I want to contort in some wicked way from the pleasure that burns every cell of my body when Maddy touches me like this.

I hope that’s not what she wanted—to fuck. If that’s the case, I won’t give her clothes back. Not until we talk. Not until I make sure I have a chance at us.

But then the beautiful girl speaks and says the most unexpected thing.

“How much longer are you planning on being angry?” she asks simply.

55

RAVEN

Her words do funny things to my heart.

I finally shift onto my side, cushion my head with my arm, and study her face.

“Why did you stay away from me?” I ask in return. This is new territory for me—talking about feelings.

“One, I was trying to figure things out.”

“And two? You hated me for blackmailing you?”

Her face falls. Shit, I said something she didn’t like.

She shifts onto her side, cushions her head with her arm, mirroring me.

“You do this again, Rave.”

“Do what?”

“Put words in my mouth. Telling me rather than asking me.”

---