Page 70 of Wished

He thrusts into me and the hurricane I predicted is unleashed. Max thrusts into me as I come, screaming into the sheets.

“I feel you,” he says. “Ifeelyou. You are the sweetest thing I’ve ever felt. I can’t?—”

Then his voice is cut off and he’s pressing a bruising kiss to my mouth. He grips my hips, tilting me, so that when he thrusts in again he hits a spot that has me crying out incoherent words.

I grip him, coming against him, as sweat runs down his forehead, down his chest, and the sounds of begging and pleading and loving and worshipping blend together in a single wish.More. More. More.

And then—I love you.

I say it first, somewhere in betweenyesandpleaseandmoreandI can’tandyoucan.

“I love you.”

I say it first.

And then, if I thought Max was unleashed before, my words cause an explosion. He flips me over. I grab the wooden headboard and he grips my hips, holding me from behind, spreading me out beneath him as he thrusts and thrusts and pushes me higher and higher. And then he’s off the bed, standing, and he’s pulled my ankles over his shoulders, tilted my hips, and he’s pistoning into me, hitting that spot, and I’m screaming as I come.

And then he’s over me again, his eyes glowing in the lights of Paris as he looks down at me, burying himself inside me. He grips my hands, holding me close, and we’re touching everywhere—touching so deeply I think he’s touched my soul.

“Anna,” he whispers against my mouth, “I was wrong. One night with you.” He thrusts again, losing his rhythm, his words coming out ragged and raw. “One night with you. I’d give up anything.”

Then he reaches down and strokes my clit, and with my name on his lips I light up like a line of stars, like a rivière necklace, like a wish in the glowing fire of a burning candle.

He gives one final thrust—a desperate, needing, shaking plea. I clench around him as he comes, driving into me, calling my name.

As we slide down, our hands entwined, our legs tangled, our hearts thumping wildly, one against the other, Max presses a kiss to my mouth and pulls me against him, wrapping me in his warm embrace.

23

We’re wrappedin the deep silence of night, in the contentment of the early hours and the hush of moonlight before dawn. A soft glow cascades through the bedroom window, reflecting the lights of Paris and casting a rosy, dreamy luminescence over the bed.

Max’s arms are wrapped around me, and I lie sprawled naked across his chest. His breath is steady, his chest rising and falling in a soothing rhythm as he strokes a hand through my hair. His heartbeat thumps against my chest, and I pull in a breath, drinking in the cloaked night air full of the memory of freesias, slick bodies, and deep kisses. The cotton sheets are warm, soft, and tangled around us.

The neighborhood is quiet, the old stone building is quiet, the bedroom is quiet. It’s strange how quiet a city can be in the deep of the night. Yet without the noise and the color and the sights, it’s easy to get lost in the way Max’s fingers tangle in my hair and how his exhales fall in warm puffs across my skin.

I’m lulled and floating in a euphoric afterglow. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so relaxed, as if I’m floating down a lazy river, lounging on an inner tube in the sun, Max cradling me in his lap as I drag my fingers through the cool water and he kisses the edge of my mouth.

Earlier, when I said “I love you,” I claimed I said it first. But what I really meant was I said it and Max didn’t.

Instead he made love to me. In the bed. Bent over his desk. Against the wall, with the balcony doors flung open and the sounds and scents and sights of Paris falling over us. In the shower, with hot jets of water spraying over us and frothy soap suds sliding over bare skin. In the kitchen, after we devoured a plate of hazelnut croissants and sipped burning liquor from a fifty-year-old bottle of Dalmore that Max said he’d been saving for the right moment.

Ten hours of making love. With his mouth. With his hands. With him thrusting desperately inside me. Max told the truth on the footbridge in the museum. He kept me coming all night long.

And now, with two hours left before sunrise, I can feel our time slipping away. Draining like grains of sand through an hourglass.

Never in my life have I wanted the sun to never rise—until now.

“I almost wish tomorrow wouldn’t come,” I say, my eyes drifting closed at the soothing rhythm of Max’s hand stroking through my hair.

He makes a soft sound, his chest rising beneath me. “It will work out. Don’t worry.”

I open my heavy eyelids and stare out the window, past the rooflines and the tops of dark chestnut trees, toward the Eiffel Tower.

“I know our wish will work,” he says, his chest rumbling with the deep baritone of his voice. “I felt something there, like I was spinning. A strange whirring, an odd tingling.”

“Like you were flying?” I ask, wondering why I didn’t feel anything—not like I did the first time.

“That’s right.” His hand trails over the back of my neck, his fingers playing over my spine.

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