Page 34 of A Night to Remember

“God, Kayla, you are so fucking sexy,” he growls. “You have no idea how much I’ve wanted you. How much I’ve wantedthis.”

I do know, because I’ve wanted it too, but I can only whimperyesagain, gripping his shoulders, slick with sweat. I pull him towards me, willing him to go deeper. I was wrong before. He isn’t too big. He’s a perfect fit, and with him fully inside me, I feel rooted, whole. But he’s holding back, trying to be careful of me, and that’s not what I want anymore.

“You feel great,” I tell him, clenching my channel around him. “I want you to do what you want.”

“Are you sure?” he says, panting.

“Yes,” I reply, digging my nails into his biceps, which are, I might add, much nicer than Adam’s.

“You drive me crazy,” he rasps, then loses control. He begins thrusting deeper, harder, until the bed is pounding against the wall and I’m biting his shoulder to keep from screaming. He’s hitting a spot inside me no man ever has, a spot I barely knew was there, and it’s like the entire universe contracts to the place where our bodies are joined. I never want this to end. Aspleasure floods through me like light, I wish for one brief, insane moment that he wasn’t wearing a condom, that I wasn’t on birth control, that something new and perfect could be born from this moment.

“Come inside me,” I urge, suddenly desperate.

“Say my name again,” he groans into my ear, pushing me even harder into the bed.

“Fuck me, Gabe, fuck me—” And then I can’t talk anymore. His entire body tenses against me. He reaches underneath me and cups my ass, pressing me into him like he’s trying to dissolve the boundary between our bodies. I wrap my legs around him as we both utter one final, despairing moan, and then collapse.

17

Gabe

Kayla still seems woozywith pleasure, drifting in and out of sleep, but I feel energized, like I can think clearly for the first time since I came back home. I could pass the bar. Solve a differential equation. Figure out what, exactly, a steam mill is and how it works.

I spoon her in her ridiculously tiny twin bed, tracing circles around her perfect bare shoulder.

“What do you think you’ll do,” I murmur into her hair, “if you’re able to refinance?”

“Probably leave Kentwood,” she mutters drowsily, snuggling closer to me, “and look for a better-paying job. If Mom is healthy enough to work and has a place to live, I don’t really need to be here.”

“You couldn’t find a better-paying job in Kentwood?”

“Well, maybe now,” she says, sounding more awake. “When I first came back, I needed flexibility to take her to appointments and stay close to home if she was having a bad day. So doingshift work for friends made sense.” She rolls onto her back and stares at the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to her ceiling. “I worked for a small publishing house for a few years after college. I’ve been freelancing a little for them since I left, and I think they would take me back full-time. I would rather do that than work as a bank teller or receptionist here.”

“Sure, that makes sense.” I feel a twinge of disappointment that I can’t quite explain. After all, aren’t I planning to leave Kentwood as soon as possible too? I admire her as she lies on her back next to me, the way her hair splays across the pillow, the elegant curve of her collarbone, her pretty breasts with their dark pink nipples, erect in the cold room. I rest my hand lightly on her belly, sweeping my thumb along the underside of her ribs.

“What about your writing?” I ask.

“It will be easier to find time for that if I have a nine-to-five job and don’t have to take care of Mom. Did I tell you I submitted a story to a magazine?”

“No! That’s great! What magazine?”

“Clarkesworld. They publish sci-fi and fantasy stories.”

“I don’t remember you being so into that stuff in high school.”

“I wasn’t.” She narrows her eyes at me, then wiggles around to face me. I let my hand stray down to her ass, and she doesn’t object. “If you’re thinking it’s escapist, it’s not. People on distant planets have all the same problems we do.”

“Do they get underwater on their spaceship mortgages?”

She pushes me playfully. “I just mean that they fight, they fall in love, they have babies, they die, you know?” She grins at me, then turns serious. “I just like the challenge of it. I like trying to make the implausible seem plausible.”

“I get that.”

“What about you?” she asks, nestling her hips closer to mine. I can feel myself getting hard again and wonder if she’d be up for round two.

“What about me what?”

“Well, aren’t you supposed to be a hotshot lawyer by now? What happened?”

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