Page 122 of This Could Be Us

“Let me guess.” I straddle him, setting one knee and then the other on either side of his powerful thighs. “You’ve got a jumbo box of condoms in that tote bag.”

“Only need one,” he says, his voice smoky and rough.

“Don’t underestimate yourself.”

He grips my ass, lifting me slightly above him to take one breast and then the other into his mouth. I drop my head back, my hair rushingdown my spine in a river of cool waves. My hips start a rolling motion, readying for the rhythm that, even after only once, my body remembers. The wrapper crinkles as he unwraps the condom, and I glance down.

“Let me.” I take it from him and clutch it in one hand for safekeeping. I scoot back but, instead of putting it on him right away, slide to the floor between his splayed knees and grip him in my hand. Holding his eyes, not breaking our stare, I bend my head and take him in my mouth.

“Sol,” he moans, slumping back, the dark brown of his skin gleaming against the garish pink brocade.

I’d forgotten how good I am at this. How much I enjoy it. I roll him in my hand, work the length of him, suck and lick until his hand fists my hair and he forces my head down to take more. I gag a little but breathe through it, wanting him to have this, but he reaches under my arms after a few minutes, dragging me up to his lap. He grabs the condom, wraps up, and touches between my legs.

“I want to make sure you’re ready,” he says, his breaths ragged. “You’re soaked.”

“What can I say?” I shrug and rise, poised to take him in. “Making you feel good does that to me.”

When he slides inside me, it’s different from the last time. We stare into each other’s eyes as I rise and fall over him. It’s like our bodies bookmarked this spot so we could take up exactly where we left off on New Year’s Day, dragging us deeper into a vortex of passion. And each touch, each stroke, each kiss is quantum, propelling us forward fast, far into a moment that exists nowhere but here. A place in time we claim as ours alone, insulated from the world beyond these walls. Sealed between our hips and bellies. Something made from our molecules meshing, cells colliding into a newuswhere we are inseparable and all things are possible. A miracle of intimacy. A faith grounded in the rhythm of our bodies and the gasps of our souls.

He tangles his hand in the length of my hair, dragging me forwardand ravaging my mouth, plundering until I offer up all my secrets—until my lips tell him everything he wants to know without yielding one word.

“I want this all the time, Sol,” he says, trailing kisses down my chin, my throat, over my shoulders. “Should I pretend I don’t?”

I don’t have words to answer him because this melding of our flesh and souls and spirits strips me of thought, blurs my reason and my reasons. Blocks my doubts and hesitations. When we’re joined like this, I would give him anything, and that may be the most dangerous truth of it all.

When we’ve plastered the walls with our muffled cries, I lie against his chest and listen to his heartbeat. It races and then evens out, until it is once again steady as a metronome.

“I didn’t mean to put pressure on you,” he says after a few minutes of quiet, his fingers playing over the damp, naked skin of my back. “While we were… I shouldn’t have said that.”

I turn my head, twisting up to look into his face. “I’m still working through some stuff, but I don’t want to hold you back, Judah.”

“That’s my line.” He huffs out a humorless breath. “There are things you need to discover by yourself, about yourself, that I don’t want to interfere with, but I’m finding it really hard to stay away.”

Stay away? Go? Live without this? A tremor runs through me at the thought of losing that moment we made. Of never being able to find it again.

“Don’t stay away.” I trace the bow and line and curve of his mouth. “I’m learning to trust myself again.”

“And me?” he asks, nipping the tip of my finger with his teeth. “Are you learning to trust me?”

I don’t answer but lay my head back down on his chest, snuggling closer under the weighted blanket. “Maybe I’m learning to trust us both.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

SOLEDAD

You cheated,” Judah accuses me, sitting at the card table in my she shed wearing only briefs and one sock.

“How do you cheat at Uno?” I try to keep a straight face but can’t hold back my laugh.

“You devised this game,” he says.

“Uno is a real game. I’ve been playing it since I was like six years old. I play it with my girls all the time. I did not devise it.”

“Right, but I’ve never heard of strip Uno.”

“They play it this way in France.” I grin at him over the one card left in my hand. “And how would I cheat?”

“When you persuaded me to call in sick to work,” he says. “Which I’ve never done, by the way.”

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