Page 53 of The Love We Make

She bares my other breast and treats my other nipple with the same reverence.

I wriggle with delight under her touch. Without lifting her lips from my nipple, she tosses my bra into the room behind her. My skin sizzles. Between my legs, a bomb is about to explode. She skates a finger from my breasts to my belly button, leaving nothing but goose bumps in its wake. While she licks my nipples, she draws a circle around my belly button. I’m squirming now. How did this happen so quickly? How did I go from lukewarm to sizzling hot like that?

People think of me as cold and distant, and I am those things, but I’m also this. Just like anyone else, I’m not just one thing. And that’s the priceless gift Mimi has already given me. The knowledge that this kind of pleasure is still within my reach. That with the right person, I can be this version of myself as well. I can share intimacy. I can use my body to create it. To delight her and lift myself up onto a cloud of pleasure.

Mimi’s lips are still firmly wrapped around my nipple. Her finger scoots down, drawing a line along the waistband of my panties. My clit throbs for her. Oh, will she put her lips between my legs? The mere thought of it ignites a fresh round of wild throbbing.

My breath stalls in my throat. I’m so beside myself, I start pushing my panties down. I want her so much and the desire for her hasn’t only taken over my body, it’s taken over my mind as well. I couldn’t care less why this is happening. I couldn’t care less about anything other than what Mimi is doing with her tongue and her hands right now.

She lets go of my nipple and helps me remove my panties.

“Fuck, Nora,” she says on a lusty sigh. “You’re so fucking gorgeous.”

And I believe every word she says. Although, right now, I’d believe her if she told me my name was Juan Diaz instead of Nora Levine. Then, it hits me that I’m totally naked in front of someone else. But again, my mind can’t focus on how out of the ordinary that might be or how that makes me feel, because my body is too busy wanting more. Wanting Mimi, who’s pushing me down again.

She can’t get enough of my nipples. She licks and sucks on them, while her hand drops between my legs. Her fingertips dance across the inside of my thighs.

I spread for her. I’m so ready for whatever she has to give. For the pleasure that awaits me. But Mimi takes her time. Her fingertips only skirt the edges of my clit for a split second here and there, but every time they do, every cell in my body lights up.

She looks up at me, my nipple softly clamped between her teeth. Her eyes are dark, stormy almost. I can’t look away from them, from her, but then I have no choice, because she’s kissing her way down. She feathers kisses around my belly button, on my lower belly, on my—oh, fuck. She plants a kiss right on my clit. It’s close-lipped and light as anything, but I’m right at the edge of whatever awaits me on the other side already. She’s driving me crazy in ways that have been too unfamiliar for me for too long.

Mimi glances up at me again and I look back. With my gaze, I try to urge her to do that again, but more this time. But I can’t make Mimi do anything. Mimi does exactly as she pleases.

I’m panting as though Marcy just made me do fifty push-ups, but my body doesn’t feel as spent. My flesh is on fire, my synapses ready. My body might be trained like an athlete’s and be able to take a lot, but it can’t take this. Every fiber of my being screams for release. It’s not just the tension created here tonight between us that I need to let go of. It’s years’ worth of pent-up emotions, denials, and doubts. It’s a layer of myself I’m ready to shed, the hard, outer one that I didn’t let anyone get through for too long.

Mimi’s lips touch down on my clit again and wrap themselves around it like they did to my nipple earlier. My dream has come true. I allow myself to enjoy every single second of this—as though I have any other choice. Her tongue is warm against me, her fingertips are suddenly everywhere. Mimi licks me, caresses me, makes love to me. I know this for certain because this love we’re making is turning me into someone else. After this, I won’t be the same Nora Levine. At least not for a while.

I come at Mimi’s tongue and I let it all go. All the love I denied myself. All the possible friendships and acts of human kindness I rejected because it was the only way I knew to hold on to the last shred of myself. To not let the fame and being Nora Levine crush me completely. And I don’t blame myself for what I did and the choices I made because, in my head, they’ve always only been the result of simple cause and effect.

And I cry. Of course I cry. This might be divine, the pleasure of a depth unknown, but it’s not painless. To be shaken to your core like this never is.

CHAPTER24

MIMI

I hold Nora close. I let her cry on my shoulder, let her dig her fingertips into my flesh, as though she’s clawing at something—or holding on to something, perhaps.

Before she can start apologizing—because I know she will—I say, “Remember that text I sent you a few weeks ago? No apologies required.” I kiss her on the crown of her head. “Especially not for being who you are.”

I’m not unmoved by this. Nora basically collapsed at my touch. After she climaxed—loud and howling—she folded in on herself, and I had to wrap myself around her. But I’m used to keeping my wits about me in all sorts of circumstances.

“It’s like you…” is all I can make out from what she mumbles against my shoulder.

She takes a deep breath, and another, then looks up at me. “Like you pulled me apart or something.”

“It was my pleasure.” I’m not being facetious. I mean it from the bottom of my heart. To see Nora like this is a privilege.

“You’re like a dream.” Nora runs her fingers underneath her nose, but they don’t even begin to catch her tears.

It’s a huge thing that she’s not crumbling even more right now, that she’s still managing to have a conversation.

“I need about a million tissues.” She pushes herself up.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

Nora nods. “I will be. I am. I just… it was overwhelming.” She nods again.

“It must be.” I hear her dogs becoming nervous outside the door. Maybe they can sense Nora’s going through something in the next room. “Do you want to talk?”

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