Page 103 of The Pairing

For a while, I’m happy to simply watch, pacified with how gorgeous they are grinding against my ass, making themself feel good. But it’s huîtres gratinées for apéro, too rich and too filling to prime the palate and not enough for a meal. I pitch my voice up, rut uselessly against air, heart-wrenchingly untouched.

“Please,” I say. “Tell me to do something.”

Theo kisses the bend of my knee and says, generously, “Get yourself wet.”

My hands snatch up the nearest bottle—Theo’s—and then I’m gasping at the shock of cold lube on warm, sensitive skin. Theo answers with an approving snap of their hips, so I make the sound again as I work myself over.

“What now, Theo?”

I can feel the plaintive look on my face, how readily I’ve shownthem my throat and the whites of my eyes, and my heart swells at the thought that I’m being easy for them. I want to remind them how good they can be at something when they decide to be, how well they can take control, see a plan to completion.

“Go slow.” They keep their voice low and steady even as their hips shift into a higher gear, core muscles flexing. “Tease yourself for me. Okay?”

“Yes. Okay, yes.”

Theo gives calm, short commands, and my hand and body listen. They talk me through every change in pressure and speed, every twist of my wrist and slick glide of my palm. They push my knees toward my chin until my thighs burn, ease me through to blissful, slack surrender,I know you can do it, beautiful, you can take more,guide me right up to the precipice and then make me stop and watch them come instead. Then they start over.

I’d be screaming with frustration if I weren’t so fucking happy to see it. So relieved, so proud.Thisis what Theo can do. The command, the deliberate force of will and want, the total inhabitance of their body, the fuckingrangeto fuck me better than any person ever has or could, thepowerof that, the breathtaking endlessness of it. They’re a catastrophe like an earthquake is a catastrophe, an act of the gods. They’re the crumbling of an empire and the simple, immediate crash of glass on the floor for good luck. They’re everything, and they’re Theo. Singular Theo, everlasting Theo, Theo the superbloom.

Finally, somewhere in the valley of it, in the cleavage of hills and the ripe, red center of vines, Theo kisses my face and speaks in a voice I’ve heard in my dark, empty flat a thousand times when I’m bringing myself over the edge, “Come for me, Kit, let me see you.” And that’s so easy to give, because the only thing I want more than release is for Theo to be looking at me.

When I finish at last—at long fucking last, God—it’s with a broken half sob, my free hand knotted in Theo’s hair, release spilling over my own skin. Theo’s mouth falls open as they watch,and a second orgasm seems to take them by total surprise. A soft, awed sound wrenches out.

For a long time after, I just look into their eyes, and they stare wonderstruck into mine, and I feel the same magnificent fear from this morning, like I’m seeing a part of them I’m not supposed to. I nearly look away. But they wrap me in their arms, and they don’t let go, even after they fall asleep.

I let myself wonder if maybe, just once, when I heard their voice in my ear in my bed in the 6th, they were on the other side of the world, hearing mine.

Morning floods across the wood and terra-cotta ceiling, turning everything to pure, pale wheat and apricot. The villa is quiet, and the smell of baking bread wafts up from the kitchens. Breakfast must not even be laid out yet.

I lift my head to look at Theo in this light while it lasts: the shape of their mouth, the dip of their collarbone, the gentle shadow cast by their nose that pools with the darkening freckles on their cheeks. It’s been so long since I woke up peacefully beside Theo, and a whole life waiting to wake tothisTheo.

When I’m satisfied, I slide out of the sheets.

In Paris, the quiet hours before I get dressed are my favorite hours of the day. I make the rounds to my houseplants, or write grocery lists, or mend socks with a darning needle and yarn, or fold the clean laundry hung to dry in the window. It’s when I feel most full of possibility, like I could solve anything. So, this morning, I take a sketchbook down to the gardens and contemplate how I could help Theo.

It’s not until I’m settling against a fountain that I realize one other person is wandering the estate: Signora Lucia, carefully clipping today’s flower arrangements. I look on quietly as a breeze stirs her dress around her, surrounded by cosmos and zinnias, dahlias and roses. She sees me and smiles, waving with a gloved hand.

She really does remind me of my mother.

Maman loved Theo like a fourth child, and Theo loved her like a second mother. Outside of Ollie and Cora, there’s nobody on earth who knows the exact shape and flavor and weight of losing her. That was one of the sharpest pains of losing Theo: losing this vestigial piece of my mother too, the deposit of her love in Theo’s heart. It’s been nice to talk about her without explaining anything.

Signora Lucia carries her flowers off toward the villa, and I sketch and think of Theo. It must be around seven now. Serving spoons clank against platters in the distance, quiet conversations twinkling to life on the terrazza. A few guests have come out for coffee and fruit, but most are sleeping off their late night. I expect Theo to do the same.

But minutes later, Theo comes tromping into the garden, dressed in boots and light jeans and a barely buttoned shirt.

“I knew you’d be here,” they call, affecting the snobbish voice they used in the pool to tease me about my reading, “doing your morning taxonomy exercises.”

I grin. “However else will I win the vicar’s favor? I never learned pianoforte.”

“Blow him,” they suggest. “Hey, do you want to go for a bike ride before we leave? Apparently there’s a trail that goes past an old castle. Twenty minutes each way. Could be cool.”

“Aren’t we loading up soon?”

“Not for another hour and a half. And I put our bags on the bus, so we don’t have to go back up. We’ll be fast.”

I shift my weight, deliberating. My phone is in my pack, so I can’t keep us on schedule. I’ll have to rely on Theo. I can see the anxious hope in their eyes, a subtle, sunny glow.

“Alright,” I say. “Which way?”

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