Page 128 of The Pairing

I understand, finally, in the heat of their mouth. They love me. I love them. It was always as simple as that.

We had two rules left. No kissing, no penetration.

We start with kissing.

We kiss on the crowded street outside the bar, one of dozens of couples pushing each other against rough stone walls under strings of hot lights, Theo’s tongue in my mouth and my hands in their hair. We kiss on our way back to the hostel, my lip caught between Theo’s teeth. We kiss on the stairs up to our rooms and again in the tight, humid hallway, gasping with slack mouths, hands everywhere. We kiss as if we’re inventing it, as if everything else we’ve done together since we got to Italy was chaste andthisis sex.

I back Theo into the door of my room and lick into their mouth, swallowing their moan like vin santo, heavy and sweet and lingering.

“Since we’re being honest,” I say, out of breath, wrenching myself away long enough to get out the room key, “I want you tofuck me.”

“I was about to say the same to you,” Theo pants.

Then we’re crashing inside, grappling across the wall, tearing at each other’s clothes. I spare half a breath to thank Italy for inspiring us to button our shirts less, because those are gone in seconds, whipped over our heads so we can press chest to chest, skin to skin, lips sliding wet and raw into another fit of furious kissing. By some miracle I manage to undo Theo’s shorts without looking, and Theo tugs my drawstrings loose, and then we’renearly naked.

For a moment our eyes lock, and we stand motionless in the amber nighttime glow of Palermo through the window, arrested under the intensity of each other’s attention.

And then Theo smiles, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen on the entire tour.

“It’s so weird when your face gets that serious,” they say.

“Yours too.”

“Like, who are we?”

I laugh, and I say, because I can, “I love you.”

“I love you,” Theo says. They love me.

They reach for their shorts on the floor and dig something shiny and gold from the pocket—I think it’s one of those fucking Jeans condoms from last night, but instead, they hand me a single euro.

“Flip for it?”

When we were together, this was how we decided who would be fucking whom when we both wanted the same thing. Heads for Theo, tails for me.

I toss the coin across the room.

“I want everything.”

Theo’s eyes darken.

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

They pull me close by the hinge of my jaw and brand my mouth with a kiss, and then they shove me onto the bed.

I can see their mind working behind dilated pupils, strategizing, making plans for me. I was already hard, but being looked at like that by them makes meache.

“Hands and knees.”

A warm shiver courses through me, and I do as I’m told. Theo climbs onto the bed behind me, strips me bare, and sets directly to work with their mouth.

I have long believed that being eaten out by Theo Flowerdayis enough to make a person understand why erotic writers of history called an orgasm a crisis. The dedication, the skill, the endurance, the total uninhibited enthusiasm, the swimmer’s breath control—they lavish me with it, rim and tease and press with their tongue until I’m whimpering and sinking down onto my elbows, widening my legs and rolling my hips.

“That’s good,” they say, breath shockingly cool on wet skin. Another whimper slips out. “You’re being so good. You want more?”

“Please,” I say, voice already wrecked. We’ve barely even started.

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