Page 69 of Fruit
My feet take me to Sebastián. I hear the guy I was dancing with ask something behind me, but I’ve already dissolved in the wash of the moving crowd around me. The current takes me easily until I’m in front of Sebastián, in the headlights of his dark eyes.
“What, you’re not going to say hi?” I say, my body just shy of pressing against his as I lean up to speak into his ear.
“You were busy.”
“He’s just—”
“That’s none of my business,” he says, and I think,But I want it to be.
I pull away from him, just enough to be able to see his eyes, before pressing in again. I kiss him, just a brush of lips, but it’s like I’ve suddenly given Sebastián permission to touch. He grabs my hips, pulling me against his body, before burying one of his hands in the hair at the back of my head and tilting my face to deepen the kiss. I let out a startled moan, wrapping my arms around his neck and giving as good as I got.
We step into the crowd again. It consumes us instantly, and we become another cell in its writhing body. We move pressed close, one step flowing into the next, the burn of his hands as transporting as the music around us.
I look at his face in the changing lights. He looks back, and the air is thick between us. I want to lick through its syrupy pulp and get to him, but just watching him for a while is almost as good.
The music eats us up, and when it’s had its fill, we end up at mine. It’s the first time he’s been there, but we’re too distracted with each other to make it an event. We fall on the unmade bed and kiss, and touch, filling ourselves with a hunger which only grows. I straddle him and the sight of his hands on my thighs as I ride him, the wide span of them caressing and gripping like they can’t get enough, is etched in the stone of my mind.
He pulls me down when I come, eating up all the sounds I make, holding my trembling skin together as he comes too. I bite at his lip in retaliation and lick up the gasp of my name, the most delicious sound of the night.
**********
The Autumn air is crisp and sharp with the approaching Winter. I thread my arm through Joaquin’s as we walk in an attempt to conserve warmth.
“Okay. I get you and Ezra had a fight,” I say, “But what happened? What was it about?”
“It was about—nothing. That’s the thing, it wasn’t about—it was about socks or something, I don’t know. We were talking about one thing one second and then we were shouting at each other. I’ve barely seen him all week.”
“Okay. So, you’re both barely seeing each other and when you do, you’re both stressed out and easily irritated and this leads to fighting. That sounds pretty normal to me.”
“Yeah, but…aren’t we supposed to know how to communicate? I mean, we’re supposed to be a team or something. We’re supposed to—”
“Okay, if you say ‘supposed to’ one more time…what handbook are you even reading from, exactly? Like, what do you mean, ‘supposed to’? What does that even mean? All teams have friction. It’s natural. You can’t freaking not fight with Ezra ever, dude.”
“I know…”
“Then figure out what’s wrong and try to solve it. I mean, when you work well together, what’s working? Like, thinking back on moments that have gone smoothly, what helped it?”
Joaquin stays silent for a while. “He can…sort of just, read what I need? Sometimes I haven’t even consciously thought about it, and it’s only when he, you know, gives it to me that I realise I wanted it.”
“What about what he needs?”
“I…”
“Like, I get that in bed the dynamic is him as a Dom,” I say, and Joaquin makes an uncomfortable sound at talking about this in public, but there’s barely anybody around as we walk through the city. “But if he’s stressed and barely home and he’s probably used to focusing more on you than himself, who’s looking after him?”
Joaquin stays silent for a while. “Shit,” he says eventually.
“Just…flip the script a little. Like, use the tricks he uses to take care of you after a scene or something to take care of him. Negotiate some time between each other or something. Use those freaking skills for the actual relationship, dude.”
“All right, all right. I get what you’re saying.”
“All right. Don’t make me kick your ass.”
“Okay, should we start talking about Sebastián—”
“Shut your hell mouth.”
“Iva, you know I don’t want to push, but isn’t it a little weird that none of us have met him? And you haven’t met any of his friends?”
