Page 83 of The True Love Experiment

“Look at you,” he whispers into my neck. “A needy cuddler. Who would have guessed?”

“I’m not usually.”

“No?”

“What have you done to me, Connor Prince III?”

He aligns his body beside mine, pulling me right up against him, coaxing my leg over his hip. “Only a fraction of what I’ve thought about doing.”

“You think about me when you’re alone?” I ask.

Connor hums, the sound raspy and deep. “All the time.”

“Me, too.”

He pulls back, grinning at me. “You do?”

“Of course I do,” I admit, and he tucks some of my tangled hair behind my ear. “Sometimes it’s sexy stuff, and sometimes I just really want to hang out with you. I like you.”

“I like you, too.” His hand smooths down my side, over my thigh. “Christ, you’re so soft.”

It seems absurd to me that I haven’t ever experienced such a basic building block of intimacy—post-sex languishing, lazy kisses and touches that are somehow more aware and more hazy—but I’m realizing I’ve been shitty at allowing any post-coital connection. These smaller kisses that lead nowhere, words spoken into skin, talking about the sex we just had with vulnerability and honesty and giddiness. Something creaks open inside me, a door to a secret room.

“That was the best sex of my life,” I say.

He doesn’t look surprised or skeptical. He says only, “Same,” as his lips make a warm path down my neck.

“I want to do it again.”

He laughs. “Do you see how sweaty I am?”

“Mmm, yes.” I run my hands over his shoulders. “Let’s go rinse off together.”

We stand and I see he was right: the bed really is a disaster. Connor holds my hand even for the short walk to the bathroom, and it’s good he does because my legs are shockingly wobbly. He presses his front to my back as we wait for the water to heat, his arms banded around my waist. He is a whole planet behind me, a sun.

Under the water, we share wet kisses and sudsy hands and it’s not long before he’s impatient again, too. He drips footprints on the bathroom floor as he rushes out to hunt for the second condom. Such confidence in this man who packed up his things earlier today.

This time the cold shower wall is at my back and his skin is hot, pressed all along my front. It’s slow and careful, then hard and frantic, his fingertips gripping bruises into my thighs, his body thrusting so deep it obliterates every other sensation. I don’t know how I’m going to function if I have to leave this room and act normal after this. I don’t know how I’m going to pretend I don’t want him with a clawing hunger every time I see him.

I finish him in the bed with my hands and mouth, his fingers a chaotic mess in my wet hair, his rough, filthy words scraping the walls as he comes. It’s a long silent pause after, my face pressed to his stomach, his heart pounding through the entire length of his torso.

“I’m crazy about you,” I say.

His voice is a low vibration reverberating down his body. “I’m out of my mind.”

“I’ll want you again tomorrow, and the next day, and literally every day after that.”

Connor is quiet so long I think he’s dozed off, but then his voice rises out of the darkness.

“Can we fake it?” he asks, finally. “I’m lying here wondering if we can do both. This and that.”

“I promise to do the best acting of my life, and I played a sun in a fifth-grade play, so I can assure you I’m very good.”

Laughing, he pushes up onto an elbow, looking at me with a pleasure-drunk blur to his gaze. “A sun?”

“I had to just stand there.” I kiss his navel. “You know me. Trust me, it was very difficult to not join in the orbit dance.”

He smiles, but it doesn’t take over his face the way I expect. “I’ll have to hide my jealousy.”

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