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I stay still, feeling, settling. Under the bright spring sunshine, I can see every taut line of his body beneath mine. How his muscles tense and how his eyes are locked on my body. It’s a kind of power I’ve never known.

I think of the woman I saw at the Paradise Lost party, who was riding her partner on the chaise. Her confident hips, her bouncing breasts. How he watched her with adoration.

West is looking at me like that.

I’m sitting perfectly still, and he’s still looking at me like that.

“Faster,” I say, and West’s thumb speeds up against my clit. The stretching burn turns into nothingness, and then into sweetness. I rise onto my knees and sink back down again.

“Oh.” I do it again and again. His hands grip my hips, helping my rhythm. I brace my hands against his chest, and the petal of an apple blossom dances past me. It lands in his brown hair. “West, we’re having sex.”

A glorious smile spreads over his face. “Yes, we are. And you’re doing so well.”

I tilt my hips a little, and it’s not easy, the burn in my thighs from riding him like this. Of all the positions I’ve fantasized about, it’s never been this. Neverlikethis. It was some alternate version of me, some future perfect vision of me, who was never awkward, never unsure. But here I am, having sex, and it’s still just me. And it’s West. And it’s us.

It’s so much better for it.

He talks me through it, returns his wet thumb to my clit until I’m overwhelmed and too hot and every nerve ending is on edge. “West,” I beg, sliding back down to take him in to the hilt. “I want… can you…”

“I can.” He sits up and wraps his arms around my waist. “Hold on. Okay?” He turns us over on the picnic blanket, still inside me. The angle is different now. The sunlight falls through the blossoms and turns his brown hair alight. Gilding him above him.

My knees fall open, and he’s there, between them, inside me. He thrusts slowly, andI didn’t know it would feel like that. That I’d feel him so deep inside. Maybe I whisper the words against him, because he pauses, forehead against my neck.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” His voice is strained. “Just can’t end too soon.”

“Why—oh.”

“Yes.Oh. You feel too good.”

“I’m sorry?” It comes out half whispered, and West groans into my skin. “That was a joke. I’m not really sorry.”

“Neither am I,” he mutters, and starts to move again, hands braced on either side of me. I look from him down between our bodies, at where he’s disappearing inside me.

Oh.

West’s movements are methodical, precise, but he’s holding on by a thread. He grips my knee and pulls it up to his hips. “Wrap your legs around me, sweetheart. Yes. Just like that… So good.”

I want him to feel as undone as I do. Like he’s made me feel over, and over, and over again. With his fingers and toys and tongue. “Don’t hold back.” I run my nails along his back. “I want it all.”

There’s a brief second where I can tell that he teeters on the edge, and then he falls, his hips speeding up. He mutters dirty things into my skin, about how good I feel, how he’s never going to last, how heknewI was going to be perfect.

I soak it all up like sunlight.

There’s something so honest about it, about being consumed by his want. He was right. This is about trust. It’s always been about trust.

Everything we’ve been doing has led us here.

He groans that he’s not going to last and I tell him I don’t want him to, and then his hips stutter against mine, and he’s fracturing.

He groans like his soul is tearing in two.

I was full before. Now I feel like I’m overflowing, and he’s a heavy weight on top of me, warm and big andeverywhere.

I squeeze my eyes tight, like it will keep the moment from ending.

We lie there for a long time. He might be my new favorite blanket.