Page 140 of Save Your Breath

Maybe that’s what I was for her.

It was always what she was for me.

Never Berne, or Chicago, or Seattle, or Tampa.

Mia.

She was my home.

I dropped my forehead to hers as I began to move, slow at first, pulsing deep and filling her with long strokes. She clung to me, her arms around my neck, nails digging into my shoulders or back, heels pressing into the back of my thighs.

Words ceased to exist now.

It was just breaths and moans and whimpers, both of us lost to each other, to this moment, to a fantasy somehow coming true.

She was in my bed. She wanted me, too.

Enough.

I was enough.

Mia pressed a hand to my chest, pushing until I took her cue and rolled us. She was on top then, straddling me, her perfect body on display as she took control. I roamed every soft curve with slow, curious hands as she rocked and rolled, rubbing her clit against my lower abdomen and throwing her head back each time she found that friction she wanted.

Soon, she was bouncing in my lap, finding her second release. This one was loud and unbridled, and then I was coming, too, holding fast to her hips as I flexed up into her again and again.

I carried her to the bath after, running it hot while I wiped us both down with a washcloth. Then I helped her step in, sliding in behind her and holding her back to my chest, my arms wrapping fully around her under the water.

We stayed like that until the water turned lukewarm, not a word to be said, just gentle touches and soft, sated sighs.

I memorized each smile she gave me as I toweled her off and watched her slip into one of my t-shirts. We crawled into bed together. I wrapped her up tight. She fell asleep in my arms.

And then the morning came.

Along with a blow that sent our fragile house of cards crashing down.

Under the Dirt and Grime

Mia

“Can’t breathe.”

I muttered the words into Aleks’s chest, his arms and legs wrapped around me and crushing me to him like I might disappear if he were to give me so much as an inch of space. We’d kicked the covers off, but he kept me warm, and I chuckled when he released me only enough to make sure I had breathing room but not enough for me to move otherwise.

“Better?” he asked, kissing my hair on a smile.

“Well, at least I’m not nose-deep in your armpit now.”

“Don’t act like my scent doesn’t make you feral.”

“Ew. Don’t sayscentlike that.”

“You love myscent,” he said again, rolling until he was on top of me. I laughed and shoved at his chest when he started sniffing under my arms and all around my neck like a hound dog. “And yours is like catnip to me.”

“I smell like you right now.”

“No,” he argued. “You smell like you. Jasmine. Honey.Du schmöcksch wie sAlpeglüe.”

“You’re doing that thing where you speak another language.”