We Are Us

I tilt my head back, into the warm nook between Tucker’s neck and shoulder. “Mm-hmm.”

His palm cups my hipbone, the tips of his fingers slipping just inside the top band of my panties before stopping there. “Let me make you feel good, Poppy. I owe you at least that.”

My heart and my mind are on opposite sides of a chasm so deep I don’t even want to peer over the edge. But my body is speaking a language all its own, pressing back against him, my leg inching open. Traitor.

“Good girl,” he says, his voice like churned gravel.

I don’t feel good. Well, I do. But I don’t.

Tucker’s hand moves lower as he kisses my neck, his touch gentle and slow. “If you want me to stop, I will.”

In response, my hips roll forward, seeking the heat of his hand, the warmth of his touch. “Don’t stop,” I somehow manage to whisper, before biting my lip as his fingers slide between my slick folds, using my own wetness to make me tremble and twitch.

“Tucker,” I cry out, taken aback by the intensity of the orgasm that rocks through me. He continues rubbing me gently to draw out firecrackers of pleasure, like the aftershocks of an earthquake.

When I can’t take it anymore, I twist inside his embrace. Throwing my arms around Tucker’s neck, I open my mouth to him, letting my kiss convey the fragments of thoughts I haven’t yet make sense of.

Thank you and Christ, you’re good at that, and Why couldn’t this have been our first time together.

Evidence of Tucker’s desire is prodding my belly, and I want him to fill the ache inside me, this need for more. I push at the band of his boxers, and they run off in the same direction as my panties. Against my lips, Tucker growls, “Tell me you want this, Poppy.”

“I do.” I really, really do. And I want to welcome Tucker’s weight on me, to engage in intimacy on my own terms.

I hear the crinkle of plastic, and then Tucker pulls away, hiking my legs around his waist and pushing into me. My body tenses as the barbed edge of a memory snags on the periphery of my consciousness. Wait, wait.

But I don’t say the words. This is our fresh start, a way to rewrite the past and shift our narrative. I won’t ruin it by giving into my fears.

Tucker’s mouth claims mine as he fills me. Emotions swirl—fear and lust and shame, the tangled knot laced with glittering shards of pleasure. Pressure builds and recedes, crashing into me with increasing force. Until my i

Tucker jerks inside me, then collapses.

We are cheek to cheek, his lips grazing the shell of my ear. His voice is hoarse, a rasp. “This is how it will be, Poppy. How it always should have been.”

And I believe him.