I didn’t let myself think too hard about that. About the fact that he hadn’t fucked another woman since he kissed me in Eugene’s. If I had, I knew my heart would translate the act into some admission of love even though my head knew it was a lie.
Finished with his ministrations, he leaned down to press a surprisingly tender kiss to the dimples on my lower back just above my ass. “Thinkin’ you need some ink here so I can see it, feel it, when I hold you down to take my cock again.”
Again.
That simple word accompanied by the tender way he stroked over my skin, the way an equestrian might do after riding his horse, stirred me. It wasn’t romantic in a traditional way, but nothing about Nova, about the two of us, was.
It was enough to feel the phantom length of him inside my swollen sex, to have his hands on my body gentling me after a rough fuck, to see the way he watched his hands on my skin as if he was drawing his art on me with just his fingertips.
He might not love me the way I loved him, but having him like this was enough.
It would have to be.
LILA
Nova was gone the next morning when I woke up, and I tried not to jump to conclusions when I opened my eyes to see the empty pillow to my right. After the tattoo session yesterday, we’d dressed and continue our day the way we might have two years before when we were still best friends who spent most of our time together. We took a ride up the Sea to Sky Highway, hollering with joy as we took the winding ribbon of road on low corners and bright bursts of speed. He didn’t complain when I insisted we stop at Rainbow Falls so we could try to catch a glimpse of the famous prisms of light bursting through the spray of water plummeting from the cliffs. He had even slung an arm over my shoulder, tucking me into his side as he’d done when I was a girl, as he explained that the Greek Goddess, Iris, the messenger of the Olympians, had used rainbows to travel from the sky down to earth. After that, we’d gone back down the mountain and set up shop at Eugene’s, drinking some beers, splitting one of their famous burgers, and generally enjoying each other’s company before we’d headed back to Nova’s place to crash.
And I’d done it in his bed, carried there the moment we made it through the door and Nova lifted me into his arms so he could practice the art of making out and walking at the same time.
I was sore because he had a thick cock, and he knew how to work it, so I was a swollen, aching mess around him, but I bore that ache with pride and exultation as he took me again and again throughout the night. I loved that he reached for me, that he couldn’t seem to get enough of me even after the third time that night when he’d collapsed beside me in a sweaty tangle of inked up limbs, admitting regretfully that he was tapped out. We’d laughed, because he always made me laugh, and that was only part of his magic.
Then we’d slept, Nova wrapped around me as if I was his teddy bear.
So waking up the next morning in an empty bed felt like a betrayal of the progress we’d made, of the perfect day we’d spent that I’d already tucked away like a secret love note into the deepest folds of my heart.
I was glad a moment later when I checked my phone to see three texts from him.
Nova: club emergency. Bat’s gonna take you to work, but I’ll be there to pick you up.
Nova: probably woke up horny after havin’ sweet ass dreams of me, but don’t touch that cunt, Lila, she’s mine.
I smiled so wide it bruised my cheeks as I typed a response.
Lila: I woke up dry as the Sahara if you must know.
He responded twenty minutes later when I was just stepping out of the shower.
Nova: Rose are red
Violets are blue
Don’t pretend you aren’t wet
Every time I’m around you
I laughed so hard I had to double over to catch my breath, and then I took another moment to wonder if it was possible for my body to withstand this level of happiness for long. Like an overwatered plant, I’d worried I’d die from the excess.
Working quickly because I had to get ready, and I wasn’t a low maintenance girl, I dropped the towel, posed in the mirror and snapped a shot of my still glistening body. I attached the photo to the text and wrote:
Lila: Then don’t pretend you didn’t wake up hard having slept beside this all night.