I didn’t want to come down. I wanted to stay there, suspended in that perfect physical pleasure. I’d missed it too much, needed it too much, to let it pass so fleetingly by. Besides me, nobody knew my body the way Neil knew it. Sex with him was a hundred times better than sex with anyone else.
“Harder!” I begged, pumping my hips frantically, and he obliged, pounding me so hard that my sobs of ecstasy turned to cries of pain. My next orgasm battered me with shocks of pleasure, each one greater than the last, until I split apart at the metaphorical seams. He growled, “Ah, fuck, I’m coming,” and drove deep, tearing a startled shriek from my throat. I felt the hot, wet gush of his cum inside of me, and I wanted it to fill me up, to spill out of me and pool beneath me on the leather. I reveled in the obscene imagery, and as he pulled out, I couldn’t help myself. I reached down and pushed two fingers into my cunt, coaxing his semen out so I could spread it up and over my clit. It only took a few quick flicks of my fingers to bring me to the edge again, though my body throbbed there for some painfully long seconds before I came for the third time.
Neil sat back on his heels, breathing hard, his face red and covered in a sheen of perspiration. I pushed my sweat-drenched hair back and closed my eyes, needing to catch my own breath.
“God, but I needed that,” Neil rasped.
My muscles burned, and everything south of the Mason-Dixon Line ached. Worth it.
My eyes flew open. “Neil…listen.”
We both went still and silent as corpses.
Olivia hadn’t woken up. It was a miracle.
We cleaned up the couch then headed downstairs, dressing ourselves again in reverse order from that in which we’d discarded our clothes all over the house. In the kitchen, I rummaged through the cupboards for some bread and Nutella.
“I know this isn’t on my diet,” I admitted guiltily as I popped the bread into the toaster. “But I’m going to eat it, anyway.”
“Don’t apologize for eating, Sophie,” Neil scolded gently.
I snorted. “I’m not apologizing for eating. I’m apologizing for not being more concerned about not getting fat.”
He put a hand on my shoulder and turned me to face him. “Stop it. You don’t owe it to me to maintain some ideal weight. I want you to be happy, and you can’t be happy and perfect at the same time.”
I picked up the jar from the counter. “Yeah, well, it’s easy for you to say. I just spent half a year worrying that my husband wasn’t sexually attracted to me, anymore.”
His eyes clouded with uncertainty. “I made you feel that way?”
“You didn’t make me feel that way. I just…felt that way.” I shrugged. I wanted him to understand the difference, but it was difficult. Neil blamed himself for things he had no control over, just like I blamed myself in similar situations.
“Listen,” I began, a tired plea. “I know why we weren’t having sex. You have been through so much, and you’re still going through it. And you were awesome about giving me the freedom to fulfill my physical needs. There are just some things I can’t get from anybody else. It was easier to blame myself and my appearance for the disappearance of those things. It felt…less selfish.”
He nodded.
“You’re still going to feel guilty, aren’t you?” I asked, the corner of my mouth twitching.
He let out a resigned exhale through his nose. “I can’t help it. It’s too ingrained in me not to.”
“Well, can I feel a little guilty about the fact that we didn’t use a condom?” I winced and admitted, “I had sex with Gena. I forgot to mention it before…”
“Ah. Well.” He shrugged. “We’ll play it safe until we get tested, again. We’re not the first people to make a mistake.”
I put my arms around him and stood on my tiptoes to kiss him. “That was a fantastic mistake, by the way.”
“It really was. I don’t know why we don’t do that more often,” he said. “No, I do. The small tyrant who mercilessly directs our days and nights rarely allows it.”
“Please tell me it gets better.” I was trying to make a joke, but I sounded desperate and unhinged when I laughed.
He smiled at me. “It does. You’ll find it easier when we’re back in New York.”
It had been easy enough to forget our lives in New York, the ones that had been put on hold since I’d come to Iceland to be with him. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t push him to go home, even if he never wanted to leave. Was going back a real possibility?
“Do you think we will go back to New York?” I opened a drawer to get a knife for my impending toast.
He frowned. “Of course we will.”
“I didn’t know. I was just kind of…rolling with things.” I faced him and tapped my fingers on the countertop. “I was willing to stay here, if you had to.”