Sleep drifts, but for once I don’t wake startled, thinking I’ve overslept or missed something important. My heart doesn’t race for no apparent reason. I draw a breath and feel something as foreign as peace.

Instinctively, I know you’re there before I open my eyes, before I sense the warmth radiating off you, and without registering your soft breathing.

I turn slowly while my eyes are still adjusting to the light—still trying to chase sleep back into the night behind us. I move slowly, because I don’t want to startle you; I want to witness you before you’re fully aware of me.

I wanted you long before I woke. Maybe it’s from breathing the same air, maybe it’s how we spent last night, or maybe it’s just me still dreaming of you.

You’re on your back. Good.

You never sleep on your back, and I didn’t wake curled up against you.

Your hair is splayed out over the pillow you insisted was yours now; your lips are barely parted enough to let out a soft exhale, and your nose twitches like it does when you think and speak at the same time.

You’re always warm.

“My body can’t regulate heat,” you’ve explained.

I like to think it’s the desert that’s settled into your blood.

This August morning is cold, bringing a hint of Norwegian fall into what’s been an unseasonably warm start to August. A reminder that the sun has turned, days are getting shorter, and the nights are stretching further into morning.

But you are always warm, and sometime in your sleep you have pulled the duvet halfway off. I trace the lion inked into your shoulder, but only with my eyes; I don’t dare touch you yet. I want the moment to stretch.

You mumble something soft, mostly a half-moan, half-exhale, and your lips close around the tail end of it. You stretch your head upward, as if chasing the arm resting at the pillow beside your head, hand open. Resting.

Your naked breast rises and falls with your breathing. A perfect mound now prickled with goosebumps framing your erect nipple. I study the pin piercing it the same way I always do when I think you’re not looking.

It could be the cold August air that has your tit looking so inviting, but I like to think the real reason is the same as for the sound that escaped you. Maybe you’re reliving yesterday, or perhaps it’s the night before, right until you fell into dreams. Your skin is impossibly pale and so soft to the touch that cupping you makes me moan. I don’t cup you now.

I know you’re naked. Your panties are bunched somewhere on the floor.

I know. I tossed them there.

Three days ago, you were fifty-three hundred miles away. You complained that it was a hundred-and-twenty degrees. It’s a number that means nothing to me, but it sounds unbearable. Even when I do the conversion, the number means nothing to me. Halfway to the boiling point. Hot enough to scorch.

And it means nothing to me, other than: how can your skin stay this impossibly soft under a burning sun like that?

Three thoughts enter at the same time.

I want to take your nipple into my mouth. I want to slide my hand between your legs and finger you. I want to lick your cunt.

I do neither.

I watch the rise and fall of your breast, still amazed that it’s me.

You look at me like I’m crazy when I tell you; you could have chosen anyone. And yet, you’ve chosen me.

I, on the other hand, keep telling you: it was always going to be you.

There are so many ways that life could have branched—for this not to happen—and yet, here we are.

You offered it so freely one morning: “The moment you decided to send me that message, the universe shifted.”

No, I don’t suck your nipple into my mouth. I don’t finger you. I don’t suck your clit between my teeth.

Because the fourth thought is always there, reined in by torturous patience, but now I can’t deny it.

I always want to fuck you.

I pull the duvet off you—not hurried, not slow enough to wake you—and bare all that is deliciously you.

The sound that escapes me is a deep groan. Pure hunger.

You startle slightly as I shift on top of you. The way your legs part on instinct and make room for me—

You once told me you have too much leg; too much body to know what to do with. But when your legs find the shape of me, they are nothing but perfect.

—always flicks a switch inside me. Hunger turns to need. I need to fuck you.

Another moan escapes you as I grind my cock against your soaked slit.

Once…

Twice…

On the third, I push in slowly. You like it slow; you want to feel all of me.

“Perfect…”

The first word to leave your mouth on this August morning is a mere whisper. A moan.

“Deep…”

It comes out as a half grunt.

You open your eyes; deep hazel draped in sleep against my steel blue, now darkened with want.

I refuse your lips the first time; you’re beautiful like this, and I want to take in all of you. When your fingers dig into my scalp, and you pull me down, though, I welcome your hungry kiss.

I fuck you slowly, breathing in each of your exhales until your cunt clenches deep.

“Mmmph,” I groan. “Yeah? Are you gonna be a good girl and cum for me, babe?”

I don’t know if you take it as permission or command, but it’s like pushing a button.

You arch into it, bare your throat for me, and seek my teeth.

“Yes,” you groan. “I want to be a good girl for you.”

You cum so beautifully. And we have all day.