“I’m sleeping,” I mutter, my cheek against the cool pillow as he runs his hand under my shirt, up my body, hip to breast. My skin prickles awake, and I shiver, pushing my back into his chest behind me, pulling the sheets and blankets around us both.

“That’s okay,” he jokes, “You can stay asleep.” If he didn’t know me, this comment would have slammed the door shut. But he does know me. He knows the difference between no and make me admit I’m awake.

I keep my eyes closed while he finds my breast, his lips and tongue behind my ear, exactly where he knows I unravel. The spiky roughness of his face against my neck does the thing it always does, and I push myself into it, open myself up to it. My body, traitor that it is, has apparently joined the morning before I have.

His hand comes to rest on the triangle of my panties, fingers firm but agonizingly still over the most sensitive part of me. He’s motionless for a minute, teasing. My breath catches, and I wait. Nothing. My dreamy half-attention suddenly constricts to a tiny space, this tiny moment, a single hot breath in my ear. My groan is irritated, and I shift under him, reaching down to press his hand harder against me. 

“I thought you were asleep.” I hear him smiling into my neck.

He drags his fingers roughly against me for a second before lightening his touch, grazing over the silky fabric, sharpening the focus of the morning. I feel him bite lightly at my neck as he presses into me again.

“Well, I’m up now,” I say, rolling onto my back. He’s propped up on an elbow, staring at me, the white sheets at his waist. Men, I think. Just so fucking pretty. It’s the shoulders, the hint of a collarbone, the light dusting of hair on his chest, that otherness. When he shifts, a rib appears beneath his skin–there and then gone. Some hound-dog part of my desire clocks it immediately. Ribs, hips, and jaws–my absolute undoing.

He’s looking rather pleased with himself, amused. “You’re wet,” he says, pushing my panties to the side, staring intensely into my eyes. The cool air hits my body while the rough of his fingers drags along my clit.

“Well, yeah. . .” I say, motioning to his hands and body, eyes widened playfully. I pull him onto me, kissing him and relishing the weight of him, pinning me to the mattress. His tongue is urgent in my mouth, as he grabs one of my hands to restrain it in his fist over my head. His forearm flexes beside my face, and I lose some private, embarrassing part of my mind. It’s the blunt fact of him on top of me–the heat; the rough jaw; the shape, smell, and movement of a body that is not mine. Everything else, I can do myself.

He’s hard between my legs, and I bend one knee to make room for him. For a second, I think of the whole stupid world carrying on without us: grocery lists, traffic, overdue bills–and then this: the impossible animal fact of him in my bed.

He pulls back and looks at me, while I run my free hand through his hair, down his neck, to that wild space at the base of his spine, circling his hip. Mine. Maybe nobody has ever loved this space of your body before. Let me see just inside the crest of your hip. Let me put my lips there and find out.

I wrench my hand free and push the sheets aside to find him naked, hard, waiting. Wrapping a fist around his shaft, I slide down his body, pausing to kiss and bite at the sweet inside of his hip, that delicious junction of bone and flesh, before taking him into my mouth. 

His body is hot and hard, masculine. Sharp angles and velvet skin. I swirl my tongue over the head of his cock and hear him gasp, tasting the first salty drop of him. He cups the back of my head with his fingers, gently. Restrained. 

People misunderstand the power of being on your knees. Sometimes it’s subservience, sure. But sometimes it’s the brief reign of reducing a man to breath and restraint and the unbearable mercy of your mouth. I track his energy. I feel him trying not to move, trying not to lose himself too quickly, and I decide to keep him there, working my lips and tongue over him. Control shifts.

I meet his eyes. “I want to come inside you,” he grumbles, my cue. And he pulls me to meet him, kissing me roughly. He slides his hand between us and then in me. I close my eyes and stiffen, with a sharp intake of breath. It’s not love with this guy, but it’s not nothing.

And then he rolls me onto my back, pulling my panties down and off as he sinks his face between my legs. His tongue finds my clit. I’ve got one hand in his hair, the other twisting the sheets, and I feel him bite gently there. He thrusts two fingers into me, and I arch into pure pleasure. Control shifts again.

“You’re definitely awake now.” He laughs.

But I’m not laughing. Whatever cleverness I had is gone. I am watching him with the feral focus of a singular need.

He guides me onto my belly, pulls my hips into the air, and enters me from behind in one hard thrust. I make a sound I don’t recognize. His hands move over me–hips, back, hair–and something in me gives way. It’s not helplessness exactly, maybe just the relief of not having to hold myself together.

I reach between my legs, fingers sliding over nerves about to break. He quickens his pace, and I quicken mine, the two of us losing the rhythm and finding it again. With a final thrust, I feel him come apart behind me just as my own body breaks open. We both cry out. Then he is heavy over me, breath hot against my shoulder, his skin damp against mine.

I find his hand and pull it between my legs, holding him there while the last of it moves through me. When he finally lies beside me, I put my hand on his chest and rest my head on his shoulder. He kisses the top of my head, and I can hear the smile in his voice. 

“Morning.”