Every Summer After(75)

“We did,” I say, smiling back.

“But you didn’t let me practice this.” He bends and kisses me over my underwear.

“I was too self-conscious,” I breathe.

“And what about now?” he asks, moving my underwear to the side. My legs twitch. “Are you still too self-conscious?”

“No,” I gasp, and he smiles up at me, but his eyes are stormy with hunger.

“Good.” He hooks his fingers around the edge of my panties and pulls them down around my ankles, then pins my wrists by my hips so I can’t move my arms. “Because I have a lot of time to make up for.” He buries his tongue inside me, then brings it up over my clit, flicking and swirling and sucking, telling me how many times he’s thought of this, how good I taste. I cry out, and he sucks harder. I try to spread my legs, but my ankles are restrained by the fabric around them.

“You like that?” he asks softly, and I lift my hips closer to his mouth in response. He lets go of my wrists, gets rid of the clothes around my ankles, and grabs the flesh of my ass, holding me up to his mouth, while my fingers grab at his hair. He moves his tongue inside me again, his moan vibrating through me, his fingers tracing lightly where I need them. I squeeze my thighs around him, and he bites my inner thigh while he reaches up to my nipple, squeezing and pinching. His mouth follows, his tongue hot on my breast, while his fingers work the swollen flesh between my legs. I whisper his name over and over, and he presses his finger inside me. My body is hot and damp with sweat, and I ask for more. He looks up at me, his eyes burning as he adds another finger and another, until I’m full of him. My legs start shaking and he moves down my body, sucking on me, hard and long, and then he grazes his teeth against me, and I scream and fall into tiny little jagged pieces.

He kisses his way back up my limp body, and I wrap my arms and legs around him.

“Just think of all the time you wasted being self-conscious,” he says with a grin.

“Shut up.” I squeeze him with my legs and he laughs and kisses me more, brushing my bangs off my damp forehead.

“Told you I had a few new moves,” he says, kissing me again.

“I’m worried about your ego,” I say, a goofy smile on my face. He nips at my shoulder, then my ear, and then Sam is above me. Pressing against me. Looking down at me. I’m not sure I’ve been this happy in more than a decade, so I push aside the nagging voice in the back of my head, even though I know I can’t ignore it much longer. I feel frantic for him. We’ve never had sex, and I want to erase all the others, so that it’s only ever been him.

I bring my face to his and kiss him slowly, rolling my hips against him. I work his underwear down and feel him hot and hard against my hip. He reaches up behind my head and pulls a condom from his nightstand drawer, rolling it over his length, and with his forearms beside my head, he lies back over me, holding my eyes with his.

“Are we really doing this?” I whisper. He pushes into me and I inhale sharply. He holds still, and we look at each other for several seconds.

“Yeah, we are,” he says, and pulls out almost all the way, and then thrusts in again, and we both groan. I capture his waist with my legs and raise my hips to meet him, following the unhurried rhythm he sets, my hands on his shoulders, his back, his ridiculously firm ass, and his eyes never leave mine. He hikes my knee up, pushing himself deeper inside me and moving his hips in infuriatingly slow circles that inch me toward release but don’t take me there. I growl in frustration and pleasure and ask him to please keep going, to please not stop, to please go faster. I’m very polite, but he only grins and pulls on my lip with his teeth.

“I’ve waited a long time for this. I’m not in a hurry,” he says.

And he’s not in a hurry, not at first, not until his back is slick and his muscles are taut and he’s shaking from restraint. He holds back until I grow impatient and needy and bite on his neck and whisper, “I’ve waited a long time for this, too.”

After, we lie on the floor facing each other, the early evening sun glowing golden over us. Sam’s eyes are heavy, a tired smile on his lips. He’s running his fingers up and down my arm. I know I have to tell him. The words run in a loop in my mind. I just have to say them out loud.

“I love you,” he whispers. “I don’t think I ever stopped.”

But I barely hear what he says, because at the same time, the words I should have said twelve years ago bubble up my throat and out of my mouth.





16



Summer, Twelve Years Ago

By the time I finally heard from Sam, it was two weeks after he’d left for school, and I was furious. He was apologetic and full of how are yous and I love yous and I miss yous, but he was also off. He evaded my questions about the workshop, his dorm, and the other students, or gave one-word answers. Five minutes into the call, a knock sounded in the background and a girl’s voice asked if he would be ready to leave soon.

“Who was that?” I asked, the words tight.

“That was just Jo.”

“A girl Jo?”

“Yeah. She’s in the workshop,” he explained. “Most of us are on the same floor. We’re having a potluck, and, well, I should go.”

“Oh.” I could hear the blood rushing through my ears, hot and angry. “We haven’t even done three updates.”