Page 41 of Hero

We fuck like that in the dark, clumsy and urgent and quiet and not very far past sleep. My body responds to the friction and the jiggling, and something deeper inside me responds to the intimacy. “Zed,” I hear myself gasping as an orgasm coils at my center. “Zed.”

“Yes.” He’s making the same kind of grunts he always makes when he fucks, but they’re softer, hoarser. “Yes. That’s me. It’s me… fucking you.”

“Zed.” One of my hands is still stroking his head while the other is gripping him at the waist.

“Yes. Yes, it’s me. This is me.”

I don’t quite know why he’s saying that, but I like the way it sounds anyway. As if it means something to him. That I know the man fucking me like this is him.

Who else would it be?

He’s all there is for me.

He’s working up toward climax now, his pushes getting harder and faster. My own orgasm breaks unexpectedly, and I shudder and jerk and dig my fingernails into his scalp.

He makes a helpless sound and suddenly jerks back his hips, letting his cock slide out of me and then folding it between our bodies as he presses down on top of me again.

He comes like that, twitching and moaning into my neck.

It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced.

“Zed,” I gasp one more time, feeling my body relax as the spasms fade.

“Yes.” He’s speaking in a hoarse whisper. “It’s me.”

We lie together like that for a long time. I should be uncomfortable under his weight, but I’m not. I should feel trapped, but I don’t. I feel safe. Protected. The low-key churning of anxiety in my gut that’s a near-constant part of my life is almost undetectable because all I can feel and sense and think about is Zed.

But that’s not the real world. That’s just how I feel right now. After sleepy, clumsy sex in the middle of the night.

Nothing about my life has changed, and I’m asking for trouble if I start believing it has.

This world doesn’t pull punches. It doesn’t rain down miracles.

It doesn’t magically fix itself.

I wriggle a little and try to roll away.

“Not yet,” Zed mumbles, lifting his head just slightly.

“I should go to my bed.”

“Why bother?”

“What if Rina wakes up early?” I don’t know why I’m arguing. I don’t want to get out of bed right now.

“Then we’ll explain. She doesn’t know anything about sex. She’s not going to think it’s anything bad.”

This is true. She’s been so cut off from the rest of the world that Rina has absolutely no preconceptions about sex or love or romantic relationships. We could tell her this is what grownups do, and she’d believe us.

But I don’t want her to see us in bed together. It would make it real in a way I’m trying not to let myself believe.

“You’re lying on top of me, Zed.”

“Ask me to move and I’ll move.”

He will. I know it for sure. So I try to make myself ask him to get off me, but I don’t.

I want to feel safe like this a little longer.

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