Page 111 of Scandalous Lover

We come together in a rush of breath and light and holding on just long enough to get the other person through. It’s chaotic and messy and for a moment I can’t tell which of us is making which noises.

Sam stills before I do, holding my hips as I grind myself against his pelvic bone, chasing the last of the feeling. When Ifinally come out the other side, I hang my head and bow my shoulders, drooping over him. He pushes my hair out of my face and pulls my lips down to meet his. I collapse beside him, inside the embrace of his strong arms, and open for his tongue as it traces mine.

“We got the clean sheets all dirty,” I say when he pulls away.

“That’s what they’re for,” he responds softly with a sleepy smile.

I don’t answer but he hears me, climbing up and fetching a pair of small towels from the main house and handing me one. We clean ourselves up as much as we can before wordlessly tangling our limbs once more, creating a braid of our bodies in the tousled sheets.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Naomi

Iwake when it’s still dark outside, moonlight through the sheer curtains casting the room in an eerie glow. With Sam curled around me like a cat, I have to stretch very carefully to keep from waking him. It takes several long, slow tries for me to get my outstretched hand on my phone. I bring it back with me and wait for a long moment to let him settle back to sleep before lighting the screen up.

Usually, I would go through the motions of checking each of my favorite apps for notifications one after the other, and then go back through each one, letting the algorithms serve up the exact stream of posts my dopamine-starved brain was searching for. After nearly a whole day away from my screen, there are so many things to check.

Right now, however, I can’t even hear the call of the apps. And I know it’s not because there are no notifications waiting for me due to my complete lack of posting. That’s never stopped me before.

No, this time, it just feels different. The phone feels the same, the same heavy plastic, the same glass screen that seemsto breathe like a living thing under my fingers. But there’s only one thing I want to see on this device, and it’s not contained within any app.

I find the video tucked into my password protected folder and key in the code. Making sure the volume is down all the way, I hit play.

I smile at the scene that jumps out of the glowing screen at me. I’m setting the camera up on the dresser in my room at Dom’s, trying to get it pointed at the right angle to capture the whole bed. I look backward and call out to Sam, and he struts over and sits on the edge of the bed, grinning at me. I say something else and he’s beside me, pulling the dresser closer to the bed while I try to keep the phone from falling off.

I scrub through the video a bit until I get to the frame where he has me spread over his body, my knees on either side of his, my back arched over his chest. One of his strong arms holds me around my ribcage, just under my breasts. The other snakes between my legs.

I have my eyes closed and my lip bit between my teeth. I was posing. I knew that at the time. I loved the feeling of being displayed for the video this way. My eyes linger on my own body for a second more before finding what I really came here for.

Sam’s expression.

The first time I used my phone to record an intimate moment, it wasn’t even my idea. The closest thing I had to a high school boyfriend, this guy who used to come over to the house and swim in the pool, watch movies with me in our home theater, and later started sleeping in my bed, suggested it.

I wasn’t stupid enough to let him record it on his own phone, but I was curious about how it all looked. How we looked.

How he looked at me.

So I videoed the whole thing on my Nokia N95 slider, the absolute top of the line phone at the time. I smile thinking back on that crappy, pixelated video now, but it was the start of something big for me.

The guy wanted to watch the video after, and we did, but I never got pulled into the action like I know he did. For me, it was all about the faces. What we looked like, where we were looking, what expressions were captured on our faces when we were lost to the heat of the moment.

iPhones upped the video game a few years later and my little hobby took on a life of its own.

I wanted to see.

Talk about distracting, it was all I could do not to perform for the camera. Not to look over at where I often had it hidden during my various one-night stands or one-week relationships over the years.

Soon enough, however, I realized that the real prize wasn’t my own face, it was the face of my partner. What expression he had. Which things I did made that expression turn favorable. Whether or not he was actually into me, or if he was just sticking his dick somewhere.

Whether I was good enough.

Looking at Sam’s face now, in the paused image of my own body spread open for the camera, I can barely breathe.

He’s looking down over my shoulder, his gaze cast over my body to where his fingers are trailing closer and closer to my core. His eyes are a little wider than usual, his cheeks flushed. The expression on his mouth could almost be reaching for a smile, but caught before it got there, slightly tipped, eager, like he’s dying to get his lips on my skin. It’s not hard to see that his entire being, every ounce of his focus, is trained on me.

I slowly move the video forward a bit, watching Sam’s face the whole time. He slips his fingers inside me, andhis eyes roll back before dropping closed and then shooting open once more to watch with reverence as he sinks knuckle deep into my wetness. When I come, his whole face lights up with pleasure and desire, as if he’s having an orgasm right alongside me.

I move forward until I’m on my hands and knees, and Sam reaches forward to wrap my long hair in his fist. His forehead is creased with concentration as he gets a better grip on me, pulling me up by my hair until my head lifts toward him.

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