Page 150 of Fumbled Into Love

Soft, brown eyes, the color of tilled soil, meet my gaze before she explodes, back arching off the bed and clinging onto me like I’m a lifeline keeping her on Earth. Pleasure zaps down my spine as I barrel closer to my orgasm and my legs twitch with restraint before I erupt, head dropping to her shoulder as her fingernails dig into the muscles of my back.

The air is knocked from my lungs as my orgasm takes hold, my vision blurry and pulse erratic.

It’s never felt like this before.

Nathalie and I have had great sex but this was…this was a homecoming. A declaration. A claiming of each other.

Gently releasing Nathalie, I flop onto the bed beside her, fighting to catch my breath. Her fingers intertwine with mine.

“Greatest sex ever,” she declares, raising her free hand for a high-five. My limbs are Jell-O and I need to clean us up, but I choke on my laughter when I high five her back.

“We’re really good at this,” I joke.

“If great sex was an Olympic sport, we would have gold metals.”

Nathalie cackles at her joke when I groan and lift off the bed, cleaning myself up and returning with a towel for her.

She’s slipping on her horrifying pajamas, wiggling her eyebrows as she twirls.

It’s so ugly and yet, so, so sexy.

“Do you know what no rules mean?!” she yells, jumping up and down. “It means we can cuddleand not pretend that it’s platonic!”

She gives me about three seconds to process before she slams into me and we tumble into bed, our laughter filling the air.

“Is this real?” Nathalie asks, fingers trailing along my torso as we lay in bed. Our breathing is timed and I hold her in my arms, thinking the same thing to myself.

I kiss the top of her head and my chest warms as the soft sigh she releases when my lips press against her skin.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” I whisper, the guilt of not telling her sooner lingering. “I don’t ever want you to feel unloved and I’m sorry that was how you felt, regardless of whether or not it’s true.”

Nathalie’s quiet, but her features are contemplative as she looks around the room, to Gordie lying at the edge of the bed, and finally to me.

“I can’t say it was a great feeling,” she starts and my stomach sinks. I’ll have to do everything I can to banish those memories. “But I also think I missed your signals in my stubbornness. You told me you didn’t want to date and I took that at face value and latched onto it in hopes it would kill my feelings.

“I was convinced you were never going to change your mind and this was over. I’m as stubborn as you are,” she says, pressing a kiss above my heart. “I don’t hold any of my emotional discomfort against you. I could have told you how I felt at any point but I chose not to. That’s on me. But, I do regret not saying something.”

“Why didn’t you?” I ask.

She stares at the ceiling.

“I wanted to be chosen. I didn’t want to beg or pressure you into a relationship you didn’t want. I was scared. Afraid of rejection. There were a lot of reasons.”

“I didn’t think I was hiding my feelings well,” I admit. There were so many moments I thought she would figure it out.

When she took care of Declan.

On my birthday when she nearly brought me to tears with her surprise.

At the gala when she confronted Savannah.

“You never once said ‘artichoke’. Never initiated our…sexual encounters. It was always me who said it, so I thought…”

She trails off, but my mind is stuck on her words. I never said artichoke? That doesn’t seem right. I sift through every time we hooked up and…holy shit, she’s right.

I thought about it constantly, but I never did work up the courage to say it myself. Didn’t know how to ask for sex when I couldn’t separate my feelings from it and couldn’t banish the memories of Savannah and her sharp words. I can imagine thevulnerability she must have felt saying it every time, allowing me the opportunity to reject her and my heart sinks.

“I never realized. The word echoed around my head constantly, if that helps.” She huffs, rolling her eyes, but the gesture is playful. “Especially in your…” I flounder for the name of that dress thing she wears.

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