Page 66 of The Ripple Effect

He must see something change, because he brings his face to mine. His lips trace a curve behind my ear and down to the corner of my jaw. “Hey. Stellar J. It’s you and me. We have time for whatever we need. Let go. Let it go now.”

Everything’s surging inside me, pushing hard and high like a flood, sparkling like sun on water, and I want to believe him. I want to believe in whatever this is.

“Okay,” I whisper, drawing out the word. It’s not agreement so much as surrender, letting myselfhavewithout fretting about the cost. Letting him give.

He turns me to my back, hooking a thumb in the waistband of my boy shorts, waiting for me to raise my hips before easing them down to my thighs, my knees, my ankles, the floor.

And when I have nothing left to hide behind, he pulls me back on top. I close my eyes and forget the math, leaning forward to brace against the soft solidity of his chest, pushing until he pushes perfectly back.

“You look so good when you get what you want,” he says tightly, roughly, his fingers playing me with steady rhythm. “Tell me what you need.”

“Hold on,” I gasp. “Hold on to me.” He wraps an arm around my back, gripping between my shoulders, his fingers splayed behind my heart.

Alive. I’m alive, and I feel everything.

And I let go, let myself break, break, break across his hand, singing like ice in springtime as it comes apart.

As I come apart.

He lets it ride until I’m good and done, more than done, every last drop caught and savored.

I open my eyes. He’s flushed, muscles tensed, agony written across his forehead. I’ve never seen anything so glorious as Lyle McHugh in the palm of my hand.

“We don’t have to do—” he starts, but I’m already reaching back to take him in hand, then taking him inside myself, slow and sweet. The sound he makes—a broken half groan accompanied by a tortured stretch and turn of his pale, beautiful neck—is worth everything to me.

“I get to have this,” I tell him, settling in, rocking in the gentle postorgasmic current. “I get to give you this. It’s a gift to know you this way.”

His fingers tremble on my back. I reach for one hand, then the other, pulling them down to my ass. I’m rewarded by another one of those sounds, more fragmented words, a rough bump upward that takes us both off the mattress. He’s trying to watch, but he can’t keep his eyes open; with every few thrusts he gasps, and they fall closed. He can’t hide a thing, this one. Even the rosy tint of his skin tells me it won’t be long.

“It’s… was it like this… for you? Likethis?” His hips shove up again, harder this time, messier and with less control, and I can’t help the ragged sound I make when he finally takes what he wants.

“Yeah,” I say, and I’m full to flooding with him and with a tenderness so sharp it aches. “It was good like that for me. So good, Lyle. I think it’s because I—”

No—I’m not quite ready to open my hand and let that go. Not yet. “Because I care for you so much,” I whisper.

The impulse to have him for myself, all of him, is unstoppable. I drape my body across his heaving chest, easing my legs to frame his thighs, moving just enough to make him shake. I know I’ve done the right thing when I wrap my arms around him tight and he curls around me in return, every muscle tight, burying a hoarse shout in my hair.

Afterward, I scoot down his body and rest my face on the little curve of his stomach, knees bent where my legs run out of cot, feet kicking idly. “Can I?” I ask, nuzzling into his belly.

Lyle snorts a half laugh and busies himself removing the elastic from my topknot so he can spread out my hair, stroking it with leisurely twists of his wrist.

I like it here. His legs are iron underneath my chest, but against my cheek he’s soft and safe.

“What you said, about caring for me,” McHuge says.

“Yes?” I realize I’ve tensed when he gently tugs my hair, encouraging me to relax again.

“You’re supposed to say it’s good with me because I have a monster in my shorts. You’re supposed to tell me my tongue is magic and my fingers play you like a Stradivarius.” I can’t see his face from here, but there’s a smile behind his lazy words.

“If there’s anything big about you, it’s your head right now,” I scoff, more of a bite in my voice than I intended.

“Hey now,” he says, tugging my earlobe with such obvious care I have to shut down the tingling behind my eyes. “I’m telling you I liked what you said. I mean, obviously I did. But if I said ‘I love you, too,’ what would you do?”

Run. I’d run.

“Exactly,” he replies, hearing the words underneath my silence. “So I didn’t say it. We have time. It can wait until it’s not the worst thing you ever heard.”

I press my teeth into his right lower quadrant in reply, and he laughs. I want to drink that sound down and get slowly, grandly tipsy on its sparkle, but his confidentWe have timetriggers an echo in my heart:Maybe we don’t.

---