Page 85 of Lessons in Forgiving
I didn’t have enough time to look around when he moved us from the foyer into the living room. I only cared about Henry—leading me to stand on my own two feet again, gently pushing me backward until my legs hit… something. I pulled him down with me, and the couch beneath us was luck.
I wanted him so badly, I might’ve let him take me on the marble, too.
And I wanted him so badly, I didn’t care about consequences at all.
Despite my initiation, he lowered me onto the sofa gently, one of the throw pillows beneath my head.
Sitting back, eyes roaming up my body, down and back up again, he might’ve been praying when he said, “Paula.” The sound guttural, raw. “God, you’re so beautiful like this.”
And I wondered if he meant out of breath, needy, desperate and wet. Becausethat’swhat I was.
“Ready and waiting.” His finger trailed from my collar bones over my breasts, all the way down my torso, stopped by my hips. Lingered before he slowly pushed my leggings and panties down my body. “Naked and blushing.” Which is when his fingers brushed their way back up the inside of my thighs. Stopped right where I wanted him. “Needy and wet.”
A whine parted my lips, and it all but confirmed his words.
“Henry,” I moaned… groaned? I wasn’t sure how to differentiate between pleasure and frustration anymore. They’d merged into one, entangling further with every sweet nothing whispered into the darkness. “Fuck me.” I blushed before I’d even said the words. “Please?”
His eyes flew up to mine, and the look lingered.
Something else between us snapped, and we were back in our rhythm of unpredictable predictability, where Henry pulled his shirt over his head and I fussed with his sweatpants, my hands trembling with need.
Until finally,finally, I pushed the grey fabric down his legs, and I saw that he still wore the same kind of boxer briefs, and I didn’t know whether to smile because he was stillMy Henryor beg him to hurry up, so I could feel him again.
A year was a long time.
But the anticipation in my chest was swamped by a wave of dread. “Do you have a condom?”
He paused, deflated. So did I. Our panting filled the air, the house otherwise quiet. “In the car,” he winced. “Maybe upstairs.”
But upstairs was far, the car even further. When I looked back at him, chest heaving above mine, eyes wide, pupils blownout as he searched my eyes, I thought I might not be able to wait. Until he’d get dressed, run around, then come back. The thought physically hurt.
He seemed to share the sentiment because he desperately threw in, “I haven’t been with anyone else.” His brows drew together, he still hovered above me. “Since you. If that helps.”
“What?” I’m not sure I could believe that. I wanted to, obviously. But it didn’t seem… plausible.
Henry hadn’t exactly been a prude when we’d met, and he certainly wouldn’t start once we’d broken up. Right?
“I couldn’t—I mean.” He shook his head. “Icouldhave. But they just weren’t… you.” Our eyes connected. “And that’s what I wanted—who I wanted. You.”
So I kissed him again, and I didn’t know I was going to until our lips met, drawing needy, desperate sounds out of both of us. “If we don’t get upstairs in the next twenty seconds—” I began, and before I’d even finished the sentence, I was back in Henry’s arms, my legs wrapped around him.
I could feel him straining against his boxers. Every step he climbed made him push against my bare skin, made him groan into my mouth or neck, and by the time we’d made it to his room he seemed as needy as I’d been.
At least we’d leveled the playing field.
Once more, Henry lowered me. Onto a perfectly made bed, almost as comfortable as the one in New York had been. He lost his boxers somewhere between getting that condom out of the nightstand and joining me between the sheets, and his breath fanned against my lips when he hovered above me.
His hand slipped between my legs, and he touched me exactly the way I’d shown him I liked.
“I dreamed of this,” he gasped against me, our heavy breaths mixing between our lips. I could feel him hard against me again, his tip glistening. “For months, Paula.” He slipped a fingerinside, just to feel me for a second, and my moan was strangled—like a broken whine.
“In New York.” He lined himself up above me, trailed a string of kisses from my neck to my breasts before he sat up. His eyes never left mine when he ripped the packaging open, and my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach when he rolled the condom over himself. “Wearing that jersey. My name on your back, and you were so close. Right there.” He looked up at me. “And that I couldn’t do anything about it was killing me.”
My breath caught in my throat, his tip resting against my entrance. I felt him twitch, felt the groan bubbling in his throat.
“Then do something about it now.”
And he did.
