Fuck. He wrapped his hands around her slim waist and held her suspended above him. “You asked me if I was safe, Sofia,” he breathed in the dark. “Are you?”
After a lifetime of caution—he’d only skipped condoms with Sofia after they’d both been tested—he’d gone inside her in the cellar uncovered. Between the astonishment and horror, protection had never crossed his mind.
“Yes, Aish, yes,” she said, desperate, her waist, her hips, weaving in his hands. “I’ve never gone bare with anyone but you.”
His heart lurched. Neither had he, not in ten years, but he was obsessed with her. What was her fucking excuse?
The Aish of a week ago would have howled and pushed, would have jumped up and turned on the lights and gone down on his knees and demanded that she acknowledge it, explain it, admit that it had to mean something, right, beg that she put him out of his misery and give him some fucking hope that, just maybe, there was some infinitesimal chance that he had another shot with her.
The Aish of right now pulled his sweet-skinned girl against his naked body, held her head in his hands as he kissed her precious mouth, and gently and carefully tilted his cock so the love of his life could sink down onto it. The Aish of right now would focus on the miracle of this moment, even if it never happened again.
When she was all the way down, when he was all the way deep, she leaned back, just a little, and pressed her hand against her stomach.
Fuck. He’d forgotten how she used to do that. “Are you okay?” he whispered. He realized then how quiet they were both being. Her breath was coming in little gasps. His chest was moving too fast.
“Sí,” she whispered back. “You’re so big.”
And all of it hit him right then, her skin and her smell and her silky wet heat and he was inside her and she wanted him there, and he groaned, loud and naked, surrounded her in his arms and began to rock her, up and down on top of him, needing to fuck her and needing to get fucked, and he growled, “C’mon, Sofia,” and she was riding him, oh fuck her perfect pussy, she was riding him so good and hard and crying out, “Así, así, like that, Aish, yes, yes...gigante, so deep,” her hands grabbing him, needing him, and he crashed her back against the leather so he could give her what she needed. He spread her thighs so he could give it to her, getting in so good and as deep as she wanted, commanding her, “Tell me...like this...like this,” using his fingers and cock and hips and balls and when she shrieked, when she showered him with her orgasm and her legs shook in his hands, he pulled out and flipped her over and slapped her ass and shoved in again because it wasn’t time yet, wasn’t time yet for him, and she called him names, filthy names, as she clawed at the leather and he grabbed the edge of the bench, and shoved in and in and in, calling her names, too.
“Belleza,” as he bit her neck. Beautiful.
“Amada,” licking at the sweat between her shoulder blades. Beloved.
“Mi princesa, mi única estrella,” as she locked up beneath him, shaking and sobbing and coming, and his own helpless orgasm shot down his spine.
My princess. My only star.
10 Years Earlier
Sofia was happy and a little buzzed on the wine they’d guzzled in the parking lot and the pot clouds floating around her as she sat on a blanket in Golden Gate Park, running her hand through Aish’s sun-warmed hair as he rested his head in her lap and sang along to the band that was playing on the festival stage. The other student-workers who’d come with them were in the beer tent, which America’s archaic liquor laws and the glaring black X on the back of her nineteen-year-old hand prevented Sofia from enjoying.
No matter. She’d worked hard all week funneling wine from the fermentation tanks to the barrels and shoveling out must. She’d even covered a couple of Aish’s shifts when he’d been up late drinking and writing music with John. So she was going to savor today, with her man’s head in her lap and his best friend at her side, who’d kept her laughing with a steady stream of stories about their childhood.
“...And he’s so proud of himself because he’s hit the ball and everyone’s yelling, but they’re yelling because he’s running the wrong way. Right to third base. A week later, our moms take us out of baseball and put us in basketball...”
Aish’s silky hair smoothed over her bare thighs as he turned to look at John and say, “And you stopped dreaming about being the next A-Rod and started talking about being the next Kobe.”
John grinned, and the sunlight glinted off the white teeth, blond hair and true-blue eyes he’d used to seduce so many. “Gotta dream big,” he said.
Things had gotten better with John in the last month. She’d worked to be more accepting of his third wheel in their company, less possessive of Aish’s time, and John had stopped flicking at their relationship. He’d even helped Sofia out a few times, covering Aish’s shift when she couldn’t, and sending a friend he knew in San Francisco to pick her up when she’d been stranded at Fisherman’s Wharf, wandering around with a bouquet of balloons when Aish had forgotten their date to play a last-minute gig in Santa Cruz.
Aish being a musical genius, John had explained, meant that he could be a relationship idiot.
If he was an idiot, he was her idiot, and Sofia didn’t love Aish any less for revealing that he was as fallible as any twenty-one-year-old
