Chapter Forty-One

Loncey

Here we are again, and yet it's nothing like last time. Last time I was in a different bed from her, little more than a few feet away but it could have been a different planet for how uncertain I felt about what I should say, what I should do to make Maeve feel good. This time, it feels very different. She's in my arms. She wants me close. She wants me to be with her and share this moment physically.

And it feels like a gift.

I have done many, many things with people's bodies. I have fucked and kissed and licked and sucked and touched and stroked and caressed and spanked and held and squeezed and adored all parts of all kinds of bodies. I've been inside people and I've had them inside me. I've had fingers and toes and tongues and dicks and cunts in my mouth. I've fucked people until they've laughed, screamed and occasionally cried. I've had my hand around partners' throats and ordered them to keep their eyes open as I made them come. I've felt a partner's orgasm rip through them and tasted what that does to their body.

But nothing feels more intimate than what I'm doing with Maeve right now. Fully dressed. Spooning. One arm cradling her head and the other hand light on her hip. The material of her pajamas moves under my fingers as I assume she slides her hand under the waistband.

"Can I kiss your shoulder and neck while you start to play with your clit?" I ask, saying each word carefully to gauge if any are too much for Maeve, but her body stays relaxed and supple against me.

"Yes."

I do, leaving a trail of kisses along the curve of her neck. Her arm starts to move.

"How do you feel, Maeve? Are you warm? Are you wet?"

"I'm warm, yes," she says, and it sounds strained. "I… I don't always like to be wet. It feels weird."

"I can understand that but it's not weird, Maeve. It's just what happens to your body as it gets you ready for an orgasm."

"It always feels like betrayal. Like it gives the wrong impression, even to me."

"It's just biology. Some people get wet and some don't. But use it to make touching yourself easier."

"Okay," she says tentatively. "That feels… better."

"Good girl," I coo. "And if you need more lubrication, you can spit on your fingers. Or I will."

"You will?" She asks.

"Oh, yes, Maeve," I tell her and I wish I had access to her thoughts, every single one of them.

Silence falls as I go back to kissing her shoulder, nudging her pyjama top to the side and using my tongue to lightly caress her warm skin. Her hand continues to move and then slowly, slowly, her body starts to rock too. Her hips tilt back and forth and her backside presses up against me, against my dick which is already hard and hot.

"Maeve," I say on a sigh. "Does that feel good to you?"

"I just feel like I need to move," she says in a rush. "Is that okay?"

"Yes," I reply quickly. "It feels very good. I just want you to be okay with it."

"With your dick? I will put up with it as it's attached to you."

I laugh again and more tension vanishes from the room. It's just us. It's just us.

"Do you… do you like the idea of me being turned on by you?" I ask. "Do you like knowing that this is making me feel good too?"

It's Maeve's turn to sigh. "Yes, I do. I always want you to feel good."

I feel desire pound in my pulse, in my heart, in my dick.

"You make me feel good. All the time, you make me feel good. But this, this is like the frosting on top of a cupcake."

"Like you ever eat cupcakes," she scoffs and I can't help myself, I grip her hip a little tighter in response to her quip. As soon as I realize what I've done, I ease up.

"No," she says. "It's okay. You can hold me tighter. You can squeeze me and show me that you want me. I like… I like to be wanted by you, desired by you."

"Oh, Maeve, I desire you so much."

"Even if I don't, you know, reciprocate it in the same way."

"Even if," I say and I dig my fingertips into her flesh a little more.

"Loncey," she says and I know she's getting closer as she continues to rock into me and move her hand.

"I'm so proud of you, Maeve, for doing what your body wants, for moving it how it needs to move. For being such a good girl."

"I can't… I can't believe I'm doing this, with you."

"I know, Maeve, it's so good. It means the world to me."

"And what about the universe? All those stars and planets you swear by?"

"Yes, it means all of those to me too. You mean the universe to me." The words flow out of my mouth before I have a chance to question if it's too much, but then Maeve moans and rocks her hips a bit further back into me and I feel my own arousal start to peak.

"Can I rock you?" I ask, using my teeth to pull on her earlobe. "I want to move us together."

"Yes. Okay."

"And if you don't like it, just say and I'll stop."

"Okay. I will."

But she doesn't say stop. She moves with me as I rock our bodies together. Back and forth. Back and forth. She sighs and mumbles incoherent nothings as her arm moves quicker.

"So good, Maeve, you're doing so good."

"Loncey, hold me closer," she says. "Please, hold me closer."

I move my hand up and wrap it around her waist. I pull her closer to my body and in doing so apply even more pressure to my cock. Admittedly, it's been over a month since I felt somebody else's body pressed up to my genitals but that can't be the only reason I feel the quickest, biggest rush of arousal surge inside me.

I'm close. I'm really close.

It's like the first time I fooled around with Leliana Collins when we were fourteen and she let me lie between her legs. Our skin wasn't touching, but I felt so much I nearly came immediately. It's like that but it's also like the times Geneva and I were intimate before we fell apart, before she became something other than a loving partner who wanted the best for me. It's like how it was when I first entered her or when we she would take me in her mouth.

And also, it's nothing like either of these occasions. It's like nothing I've ever experienced before. It's like rediscovering sex and intimacy and fuck, love, all these things I thought I already knew everything about.

But no. I'm learning with Maeve. I'm learning and I'm also falling apart. At least that's what it feels like as her butt continues to rub against me, her little sighs and moans fill my ears and I feel a warmth like never before spread over me as my climax rushes closer.

"Maeve," I say quickly, urgently. "You need to stop moving or I need to change position, if you don't want me to come. Because I'm really close and I don't want it to ruin this moment."

"Really? You're close?" There's shock in her voice and her hand stops moving.

"Yes, so close. But I can move—"

"No," she says immediately. "It's okay. I want you to…" Her hand starts moving again. "Maybe we could come together? I know that's like a thing in films and romance books. I just… I never thought I'd get to do that with someone."

"It's not as easy as the movies make it seem," I say and squeeze her waist again. "But we could try."

"We could try," she repeats and then her voice changes. "I think that's the chat I want to have with you tomorrow. About us."

"I'm sorry, I'm not with you." I frown into her hair, confused.

"We could try," she says again and I'm beyond proud of her when she starts to move her hand again. "That's all I want us to agree to tomorrow in our talk about us and the future. That we try, to make this, to make us work."

"I want that too," I say and I start to move our bodies together again, rocking and rolling in the bed.

"Are you still close?" Maeve gasps.

"Yes, Maeve," I say and I kiss her neck. "You feel so good. So fucking good."

"Oh, shit, it feels too hard," she says, her voice strained. "I'm losing it. And it hurts. It aches."

"I know, Maeve, I know. But we're going to make that ache go away. We're going to make you feel so good."

"I don't know how… I don't know…" she says, desperately.

"Take a breath. Change the rhythm. Try going softer, or harder. Try just cupping yourself and then using our movement to get you there."

"Okay," she says, still sounding a little stressed.

I use my arm to rock her against me and I push back a little to move us back the other way. My dick loves the pressure and it's not long before I'm chasing it like I love to do. This is the moment I love most in sex. When the desire and the arousal take over and I leave my worries behind me, when I am nowhere but in my body and my body is something I love, something I can enjoy fully. When I am lost in the sounds my partner, no, Maeve, is making. When I'm fixated on them feeling something close to the pleasure I'm experiencing. When I am none of my labels – be they self-given or assigned to me by strangers – and I just am. When I just am. This is why I love sex. It has nothing to do with penetration, or genitalia, or kink. It's about connection and closeness and some kind of magic, cosmic correlation.

"Did that help, Maeve?"

"I think so," she mutters.

"Are you close?"

"I… I don't know."

"Tell me what you need, Maeve."

"Kiss me," she says like she's been waiting to ask for the longest time. "I need you to kiss me."

I push up on my elbow and move my hand from her waist and to her chin. Turning and tipping her head back, I dip down and kiss her with everything I have. Hey body is slightly twisted so I've lost the all-encompassing pressure around my cock, but her hip is pushed up against the head in just the right angle and when I notice she starts to thrust up into her hand again, I press a little closer to her. All the while, I continue to kiss her deeply, exploring her mouth with my tongue and keeping my hand on her chin so she stays open for me.

"Oh, fuck," I whisper into her mouth as my balls pull up tight. "You're killing me, Maeve. You're really killing me."

"Loncey, I… I…" she says.

"I know," I say, not knowing for certain of course, but feeling completely assured that whatever it is she's feeling in this moment, I feel it too.

"Oh, God!" she calls out and she thrusts back more violently. Once, twice, then a third time. Each motion strokes me in the perfect place, but more than that, the way she can't catch her breath, the way she trembles as her orgasms charges through her, the way she moans into my mouth, all of that takes me to my climax and I come. I come so hard, I lose my breath. I come so hard, my whole body jolts away from Maeve but I move back instantly, my lips landing on her nose. I come so hard, I find myself finally laughing when oxygen is back in my lungs.

I'm still recovering, chuckling in between deep breaths, when Maeve rolls over and I feel both of her hands land on my chest.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

"Fuck, yes. I'm… Jesus, that was good."

"I'm glad," Maeve says softly.

I reach for her hands and cover them. "No, I don't think you understand, Maeve, and I kind of need you to. That was… that was something else."

"Something else? You mean different to all the other sex you've had?" I know her emphasis on the all is deliberate but I don't rise to it because that wouldn't help me make it clear to her that what just happened was incredibly special to me.

"Yes, Maeve. That's exactly what I mean. That was on another planet. No, in another galaxy, the most beautiful and special undiscovered galaxy."

"Oh."

"That was like…" I pause long enough to second guess my next words and then say them anyway. "That was like making love."

I can't say what it is but something in her eyes changes. The shape, the colour, the sheen on them – I don't know what because it's too dark to see them as intricately as I want to, but I know my words just meant something to her. I know this and yet she doesn't say anything. For a long time.

"And it was good for you?"

"It was good for me," she says. "I like that it was like that for you."

I am hyper aware that she doesn't exactly agree with me. I wonder I've got something very wrong. "It wasn't too weird?"

She chuckles lightly. "I mean, I'm not going to lie, it was a bit weird. But mostly in a good way."

"Want to explain?"

Maeve yawns and I promise both her and myself I'll stop asking questions very soon so she can sleep. "Like, I didn't think I would like having your, you know, dick pressed up against me, but I sort of did, once I got used to it. And I was only a little bit freaked out when I felt the wetness on my back."

"Shit, yeah. We may both need to change our clothes."

"Maybe in a minute." She yawns again.

"Maeve O'Martin, are you telling me you're happy to fall asleep in our sticky sex clothes?" I tease.

"I just don't want this high to end," she says, and my eyes have adjusted so much to the low light in the room that I can see her gaze up at me. And I know then that even if she's not saying it, she agrees. What we did was making love.

"Who says it's going to end?" I say and my optimism surprises even me.

"I have to fly home tomorrow," she says and I see her eyes close. I really should get up and change now the wet patch in my briefs has grown cold and seeped through to my slip, which is frankly no respectful way to treat vintage silk.

"We said we would try," I say simply.

"We said we could try," she reminds me.

"How about, we will try. I think I like that best."

"I think I like that best too," she says and she kisses me on my chest, right in the middle of my pectorals. The warmth her lips leave stays for a long, long time as I move my hands around her body and start to stroke her back.

"We will try," I say.

"We will try," she repeats and it's the last thing we both say before we let sleep come and take us, sticky sex mess and all.