She grips me hard as I drive her home. Harder than she needs to. Fingers claw-like against my abdominals, as if she wants to tear me apart. Her nipples stiff enough that I feel them against my back, through her tank top, through my t-shirt, so all I can think about are those swelling breasts, so close and yet still out of reach. It sends me half crazy, so that I jump reds and push the bike hard, making it rev and roar, a voice for the almost angry lust that she’s stirring inside of me.

By the time we get to her apartment I’m seven different kinds of twisted, cock pressing against my jeans like a wound-up spring, feeling like a loaded gun.

“This you?” I say, once we’re off the bike and standing in front of the apartment complex. I want to fuck her so bad I can barely keep from picking her up in my arms and kicking down the door, but I force myself to stay in control.

“Yep. Just moved in about a month ago.”

I follow her up a flight of stairs, the view of her ass torturing me all the way, even in those boyfriend jeans, still testing the limits of my self-control. She opens her door and I follow her inside.

“It’s still a work-in-progress,” she says, as she tosses her jean jacket and keys aside. “I need to get some more furniture. It’s a lot bigger than my last place.”

It’s dark outside now, only the dim streetlights casting a yellowish glow through the night beyond the window. Ash turns on a lamp shaded in red, and it’s like she’s unveiling a masterpiece. I move through the hallway, soaking it all up. The art books stacked on the reclaimed wood coffee table and thick, knitted throws covering the low couch. The line of succulents on the window sill and the wood-framed paintings in small groupings across the walls. The antique cabinets painted in reds and yellows, topped with fading white flowers in mason jars, and the old, faded, country guitar in the corner by the French window.

It feels like her. Colorful, warm, interesting. Even smells like her, like wood and honey. It feels like a home. Somewhere a person can breathe and be themselves. I think about her room, back then, the one I would sneak into at night, and how that also felt like some expression of her.

I think of all the places I’ve called home. Weather-beaten trailers and old cabins not much more than barns. Even now, my place in L.A. Big and expensive, filled with slick electronics and black leather furniture and shit I don’t actually need—a home only in name. I might be able to draw nice, but Ash always knew how to live beautifully.

“You want something to drink?” she calls from some other room.

“Sure. Something strong.”

“Vodka ok?”

“Always.”

I pace around the room a little, lust still pumping me full of adrenaline, taking in the details, stopping to study a Basquiat print above a bookcase. Flashbacks of conversations we had in her bed rushing through my mind, until she clinks some glasses behind me and I turn around.

“Here you go,” she says, handing me the glass.

I take it from her, sip slowly, but my eyes stay on hers—a living work of art even more captivating than what’s on the walls. The alcohol burns, hitting the spot, but I’m intoxicated enough by the room, by the smell, by her. She must sense it, because she breaks my gaze, eyelashes flickering away as she smiles down, but her coyness only ignites the fire building within me.

I put my drink down and throw her on the couch so I can gaze at those lush curves, trace my eyes down the length of that magnificent body.

I trace a finger around her ear, down her neck. She trembles like a leaf under my touch, skin cool with goosebumps. Her breath quickening, hot and heavy.

I climb on top of her and we devour each other’s mouths as I tug her pants off and she pulls her shirt over her head. We roll around on the couch, her hands squeezing my cock, my mouth sucking each nipple until her breath shudders, her fingers clawing down my back. I need to taste her.

I pull away, enjoying how she hisses with unresolved desire.

“Why are you stopping?” she asks, her voice tinged with desperation.

I growl, low and firm, “I’m not. I’m going to eat you.”

I pull her ass closer and rip her panties off, spreading her open and giving her one long, slow lick. She tastes delicious. I kiss and suck and tongue her pussy like I’ve been starving for her, for this, until she’s panting and moaning, a dreamy smile on her face.

“You like that?” I say, and before she can answer I suck her clit between my lips, slipping a finger inside her to curl back and hit the spot I know drives her crazy.

She cries out, “Fuck me, Teo.”

The lust in her voice drives me wild—it always did—and sets a fire through my body. I lick her again and again, lapping up her juices, pumping my finger inside her until I hear her moans grow in strength and her body begins to writhe and shake. I nip at her clit until she comes with an intensity I don’t remember.

I pull back, looking down at her, oceans of desire swirling inside me. She bites her lip, puts her hands on her breasts and squeezes them.

“You have no idea what you’re doing to me,” she says, the words coming out like a low, thudding drum.

“No. I do,” I say. “But I’m not done with you yet.”

My words make her smile. There’s a twinkle in her eye. She brings a finger to her mouth, and something inside me triggers. I pounce on her like a predator. I bite at that divine flesh, run a rough tongue from nipple to neck and back again, take those perfect tits in my hands and mouth, pulling and grabbing. Ash tugs at my pants, undoing my button fly and wrapping her hands tight around my throbbing cock. We push and pull against each other until we fall to the floor, knocking the stack of books on the coffee table over, glasses clattering against the wood, a chaos of sounds that only sends us further into frenzy

I pull back from her to sit on the floor, so that I can pull and yank at my bootlaces, kicking them off. Ash tugs off my jeans just as quickly and then I stand up and let her peel my shirt off.

I smack her ass, making her moan deliciously, and then pick her up and carry her to the bedroom.

I toss her onto the bed but she laughs and climbs off, kneeling on the floor in front of me to pull down my boxer briefs. “I have a little favor to return,” she grins.

“Do you?” I grab a handful of her hair and bring her mouth to my stiff cock. “You still love giving head, you dirty girl?”

She moans hungrily in response as her lips stretch across the head, soft and warm. Satisfying sensations making me slam back into her dresser, knocking into a lamp and upsetting a pile of folded laundry. But Ash doesn’t miss a beat. Her tongue wraps and tosses my cock inside her mouth, soaking me in the hot cavern of her mouth, conjuring all sensation from my body to centralize there on the touch of her sensitive lips against my sensitive shaft.

“Fuck…Ash…” I snarl through gritted teeth. “Ash…that’s good.”

I can almost feel her satisfied smile, a shuddering laugh that shakes through my entire body. Her head twists around my cock, her hand working my balls with the tender care of somebody who knows they’re in control, someone who remembers all the things that worked on me all those years ago.

I pull her away, her mouth open and gasping for more, my cock feeling powerful enough to smash a wall. Too close to wait now, burning too much to stay like this.

“Get a condom,” I command.

She runs to the bathroom, already tearing the packet open as she walks back into the room. Without taking her eyes from mine, she puts it on me, enjoying how I wince a little as she makes sure it’s on tight and good. Then she takes my hand and moves past me, leading me over to the bed.

I press up behind and bend her over the mattress, feeling the curve of her front, grabbing fistfuls of those tits to squeeze and pinch, leaning over her arched back to sink my teeth into her shoulder as I tease my cock against her ass.

“Getting impatient?” she teases.

“I’ve waited long enough,” I whisper into her ear, taking her lobe between my teeth as she winds her ass up, the tip of my cock playing around her pussy.

I guide those swaying, dizzying hips with my hands, cock rolling against her wetness. I want to hold back but we fit too perfectly together, it feels too right, too good to press inside her again, to have her engulf my hard center. She moans, long and low, pushing herself against me, fisting the blankets and using the edge of the mattress for leverage. My hands on her tits, my teeth on the back of her neck, I pound hard into her, giving her a little more inside, her trembling gasps escalating a little more each time.

“Fuck me, Teo,” she moans, her voice thick with sensation. So I do.

Both of us yearning for each other, but both of us holding back, teetering on the edge, trying to stop time to linger in this perfect moment a little longer, until the weight of our lust gets too heavy, too unbearable, and something snaps. No more foreplay. No more teasing anticipation. No more dancing along the edge. Just pure fucking, beasts unleashed, urges rampant.

“Get up on the bed,” I tell her. “On all fours.”

I climb up behind her and slam into her again, finding the rhythm again, stroking harder and deeper until she’s panting my name.

“Fuck, you make me wild,” I growl, and pull back to gaze through the mad haze at the perfection of the curve of her back, the shake and tremor of her ass against my hips. Pounding into her almost angrily, with seven years’ worth of unfulfilled need. I grab a fistful of her sweat-damp hair and pull her head back, guiding her throaty screams upward. She pushes, straight-armed, against the bed frame, urging me deeper.

I smack her ass as she pushes, as I ram, until her muscles go limp, her moans pitching higher and higher. I can tell she’s close, so I flip her over onto her back and gaze into her eyes as I pump into her, watching the ecstasy take her over. She closes her eyes and her moans reach even higher levels as her orgasm slams through her, the sound of her pleasure echoing through the apartment as her body gushes with the honey-thick glow of satisfaction.

“Teo,” she says, reaching up to pull me toward her for one last kiss. “I love you.”

Suddenly I lose all control. With a frenzy of final thrusts I let myself go, coming deep inside of her, the last tightenings of her pussy taking the last of my lust. My own body almost numb as I lean over, breath slowing, and plant a grateful kiss on her neck.

A quarter of an hour later, we’re lying on our sides in her bed, gazing at each other as we recover some of our senses, come down from the high.

“That was nothing like high school,” Ash says, still biting her lip a little from the shimmering afterglow.

“Well, we never had much time back then,” I say, feeling the stirrings of another lust begin deep in my chest. Pushing a cool finger down her side.

“No,” she says, a little sadly. “We didn’t.”

I narrow my eyes a little, my finger reaching her waist and pulling her closer, until the cool skin of her breasts is pressed against my chest. Close enough to see the swirls in her eyes again.

“I’m done thinking about the past,” I say, hands already roving across the mountain of her ass again. “I wanna make the most of this right now.”

“And what about later?” she asks with a mischievous smile.

I pull her on top of me. “We’ll figure it out,” I say, drawing her lips down toward mine.