I spent the train ride home from Thanksgiving with my parents caught between periods of silent staring and bouts of near manic laughter, and everyone else on the train seemed to be in similar spirits.

Dinner had been precisely as awful as I’d expected, but because I’d been dreading some health crisis bomb to go off I was relieved that it hadn’t. My dad seemed to be fine, aside from his chronic spinelessness, but that wasn’t any more acute than usual, so I wasn’t sure what Eva had been smoking. Maybe she’d just wanted something to be concerned about. God knew it wouldn’t have been the first time.

When I got above ground I just stood for a minute, breathing in the autumn air, looking up and down Broad Street at the lights of the theater marquees and hotel bars.

I pulled out my phone, took a deep breath, and texted Christopher.

I have an indecent proposal for you. Also an apology.

I knew he was at his parents’ but it was nearly nine and I was hoping maybe they’d eaten early. My phone pinged almost immediately.

I only accept apologies in person.

Then you’d better take me up on the indecent proposal.

I realized I was grinning, cleared my throat, and walked down South Street toward home.

You have my full attention, he wrote.

Okay, here goes: do you want to come over and consume even more food than we already have? I know of a magical place that can save Thanksgiving… Then, remembering that he actually liked his family, I added, Or uh make it even better if it was already good.

I can be there in 20.

Just come up the fire escape.

I hurried the last few blocks home, stopping at Cinders on the way.

It was operated via a fold-down counter out of a window in a building it shared with a sex toy shop. The non-sex-toy shop half of the building had been partially burned-out back in the nineties and the owner took the insurance money and abandoned it. A few years later, Cinders simply appeared—open for business one day where there had been nothing the day before. It had just been regular burritos at first (or so I’d heard), but the holiday burritos had been so popular that the owner (who we all just called Cinders) went with it, introducing more and more holiday burritos and taking the non-holiday days as, well, holidays.

“Hey, if it ain’t the walking billboard!” Cinders called as I walked up, thick South Philly accent curling his vowels.

“And if it isn’t the man who does the best holiday wrapping on South Street.”

He held out a hand through the window and I squeezed it. “Where’s your buddy this Thanksgiving?”

“He moved, man. Got a job in Michigan, teaching.”

“No kidding. Well good for him. Damn. You tell that one I said well done, y’hear. I liked him. Smart kid. So, one this year?”

“Nah, better make it two. I’m inducting a first-timer into the world of Cinders, so I want him to get the full effect.”

He pointed at me with his knife. “Good thinking. Two, then. With everything?”

Everything meant turkey, sweet potato roasted with brown sugar, cornbread stuffing, and cranberry sauce.

“Everything.”

“Listen,” he said as he handed me a bag with two huge, warm burritos. “I’m doing solstices now. Tell your friend—pretty black girl who likes horoscopes? I’m gonna have, uh, moon burritos on the winter solstice. They’re vegan. Okay? Longest night of the year, plenty a time for eatin’ burritos. You tell her.”

“Morgan,” I said, smiling. She’d become the newest Cinders convert when I’d brought her for Rosh Hashanah burritos in the fall (turned out black beans went surprisingly well with apples and honey). “I’ll tell her.”

“Yeah, Morgan. Moon burritos,” he murmured meditatively. “Okay, happy Thanksgiving. You enjoy, now.”

“Thanks,” I called, and blew him a kiss over my shoulder.

I got to the shop door just in time to see Christopher get out of a battered orange truck.

“Hey,” I said, walking over. “You know I just realized I have no idea where you live?”

He locked the truck, holding the handle while he kicked the bottom left corner of the door in what was clearly a familiar maneuver. “I live just the other side of the Italian Market, but I’m coming from my parents’ in Germantown.”

We faced off for a minute, the awkwardness of our last exchange making me feel like it’d be weird to touch him, but kind of just wanting to slide my arms around him. I held up the burritos and he nodded.

He followed me upstairs. It was awkward and I didn’t bother trying to make conversation as I let us in and shed my coat, put the burritos on plates, and poured bourbon into two glasses. I deposited it all on the wagon wheel coffee table, avoiding eye contact. I was still wearing the gray sweatshirt dress I’d worn to dinner and I wanted to change into pajamas, but it felt strange to do when things were strained between us. Too vulnerable to be in pajamas when he was in clothes. I settled for unzipping my boots and tossing them next to the closet.

When I looked up Christopher was looking at the art in my apartment. It was mostly work I’d traded for my own, or traded for tattoos. Jonah’s Day of the Dead animals, Nika’s glitter-crusted skulls, Willa’s leather masks, Mychaela’s collages of outer space. My favorite was by a guy whose name I never even knew, though it was signed JMB. It was a nude of a beautiful, fleshy man, reclining in a throne made out of half a bathtub, every inch of his skin intricately tattooed, bubbles from the bath clinging to his inked skin. His eyes were distant and his expression ecstatic. I’d traded two of my paintings for it at an art show years ago. The last show I’d done.

“Wow,” Christopher said, coming to stand in front of the nude. “I’m so in awe of artists. I don’t know how you do it at all. Not just the technical side, but the whole thing. How certain things present such…opportunity.”

“Well you do that with food, don’t you? See the opportunity of how certain flavors go together?”

He turned toward me, brows drawn together. “Hmm. I guess a little. I never thought of it as being the same.” Before I could respond he said, “Hey, can we make with the apology part of this whole jawn so we can get on to me asking about how your Thanksgiving was?”

I nodded and sat down on the couch, but instead of sitting beside me he sat on the leather armchair across from me.

“I won’t apologize for not being free, or for needing—wanting—to paint. But I’m sorry I was so mean about how I reacted. I…implied that you expected something of me. That you had some kind of, I don’t know, menacing ulterior motive or something. Which was super unfair. You didn’t do anything to make me think that. At all. Ever. I reacted that way because of me and my brain, and not because of you. So I’m really sorry.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I accept your apology. And I accept what you’re not apologizing for. I know I sprung those invitations on you at the last minute and I really wasn’t expecting you to drop anything to hang with me. Just…hoping, I guess, that you might be free.”

I nodded, glad I’d been right about him. He stood and pressed a kiss to my lips, thumb stroking my cheekbone, then sat down beside me.

“So why did you react that way? Have other people you’ve been in relationships with made you feel shitty for working, or…?”

I snorted, and muttered, “What other relationships?”

Christopher’s gaze sharpened. “You haven’t…dated people much? How come?”

I dropped my head back on the couch and sighed. What I really wanted was just to talk to Christopher without thinking too much. I wanted us to know each other already, rather than having a State of the Union about our relationship.

“Well, I dated Marcus for almost a year, a lifetime ago.”

“Marcus from the shop, Marcus?”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s it for long-term relationships. Mostly I’ve dated people for, uh, shorter periods.”

“Why so short?”

“Oh, sometimes because after I got to know them a little I realized I didn’t like them after all. Or that I’d rather be working on art or tattooing. Sometimes because it just fell apart. Like, I’d stop being willing to put in the effort, or it would start to feel like an obligation. I’d get claustrophobic.”

“How long did you usually date them for?”

“Er, about a month.”

We both looked at each other, realizing that a month was about how long it had been since we’d met. Then Christopher shot me a cocky grin, like he was determined to beat the odds, and relaxed back into the chair.

“Well, you are pretty bad at it.”

“Huh?”

“Dating. I mean, I basically had to beg you to go out with me, and when you finally did, you flashed everyone else in the room and then ravished me in a filthy alley.”

I laughed, and then remembered a conversation I’d had with Daniel and laughed even more.

“Oh, man,” I said. “I gave Daniel all this dating advice and I was so serious about it, like”—I wagged my finger and made my expression stern—“wear these jeans and don’t swear too much and…and…and all this shit.” I started laughing harder and Christopher chuckled too.

“I have to tell you a secret,” he said. “I have no idea why, and I don’t want to analyze it, honestly, but I find it ridiculously hot that you have such a filthy damn mouth. I mean, filthy.”

I opened my filthy damn mouth to comment, realized I was about to swear in response, realized that would be ridiculous, and closed it again.

Christopher leaned in and ran a thumb over my lips, then kissed me. “Okay, so what’s this indecent proposal?”

I was pretty ready to abandon the burrito in favor of other pursuits, and I forced myself to refocus on the matter at hand. “This”—I pointed—“is the Thanksgiving Burrito. If I were you, I would prepare to have my mind blown. Of course, if you ate an actual delicious Thanksgiving dinner then the effect is, admittedly, not quite so shocking. It’s true that Cinders kind of caters to those of us who need the holidays redeemed. And a burrito is the ultimate redemption.”

“I ate a pretty good Thanksgiving dinner,” he confirmed. “But that was hours and hours ago. And I can always eat.”

“Why do Christians do that?”

“Huh?”

“That…eat dinner at lunchtime thing on holidays. It’s so weird.”

“Jews don’t do that?”

“No way, man. Our shit doesn’t even start till sundown.”

He laughed. “Uh, I don’t know because my family’s always done it. I guess I thought everyone did that. Though you’re seeing one reason it’s a great idea right here. I get to have my cake and eat it too.”

“That’s not what that saying means.”

“I get to eat my cake and then eat it again. How’s that?”

“Yummm, cake. So, go.” I gestured him toward the burrito.

He took a bite and a slow smile spread across his face as he chewed. “That…is somehow perfect,” he said. I could almost see the cogs turning as he started to imagine how he could riff on it in deli sandwich form.

“Right!? Yay. Also, do not steal The Burrito for Melt or I’ll have you blacklisted.”

He grinned and held up his free hand in peace. Now that I knew he wasn’t an idiot who couldn’t accept an apology or appreciate The Burrito I unwrapped my own and started eating. I was starving.

“So can I ask about how your Thanksgiving was now, or is there some kind of hallowed no-talking-while-burritoing rule I should be aware of?”

“It was garbage, thanks, and yours?” I tore off a huge bite of my burrito so I couldn’t speak.

“It was great, thanks. Garbage how?”

“Welp. My cousin Tamara, who’s six years younger than me, just had her third child—she’s married. My cousin Neil got a promotion at the advertising firm he works at so now he’s been able to put a down payment on a loft in Center City. Janie, the Johnsons next door’s daughter is getting her master’s degree in urban planning, which is both academically impressive and extremely useful in today’s competitive job market. Kenneth, the neighbor’s kid from across the street, just got married to the nicest woman, and they’re going to be decorating the nursery in lavender and mint—did you know those colors are very on-trend for a nursery? Very on-trend. Let’s see…oh! The Roscoes, up the block? Their daughter just made partner. She’s two years younger than me. And all of them keep in what seems to be near constant communication with their parents about everything they do.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah, my mom can somehow remember every accomplishment of every person between the ages of eighteen and forty but can’t remember the name of my shop. Hmm, the brain is a complex and mysterious organ.” I tapped my head in faux confusion.

“But you’re wicked successful—did you tell them about how busy the shop is and how that Eddie guy is promoing you? About your art show?”

“They don’t care about that stuff. Those aren’t real accomplishments.” At Christopher’s look of surprise, I explained, “My parents hate tattoos. Well, my mom does. My dad wouldn’t have an independent opinion if it begged him. She thinks they’re ugly and disgusting. When I left school at sixteen to apprentice, they didn’t speak to me for months. And when they did, my mother cried every time she saw me because it was just so hard for her that I would never amount to anything. It’s terrible for a parent when their child totally disappoints them, did you know?”

“Fuck, I’m sorry. That’s awful—they should be so proud of you. Would they have felt the same if you hadn’t left school?”

“It wouldn’t have been quite as bad, probably. They were horrified. Like, spit over their shoulders, don’t speak my name horrified. I swear to god, in another life, my mother would’ve loved to be a voodoo practitioner. She said I was throwing my life away, that I was chasing a stupid dream. I mean, at least if I’d run away to Hollywood to try and be a movie star or something, they could’ve understood the impulse. Even though no doubt my mom would’ve told me I’d never make it because movie stars are thin and beautiful. Still, she could’ve understood. But tattoos? I might as well as have dropped out of high school to be a garbage collector, in her mind. Uh, not that there’s anything wrong with—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Christopher said, patting my arm. His expression darkened. “I am, in this moment, honestly not trying to flirt with you, though I’ll start trying again after this moment. But I don’t get this thing you keep saying about your mom and your looks. You’re gorgeous. Your skin and your hair and your—god, those big brown eyes—and your fucking mouth. I don’t get it.”

He shook his head and a wave of warmth washed through me. It was the nicest non-flirting I’d ever heard. “Um, well, I’m glad you think so? But…here, look.”

I pulled out my phone and found a picture of my mom and Eva that I’d taken earlier that evening. They stood, flanking the oven, both looking slightly off to the left, because the doorbell had rung. I took the picture because they looked so hilariously like each other they could’ve been twins, my mom in a lavender cardigan and khaki capris, Eva in a lemon yellow cardigan and khaki capris, both of them with their arms crossed loosely in front of them.

“This is my mom, this is Eva. She’s my mother’s clone. They even got the same haircut, see? Mother-daughter spa day, ya know? And no, I wasn’t invited—but it’s the haircut my mom always gets so now Eva looks about fifty years old. She’s the office manager for a big tech company in Center City and has appropriate nine-to-five things to say about her job. Not, mind you, that she couldn’t have done better, as my mother points out from time to time when she’s feeling particularly poisonous and I’m not rising to her bait in a satisfying manner. ‘Eva’s very smart and could have run the company.’”

“Jesus, your whole voice changes when you do that mom impression thing—it’s creepy.”

“Ugh. Yeah, it’s a nightmare. I can hear her voice in my head. ‘Ginger, you know, if you’d just lose ten pounds then maybe your tattoos would look like an avant-garde statement instead of a desperate attempt to thumb your nose at society’s standards of beauty before men reject you for being…unconventional-looking. Ginger, if you insist on spending all your time at that tattoo store, then you’ll never expand your horizons and meet a different class of people. Oh, Ginger, you were such a smart girl—what happened? Ginger, you may think everything is fun and games now, but what will happen when you wake up twenty years from now, and you’re an old lady covered in tattoos who’s wasted her life and ended up totally alone without accomplishing anything?’”

I crossed my arms over my chest and slouched down on the couch. That last comment had sounded a little less like my mom than I’d expected.

Christopher put down his plate and slid next to me on the couch. “Come here.”

He took my plate off my stomach and pulled me against him. He then proceeded to give me the world’s nicest hug.

“Fuck,” he murmured, and I didn’t think I’d heard him use the word before. “I think your family sounds kind of awful.”

I sighed into his neck, breathing in his smell. “They are,” I muttered. “I hate them. I don’t know why I even went. I don’t know why I ever talk to them at all. They just make me feel like shit.”

I felt sulky and raw—wrung out. I hated how much I could hate them and still be hurt by them. Christopher ran his hand up and down my back and I let myself melt farther into him.

“I guess I kind of…I always hold out this tiny little bit of hope that one day they’ll magically…turn into other people or something and be proud of me. It’s stupid, I know.”

“It’s not stupid. It’s generous. With family, it’s easier if you can write them off entirely, I think. Draw a firm line. But you don’t just stop loving people, or stop wanting them to love you just because they act badly, you know?”

I nodded into his shoulder and breathed in his smell. Fresh air and beeswax, and the earthy smell of wool from his sweater. It was slightly too small for him, showing his T-shirt at the waist and leaving his wrist bones exposed, like it couldn’t quite contain him.

I lifted myself away and sat facing him, grabbing my plate again. I had barely eaten anything at dinner. “Okay, anyway, tell me about your nice Thanksgiving. I want to live vicariously.”

“Well, you’ve met my parents so you can probably guess there was a ton of food and a lot of talking over each other.”

I smiled. The one time I’d been at the shop when both of Christopher’s parents were there they had been like a sitcom couple, finishing each other’s sentences, talking over each other, and swatting each other affectionately. It was utterly unlike my mother’s icy disdain and my father’s anxious bumbling.

“Some aunts and uncles and cousins were there, and a friend of my mom’s who’s like a aunt to us. She has a subscription to every magazine under the sun so she’s always quoting them, only she’ll mix up the tips from different magazines, so it becomes a ridiculous mashup of, like, ‘how to remove a stain from your sexually uninhibited cat using only ultra-thick motor oil and the powers of embracing yes.’ We ate a lot and there were five different kinds of pie—I’m a pie man, you should know. Over cake, I mean.”

That was ludicrous, but I let it go for the moment. I’d had enough discord for one evening. “How do you feel about ice cream?”

“I could take it or leave it.”

“So what else should I know?” I’d meant it to just encourage him to tell me more about Thanksgiving, but his expression grew a little shy.

“I told my brother about you.”

“You did?”

“I emailed him about you. He doesn’t do the phone.”

“Amen.”

“I told him I had a huge crush on you,” he drawled, leaning back on the couch and grinning at me. That should’ve sounded puerile and ridiculous but I liked how he was challenging me. As if it was a dare where I would have to tell him explicitly if his attention wasn’t warranted. “I also told him that our date the other night was the best date I’d ever been on. And not just because I got an original Ginger Holtzman out of the deal.”

Whoa. That was unbelievably sweet. “Um, wow, thanks. I…well, it was the best date I’ve ever been on too. Hands down. Are you guys close?”

“We…are. I haven’t actually seen him in a while. He’s lived in Boston during the year and in a small town near Tanglewood Music Center in the summers for the last few years, and I’ve been all over the place. We were really close as kids.”

“He older or younger?”

“Older. A little over two years. I would drive him nuts following him around and stuff when he wanted to be left alone, but we mostly got along really well. I wanted to be just like him. He was so smart. He always seemed to understand everything. Stuff our parents’ friends said. Why people did stuff. He was in math classes with seniors in high school when we were still in middle school. And the piano? He was just…unbelievable. I even tried to pretend I was bad at some of the stuff he was bad at so I’d be more like him.”

“Like what?”

“Like I pretended I wasn’t good at sports even though I was. Or my dad had season hockey tickets and Jude thought hockey was boring so I pretended I didn’t want to go.” He grinned. “Fortunately my dad saw right through me and made me go anyway, so I could whine about it and front like I didn’t want to but I still got to go.”

“God, that’s so sweet of your dad.”

“Yup. When we were little, Jude and I did everything together. Shared everything.” He rolled his eyes. “He had this kind of singular focus though, even as a kid. This follow-through. Once, we said we were going to set up all the trains and this little Christmas village thing that we’d had forever. My parents had it all packed away in the attic. We dragged out all these boxes and unpacked the stuff, and after like an hour I was kind of done. But Jude spent all day on it. Maybe eight hours setting the whole thing up. It was amazing—so intricate. It was perfect.”

Christopher’s eyes were wistful and far away.

“I was more interested in watching him because he was so totally absorbed in it. Older brother worship, or whatever. But he had this way of making me feel like whatever he did still included me. We left it up for a month and he always called it our village, as if I hadn’t just sat there, occasionally handing him stuff. Anyway, around the time he turned fourteen everything kind of changed. He started acting so different. He stopped talking to me. Stopped talking, period. He never wanted to hang out. Never wanted to do anything. It was like he just…switched off? He was there, physically, but inside, he was gone.”

I slid my hand into Christopher’s and squeezed, hard.

“I was too young to really understand what was happening. This was years before he got diagnosed. I just knew that all of a sudden he didn’t want me around anymore. He’d just stay in his room and listen to music. My parents said he was just being a moody teenager, and I assumed they were right. He was older and I figured it would happen to me to. But it just got worse and worse. Turned out he has major depressive disorder.”

“That’s so hard. How is he now?”

“Not great. He’s actually in a hospital right now, in Boston, so they can keep an eye on him. Then he’s coming to stay with my parents. But we’re not sure when. Maybe for Christmas…” He trailed off, seeming distracted by playing with my hair. Before I could ask another question about his brother he said, “I try really hard not to stare at you because you get this boo face sometimes.”

“Boo face?” It took me a second to register the abrupt subject change.

“Yeah, like boo!” He said it like I was a ghost popping out from behind a curtain. “Like, you want to scare me away. I want to though. You’re so…complicated-looking.”

My first reaction was suspicion, but the way his eyes were moving from my hair to my face to my body felt pretty complimentary.

“Beautiful, I mean, like I already said,” he said absently. “But with all your tattoos and your hair. Your face, how you dress. It’s like there’s so much of you going on I always feel like I don’t want to miss anything. Uh, that was me back to flirting again.”

That was about the best compliment I’d ever gotten.

We sat on the couch and looked at each other, but instead of feeling self-conscious and irritated, like I usually would with someone talking about my appearance, I felt like he saw me. Like he was looking at all the specific things that made me me.

And after a few breaths, I forced myself to do what I actually wanted to do. I stopped thinking about how he was watching me, what he might be thinking about what he saw. And I started actually looking at him the way I always wanted to look at people but usually didn’t because I didn’t want them to feel uncomfortable. And I hoped that he’d feel it as the appreciation I intended, and not scrutiny.

Faces were like tattoos, aesthetic and expressive at the same time. Faces were what they were when they were still—beautiful, ugly, boring, interesting, and everything in between. But they were never really blank. Beauty didn’t signify, but the way someone used their face, the way their face formed expressions—it interacted with their features in a way that had impact.

The freckles that followed the lines of Christopher’s cheekbones and crossed over the bridge of his nose were aesthetically pleasing to me, yeah, but also, when he laughed and his face turned pliable those freckles cut a line through that expression, reminding me of a hard spine beneath soft skin. The fact that his lower lip was full was hot because it made me think of kissing him and of what else his mouth could do. But also, when he shot me the look that meant he found something I’d just said ridiculous, his mouth retained some gentleness, easing any barb.

I traced his mouth with my finger and felt his sharp breath. I ran my fingertips over the shaved sides of his hair. It felt like velvet, and Christopher’s eyes fluttered shut as I moved to run my fingers through the rest of his hair. I loved the color of it, a thick, fiery shade between russet and rust. He slid a hand into my hair and twined his fingers through my curls. His touch was tender and sure, and it made me feel like he wanted me. Like anything I did would be welcome.

I leaned in and kissed him, pressing him back into the couch, and he hummed into my mouth, his other hand holding me close. I wanted to taste his skin everywhere, feel the subtle change from smooth to rough and everything in between. My tongue along the shell of his ear, dipping inside at his sharp intake of breath. Mapping his jaw and kissing his throat where his stubble softened. But it was so much—so overwhelming with him close, all color and line and texture and angle, smell and breath and sound.

I wanted all of it but I didn’t even know where to start, and I realized I was just staring, but he didn’t seem to mind.

The heat coming off him was intense, and I slid a hand under his shirt, pushing it and his sweater up over his head, wanting to see him.

He was beautiful—his freckled shoulders broad, chest covered in coppery hair that led down his stomach and disappeared into his jeans. He looked even bigger without his shirt on, the subtle play of muscle making his strength clear. I leaned closer, straddling his hips, and I could feel him harden against me.

Christopher sucked in a breath, then slid a hand over my breast, his thumb at my nipple sending shivers through me.

“Are your…nipples pierced?” he asked, and I winked at him. Guess there were benefits to sex not had in alleys. “Christ. Can we please have sex now?”

I laughed, but the raw, aroused scrape of his voice made me shiver. “Kay.”

He stood up as if my weight on his lap was nothing and set me gently on my feet. For a moment, he just looked at me, pupils dilated, lips slightly parted, as if he was memorizing the lines of me. Then ran hands over my shoulders, gently, as if he were holding himself back.

“Can I?” he asked, plucking at the fabric of my dress and nudging me next to the bed.

I nodded and swallowed hard as Christopher stripped me of my dress in one smooth move.

“Jesus, you’re so beautiful.” His voice was awed, his eyes roaming over my body.

My heart pounded, and as his gaze ran over me, my skin prickled.

He was so undeniably present. Large and unmoving, he took up all the space, all my air, all my senses, but I welcomed that kind of overtaking. I welcomed the way it made my heart slam against my chest and made me feel surrounded, enveloped, overcome.

He dropped to his knees and kissed the swell of my belly, where a black and gray snake curled, and followed the line of it to my waist and up my ribs, where its tongue licked the underside of my left breast, overlaying the snake’s tongue with his own.

The second he got my bra off, he knelt and pressed his face to my breastbone, kissing as his stubble rubbed the insides of my breasts, then turned his attention to the barbells through my nipples. His tongue was gentle but his teeth were sharp, and every scrape and nip sent shivers through me. I shuddered when he sucked hard, and pushed my chest out. He licked my nipples roughly and I moaned as my stomach tightened, burying my hands in his hair.

Suddenly, he hooked his arms under my knees, muscular thighs bunching as he lifted me onto the bed on my back. The sheer power of his body was incredibly hot and I shivered as he moved over me. He dragged my underwear off as he trailed kisses back down to my hip bones and into the crease of my thigh.

“Fuck, Ginger,” he said. He kissed the tender flesh of my inner thighs, stubble scraping slightly and making the nerve endings come alive. My hips bucked toward him and I felt empty and throbbing. I wanted him inside me.

I twisted a bit to one side to kick my underwear the rest of the way off, and he grabbed my thigh.

“Have I mentioned I’m something of an ass man?” he murmured hotly. He ran a rough palm over the swell of my ass, and squeezed. Then he paused and leaned in closer, looking at my tattoo, and smiled.

“You also said you were a pie man,” I said, patting my ass. The tattoo there was a slice of cherry pie on a blue and white patterned china plate, with lyrics from Patty Griffin’s “Making Pies” curling around it in the stylized script of a fifties diner: “You could cry or die or just make pies all day. I’m making pies.”

“It’s true.” He licked the slice of pie. “Now this I can have and eat too.” He nibbled at the pie and I smiled.

I couldn’t go any longer without touching him. I pulled his briefs down and his thick erection smacked his stomach. He was already leaking precome and his cock had a wicked curve that I hoped would touch all the right places inside me. I stroked him and he bit his lip as the muscles of his stomach and ass clenched. Fuck, he was gorgeous.

“I’m an ass woman too,” I murmured, sliding my hands over it. He had a gorgeous ass, round and muscular, and I pulled him down over me, squeezing until he groaned and shuddered, grinding his hips so the base of his erection slid in the cleft of my pussy—a tease, a promise.

We kissed hard, sliding tongues and gasped breath, the scrape of stubble against my chin electrifying. My heart was racing and I could feel it in my throat, my nipples, between my legs. A dark, hot pulse.

“I want you,” I managed to get out, grabbing a condom from the bedside table and holding it up.

I cupped Christopher’s heavy balls and ran a finger, feather light, up his length, watching his cock jump against his stomach. I wanted to watch him for hours—watch his unguarded reactions and the beautiful lines of him.

“Shit,” he murmured.

His eyes darted to mine as I watched him intently, eyelashes fluttering and the flush that started in his cheeks creeping down his throat. He shivered at my gaze and at his own touch as he rolled the condom on.

He ran a hand from my knee up my thigh, spreading my legs wide so I was completely open to him. He slid his fingers inside me, stroking my wet folds and swirling around my clit until my hips thrust up and my knees fell apart. I was breathing heavily, my skin hot and my clit throbbing.

He lowered his hips and slid inside me slowly, hard heat and pressure taking my breath away. At first it was almost too much, but then he bottomed out inside me and I felt myself adjust to his thickness. After a few slow thrusts, I tilted my hips back and he thrust his upward, and then, on a deep thrust, the tip of his cock hit my G-spot, lighting me up.

I clenched my inner muscles around him and we both groaned.

“Oh, god, please?” I muttered.

He was breathing heavily with the effort of holding back, but at my words, he started to thrust into me in earnest, and the pressure built, friction licking my insides with liquid heat.

He slid me up the bed like I weighed nothing and pulled out, licked a drop of sweat off my stomach, following its trail with his tongue. The loss of him left me feeling empty, and I reached out a hand to his shoulder. Then he rolled my hips up and kissed my clit, his stubble electrifying the sensitive tissue as he started to lick me. Jolts of pleasure shot through me and I squeezed Christopher’s shoulder.

He gave another lick, then slid up my body and drove into me in one long thrust, a starburst of pleasure running through me. I swore and he did it again, the angle perfect. On his next thrust, I grabbed his ass to keep him inside me, and his eyelids fluttered. He pulsed his hips, deep inside me, and I pressed my hips up, clenching my muscles until my heart pounded.

“Touch yourself,” he said against my lips, then kissed me as I reached between us. I slid my hand down his stomach to the base of his cock, giving him a squeeze. He bucked and I kissed him harder, running a teasing fingertip over my clit as he moved inside me. It was perfect—the full heat of him inside me and his hard body around me. His firm chest brushed my nipples, my piercings gone extra sensitive from his teeth earlier, and I could feel my orgasm starting to collect, thin shivers of pleasure at my nipples and clit, stronger tendrils deep inside me and in my belly.

“Fuck,” I moaned, and Christopher went wild, driving into me at an angle that had me seeing stars and clenching around him with every thrust. I’d lost track of my body, become nothing but heat and sweat and pulse and then his mouth was on mine.

He found that perfect angle again, then, and with every powerful thrust he hit my G-spot, the deep pleasure rippling through my core. My head was pounding and I squeezed my eyes shut, blocking out everything except the feeling of him inside, filling me so perfectly that I never wanted it to stop. I was moaning at every thrust, and his rhythm started to falter. I knew he was close.

I clenched every muscle, pushing myself there, pressing my hips up as the pulse pounded in my ears and the first ripples of orgasm tore through me with his powerful thrusts. I clutched at Christopher’s back and cried out, and he slammed into me and then held where he was, pushing even deeper inside as my muscles rippled around him. Heat flushed through me and Christopher groaned as my body milked his cock.

He thrust faster and faster, then froze as he came, and buried his face in my neck as he thrust a few more times, coming down.

I shivered a little as gentle echoes of pleasure washed through me, and then let myself relax, boneless and fucked-out on the bed.

“God,” he groaned, sounding totally satisfied. Then, a minute later, “Am I crushing you?”

“No, I like it,” I mumbled. My voice sounded thick and distant.

His solid weight surrounding me, inside me, his breath on my neck—it all made me feel connected to him and I wanted it to last.

After a minute, he pulled out gently and I felt my body readjust to being without him. He lifted me half onto his chest, and ran fingers up and down my spine, finally resting one hand on my ass, over the pie tattoo, like it belonged to him, and letting out a huge sigh.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, patting my ass appreciatively. “Thanks.”

I laughed at that, but couldn’t find any words. I wasn’t tired but I felt relaxed, my limbs like jelly and my heartbeat in my clit.

“This is perfect,” he murmured into my hair. It was perfect. But as I lay there, I found my heart rate increasing again, a thread of anxiety interrupting the peace of a moment before. I felt blown open, vulnerable, scared. I buried my face in Christopher’s shoulder, wishing it away. After a minute, though, my stomach let out an embarrassingly loud growl and I remembered I still had half my burrito left. Yeah, Holtzman, that’s not an excuse at all.

“Wait, I know how to make it even more perfect.” I kissed Christopher, then pulled him to the couch. I put my burrito on his gorgeous chest and snapped a picture, then sank down next to him, putting my legs across his and retrieving my burrito as I texted the picture to Daniel.

“Are you posting to some kind of food porn site?” Christopher asked, raising one eyebrow. “Because I’m pretty confident in the whole size area, but even a porn star would look lacking when compared to this burrito.”

“I’m just showing Daniel I took his advice,” I said, and held out the burrito to share. “And you really don’t have anything to be concerned about.”