Chaos

And my heart tells me I do too.

With my face still cradled gently between his calloused hands, I open my eyes and lift onto my tiptoes, meeting him in a kiss that promises to put me back together—even as it breaks my heart. He’s so close, but I feel like I miss him. Like I’ve always missed him. And I’m desperate to make this feeling go away—this distance, this emptiness.

His hands tunnel into my hair, and he draws me up as I draw him down, but we’re still not close enough. I need more of him, and I find myself walking him backward, step by step to the edge of my bed. When the backs of his legs are against it, I crawl on top of him, my knees sinking into the mattress next to his hips and my lips forcing his head down to my pillow. We’re both breathing heavy as I kiss him, as he kisses me back—little moans escaping my lips and big ones rumbling in his chest. His hands slide under the hem of my shirt, greedy for soft skin, and mine scratch over his scalp as I kiss him desperately, needing him more than I need to breathe.

He’s hard beneath me when he begins to sit up, to take control, but when I push him back down against my mattress, that’s when his self-restraint snaps. His fingers grip the hem of my shirt and yank it over my head in an unapologetic move that makes my skin burn hot. Even in just a bra, I’m burning up, so when he reaches behind me and unclasps it with an expert flick of his fingers, all I can do is thank him.

I thank him with my lips, my tongue, my hands—with the little sounds I make as he traces his tongue across my collarbone and dips scalding-hot kisses into the dip at the base of my throat. When he sits up this time, I let him, and the petal of my nipple is between his lips a second later. He curls his tongue around it—a wet, warm, breath-stealing sensation that has it blooming between his lips.

My back arches. My head falls back. My long hair cascades over his hand as he kisses and nibbles and pulls. And I don’t know what comes over me, but when I tip my chin back down, my fingers grip tight around his hair and I break his lips from my skin. He looks up at me with blazing green eyes—the forest in them burning to the ground—and I devour his mouth a shallow breath later, my hips sinking low on top of the stiffness inside his jeans. I moan at the sudden heat between my legs, my blood pumping fast when Shawn’s hands rock me even tighter against him.

“Shawn,” I gasp, parting my lips from his on a moan, but he doesn’t release his hold on the frayed back pockets of my jeans. He moves me against him in a heated rhythm that my hips are eager to match, and when I can’t take the sparks that are flying between us anymore, I reach down and find the button of his jeans.

Shawn watches me as I unbutton him, as I unzip him, as I undo him by stripping out of the last of my clothes next to the bed—in full light, on full display, just for him. It’s too late to feel self-conscious, because I’ve already put it all on the line. He shimmies out of the rest of his clothes as I fish for a condom stashed in a drawer I haven’t gone to in forever, and when I hand it to him, he follows my silent request and slides it over himself—slowly, while I watch.

My bottom lip bears the sharp bite of my anticipation as his fingers glide over every hard inch, and I begin crawling on top of him before he’s even finished. I walk my knees up the bed until I’m hovering over his hips, and he lies motionless on his back, staring up at me.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks, but his eyes are betraying his self-control. They’re on my lips, my breasts, my stomach, and lower. The feather-light touch of his fingers dances over my sides, then my thighs—giving me goose bumps, making my nipples harden, making it impossible for me to speak.

I don’t answer him. Instead, I lower my lips to his, kissing him slowly as my fingers scratch down his chest, his stomach, the thin line of hair trailing south of his navel. I wrap my hand around him and tease him with my fingers, relishing in the way his grip tightens around my waist. When I can tell he wants to push me lower, to steal control, I lift him to meet me, and then I rock down on top of him, just enough for both of us to feel it.

My breath catches in my throat, and he squeezes my hips almost painfully. With his lip pinned between my teeth, I sink down lower, deeper, until I can’t tell where he ends and I begin. The memory of how this felt with him in high school has faded, but God, I know it couldn’t have felt like this. My heart feels ten times too big for my chest, and each beat makes it impossible for me to think. All I know is that it’s Shawn between my legs, Shawn under my palms, Shawn holding me tight as I rock lower and lower still. There’s so much of him for me to take, and I want him—all of him, every single bit.

He moans against my mouth, and I kiss the sound away until he’s all the way inside me, my forehead dropping to the pillow next to his head. The length of him is making every nerve in my body flash-fire with electric heat, and all I can do is make tiny sounds of ecstasy against the soft shell of his ear as he begins moving in and out of me on his own, his strong hands holding my hips in place. With Shawn rocking in me, out of me, in me, out of me, I grip the bedsheets, the pillow next to his head, the roots of his hair.

The moans coming from my throat become quicker, more frantic, and his pace picks up to match. He’s pushing me higher and higher, out of my fucking mind, and in the heart of the fire, I sit up straight and brace my hands on his shoulders. I steal the pace from him, my knees lifting me, rocking me, grinding me against him, until the world is spinning and I’m being flipped onto my back.