Dark Wild Night

OLIVER IS STANDING outside my building on Friday afternoon when the black car pulls up to the curb. The driver opens my door and then unloads my small bag from the trunk, refusing a tip.

“Already covered,” he says with a smile.

I wilt. This time I was prepared. I shove the twenty in my pocket and look up.

Mute at night, frantic to contribute meaningfully during the day, I spoke to Oliver only twice in the past two days—for a total of maybe ten minutes—and my reaction to seeing him right now is exactly what I expected. He’s wearing dark jeans, a deep red T-shirt, his navy blue Converse. His hair is combed but hangs over his forehead. His lenses don’t begin to filter the brilliant blue eyes behind them. When he smiles at me, tucking the corner of his bottom lip between his straight, white teeth, it’s like taking ten deep gulps of fresh air.

He takes one step toward me and I move quickly into his arms, pressing into him for more when he squeezes tight, pushing all the air out of me. His mouth is on my temple, my cheek, covering my lips in small bursts of kisses, lips opening, tongue sliding inside to claim me. Out on the sidewalk his hands impatiently move over my waist, my hips, my ass, words sliding across my lips as he tells me he missed me, missed me, missed me.

I want to go upstairs, make love, drown in him. But it’s nearly seven, and we have dinner at my dad’s. With a groan, Oliver pulls away, nodding to his car at the curb. He links his fingers with mine and walks me to the passenger side.

“Ready?”

I nod. “No.”

Laughing, he opens the door for me. “Let’s go.”

AS IMPOSSIBLE AS it seems, I’ve never really had an awkward moment with my dad. Even after he came home from the war and we sat across from each other at the breakfast table, both of us unable to think of anything but his nightmare-tortured bellowing in the middle of the night, haunted by the images scorched on his closed lids. Even when Mom left and he lost his mind in a bottle and pills and I would drag him to bed, give him water, listen to his sobs. Even when he came to my room while I was doing homework, and quietly admitted that he needed some help. We’ve had hard times—brutal even—but it’s never been weird.

This truth dissolves the moment we pull up at the curb and Dad is waiting on the porch, wearing an enormous grin.

It didn’t occur to me until just now that I’m twenty-three and have never brought a boyfriend home.

The second we walk in the door, I know Dad is going to make this as horrible as I expected: his smile reaches both ears, and when he slaps Oliver on the back, the sound cracks through the room.

Oliver smiles easily at him, eyes glinting with humor. “Hey, Greg.”

“Son!” Dad crows.

My stomach turns tight and sour. “Dad, don’t,” I warn.

He laughs. “Don’t what, Lorelei?”

“Don’t make it weird for the rest of all time.”

He’s already shaking his head. “Make it weird? Why would I do that? Just saying hi to you and your new fella. Your boyfriend. Your—”

I growl at him, cutting him off.

Reaching for something behind the couch, he pulls out a Barry White CD and an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne. “To the happy new couple!”

Oliver laughs, a single short burst of delight—always so easy, never makes it awkward for anyone—and takes the bottle from Greg. “Allow me the pleasure.”

“I don’t think I had any say in the matter,” Dad jokes.

I squeeze my eyes closed. It’s both the best and worst thing that the two of them are such good friends.

The panel shows the girl, throwing a frying pan into the air and standing quietly beneath it.

I pat both their shoulders as I walk past them. “If anyone needs me for this self-congratulatory wankfest I’ll be in the backyard.”

Dad calls after me—“Don’t you want a glass of this New Relationship Champagne, Lola?”—but I’m already through the kitchen, pushing out into the crisp open air.

It’s gorgeous out. Passion fruit vines crawl heavily up the fence separating our yard from the Blunts’, weighing down the ancient wood so that it bows toward our lawn. During the summer days there are so many bees inside the web of leaves that I used to imagine they could work in concert to lift the leaves, the fence, the yard, our house from the earth and take us somewhere else, like pulling a sticker from paper. When the fruit grows ripe, it falls from the vine, making a tiny popping sound against the hard earth below. I close my eyes, remembering the feel of the vibration of the bees above as I would crawl into the vines and feel along the ground for ripe fruit to take inside.

I feel like I haven’t breathed in days, but now that I’m away from L.A. I can. I’m aware of the tightness high in my throat and how it eases, a fist unclenching. Tension still knots my stomach. I have so much to do.

The script isn’t even finalized; Austin and Langdon compromised by letting me edit the version we came up with, on the condition that I don’t revert any of the agreed-upon changes back to the original version. Erik has given me two weeks to finish Junebug, which is good because soon after that, I leave on another book tour, and return a week later to the first day of principal filming on set. I’ve never had to juggle this much before, and every time I have to switch my headspace from movie Razor Fish to book Razor Fish to Junebug, it feels like learning how to write all over again. I am a reservoir, slowly draining water.

From the house, I hear Oliver’s low voice and then Dad’s burst of laughter followed by the pop of a cork. Despite the twisting worry in me, I bite my lip as I smile at the sound of their indistinct words, spoken in happy, easy tones. They’re a bit over-the-top when together, but I knew this about Dad already and still brought Oliver to dinner. They’re so genuinely fond of each other, and that knowledge is both a relief and terrifying.

The voices inside disappear and then the screen door creaks behind me, slow footsteps make their way down the back stairs, and I feel a long, warm body settle beside me on the lawn.

I lean into his side, closing my eyes and wanting to roll on him, luxuriate in the feel of him.

“Where’s Dad?” I ask.

Oliver slides an arm along my back, cupping his fingers into my waist. His mouth finds my neck and he speaks into it: “Putting the finishing touches on our Coming Out dinner.”

I laugh, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath.

“You don’t like how he’s taking all of this?”

“I do. . . .” I hedge. “It’s just like having a new haircut. You want everyone to like it but you don’t really need everyone to notice it quite so intensely.”

He bends, kissing the corner of my mouth. “You hate this sort of attention, don’t you? You want this, us—Loliver,” he says with a smirk, “to be a fact. Settled. Old news.”

I smile up at him, a million beating wings let loose in my heart. “Or maybe I want him to smile and be quietly knowing, but let me be the one who’s giddy over Loliver.”

“That’s rather selfish,” he says, teasing. “And for the record, I’ve never known your dad to be quietly knowing about anything.”

I bite my lip, looking up at him. His mouth is skewed by a tiny smile and I can tell he’s teasing, but he’s also not. “I know.”

He turns to me, rubbing the pad of his index finger along my bottom lip. “Greg’s happy for you.” Pausing, he studies me while I manage several short, shallow breaths under the gentle scrutiny. When he says more, his voice is quiet. “I get the sense you haven’t brought many boyfriends home.”

“Or any,” I say and his gaze becomes heavy, dropping to my mouth. “You’re the first.”

“You’ve had other long-term boyfriends, though?”

Reaching up, I touch my fingertip to his chin. “I wouldn’t call you and me long-term yet.”

He laughs. “I guess that depends on your definition; we’ve certainly been building up to this for a long time. I mean someone you’ve been with long enough to want to bring home.”

“Are you asking me how many people I’ve been with?”

A smile curves his lips. “Not directly.”

I laugh, telling him, “You’re my fifth.” He makes a little grumpy face I’ve never seen before, and I ask, “Do you want me to ask you?”

“You can,” he challenges, meeting my eyes and maybe knowing I won’t actually ask. I wait, and finally he laughs through a wince, “Though I don’t actually know. There were lots of random nights in uni. I’m going to guess around thirty.”

I nod, looking back over to the fence and holding my breath until the sting evaporates from my lungs.

“You don’t like that answer,” he says.

“Did you like mine?”

Laughing, he agrees: “Not really. In my ideal world I took your virginity the other night.”

I roll my eyes. “Guys are so ridiculous about that.”

“Well, clearly not just guys,” he argues. “You also don’t like that I’ve been with other women.”

“I don’t like the idea that you’ve loved other women.”

He can’t help the cocky flicker of a smile that flashes on his lips. Oliver leans close, mouth sliding up my neck to my ear. “Well, I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone quite like this. In this sort of giddy, obliterating game-changing way. Where I can see myself with her for the rest of my life.”

This feels so new, so bare, so exposed. I wonder if Oliver realizes how scary it is for me to bring him here, to admit—even if I can’t say the three tiny words myself—that I care that he loves me. As soon as we open our hearts up to love, we show the universe the easiest way to break them in half.

Thirty women. It’s not that it’s a surprise or particularly jarring, not after the initial sting, anyway. It’s that it’s new after months of never discussing these things. I can’t decide if I love or hate how everything I learn about him makes me feel like I don’t really know him at all. I know what art would make his eyes go wide, which movies he hates and which he loves. I know what to order him if he’s late to meet us at the Regal Beagle, I know that he’s an only child and that he doesn’t like ketchup. But I don’t know his emotional heart at all: who he’s ever imagined he might love, how he’s been hurt, and what kind of boyfriend he’s been to some of those women. What might send him away.

His hand comes up to my back, rubbing in small, slow circles.

“I missed you,” he whispers.

God, my heart. “Me, too.”

“Why did you not call me more?”

I shrug, leaning into his shoulder. “I didn’t know what to say. The meetings were hard. I missed a really important deadline. I went to a weird place.”

“What deadline?” he asks, pulling back to look at me.

“Junebug,” I say, and feel the now-familiar roll of nausea over it. “It was due two weeks ago.”

“It was?” he says, eyes wide. “I didn’t—”

I nod. “I know. I had the date right in my calendar, but in my head I thought it was next week. Even if it was next week, it would be late.”

“How can I help?”

It’s weird—but wonderful—to hear him ask this. Weird because it comes out so easily, so readily, and for the first time I really do see what Harlow meant about me being clueless: this sort of question has been second nature to Oliver for as long as I’ve known him.

“I don’t know. I’m going to dive into it all tomorrow morning.” I squeeze my eyes closed, wanting to put that aside, just for another couple of hours. “Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t call. I didn’t like being away. But then I didn’t like not liking being away.”

He laughs quietly. “That makes perfect sense.”

“I took sleeping pills a couple of the nights.”

I feel him turn to look at me. “Yeah? Do you need that usually?”

“No. But work was really stressful and I sort of turned into mute Lola.”

“Still a version of the Lola I love,” he says, kissing my hair. “I know her well.”

Away from him I felt crazy. Next to him, it’s easy to just spill it all and it doesn’t seem so strange. How did I manage to be away for three days?

He slides his hand into the back of my hair. “You’ll stay over tonight?”

I should say no but it’s not like I’m going to get a lot of work done tonight anyway. Tonight, I need this. I need the Oliver Reboot. Tomorrow, the crackdown begins in earnest.

I nod and turn my face to him just as he leans close, putting his lips on mine. Slightly open. Just barely wet. The tip of his tongue touches the tip of mine and it’s a match struck against pavement.

I’m over him, pressing down, needing relief in that aching part of me. Aching parts: between my legs. Inside my ribs. I want to believe I can breathe without him but I’m not sure, and I don’t know what’s more terrifying: thinking I could never be alone again or trying it.

I hear a quiet cry escape my throat. “I missed you.”

He kisses me again, whispering, “So did I. Come here, Lola Love.”

He draws his tongue across the seam of my mouth, encouraging me to open again. I feel his quiet groan, the urgency behind his touch when he cups my face and tilts his head, getting a better angle. Steam is rushing through my blood, too, urging my hips to fall into the instinctive easy rhythm. Desire flashes hot along my skin when my body remembers sex with him. I want every touch to turn into something deeper and wild. He growls and bites my lip when I grind my hips over him, needing to see if he’s hard already, as immediately desperate as I am.

But he shifts me back—reasonably—and I know the backyard of my dad’s house isn’t the right place for this. I can’t take him in small doses yet. I’m not used to kissing him enough to have just a taste.

Pulling away, I lean my forehead against his, catching my breath. It seems like instead of having five senses I now have twenty; everything inside me buzzes with sensory overload.

“Sorry,” I whisper.

“I still don’t really believe you’re on my lap like this.” He runs his hands up my sides. “Do you know how many times I touched myself to the fantasy of you sitting on my lap, fucking me while I suck your perfect tits?”

I burst out laughing, slapping a hand over my mouth as I glance back at the screen door.

He kisses my chin, his calm smile slowly straightening into a sweetly curved line. He suddenly seems thirty years older than me. He handles this infatuation so well. “We’ll finish this later.”

When I nod again, he guides me off his lap and we lie down, shoulder to shoulder, staring up at the sky. It feels like an enormous ocean above us, swimming with stars. Oliver’s hand finds mine, his long fingers curling around and between.

“Tell me more about L.A.,” he says.

I groan, taking a few breaths to collect my thoughts. “I started Razor so long ago, I don’t think I remember the stumbling at first. But going up to L.A. was like ice water dumped over my head. I felt naïve and useless in these meetings—about my own story—and then when I would go home at night to work on Junebug, it was like I couldn’t even get started.”

He hums sympathetically beside me, lifting our joined hands to his mouth to kiss the back of mine.

“I missed you and was obsessing about us, and couldn’t stop worrying about how I was coming off in these meetings.” I look over at him. “There were three of them: Gregory—don’t call him Greg, by God—Austin, and Langdon.”

“Gregory Saint Jude?” he asks, “He did Metadata last year, right?” He’s obviously more familiar with these names than I am—I had to do some quick IMDb’ing on my phone in the hall the other day—and I have a pang of embarrassment all over again.

“Right. And he’s fine. He didn’t really engage me much, but Langdon is a total douche. Initially Austin said Langdon really connected to the story, but let me be clear. He doesn’t. Or, maybe he does, but as a forty-something dude who wants to bang Quinn.”

Oliver groans. “So did you finish the edits?” he asks, and I can feel his head turned, the weight of his eyes on me.

“No, we got through it but they’re letting me have two weeks with it to ‘put my polish on it,’ whatever that means,” I say. “There are so many things I’m not allowed to change, and the things I am aren’t really details I care about. I don’t care about Quinn’s clothes.”

He sighs, turning his face back up to the sky. “I’m sorry it was frustrating, pet. That sucks.”

I nod. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out. I’m just glad to be back with you tonight.”

“Same.” He kisses my hand again, and after we have spent several minutes looking up at the stars in silence, the screen door squeaks open and I feel Dad up there, looking down at us. I know what he sees: his daughter lying on the grass, holding hands with a man for the first time in front of him. I can’t imagine what he feels, if it’s bittersweet or only sweet, or as terrifying for him as it is for me.

“Dinner,” he calls quietly.

Inside, he’s set the table with placemats and napkins tucked into brass rings. A candle is lit in the middle and when I look up at him to scowl, his eyes are more anxious than teasing. I can tell he knows he’s gone a little overboard and I give him a reluctant smile instead.

Oliver sits beside me on the opposite side of the table from Dad and we serve ourselves in silence. Without me here they’d be laughing and eating unself-consciously. Without Oliver here, Dad and I would be laughing and eating unself-consciously. In this case, two is not better than one.

Dad clears his throat awkwardly and looks up at us. “I am really happy for you two,” he says.

I open my mouth to beg for us to change the subject, for the love of God, but Oliver senses something I don’t, and covers my knee with his hand beneath the table, squeezing.

“Thanks. It’s pretty great so far.” He smiles at Dad before taking a bite of salad.

“Friends first,” Dad says, nodding.

“Friends first,” Oliver repeats.

Dad sips his water and then gazes at me, and I see what Oliver must have: Dad usually hides behind teasing humor, but now he’s showing rare emotion. “Lola’s mom and I met at a bar.” He tilts his head, smiling. “Dove straight in. Turns out, we were better at being enemies, but when we were friends, it was awfully nice. I want you to have someone who’s better at being a friend.”

Raising my eyebrows, I give him a we’re-going-to-talk-about-this-here-and-now? face and he laughs a little. We don’t talk about Mom anymore when it’s just the two of us, let alone in front of someone else; there just isn’t very much unexplored territory. As of this summer, she’s been gone one year longer than they were married. I know the basics any child would know: They had a decent marriage—not a great one—but weren’t actually together in one place very often because of his deployments. When he was discharged and returned home, things were too hard for her. As an adult, I’ve deduced that Dad forgave her long ago and thinks she probably hates herself too much for leaving to ever try to talk to me again.

I think she’s a coward who shouldn’t bother.

Tom Petty sings about free falling in the other room, and the melody has this way of making me feel like time loops in this slowly expanding arc. We just go around and around and around, and part of me will always be twelve while the rest of me ages, navigating the world with one parent who cared enough for two.

Gratitude for my father swells in me until I feel my breath catch in my throat.

I cover Oliver’s hand with mine, grateful for the tiny breath he forced me to take, the step back for perspective, and ask Dad, “Where’s Ellen tonight?”

I can tell he’s happy that I brought her up: his smile cracks across his face and he launches into a very detailed explanation of her work schedule and late dinner plans with friends. Oliver’s hand is a distracting warmth beneath mine: tendons and bones, smooth skin, sparse hair. I want to lift it from the table, press it to my face.

OLIVER DRAWS SMALL circles on my thigh as he drives us home. If I didn’t know better, I would think he was doing it absently, but I’m finding that he doesn’t do anything without intent. He’s quiet but deliberate, relaxed but always observing.

“Where do you want to have sex?” he asks, staring straight ahead.

I turn to grin at him. “Right now?”

Laughing, he says, “No, I mean, some crazy place you want to do it someday. Right now I’m driving to my house for the sex.”

I hum, thinking. “Small World ride at Disneyland.”

He glances at me and then back at the road. “A bit of a cliché, maybe? And illegal, I’m guessing.”

“Probably. But every time I’m on it I can’t help but think about what it would be like to sneak in there and find a dark corner.”

“At night, maybe,” he agrees quietly. “Away from everyone. We’d take off just enough for me to be able to get inside you.”

I swallow, pushing his hand up my thigh as I imagine his pants hanging low on his hips, the definition of muscles framing the soft hair on his toned stomach, how fast and frantic he would move in me.

“Would you want the ride to be going while I was fucking you in there?” he asks casually, clicking on his right-turn indicator.

Goose bumps erupt along my arms at his crude, growled words. “Only if I knew we were hidden from view and it was just about being quiet.”

“That bleeding song plays the whole time anyway.” He doesn’t look my way, but smiles at this. “I’d want to make just enough noise so that you could hear me,” he says, turning onto his street. As soon as he says it, I remember the sound of his rhythmic grunts, his hoarse, guttural exhales as he fucks me hard.

He pulls to the curb and shuts off the engine, turning to look at me. The engine ticks through the silent car, and I can feel my heart pounding in my chest and all the way up my throat as he slowly leans in, his focus entirely on my lips.

The house is right there, twenty steps to inside, but we’re here, kissing like we haven’t been alone in a year. Oliver kisses me for minutes, for days, until my mouth is sore from the beard I don’t want him to shave; he’s tongue and teeth and growl while he presses me into the door. I can feel his hunger in the way he stretches across the center console and cups my head in his hand. I can feel it in the noises that escape every time he gets me at a different angle, every time I pull him in deeper, bite him, suck on his lips.

“Take me inside.”

“I will take you. Inside,” he says, laughing and opening the door behind me so we half-tumble out together and he has to crawl awkwardly out of my side of the car, practically laying me down on the sidewalk. Anyone walking by would think we were drunk.

Is that what this is?

It’s chemistry, I know that for sure, something numbing and piercing at once, something that makes me feel like I’m alive for the first time and dead in other ways—murdered memories of what anyone else felt like before this man. Murdered memories of what it felt like to be over a hundred miles away.

I know the weight of his hands and body, how he tastes just like me after only two deep kisses, the way his laughs turn into moans, and how he watches my hands when I touch him.

Oliver pulls me up so I’m standing and throws me over his shoulder, charging down the walkway and bursting into the house. He lowers me so that I slide down his front, all along him, and feel his chest and stomach and his cock pressing at me from beneath his jeans. His fingers tickle my waist, he gives me a tiny smile and my shirt is up and off, followed by my bra.

The breeze picks up and the open door squeaks on its hinges, Oliver’s R2-D2 knocker rattling against the wood. The cool air rolls along my skin, over goose bumps that pebble my arms and stomach. I kick the door closed, blocking out the intrusion of this one additional string left loose and untended. Quiet seals up around us, and then all I can hear is the soft sound of Oliver kissing up my neck.

His hands curve over my breasts, my waist, my hips. My pants are unbuttoned and sweetly coaxed down my legs.

I never want to run out of clothes because every time he peels something away, he kisses me lower, hums against the skin, and bites just the smallest bit. It’s like having lust uncorked and poured in bubbly streams across my skin.

“You’re soft in all the best places.” His voice turns to smoke against my skin as he kneels, pulling my underwear down my legs one tiny inch at a time. “Even sweeter than you are soft.”

His mouth finds my breast, nibbling and blowing across the tips while his hands are busy helping me step out of my underwear. The entryway light is on and he looks up at me, whispering, “You like having your tits sucked?”

I nod, bracing my hands on his shoulders, right there, mere feet from his front door. I push into his mouth and wonder how I’m standing naked and he’s fully clothed, and I feel like I can’t move because I don’t ever want him to stop what he’s doing . . . but I want more. I grow heavy, desire filling the space beneath my skin until I can’t help but beg out loud. He smiles as he kisses me and moves to the other, neglected breast, licking in long draws of his tongue until he gives me what I really want: the closing of his lips around me, the delicious relief of suction.

I stare down at him, at his mess of brown hair brushing against my skin and kiss-swollen lips playing with my breast.

“Is this really happening?

Oliver nods, drawing his tongue across my nipple—like he’s licking an ice-cream cone—and then sucks it so deep into his mouth I wonder if he might consume me. My breasts spill from his hands and he licks and bites whatever he can’t hold. It’s a frenzy; my body has been waiting days for this and has no patience now.

“Fuck.” My fingers curl into his hair and he pulls back, looking up at my face as his fingers stroke the inside of my thigh. I make fists in his shirt, pull it over his head, and relish the slide of my palms over his wide shoulders as he kisses my navel, my hip.

I don’t want to do this here.

I take a step backward, and then one more, and he’s up, following me down the hall with his hands on my hips and his mouth on mine and he’s telling me I’m so fucking sweet, he wants me so much.

The world tilts and his bed is soft beneath my back.

The panel shows him looking down at her. She’s wide open: the first day with these new eyes. He would take a bite out of her if he could.

Oliver takes his glasses off and sets them on the table near the bed. He braces his hand at my hip, gazing down, letting his gaze move over every part of me. In my peripheral vision, I can see my chest rising and falling but I can’t tear my attention from his face.

I remember the time he made me laugh so hard I spit-sprayed Diet Coke all over his Hellraiser T-shirt.

I remember the time he ran up to the loft to show me the Detective Comics 31 someone sold him.

I remember when he said “I do,” even though he didn’t.

I remember leaning on the kitchen counter, sipping coffee, watching him sleep on the couch.

“What’s going on in that mind of yours?”

I’m trying not to panic, obsess, fall too fast, too deep.

“I’m feeling things,” I whisper.

He bends, speaking against my stomach as he kisses it. “What kind of things?”

“Panicky things.”

I can feel his smile. “Let them go.”

I close my eyes, threading my hand into his hair. How can such happiness push a sharp spike through my lungs?

“It’s good,” he promises, kissing down to my hip. “I’ve wanted this for months. And I know you feel the same. I love you. I feel you thinking it every time I say it, in the way your hands find some part of me to hold on to.”

His fingers move between my legs, slide down over my clit, barely dipping into me. It’s a luxury, doing this, feeling this, being here. It’s a luxury to have all night, to have nothing but this thing between us to tend to. He strokes me, soft at first, so slowly, and then he speeds up as my breath catches and my legs open wider, him kissing his way to my mouth, asking quietly if I like it, if his fingers feel good. I nod, arching from the bed, working my body closer, wishing his pants were off so I could feel the thick weight of him in my hand and pushing inside me.

I don’t know what he’s doing with his fingers but it’s fast and slippery and I’m so close, almost there, everything is turning transparent and—

His hand leaves me for a split second and then I feel the stinging bite of his fingers spanking me there.

The panel shows the earth, split in two.

He swallows my shocked gasp with a deep kiss, covering my mouth and groaning when heat melts into a fevered need for more and he feels me arch under him, shuddering.

“Oh, God.”

He exhales something between a sigh and a “Yeah?” against my lips and strokes me gently again for several soft, slow kisses before he spanks me again three times, fast and sharp.

The next time his fingers circle gently across my clit, I’m crying out, filled with something warm and silver and it bursts out of me, sliding over my skin and filling my blood with smoke. He strokes me satisfyingly hard, eyes wide as he watches me come. When I close my eyes and melt into the mattress below me, he ducks, kissing my neck, hand trailing over to my thigh to spread me even wider.

“You liked that,” he says, lips finding my jaw. “I spanked your pussy and you liked it.”

I moan, wanting his mouth on mine, the odd reassurance of it.

“You’re filthy,” he praises, licking my lower lip. “You’re glorious.”

I sit up, pulling him between my legs and going to work on his belt, his button fly, shoving his pants down his hips with impatient hands. My mouth is watering and his hands brace on my shoulders, ready. His cock juts in front of me, thick to the point of excessive, and I feel the way his torso clenches when I pull his foreskin back, bend and lick around the crown, sucking.

I’ve only given a few blow jobs in my life and each time it was such a conscious effort filled with so much thought—

is it good,

oh, God, my jaw is sore,

will I have to swallow?

None of that is happening now: all I can think is how much more I want to take, how the skin is stretched so tight around him, how I can practically feel how it must be for him when I lick him wetly, suck at where he leaks, pull the entire head of his cock into my mouth and as far down as I can take it. My hands find his balls, feeling, knowing. This body is mine to know, mine to touch, and he helps me move, helps me find a rhythm and his hips shift with me, his voice encourages me with the broken sounds and tiny grunts and I love how hard he gets, harder, harder as I suck and he’s close, oh fuck, he’s so close already and I ache for it. I want him to come in me, on me, over me, and he’s there, thrusts wild, hands making fists in my hair, voice growing louder in warning, accent thick and garbled but I don’t want to stop, I want him like this: hips flexed as he’s coming in my throat, growling as I suck all the way through it. He presses his lips to my hair, groaning as the final spasms of his orgasm shake through him, and the feel of it is like a million tiny lightning bolts dancing across my scalp.

He stares down at me, catching his breath as I kiss up and down his cock.

I have never loved doing that before, but holy fuck, now I’m obsessed. I collapse back on the mattress, biting my lip through an enormous grin.

Oliver shifts forward, bending over me with two fists planted beside my hips. “You just sucked my soul out of me.”

I roll to the side, giggling and feeling pretty fucking proud of the head I just gave because just looking at him I can tell it was stellar. He kicks off his pants, rolls me back so he’s above me, and kisses my breasts, down my stomach . . . and in a haze I realize where he’s headed, what he’s going to do.

“No,” I whisper, quickly adding, “It’s okay.” I slide my fingers under his jaw, guide his face back up to mine.

He’s gone quiet. Oliver kisses me once but no more. He stares down at me, studying my face.

Something is wrapped around my heart, growing tighter the longer I look at him—the floppy brown hair and blue eyes still full of satisfaction, but now also mixed with something else, something knowing—and I have to close my eyes to ease the ache of it because it was all so perfect until I stopped him.

“Look at me.” He waits and then urges, “Lola.”

I open my eyes, focus on his mouth. The soft bottom lip, dark stubble shadowing his jaw.

“You don’t want me to kiss you here.” His fingers drift between my legs.

“I do. . . .”

“Then why did you stop me?”

“It’s . . .”

“It’s what?”

“It’s a thing.”

“ ‘A thing’?” He pulls back a little, a jerky movement that tells me he’s not sure he likes what I’m saying. “I don’t know what you mean.”

God, I am so bad at articulating this. “The whole backstory.”

“The what?”

Sighing, I throw an arm over my face and am grateful he doesn’t immediately pull it away. “You know. About learning from your roommates and her friends. How you became this oral sex legend. It just means you’ve done it with a lot of women.”

When I move my arm, I see that he looks briefly amused. “You just gave me the blow job of my life.”

“I’m as surprised as you are,” I tell him honestly. “You inspired me. I haven’t been taught.”

He sighs. “I was wondering if it bothered you, or if you were teasing me.”

I reach up, trace his mouth with my fingertip. “It doesn’t bother me or make me jealous. It makes me feel like I have to get it, if that makes sense. I don’t like oral sex. But with you, if I don’t come it’s because of me.” He starts to say something but I press my fingers to his mouth so I can finish my thought first: “I’m not very good at relaxing when guys are doing that to me. I never have been; my mind wanders and I start thinking of other things and . . . I realize that makes me weird, but there you go.”

He closes his eyes. “Do you feel the same with me as you have with these other men?”

The hilarity of this. “No. Of course not.”

“Have you considered that you didn’t enjoy it because they weren’t very good at it?”

“Yes, but I’ve also considered that I didn’t enjoy it because they didn’t, either.”

He stares at me, head tilted, expression unreadable, until he whispers, “Or maybe you need to be comfortable with the person in order to be comfortable with the act?”

“No . . . I mean,” I whisper, feeling truly naked for the first time tonight, “what if you don’t like it with me?”

His gaze softens. “How could that possibly happen?”

When I don’t answer he whispers, “Lola. I’ve already felt you. I’ve tasted you.”

“I know.”

“On my fingers. On yours. Do you remember how I responded?”

I close my eyes and nod. I remember the sounds he made, the way he seemed to want more.

He lifts my hand, kisses my palm. “I’d be so careful with you.”

“I trust—”

“I’d start slow,” he interrupts, kissing me again. “Just kissing you there first.”

I bite back a smile but it dissolves when his tongue slips across my palm, tracing in a soft, wide circle. His lips come together and he sucks gently on each of my fingers.

“I wouldn’t suck too hard. Wouldn’t lick too fast.”

Swirling around my palm, his tongue forms smaller and smaller circles until my hand feels wet and warm under his kiss and I ache so intensely for him that I feel a little breathless. “And it’s me. It’s Oliver. Not some other guy.”

I smile, pulling my hand back enough to run my finger across his stubbly chin.

“Circles, I think,” he muses. “Just around and around and around so steady and gentle until you’re soaking wet with legs spread wide and you’re clawing at the sheets, begging to come on my lips. I’d want you begging for my mouth every time we’re alone.”

He looks up at me.

“And I’d give it to you, Lola,” he says quietly, earnestly. “I would suck the pleasure straight out of you; I wouldn’t toy with you. If I could get you there I would, whenever you want it.” He slides his tongue along my index finger to the tip. “I want to be so good you never let me go.”

I exhale a hoarse, begging noise. I already can’t imagine my life without him.

“But after I’d do that, I’d need to feel you.”

“You would?”

He brings my hand between us, circling his cock. “See, even the idea has me hard again and I just came. Already I’m so bloody hard for you.”

After studying his face for three deep breaths, I nod, and he shifts back again, this time kneeling between my legs at the side of the bed.

He watches where he touches me and I fight the urge to cover myself, closing my eyes instead. I feel his hair brush my thighs as he bends forward, feel his breath when he exhales against me, and then feel the soft kiss, one more, and then his lips part and cover me, and his tongue is there, touching, stroking so carefully.

“Holy fuck,” he growls, and his hands shake as he spreads my legs, urges me to rest my feet on the mattress. “Holy fuck, Lola.”

I no longer want careful.

I no longer want gentle.

I want him to pull out every fucking trick he ever learned because if he can make me feel this much with one single kiss, I’m dying to know what I feel when he pulls out all the stops.

Once I’m situated he quickly returns to me, trying to be slow. He’s watching me—eyes glued to my face—and my chest twists when I see how anxious he is to please me. Pushing my head into the mattress, I arch into him, whispering, “It’s good, it’s good, it’s good,” and it unleashes something in him. I don’t know what he’s doing; I don’t know if I even have the muscles he’s using but it’s fast and perfect and better than any sex toy I’ve ever found.

Holy shit . . .

I want to watch but there is too much to feel. The wet slide of his tongue, the vibrations of his sounds, how my thighs shake, my stomach grows tight, pleasure crawls up my torso.

But oh . . . how his head looks between my legs. How his arms wrap tightly around my thighs, a band of muscle keeping me open for him. The long line of his back, his ass in the mirror across the room, the definition of his thighs as he rocks absently, loving me with his full body but touching me only with his—

Sensation snags me mid-thought; it’s felt consuming, nearly surreal, but then it’s more than good, it’s everything. It’s his sounds and his breath against me, and the pleasure growing on the surface of my skin and plunging deep until I can’t process anything but the way pleasure rockets through my body.

I get it.

I get it now.

“I’m coming,” I cry through a choking exhale.

And—holy shit—I’m coming so hard.

He grunts encouragement, looking up at me as I say it again, and again, with wonder in my voice and it’s still true after so many gasping, preparatory breaths. It seems to build forever, growing and never cresting and I’m saying it so many times I can feel him laugh proudly against me, holding his rhythm and giving me more, and better, and holy fuck I have time to wonder if this is a completely new thing my body does, whether every other orgasm was some sad bastard cousin of this orgasm, the one that seems to never end.

“Okay,” I finally manage to say aloud as he climbs up my body, kissing across my skin. He’s breathless, and hard. “I admit: you won this round.”

He laughs into a kiss to my lips. “I’d say we both won that round.”

WE’RE STILL AWAKE when the sun rises on the other side of the sky, slowly brightening Oliver’s room. The sheets are mostly on the floor, pillows crushed between the mattress and headboard, but I am centered perfectly on the huge bed, carefully covered by Oliver’s endless, smooth naked skin.

“Are you going to be able to work?” I ask, trying to see past him to the clock.

He mumbles into my shoulder: “More importantly, are you going to be able to walk?”

It’s a good question.

Laughing, I ease out from under him and climb out of bed, walking unsteadily to the bathroom in the hall. I feel tender everywhere; I want to stay in bed all day and sleep curled around him. I don’t want to think about everything else. Anything else. I want it to evaporate.

For the first time in my life, I resent work.

He joins me in the shower. After no sleep and hours of sweaty, wild sex, I assume we’re both too tired for much more than kissing. But being drenched in steam and pounding water, the sudsy slide of his skin across mine and the suggestion his fingers make when they move over my ass and between, stroking, leaves me begging him for something I never thought I’d want before.

I look up at him. “I want to feel you there.”

Water drips down his forehead. Thick lashes, clumped and wet, frame his brilliant blue eyes as he studies me. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” I push onto my toes to reach his jaw, to scratch it with my teeth.

Oliver turns me to the wall, kissing my neck as his fingers run down my back, over my backside, until he carefully eases one slick finger in and out, then two, slowly stretching me. While he whispers and groans, telling me he’ll be careful, telling me how much he loves me, he finally enters me there, inch by inch.

“You okay?”

I nod. I am, and I’m not. I’m overwhelmed and split in two and wishing I could have more of him, and everywhere all at once.

He’s bare in me like this, fingers snaking around and touching me from the front but I can feel his fascinated thrill and once he starts moving he doesn’t last very long. The satisfaction I feel in his sounds, the way he shakes and moves so arrhythmically, the bouncing echo of his surprised shout when he comes loosens all of the fear I’ve held on to that I have him but could lose him.

That everything good in my life could vanish and he would leave me.

That we could build a life together and have it yanked out from beneath us.

That I would unravel, that nothing else would matter but this.

Right now, he is everything.

Oliver washes me, eyes heavy and sleepy, lips thanking me with every kiss. “How’s my girl?”

I answer the question he’s asking, and not the bigger one—the enormous one—because existentially, at this moment, I am not okay. I’m drowning in what I feel for him.

But I’m not physically hurt. “I’m good.”

His mouth finds mine, desperate and wet.

I realize it’s a cliché but everything changes for me after that shower. I don’t think I’ll ever love anyone the way I love this man.

While we get dressed in silence, he keeps looking at me with this strange mixture of awe and relief.

“You’re okay though?” he asks again from across the room, pulling clothes out of his dresser.

I nod, mute.

I love him. I love him more than anything and it’s obliterating everything else around me.

He comes over and studies me, cupping my face in his hands. “Lola Love, you’re not okay. Is it me? Is it what we just did?” His face grows tight.

Shaking my head, I stretch, sliding my arms around his neck and pressing my lips to the warm, clean skin there. He bends, holding me tight. I want him to hold me all day long. I want to keep the rest of the world at bay, and just be here, with Oliver, until it’s time to climb back into bed again.

I AM DAZED, drunk. I climb the steps to my apartment slowly, exhausted but in the best way.

The loft is quiet—London is most likely surfing—and I grab a cup of coffee before heading to my room to start working on the ever-expanding list of deadlines. I haven’t checked my email in over a day, and still don’t want to now. I like the bubble.

And I’ve barely slept. I glance at my computer, the stylus sitting so innocently on the digital sketchpad, and I know how much I need to get done today but I also know how much a tiny nap will help.

I fall into bed, closing my eyes and trying to focus on Junebug unfolding, her story and who she is. But instead my mind keeps bending back to all the points of tenderness on my body, just to remember. I hear Oliver’s voice in my ear, remember every one of his kisses.

I wake only when it’s dark out and my stomach gnaws with hunger.

I lift my phone, blinking in surprise at the number of notifications on the screen.

I’ve missed four calls from numbers I don’t recognize, and two more from one that I do: my publicist, Samantha. I swipe the screen and immediately call her.

“Sam,” I say quickly. “What’s up? I fell asleep.”

I can hear the smile in her voice, the way she’s struggling to stay calm to keep me calm. She’s never shown me a second of stress until now. “Oh, okay, I’ll reschedule the calls. Don’t even worry.”

“What calls?” I ask, sitting up and pressing my palm to my forehead. “Shit, Sam, what calls?”

“The Sun,” she says, adding, “the Post, and the Wall Street Journal were all today. I knew it was tricky on a Saturday, I’m sorry, it just seemed easiest to move them all so they could run Monday. We’ll reschedule for next week.”

Something breaks inside me, some panic unbottled and poured everywhere.

I apologize, hanging up, and staring at the wall in horror. I spaced three interviews today. I missed a deadline by two weeks. I don’t even know who I am anymore, and the one thing I’ve always known is how to write, how to draw, how to work.

My phone buzzes in my hands, and I glance down at the picture of Oliver on my screen. My first instinct is to answer, to stroll to the bed and lie down and listen to the honey of his voice pour over me.

Instead, my breath gets cut off in my throat and I hate myself so much in the moment I flip my phone over, putting it facedown on the desk before knocking it to the floor. I have to work. I have to dive in, and work, and finish all this. I’m dropping things—not just dropping, abandoning them. I just need to draw one line, and then another, and another, and another until I am done.

The only thing I can do right now is build words and images into a story unfolding and then I will be okay.

I will be okay.