Faker - Sarah Smith Page 0,107

I’ve gotten a hold of myself, he whispers into my ear how gorgeous I look, how my skin is the softest thing he’s ever touched, and how he wants to feel my body against his forever. My knees tremble, and my eyes roll to the back of my head. Ecstasy is seconds away, max.

I feel the start of the inevitable drop. I wrap my legs around his waist, claw my nails into the meaty part of his shoulders, and tilt my head back for a long overdue scream.

“Harder,” he moans. I obey, digging my fingers in his thick skin while squeezing my legs tighter. The distant, concentrated look in his eyes tells me he’s not far off either.

The moment it hits, I’m caught off guard. I thought I had longer. My body convulses, like I’ve been struck by lightning while enduring the frenzied g-force of a roller coaster. I have no control over myself. My body heaves and twists around him violently, and there’s nothing I can do but claw at his hair and back while screaming gibberish. When I finish, he groans, shudders, and then stops moving. He must have lost it right along with me.

I beam a pleasure-drunk grin at him. “That was . . . I don’t even . . . Fuck.”

He smiles back but says nothing. When he peels himself off of me, I stare at the ceiling. I can’t make out any colors or shapes. A fuzzy blur is all I see. I keep blinking until I regain focus. I’m completely stripped of my old self. I am no longer made of metal, tough and hard and unrelenting. I am goo. I am slush. I am a pile of sweaty skin, pumping blood, and vibrating bones. Tate has extracted everything tough about me and replaced it with mind-blowing pleasure. Faking in bed isn’t an option anymore. I’m physically unable to pretend. Everything from this moment on is real and true and painted in a blissful, postorgasmic glow.

As shaky as I am, I feel empowered. I can conquer the world. No matter the challenge, I will throw down. Air gliding. Applied mathematics. Three-dimensional origami. The intoxicating aftershocks pulsing throughout my body make it so. The bliss powering this afterglow is life changing. I can do all things after a night with Tate Rasmussen, bringer of elusive, incredible orgasms.

When I’m finally able to see again, I turn to him. His haphazard curls have been smoothed down, and his face is wiped dry. He must have gone to the bathroom to clean up.

“You’ve broken me,” I babble.

“It was totally and completely my pleasure.” He brushes a sweaty mass of hair from my face.

“We have to do this again.” My eyelids droop. Exhaustion is settling in, and I’m ready for a night of heavy sleep.

“Just name the time and place.”

With shaky hands, I tilt his face to mine. “No one has ever made me feel that good. And ‘good’ isn’t even the right word, but I can’t think of a better one right now because you’ve screwed the living daylights out of me.” I peck him on the lips just as he chuckles.

Nuzzling into the pillow, I close my eyes. Tate’s arm snakes around me, pulling my head into the crook between his shoulder and chest. Each breath I take tingles, his musky, evergreen scent filling my lungs. There is no better smell in the world, I think to myself as I doze.

twenty-eight

It’s a brand-new day when I wake, tangled in the paper-hued sheets of Tate’s bed. I lie on my side; he spoons me from behind, his tree-trunk arm resting over my waist. I peel open my eyes. Morning sunlight peeks through the tilted blinds over the only window in his bedroom. It warms the light cotton sheet draped over us. Yet another stiflingly hot and humid Midwest day, but I welcome it. The morning’s soft heat makes me feel cradled and secure. We’re captured in an impenetrable bubble where nothing can reach us.

I roll over, still half-asleep, and let my eyes adjust to the brightness. Peering around the room, I soak in the light and the comfort. Tate stirs and moans, then pulls me closer to his chest. I smile and close my eyes again. I want to wake up like this every day.

Behind my eyelids, I imagine what we must look like. In my dreams, we are a simple image: a man and a woman floating in the middle of a bed, wrapped in cotton sheets