“For God’s sake—why would you ever stop doing that—”
“Because,” Jane says, pinching August on the hip, “I don’t want to fuck you on the bathroom floor.”
“We’ve fucked on the subway,” August says. Her voice comes out pouty and petulant. She does not care. “The bathroom floor is an upgrade.”
“I’m not against the bathroom floor,” Jane says. “I mean, there are a lot of places in this apartment where I have every intention of fucking you. I just want to start with the bed.”
Oh, right. The bed. They can have sex in a bed now.
“Hurry up, then,” August says, clambering to her feet and pulling a towel with her. It’s a testament to all they’ve been through together that she doesn’t even think to care what her body looks like as she wrenches the door open and crosses into her bedroom.
“You’re so annoying,” Jane says, but she’s close behind, shutting the door and pulling August into her, throwing the towel across the room as carelessly as she threw August’s glasses that night on the Manhattan Bridge.
She backs August toward the bed, and August can feel warm, shower-fresh skin everywhere, and she’s going crazy over it. Jane’s waist and hips, the tight swells of her ass and thighs, ribs, breasts, elbows, ankles. She’s losing it. She’s a lifelong heretic suddenly overwhelmed with blissful gratitude for whatever made this possible. Her mouth is watering, and it tastes like honey, but maybe that’s because Jane tastes as sweet as she smells.
Jane gives her a little push, and she lets herself fall into the sheets.
She lies there, watching Jane look around the room—the tiny writing desk stacked with textbooks, the basket of carefully folded laundry by the closet, the potted cactus on the windowsill that Niko gave her for her birthday in September, the maps and timelines that she hasn’t yet brought herself to unpin from the walls. The jacket on the chair. August’s room is like her: quiet, unfancy, gray in the stormy afternoon, and filled up with Jane.
“Yeah, this’ll do,” Jane says. “I have some suggestions about decor, but we can talk about that later.”
She’s still standing a few feet from the bed, naked and never shy, and August doesn’t bother pretending not to look at every inch of her for the first time. Jane is obviously, always, inevitably stunning, all long legs and gentle curves and sharp hipbones and tattoos. But August finds that she loves things it never occurred to her to love. The dimples of her knees. The knots of her shoulders. The way her bare toes touch the scuffed floor.
“What?” Jane asks.
“Nothing,” August says, rolling over to lay her cheek against the pillow. Jane’s eyes track the way her damp hair tumbles down her shoulders and back. “It’s cute how you just invited yourself to move in with us.”
“Four’s unlucky anyway,” Jane says, “might as well make it five.”
She throws herself at the bed, and August bounces and laughs and lets Jane push her onto her back, already gasping.
“You’re always so,” she says, kissing the patch of skin behind August’s ear, her right hand finding its way, “sensitive.”
“Don’t—don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun of you.” She moves one of her fingers in a teasing little circle and August gasps again, one hand fisting in the sheets. “I love that about you. It’s fun.”
When August opens her eyes, Jane’s hovering over her, face gentle and awed. At August. She’s looking at August like that. August can literally split time open, apparently, but she still can’t believe the way Jane looks at her.
“You know I still love you, right?” August tells her. It falls out of her mouth readily. Losing her made it easy to say. “Even though it’s been months for me. I never even came close to stopping.”
Jane presses her lips to the center of August’s chest.
“Tell me one more time.”
August lets out a quiet, eager sound when she moves again. “I love you. I—I love you.”
And Jane presses her into the mattress and says, “I’m here. I’m not leaving.”
It’s luxury. The most basic parameters of privacy—a door, an empty apartment, an afternoon stretching out before them—and that’s luxury. No train schedules or nosy commuters. No fluorescent lights. Just touching for the luxury of touch, greedy because they can be. Jane keeps watching her face, and August can’t imagine what her expression is doing, but Jane’s smiling, and it only winds her up more to know that Jane’s getting off on getting her off. August wants more,