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They've been long-distance for almost two years now.
Not two years in a row—two years of pieces. Like, a week of him in Paris. A week of her in Palo Alto. A week of them in Boston. A weekend in New York. A quick stilted trip to Cousins in the spring with their families that didn't really count the same because it was more of an icebreaker than a real visit.
Puzzle pieces of their story scattered across regions and time zones.
But not this yet. Not the Fourth. Not the two of them in this house on the Fourth of July for the first time in a very long time.
And officially together, alone without interruption in this house on the Fourth of July for the first time in— Well, ever.
They've been…strange with each other in the weeks leading up to this reunion.
Static on the phone. Small silences Belly's read way too much into. It's nerves. Nerves latching onto a million tiny unresolved things still living in the wiring of them. Conrad called her last Tuesday—she'd been two glasses in after drinks with Gemma—and Belly said, laughing, When I get there, Conrad, I'm going to do whatever I want with you. Just to ease the tension.
There'd been a long silence on the line first, and she'd pulled the phone away from her ear while blushing to make sure it was still connected. Then Conrad said, so quiet, so serious: "You could."
Just that. You could.
Belly hadn't been able to speak for a full minute. She'd said, "What?"
And he'd said again, "You could, Belly. You know, whatever you want. However you want it. I've been telling you that forever, and I think you don't really hear me when I say that. Anything at all."
So. Here we are.
Conrad's just out of the shower when she gets in. His hair is dark from it the way she just loves and finger-swept back, water still bright at the tips. And he's in a white t-shirt and jeans and bare feet, and he opens the door and looks at her and neither of them moves for a full second before she jumps into his arms and plants a kiss on him. A kiss that resurrects his smile from their very first one on the beach that dawn.
"Hi," Conrad says, smiling down at her, kissing her forehead as punctuation to the greeting just because.
Belly beams back at him. "Hi."
She's in a red and white dress today, not dissimilar to the one she wore when she was sixteen many moons ago. Belly picked it on purpose because Conrad's told her twice now that he can't think when she wears the pattern or the color. And when he notices, his face submits to the vision completely.
That's an expression she's never had a word for before. Belly's body has invented one just now in response, but it won't give her real words for it.
It's okay—bigger fish. She decides not to waste any more time: "Um. Were you…serious? Or."
Conrad raises a brow. "About what?"
Belly frowns and slaps at his chest. "Don't."
He throws his hands up. "Don't what? I'm really asking."
"On the phone! When you said…I could."
Conrad closes the door behind her, takes her bags and things and sets them down neatly on the foyer bench as Belly kicks her shoes off.
But when they walk into the kitchen, he doesn't touch her. No, he stops three feet away from her at the counter, and he looks at her mouth for a moment and then up at her eyes, and says, "Yes."
His throat moves hard as he confirms it. Conrad's been sitting with this yes for weeks. Belly can see it in his hands too, in the way they don't know where to be.
He goes on: "Whatever you want tonight's what happens, Belly. That's it. Just take it. I'm not gonna say no. I'm not gonna correct you. I'll be—" he pauses, finds the word, "—yours. No rules, that's the only line."
Belly just looks at him. "And...what if I don't know what I want?"
"Then I'll wait till you decide. All night if I have to." His smile's so gentle it hurts. "Nice and slow."
Belly wants to swoon and crumple up and run away over this, but instead she opts to hold strong and persist. This is on you, Isabel Conklin, she tells herself. You said you wanted to, and now your dream man is giving it to you. Use your fucking words!
"Okay. So, uh… Take your shirt off?"
(Well. She does consider she should work on her delivery, but that's a start.)
Conrad takes his shirt off right then, automatic. Like he's her Ken doll.
Fuck. Belly wishes she could wring out the energy in her hands or something without looking stupid.
"Pants, too," she continues once he's completed the task.
Conrad pushes his jeans down and steps out of them.
Then he stands in the kitchen in his navy blue briefs and looks at her, waiting to be used.
Belly drags a chair out for him—a wooden one from the kitchen table's set—and Conrad sits when she tells him to. Then looks up at her.
He doesn't cross his arms or make a joke to cut the quiet. He just sits there and lets her look and decide what to do next.
And Belly gets it.
All at once: Conrad's really not going to do anything to her tonight. Not unless she makes him. He's going to be done to, a passive and yet total offering. He's laid the body of himself down for her to play with. And this—this is the part that catches her in the throat—he's prepared to be this. He came out of the shower ready for it, water still in his hair for her, briefs already the softer pair and her favorite blue on him.
Belly takes off her dress and lets it fall to the kitchen floor.
She doesn't fold it, just drops it there and stands in the red underwear she picked out just for this, braless and bare for him otherwise, and Conrad watches her from the chair, pupils turning his eyes black, lips parted. God, his eyes on her body always do something she can feel deep in the core of her chest. A pull, a tug, like a doll's string being tugged in her back.
And Belly, in the kitchen where they've eaten a thousand summer dinners, walks over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder and swings one leg over his thigh and sits down on it, straddling. Then she puts both hands flat on his chest and looks down at him—for once she's the taller of them, and he's looking up at her from inside the shelter of her dark brown hair like she's his own cathedral.
"Don't touch," she says. She surprises herself with the steadiness of it. "Not until I say."
Conrad swallows, then, "Okay."
Belly swallows too, trying to come up with more ideas in real-time. (Should she have prepared a script for this?! Shit, shit.) "Say...okay again. You know, just so I'm sure."
He catches what she's doing and just smiles, says it again slowly into the space between them like he's setting it there for her to hold onto: "Okay, Belly. Not until you say."
Belly nods to herself, more confident now, and smiles wide and rolls her hips down. "Okay."
Mm, there's the seam of her underwear against the corded muscle of his thigh and the delicious clean shower-smell of him. God. She's already soaked through the cotton, too. Belly can feel it smear and stick against his bare thigh. She can also feel how easily she slides against him. So she rolls again, slower, dragging her clit along the muscle on purpose this time, and Conrad inhales sharply and his thigh tenses beneath her to give her something harder to grind down on.
"You can look at me while I do it," Belly suggests then, shyly, when the silence of his submission starts to prickle a strange old self-consciousness under her skin. (For a second, they're young and she's making him swear not to take his hands off her bike seat even though she knows he will, if it's for her own good.)
"I'm looking at you," Conrad assures her a bit breathlessly, fingers twitching for her at his sides. "And you're already shaking, Belly. And I haven't even done anything." A beat. "That's all you."
Fuck.
Belly grinds on in the silence. Until she can't stand it again.
"And you can…talk to me," she suggests. "More."
Conrad lifts a brow, and it's annoying that he's amused. A little smug. "Yeah? You want me to talk to you more?"
"Yes, Conrad," Belly says through her teeth. She loves hates that smirk on his face when he taunts her like that.
"Then talk to me first," Conrad says, gently. "Tell me who this is for. Tell me who I belong to."
Belly frowns. "What?"
"Say it out loud," he explains. "Tell me who's using me tonight."
Her face gets hot. "...Me?" Wait, no. Belly forces a very serious expression. "Me."
"Yeah. You. Belly. Say it back to me all the way. Tell me who I am tonight. What am I?"
"You're—mine. It's for me. I'm using you."
"Good." Conrad's good old half-smile again, small, not condescending, but proud. "Now do it."
Belly does it, she uses him.
She grinds down against his thigh with her hands flat on his chest, slow at first. And then, because he's been sitting perfectly still and looking up at her with those eyes, faster. Until she can feel her breath climbing up her throat like a trapped bird. She whimpers out loud.
Conrad still doesn't move, but he does make a sound of his own to match so she knows he really wants to. She loves him for that. She's loving him in new ways every minute.
As a show of this welling affection, Belly takes one of his hands from where it rests patiently by his thigh and lifts it to her mouth.
Then Belly sucks his fingers deep, hollowing her cheeks, her tongue working under the pads of his fingertips, letting her teeth just barely graze the skin so he feels them there. She's done this a thousand times as the one being fed his fingers. But she's never done it as the one taking her meal.
She watches his face while she does it—Conrad's face grimacing with pure pained pleasure, mouth wet and open, eyes going somewhere she's never gotten to see them go. It's amazing.
"Holy shit, Belly."
Satisfied with that exclamation, Belly pulls his fingers out, slick, and guides his hand down between her thighs. She pushes her underwear aside—the fabric wet and heavy with her, so much she almost laughs at herself—and she takes his two wet fingers and puts them inside her like a toy.
They both moan, nearly in sync.
Belly sinks down on his fingers to the second knuckle, and she gasps, and Conrad curses something incoherent under his breath. Then he says, very softly, right at her temple, just to help her along, "There you go. Keep going."
She rides his hand. And Belly's never in her life fucked herself on a man's hand like this—the man passive, the man watching, the man's hand a thing she's only using—and she almost comes on the first accidental curl of his knuckles. (Because he does curl when she pulls him in. And yes, without her asking. Because Conrad just can't help himself.)
He knows her body better than she does, and he's not taking that back. He's letting her…wield him.
"Look at you," Conrad murmurs at her now, eyes locked on her while Belly furrows her brow and tries to concentrate. "You like using me? Look at what a fucking pretty animal you are—just taking whatever you want."
God, god. The shit Conrad comes up with when he's got her like this…you'd never guess it. (And Belly's glad you wouldn't.) It's a strangeness only they speak that sets off everything hot and true inside her.
"Conrad."
"Yeah, sweetheart."
"I'm gonna."
"Do it, on my hand. Right now. Come on, come on my hand for me. Get it nice and wet."
She laughs—a little disbelieving oh on the exhale.
Belly comes. She comes on his hand with her forehead pressed to his and her hips shuddering and moans dripping out from her lips. And Conrad doesn't move one bit the entire time.
Belly stays sitting on him after, full.
His fingers are still inside her as her chest heaves in the race to catch her breath. She's making surely deranged-sounding noises she can't quit. Conrad's stroking her hair with the hand that's not inside her now, carefully bringing her down and making her feel safe, murmuring her name over and over like he's trying to guide her back through the thick trees.
And Belly, who just came so hard she saw new shapes and colors, is still hungry. Starving, even.
Fucking ravenous.
As it turns out, the constant ache of him doesn't get answered by a single hand. She has him. He's for her. All night. All infinity. Belly understands why people go mad in fairytales, now. She does. There's going to keep being more of Conrad, newer and older and different versions of him to take and take and take. And the prospect makes Belly dizzy and increasingly drunk on the reminder.
She sits up straighter on his thigh.
Then she slides his long slick fingers out of her—slow, and Conrad hisses at nothing, only the feeling—and then Belly takes them and lifts them up to his mouth.
"Open," Belly tells him.
Conrad parts his lips; he doesn't even hesitate. And Belly feeds Conrad the taste of herself off his own hand.
In private awe, she watches him close his eyes and lick her up off the pads of his own fingers, both slid all the way to the back of his tongue, his throat working around them, a muffled sound coming out. And then he swallows once, hard, like he's tucking the taste of her someplace safe inside him.
Belly stands up, overwhelmed and feeling semi-possessed. Her legs are shaking a little bit, actually. She catches a flash of her wild-haired self in the dark windows and doesn't recognize the woman doing this. But she likes her. A lot. Yup. Yeah. That woman does exist.
Now, she can exist.
So, Belly looks back at Conrad in the chair—palms open, the leaking tip of his cock straining out of the waistband of his briefs, mouth absolutely wet with her—and she has a thought so cheerfully filthy she has to hear herself think it twice to decide upon logistics.
"Move the chair."
Conrad blinks up at her. "…what?"
"Back to the table."
"You—"
"Are you supposed to talk?" Belly swallows, forces her voice not to shake. "Or are you supposed to be useful, Conrad?"
Conrad blinks and then gets up. He drags the chair back to its place at the table. And then he stops, puts his hands back down before she's told him to.
Good boy.
Belly walks past him.
Her thighs are almost embarrassingly wet as she does, and she feels it with every step. She thinks: is he watching me walk? (Old habits do die hard.) But, to her credit, she doesn't turn around to check. Not tonight.
Now, the kitchen table. The one Susannah put the nice linen napkins and nice nautical cutlery on. The one Belly ate too many pancakes at. The one Conrad taught her math and board game and chess rules on. That table—Belly hoists herself up onto the edge of it.
Then she points to the chair. "Sit."
Conrad sits and pulls the chair up until his chest is a breath from the edge of the table, palms flat on his thighs like a patient boy about to be served dinner. Then he looks up hungrily and once again waits.
Belly takes a deep breath and lies all the way down on her back across the table. She scoots her hips right to the edge—where a placemat and a plate and a meal would go—and she plants both feet on his shoulders, lifts a bit to take her underwear off while he watches. She drops it on the floor.
And then, watching his face, watching him watch her, Belly spreads herself wide open. Slowly, all the way, until she's exposed to him completely and unabashedly dripping onto the table. She keeps her legs wide apart and lets him look at what's been served.
Conrad's face is…not doing okay.
His mouth, for example, has fallen all the way open, that full bottom lip trembling. His eyes go wide, then half-lidded.
"Jesus, Belly."
"Yeah?"
"Jesus Christ."
"I told you...I didn't touch myself all of June."
"No, yeah. Fuck."
"Well then. I made this for you, Conrad." Belly lifts her chin. Imperious, brazen, so far outside herself she's a little bit afraid of the woman she's being. "Eat."
Conrad inhales like he's been slapped.
But she's on a roll now. "And Conrad?"
He exhales where a real response should be.
"Don't stop unless I say," Belly advises.
"I—" He swallows. He looks like he's been drugged. "I wouldn't."
"You don't come up for a breather. You don't get to ask. You just stay."
"I stay," Conrad repeats in a trance.
"And you…look at me," Belly continues, getting a different kind of high on the feeling herself. "The whole time."
"I will."
"Okay." Belly rests back on the table and worries her heart might beat out of her chest. "Go."
Conrad slides the chair the last inch forward, scrapes a loud clumsy sound in the room, and puts his palms on the table on either side of her hips—where he could grip her and doesn't—and he lowers his mouth to her.
He doesn't do it fast.
He kisses the inside of one thigh once like he's asking. Then the other. Then the crease of her hip, the center of her mound and the dusting of dark hair there. Then, close up and breath warm, so soft she almost misses it, he whispers to himself or her or perhaps any and all of the gods—"Thank you."
And Belly, overwhelmed, on her back on the table with tears springing to her eyes, doesn't at all know what to do with that.
But then he opens his mouth a breath from her clit. And she stops needing to know.
Conrad's mouth is patient. Conrad's mouth is devout. He licks a slow line up her first, tasting how wet she already is for him, and groans against her cunt like the taste alone is making a wreck of him. Then he seals his lips around her clit and sucks, working her with nothing but his mouth.
The kitchen's quiet except for what he's doing to her, the sloppy sound of it filling the room. And Belly can hear it, can hear herself getting eaten up, can feel his tongue finding her and staying and staying, flattening, pointing, circling—fuck. His cheeks are slick from it, rubbing on the insides of her thighs where the skin's thinnest. Oh.
Belly's shaking a little now. Not from the pleasure yet, from the permission of it. From getting to have Conrad Fisher's mouth on her and her hand in his hair and her thighs pressed to his ears and his eyes on her face. All at once. All for as long as she wants, no one to stop her.
She's shaking from the fact that she's allowed to be greedy. Because she did grow up a greedy, greedy girl (especially in matters regarding Conrad Fisher), with such a ferocious craving for more she's never been able to kick. One she's always felt such shame for.
Belly lies there and grinds into this beautiful man's face and thinks about every time she asked for less than she wanted. And she wants to reach back through the last decade and put a hand on that smaller girl's shoulder and whisper, You have no idea how badly the right things will want to give it to you when you finally let them.
The pleasure starts building.
She feels it in her belly first, then her hips, then the backs of her thighs, and Conrad's tongue—god, Conrad's tongue—stays exactly where she needs it, because he learned her a long time ago, because he always remembers.
"Conrad."
Mm.
"Fuck. Conrad—"
He hums again, more of a moan in it this time. Mmph.
Then Conrad starts to pull back, merely an inch to breathe, chin lifting the tiniest bit off her. And Belly, before she knows she's doing it, before her brain catches up with her hand, closes her fist in his hair and pushes his face right back down onto her.
"Uh-uh."
Conrad makes a rough, apologetic sound immediately.
So Belly adds: "You eat when I want you to eat, Conrad."
He moans into her, and it's more than an apology this time. It's a right, I forgot, thank you for reminding me, thank you for tugging the leash. And he gets right back to it.
Belly mouths oh my god to the ceiling. Her face is burning. She's mortified. She's thrilled. She keeps her hand in his hair and doesn't take it out. Conrad continues to eat her out exactly how she's told him to, without lifting off or stopping, suffocating himself and seeing heaven for it.
And Belly—flat on her back, thighs open, one foot on the edge of the table and the other hooking around the back of his neck because some part of her needs a pin to close the circuit—comes on his mouth.
Not like the first one.
This one's a total whiteout, her back arching so hard it cracks a little coming off the table. One hand's fisted in his hair, holding him where she wants him. The other's fisted in her own hair above her head. (She's going to find strands of both caught in her fingers tomorrow.)
And Conrad's mouth is still on her, still going, still drinking her, eyes never once leaving her face.
He isn't fighting to touch her. He's fighting not to. Because she said.
Belly rides it out, and when it finally lets her go—leaves her wet on her back with her thighs quivering—she doesn't take her hand out of his hair. She just holds him there, stroking his cheek while his other cheek's mashed against her thigh, those pretty eyes of his still up and waiting.
Finally, he speaks, still out of breath: "You know I. I've always fantasized about this."
Belly struggles to locate her voice and has to dust it off when she does find it. "About what?"
"About... I don't know, you having something you need done, and me being the one you make do it. Not the…fucking. Just." He kisses the inside of her thigh again. "I dream about being useful to you."
And something old opens in her chest.
Doesn't he know? Doesn't she?
In her mind, she's young again, six on the beach at Cousins with pockets that weren't hers to fill. They're walking down the shoreline, and she's handing him a rock, and he's putting it in his pocket so she doesn't have to carry it herself. So she has her hands free for more. A broken shell. A plastic figurine smoothed by the sea. Sea glass shards smoothed by time.
And, of course, there was the tattoo shop.
Belly's Glitter Tattoo Parlor, at the loungers by the pool—unlicensed, glitter glue, a fine-tip Sharpie Laurel would've reprimanded her for using on his skin. And Conrad, ten years old, sleeve rolled up, sitting perfectly still on the bench while Belly painted daisy after glitter daisy on the inside of his arm and told him he couldn't move for thirty minutes or it wouldn't "heal right." (Really, it was so he had nowhere to go but right there, beside her.)
Not that he needed telling. Conrad sat patiently with his arm out for the whole half hour and let Belly's wiggly artworks dry all over him and become a part of who he was. And when they faded by the next week, he came back for more. He came back for years.
Conrad let her put things on his body, on his mind, on his heart. He let Belly put her things in his pockets. He sat where she pointed. He held still when she said.
Right now, on this specific table, tonight—Conrad's just doing it all grown up.
She strokes the back of his neck with the hand that isn't in his hair. Belly loves him so enormously it scares her. This is simply a fear she's decided to love almost as much.
"Come up here," she whispers to him. "Come here to me."
Conrad comes. He rises up from the chair the smallest amount, still bent at the ribs against the table edge, and Belly sits up on her elbows and then all the way, thighs still open around him, and she takes his face in both her hands and pulls him down to kiss him.
No, she doesn't only kiss him. She gets into him—licks into the seam of his mouth, catches his bottom lip in her teeth and pulls, licks herself off his tongue and goes back for more like she can't get enough of the mess of it.
She's making sounds she'd be embarrassed by if she could even fucking think of stopping. Belly nips at his jaw, his open mouth, the corner of it, sloppy and greedy and losing the thread of anything but more. And Conrad—Conrad gasps into her, holds still for it, his whole body tight and trembling because she can feel it: he's trying not to come. Just from being kissed by her.
Conrad's hands stay on the table because he hasn't been told he can move them. But every other part of him strains forward with the effort—forehead to hers, chest bowed over the table, knees pressed against the underside—and she can feel him shaking. All over.
Belly isn't shaking. She's the one holding the leash.
She kisses him again, slower and longer. Her whole chest aches and she doesn't have a word for what the ache is—it makes no sense, he's sitting mostly naked in her hands right in front of her, what more could she dream—so she puts it against his mouth and lets him have that ache too, untranslated. Thumb at the corner of his jaw. Palm at the pulse in his throat, going too fast under her fingers.
"Conrad."
"Yeah, Belly?"
"You're so beautiful."
Conrad shuts his eyes, lets her hold his face while he does.
"Now push the chair back. I want to do something else."
He pushes the chair back immediately.
Belly slides down and goes to her knees on the kitchen floor between his open thighs, and Conrad watches her the whole way down, keeping his hands to himself as she takes his briefs off. He lifts his hips just enough to help.
"So. You won't move."
Conrad peers at her eyes, and Belly can tell he's doing his not-so-secret assessment of how okay she's doing with all this. "I won't."
"Then." Belly lifts her chin. She's very much more than okay. She'll show him that. "I want your hand in my hair."
He puts one hand in her hair, carefully. He doesn't grip or guide. Rather, his fingers spread and settle at the back of her head just to be there, to be present with her while she does this. To let her. To open the door, and let her in.
Belly takes him in her mouth.
Conrad makes a sound again, louder this time, but it breaks apart in the middle. She licks the salt off the tip first—he's already leaking for her, has been—and swirls her tongue through it to watch him snap tight. Belly's done this before, yes, but never like this, never so she can take her time and taste, never with his stillness and her leisure as the whole point of it.
She sets the pace and sets the depth, takes him all the way to the back of her throat and holds him there, breathing through her nose, feeling him twitch against her soft palate while she keeps him pinned. She pulls off slow, a string of spit still bridging her lips to the head of him, and licks the whole length. She lets herself gag on the next one and still doesn't stop. And Conrad still doesn't move—the hand at the back of her head stays open. And though it's trembling violently, it's still not pushing. And the discipline of that makes her clench around nothing.
Her spit slides down him, pooling and slicking his balls—that's all her doing, her mess, and Belly fists it up his shaft and takes him back in wetter. Then she pulls off once just to breathe on him. Just to hold his cock against her open mouth and blow warm air across the flushed head of it and watch him bite down on yet another sound. Then she swallows him again, one filthy inch at a time, eyes up the whole way, making him watch her do it.
Somewhere in there, Conrad starts talking.
(And possibly loses his mind.)
"Fuck, that's—Belly, that's—you're so—you always were, you always—take your time. No, take your time. I'm yours, Belly. But Belly, please, I'm gonna—I'm gonna— Can I—can I come, please, I've been so—I've been good, haven't I, I've been—"
Belly pulls off just before he comes—slick and hot and gasping.
"No," she says then. "Get up."
She can see the flash of a tortured smile on Conrad's lips as he does.
Belly disappears for a moment to the living room to pull a throw blanket off the back of the couch and returns to spread it on the kitchen floor. Conrad watches her do this like she's setting another table.
"Down," she says.
He lies down.
She straddles him.
Did you know: Belly's thought of this specific position, on this specific floor, with this specific person, since she was a teenager? It's true. Only reinforced years later when they argued with each other on it before her rehearsal dinner. She's never told anyone. She's never even told him. But now, she hovers over him with her hands on his chest and her hair falling around them and she has to close her eyes for a second because she's getting weirdly emotional.
"Belly."
"No, no, I'm okay."
"If you, we can—"
Belly doesn't let him finish the words, just sinks down on him. The first stroke takes them all the way, and it makes her keen, makes her grip him tight. Conrad grips the throw blanket at his sides with both hands just as tight. But he still doesn't put his hands on her. He's still waiting for her to let him.
"You can—" Belly gasps, resolve unspooling. "You can touch me."
"Where?"
"Anywhere."
Conrad's hands come up. They land on her hips first, tentative, waiting to see if that's what she meant. Belly exhales and nods. He settles them there, warm and heavy, not gripping.
She rides him, rides him with her hands flat on his chest, pale pink nails scoring down his torso. And her hips find this pace that's always lived between them. It comes right back like it's only ever been paused. She hears the wet slap of her hips meeting his and it startles her and invigorates her at the same time, and Conrad's stomach gets tight under her palms every time she drops. There's sweat at her hairline. There's hair sticking to her collarbone.
There's the drag of him inside her, hitting some blessed spot in her again and again.
She's so wet it's unbelievable, wet enough to hear, and the sound of it—of him going in and out of her, of how much of her he's dragging out on every stroke—rises up between them like heat off asphalt. Everything's slick and summer-thick. His stomach's shining with her. His cock comes out glossed every time she lifts up off it. And she watches that, watches herself ruin him, and sinks back down to feel him split her open again.
Conrad's watching all of her, somehow, at once. Her tits moving, her throat working, her mouth open. She's watching him right back. And he's rambling again—halting, broken, all Belly—Belly. Belly, look at you. Look at what you're doing to me. Belly, take it, take it, however you want it, however—Belly.
And somewhere over the water, far away and so very near, the fireworks start. She hears them, small pops through the cracked kitchen windows, the glass back doors.
She reaches down and takes one of his hands off her hip. She lifts it to her neck, squeezes his fingers so they squeeze her throat, stealing her own breath with his hand.
That's what does it. Belly comes like that, vision flickering, and his other hand on her hip and his hips letting her set every last thing while he pants, "I'm here, Belly, I'm here, I'm here, fuck, I'm here."
She rides it out. Conrad's still so hard inside her she's gonna lose her mind. His hand's still at her throat. His other hand's still on her hip. His hips are still, still, still.
"Belly—" his voice cracks all the way open "—I'm right at it, I'm right there, shit, but I'm not gonna, not till you—say I can, please say it, I've been so good for—"
"Now," Belly moans when the last of it starts to leave her. "Now, Conrad."
"Belly."
"Now."
Conrad comes when she tells him to. Inside her and on her word.
Belly doesn't get off him right away, just sits with his cock softening inside her and watches his face come back to him from wherever he's just gone. His hand at her neck slides slack.
Then she rocks up onto her knees and pulls off him, careful and slow, and she feels him spill out of her. He groans at the loss. And his come—theirs, now—runs down the inside of her thigh, some of it dripping onto the throw.
Belly looks at Conrad on his back, his chest rising and falling, his cock softening on his stomach, still glistening with her. She bites her lip, and before she can overthink it, scoots up his body until she's straddling his face this time, hovering just above it.
Conrad understands before she says it.
"Clean it up. And no hands."
"Fuck, Be—"
Belly lowers herself onto his mouth.
Conrad—hands falling back above his head as if she's tied him down there—eats his own come out of her. She feels his tongue push up into her to get at it, feels him swallow around the taste of the both of them now. He licks what spilled too, laps it off her skin and doesn't miss a drop, cleans her out with that consistent devotion. And he's making this ruined sound the whole time that Belly reads two ways at once—thank you and please, more.
Belly stays all over him after, her cheek pressed to his chest, his hand stroking the top of her head. The fireworks are going and going out over the water. Someone else's noise.
After a while, she lifts her head and looks at him.
And she takes his face in both of her hands.
And she kisses him. Yes. She kisses him slow, on the mouth, on her own terms, at the moment she chooses, with the fireworks going out over the water and—for the first time in her life—not taking anything away from her.
Conrad kisses her back and lets her have it all.