Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

            “You’ll get used to me,” he gasps against my temple, pushing my hair back from my forehead with trembling hands, and then I am so full, I cannot be still anymore. I roll my hips to test the waters, see what hurts (very little) and what’s good (a whole lot). I learn what I want. Which angle. Which rhythm. In exchange, I let Levi’s hands roam my body wherever he likes—and it’s everywhere. There are wet, filthy, shameful sounds, but I don’t care, too busy gripping the headboard and grinding myself against that spot inside me which— Yes. Yes. He’s immense, stretching me to my limit and a bit past. I balance myself on his chest. His heart beats a drum against my palm, and I move up and down. Delicious pressure. Pleasure pulses deep in my belly. “Like this?” I ask.

            He doesn’t answer. Or he does, but in murmurs, incoherent little things, like Please, Be still, Don’t move, You’re so tight, I’m going to— Oh, shit. It gets worse when I clench around him on purpose, just to see where I can go. There’s no extra room inside me. Nothing at all, and my vision dots. My pulse spikes. My head snaps blank, my lungs void of air, and I come like an avalanche, a wash of blinding pleasure as my body contracts rhythmically. I whimper my orgasm into the skin of his collarbone.

            When I can think again, I find Levi on top of me, panting against my throat, fingers tight around my hips. He babbles, groans, desperately grinds his cock against my stomach, but he has pulled out. I am painfully empty, clenching against nothing.

            “Did you—?” My voice is hoarse.

            “I’m trying to make it last,” he pants. “I don’t want this to end.” I try to guide him into me once again, but he pins my wrists above my head and kisses me, endless, deep, without restraint, swallowing my soft whimpers in his mouth. Then he slides back inside. In this position he gets deeper. Harder. Different angles. He covers me, all of me, and I let him do what he let me do: find his pleasure in my body. His thrusts are shallow, then slow, then deep. Then his control snaps in two, long movements that drag delicious friction against all of my nerve endings. I love his weight on me. I love his guttural groans. I love the absent, awestruck green of his eyes. I’m so close. So close again.

            This is good. He is good. We are good. Together. Like this.

            “Bee,” he slurs against my cheek. “Bee. You are everything I—”

            My hands slide against his sweat-slick back, and I hold him together as he shatters into a million pieces.





18





RAPHE NUCLEI: HAPPINESS



“AMAZING.” GUY’S VOICE trembles slightly, a tinge of fear to his admiration. Awe, I guess it’s called? All that matters is that it opens the floodgates for everyone else to speak up.

            “Incredible.”

            “—we have a working prototype—”

            “—can’t believe there was such a simple solution—”

            “—BLINK is basically done—”

            “—such an elegant way of—”

            “Fucking awesome,” Rocío declares, the loudest voice. Everyone looks at her, and that’s when the impressed whispers become more like a frat party. High fives, hugs, the occasional chant. I’m surprised a keg isn’t suddenly produced out of thin air.

            Levi leans against a bench on the opposite side of the room, wearing last night’s Henley. This morning I offered him my stretchy tie-dye camisole, but he just glared at me. Ingrate. He notices I’m staring and we both look away, bashful to have been caught. Then our eyes lock again. This time, we share a smile.

            “We should celebrate!” someone’s yelling. We ignore him and keep on smiling.

            The first time Tim and I had sex, I was terrified he hadn’t enjoyed it. He didn’t call me for two days, which I spent wondering if I was shit in bed—instead of focusing on how shitty he was. In the fight that ended our engagement, he accused me of pushing him to sleep with other women because I was “a total starfish” during sex (I had to google what that even meant after he left). On reflection, our relationship was bookended by Tim making me feel terrible about myself. How poetic.

            Maybe in the past years I’ve learned to give considerably fewer fucks about what dudes think of me, and that’s why I’ve spent zero seconds of the last twenty-four hours wondering whether Levi thinks I’m a shit lay. But maybe that’s not the only reason. Maybe it has to do with the way he looked at me this morning, when I woke up on top of him in my twin bed that he accused of being “an instrument of torture repurposed as a piece of furniture.” Maybe it was the quiet, sweetly bashful conversation we had about me being on birth control, and about the fact that we’ve both been living like ascetic monks for long enough that we’re sure to be clean. Maybe it’s the appalled face he made when he saw me guzzle unsweetened soy milk directly from the carton. Maybe it’s the swift, covert glances he’s been giving me all day long.