March—Cannes
Corin tilts his head to study Maeva's face as his song opens. Her eyes gleaming, lips parted and cheeks defined with slashes of hot, hot pink. He can't help but think of his lyrics as he watches her. Her skin pale and soft like January snow, lips a cold pink that never leaves winter but hints at spring coming the next month. The kinked strands of her hair look like silk, and he knows they feel like it too. He knows how warm she is in contrast to how cold she looks. The next line speaks of damages, and he remembers thinking about her as he had written it. He doesn't know nearly as much of her pains as she knows of his, but he had always felt there was something that fostered her coldness and her introversion. Though nothing influenced Maeva except Maeva, and the more he had thought about it, the more he thought she might have done it to herself.
Corin feels like his eyes might roll back as her voice touches his ears. Leaning a shoulder on the wall, he nods his head along to the song and tries to focus on what might be wrong. A little hitch in her second section. Cameron's shitty bass jam that they hadn't figured out. His own shitty singing where he had fucked up his breath timing in one of the choruses. Maeva sings through the third section. There is something distantly heady about hearing his voice intermingled with hers through the headphones, like remembering an erotic dream two mornings later. He pops his headphones off.
"Do you hear it?"
"Mhm. You're rushing," Corin picks up the music and points to her lines staggered between his, "it sounds like you're timing your start too early, so the rhythm with my notes is off. Are you breathing?"
"Not really. Once at the beginning of your line here."
"I think you're missing your starting point," he taps his finger beside hers, "I know there isn't a rest here like on the others, but that's because I'm supposed to trail out, and they almost overlap, but not quite."
"Alright. What do you suggest then, song boy?"
"Think of it like blending your paints, trail them into each other. You know what, let's do it once before you start the recording again, I might have fucked up on the track."
He sits on the table, and Maeva comes and sits beside him, folding her legs into the lotus position. Her knee brushes his hip. He tries like hell to ignore it. Her knee, her scent, the arc of her neck as she tilts her head to see the music.
"Where are we starting?"
"I'll start here, excuse me if I sound like shit for the first few lines," he clears his throat.
"Ever the professional," she rolls her eyes.
He glares at her, lets his temper color his voice, "her lipstick stings like acid rain, dissolving away my sense of restraint."
She looks away from him to the music, and he catches her lips rubbing together as he goes on.
"The streetlamps burn through the cloak of the fog, concealing the violence, I've been stung by the wa—"
Maeva opens her mouth to sing, but stops before the first vowel gets out. Little lines form between her brows.
"See, you're in a hurry," he smirks, "listen to the professional, as you sit in his massive beach house in his million-dollar recording booth. He knows of what he speaks."
Maeva grumbles and runs her hands through her loose hairs.
"Dammit, what is wrong with me? It isn't that hard, why can't I concentrate?"
Something smug and egotistical inside him thinks he might know, but he just shrugs.
"You're stressing yourself out too much. Here, look up," Corin shifts so he is sitting cross legged in front of her.
She tilts her chin back up, and her eyes pop wide as he puts his finger on her lips. But she doesn't pull away.
"I'll take my finger off when it's your turn to sing."
He laughs at her expression and looks back at the music. Only to avoid staring into her eyes as he sings.
"Her lipstick stings like acid rain, dissolving away my sense of restraint. The streetlamps burn through the cloak of the fog, concealing the violence, I've been stung by the wasp..."
He looks up as he trails the note, lifting his finger from her lips midway through. She doesn't look down, and he feels his mouth drying out.
"So...come for me..." she sings.
He touches her lip again, and his voice comes throatier than he intends, "no sense of restraint."
Maeva breathes against his fingerprint, "so, come for me..."
Corin looks down at the music for the count between lyrics. He doesn't put his finger to her lips again. He doesn't think he can handle it.
"I will wait, endlessly. I will break you carefully..."
"So take me, harmfully," she murmurs, right on time, "you fit, so perfectly...I will wait."
He isn't sure why he finishes the song, her part is over, but his lips part, his voice rises up his throat, and he stares at his music as she watches him.
"Her lipstick stings like acid rain, dissolving away my sense of restraint. The streetlamps burn through the cloak of the fog, concealing the violence, I've been stung by...
"Some hurt me again it's not worth saving, the heart that I've spent my whole life breaking. The windshield cracks through the cloak of the fog, concealing in silence, I've been stung by the wasp."
It is cathartic, those last few lines. He spills them from his mouth and he can feel the emotions spilling from his heart, his skin. He nearly forgets Maeva is there, but when he looks up, she is staring at him. He wonders if she understands. Hopes and dreads that she does.
Heat creeps into his nose and he wills himself back into one piece, "I think it's good, are you ready to go back to the mic?"
"Um...yes. Is there more water?" The flush has not left her cheeks.
"Of course. Are you still warm, do you want to step outside?" He gets to his feet.
She puts her headphones back on with a wry smile, "if I leave I may not want to come back."
"I'll lock the door then—the last thing I need is you running off with half of my song."
In the kitchen, he sits on the floor to rest his head in the freezer. Deep breaths fill his lungs as he looks for the last few screws to his brain. It has collapsed into a jumble of perfume and husky words and feelings. If listening through his headphones had been a memory, singing with her had been the full wet dream. He grabs water from the fridge and his Ultrasones from under the kitchen table as he leaves.
When he comes back down, Maeva drinks an entire bottle of water and returns to the mic. Corin sits on the floor and spends a significant amount of time absorbed in her ass before he replaces his recording headphones with his everyday ones. The pads are lambskin, sitting perfectly around his ears, surrounded by titanium cups that house a five-thousand-dollar sound system. When he lies down and flicks the music on, he is once again reminded how fucking worth it they are. They have saved his life on more than one occasion.
His phone is set on his favorite Fall Out Boy song, but after two lines he finds it's the last thing he's in the mood for, and changes it to a broody French love song with a piano at the back. It growls about dreams and beauty and eternal feelings, pulling him to pieces and showing him his emotions in manageable hunks. He opens his eyes a sliver to look at the white ceiling, projecting his thoughts on the plain surface, turning them, analyzing them. He doesn't find answers, but when he closes his eyes, he feels cleaner, smaller. No less heavy though. Perhaps after he takes Maeva home he will come scream out a few of his songs in here.
He listens to the same song five times. Each time, he feels a little bit better. He thinks about Maeva: Her face, her glare, her voice, and her lips moving against his. He thinks about his show tomorrow, though not much. He thinks about the sea outside, dark and churning and freezing. He thinks about sliding a needle under his skin, and he thinks about dying. A small part of brain tells him it's bad to think of that. The rest, the grown-up part, deals with it casually, with the knowledge that it will never be gone, it will always haunt him. Knows there will be times it grows like slimy brambles in his head and his heart, suffocating any other options. He takes a deep breath, in through his mouth, another suck through his nose, and then all out in a long sigh.
By the time the song has begun a sixth time, he has forgotten most of the world around him. He almost feels like his body is numb.
And then there is a gentle prod on his ribs, and he slams back into the carpet against his arms, his jeans scraping his hips, and the warm air in the booth against the strip of stomach where his shirt has ridden up. He opens his eyes and finds Maeva standing over him. She offers him one of her hands.
Corin wraps his fingers around her wrist and gets to his feet. He looks down at her and pulls his headphones around his neck.
"Done?"
"Mhm. Do you want to hear it?"
He looks at the music they had left on the table and imagines listening to her voice like that, feeling his newly tidied emotions snarl themselves again. Overwhelm him again. He smiles at her and shakes his head.
"I trust you."
"Alright," her eyes drift to his lips, and then to his headphones, "what have you been listening to?"
Corin replaces her headphones with his own. His little fingers brush her neck as he lowers his hands. Her nose flares. She nods her head through half of the song, searching his face, and then she takes his phone from his hands and sets it on the table with the headphones.
"You said the song was about a lot of things."
"You seemed to have formed your own opinions on what the song is about. It's called "Wasp," by the way," he says.
She tilts her head, "is "The One" about a lot of things too?"
Corin's eyes widen, effectively ruining any chance he has of lying. The song runs through his head. Sexual tension with the vague hint of feelings, much less serious than Wasp. He had written it after a dream he'd had about her, over a year before they'd kissed.
"Yes," he says.
She doesn't say anything else. She curls her fingers at her sides and clenches a muscle in her jaw. It looks like she is either fighting with herself or preparing to rip him a new one. Eventually she relaxes, looking back into his eyes.
When her fingers come up and just barely rest against his chest, he very seriously considers whether or not he is dreaming. Perhaps he had passed out on the floor with his headphones. Or gotten blackout drunk somewhere. But her fingernails scrape his collarbone as she twists her hands in the collar of his shirt, and he doesn't wake up. He still doesn't wake up when she pulls his head down into her reach. When her lips brush against his, and he feels the beginnings of a chap on them, the dream theory goes out the window.
She gives him room to pull back, her mouth barely on his, her grip on his shirt ready to break. He breathes with her for a fraction of a moment, and then he cups her face and draws her in. She lets a long breath into his mouth, almost like relief, almost like a moan. Her fingers spread against his throat as she seeks more of his mouth, and he angles her head to kiss her more deeply. The ribbon in her hair catches his fingers, and her waves tumble free. They are like he remembers, warm and luxurious, and when she sweeps her tongue over his, it still tastes of cinnamon candy. He tugs her lower lip between his teeth and licks the taste from it.
Maeva's hands tighten in his collar, and she yanks him toward the wall. Her back presses into it, his hips pin her there. He slides his hands from her face, through her gorgeous hair to the small of her back. His little fingers brush her jeans, his palms mold to her spine. The breath in both their lungs grows short as he touches her. She had been wearing a dress the last time. Now, in her tiny little Eurydice shirt, he feathers his fingers through the tight dip of her waist, makes a gap between them and drags his knuckles down the soft plane of her stomach. Every inch of her skin he touches is soft enough to make him growl with desire, until he comes to a rough smear of paint on her hip. It crumbles away under his thumb. He thinks about pulling away, not letting this go any further, but she wraps his arms around his neck and curves her body into him. Her chest presses into his, and she is not wearing a bra beneath her shirt. His head spins as he realizes he could reach under it and touch her. He could slip her out of her clothes and take her to bed, if she felt so inclined. Or he could have her right here. Right here would do just fine.
The pause of his fingers has her pulling impatiently at his hair, whispering for him to touch her between kisses. He slips his hands under her shirt and cups her breasts, feeling their weight and their curves and tracing the delicate points of her nipples. Maeva swears and climbs up his body; her hands find the trail of dark hair above his jeans, stroking, tugging. His groans vibrate on her neck, and she laughs, running her hands up the muscles in his stomach, knocking through his ribs, coming back down to trace his hips. Her hands send heat through his skin wherever they touch. She digs her nails in and moans when he bites at her throat. A moment later, she has her nails pressed into his back and is rubbing her hips against his. Their skin glides together where she has pushed his shirt up. His pelvic muscles twist each time her jeans catch on his. He has to muster the willpower to push her back.
Corin holds her against the wall by the hips. Maeva is panting and bright eyed, her lashes veiling her irises. There is a bruise blooming on her neck, her black as fuck hair curling into her pink cheeks, and he wants her more than anything.
"What are we doing?" He asks.
"This is a terrible time to stop wanting me," she huffs, "come here."
"No, Maeva."
He leans back into her and rests his forehead on hers. She grips his hair and rubs her nose against his.
"What are we doing? I don't want this to go any further until you tell me what you want."
"I want you," she kisses his lips, "just for tonight. I just want to pretend for a little while. Do you want me?"
He doesn't ask what she means by pretending. He doesn't want to know.
"You know I want you, you know I want you for more than just tonight. I'll take what I can get though."
Corin looks into her eyes and sees a level of emotion there he has never seen before. He worries she might start crying, her eyes are so full of longing and desire and feelings that are too shadowed in black and green for him to decipher.
This time when she kisses him it is like a dam has broken in both of them. Hot, crushing, bone deep kisses that are full of every feeling he has ever had for her. And while he doesn't know what emotion is pouring off of her lips, it follows the same shape and rhythm as his. Her hands are all over him, clawing his shirt over his head so she can touch his chest and shoulders and run her fingers over the scars at his wrists. He tugs them away, reaching for her jeans. The button pops open and he traces the scalloped edge of her underwear.
"God," Maeva whines, "please, Corr, please."
Corin growls into her collarbone as he slips his fingers between her legs. She is soft and warm and slick, putting her mouth to his ear, filling it with breathy little moans.
He drops her onto the table, kneeling to help her wrestle with her jeans. She is making tiny, desperate noises as they pop open buttons, long relieved ones as he pulls them off. Her newly exposed skin draws his lips, and he flicks his eyes up to her face as he kisses her. She tangles her fingers in his hair to push his mouth between her legs.
Corin hears her head hit the table, feels her body arch as he licks and sucks on her. He presses his hand onto her hip to keep her still.
"Oh, fuck me," she gasps and strains against his hold, "Corin, do you...do you have a..." her words dissolve, but he can guess the rest.
"Mhm," he finds his cell phone and pops the case off, sliding a condom out from under it.
Maeva sits up and brings his mouth back to hers. It feels like a forever process—helping her get his jeans undone, keeping her hands off of him just long enough to get the condom on. It feels endless, but really it is only a few seconds, and then he is pushing her back against the wall and pressing inside her.
She clenches around him, kisses full of moans and gasps. Shudders rock through him each time his hips knock into hers. Where her thighs grip around him and her stomach slides against his is already slick with sweat. Sweet when he tastes it on her neck, up her throat, along her jawline. She shudders under him, arches her spine and breathes out his name. He cradles her face, and kisses her again, moving against her hard enough that the wall rattles. Her eyes are huge and dark and heavy on his, urging his body along with hers. Their lips brush as they pant and race together.
He feels her jaw tense under his hands just before her eyes roll closed and she comes. Heat bleeds from her skin to his as her pelvic muscles clench, yanking him over the edge after her. He fists his hands into her hair and distantly hears himself groaning into her neck. The little shocks running through his skin last a long time, longer than it takes her to come down and hug him close to her. Corin wraps his arms around her waist.
They cuddle like that for a long time, sweaty and shivering. A part of his brain is still processing that this even happened. The rest of him is too bathed in endorphins to feel anything except the sweet feeling he gets from holding her.
She is the first to move, but she doesn't pull away, only shifts and makes a kittenish noise against his shoulder.
"Do you have any more condoms?"
He whispers back, "one more in my phone case, a stock in my bedroom."
Maeva sighs and returns to silent cuddling.
Corin sits on the table with her, burying his cheek in her hair. He opens his eyes and looks around the room, committing it to memory with this moment. The wastebasket full of water bottles, the settings on the switchboard, her jeans and panties piled on the floor with his shirt. He looks at the microphone and sighs at the little red light glowing beside the record switch.
Maeva finally looks up as he picks her up and goes to turn it off.
"Oh, fuck."
"Its fine, we can trim out anything extra on recording. Are you feeling alright?" He asks.
"I feel amazing, I'm just basking," her head weighs on his shoulder again.
"Good. Here, I'm going to set you down for a second," he lowers her to her feet and goes to get out of his condom and zip his jeans back up.
Maeva holds herself up against the wall on unsteady legs. Corin turns his head to look at her, and loses his breath for a moment. Naked except for her sweat dampened shirt, with swollen lips, sleepy eyes, and a wild mess of crow-black hair, she looks like a dream again. He gathers her up in his arms and kisses her. It isn't long before she is jumping up to wrap her legs around him and tugging on his hair, demanding more. And he is only too happy to give it to her.
Corin holds her up with one arm and makes sure to grab his phone with the other, carrying her out of the booth and up the stairs. He nearly loses his balance as their kisses heat up, all teeth and moans as he massages her breasts and she teases him through his jeans. They don't make it all the way to the third floor of the house.
He is stumbling up the second flight of stairs, sucking a spot on her neck and pulling at her nipples. She is squirming and squeezing him in her hands, so wet he can smell it. When she yanks his jeans open and plunges her hands in, he falls, landing hard on his elbows with Maeva on top of him. She finds his phone in his back pocket, he helps her unwrap the condom, and then she is sinking onto him. Corin leans his head back and lets her ride him. She is tight and silky and rolls her hips like heaven, clawing at his abdomen.
"Fuck, Maeva," he reaches down and brushes his knuckles against her clit, "god, baby, just like that."
She responds by collapsing on his chest and coming. Her body shakes and he rubs her clit through it, pushing her hair back to see her bite her own lip.
"You're beautiful," he murmurs.
"You're everything," she whispers back.
She kisses up his jaw to his mouth, sucking on his lower lip. Corin groans as he picks her back up and carries her into his bedroom. The bed sinks under her back, and then under his forearms as he braces over her and thrusts in a rhythm that matches her kisses. Maeva pushes his jeans off and curls around him. Her hair spreads out beneath his hands in a gorgeous fan, velvet black in the dark of his room. He curls his fingers in it, kisses down her neck, and basks in the feeling of her legs sliding up his sides. It is a short lived little heaven though, cut off by Maeva pushing him over onto his back and sitting up on his hips.
"I think I owe you an orgasm."
She crosses her arms and pulls her shirt off, leaving herself naked with her hair spilling over her breasts. The moon outlines her body, his tattooed fingers wrapped around her hips. He thinks he would die a very happy man right now.
"You don't have to do all the work though," he says.
"I want to watch you come like this," she flips her hair and moves her hips the same way she had before.
He drops his head back, moaning and tilting into her motions.
She laughs, "so tell me, Corin, am I everything you ever dreamed of?"
Corin looks at her, bathed silver, looking at him through her lashes, blushing, shimmering with sweat.
"I think..." he spreads his fingers over her warm skin, "that you're a religion I would love to convert to."
"Good," she leans down, "because you've put my dreams to shame so far."
Her lips come down on his before he can respond to that. He lets it go for the moment, lets her distract him with her body. His muscles are starting to coil as she picks up her pace. She whispers his name into his ear. Louder when he runs his thumb around her nipple. Moaning it as he slips his other hand between them to rub her clit. He latches back onto her hip, urging her along faster.
She sits back up to oblige him, watching his jaw clench and his eyes squeeze shut as he builds up slowly. She reaches forward and touches his face, making him look at her. The look in her eyes as she orgasms ends him. His muscles shudder into oblivion, and halfway through she lies down on top of him, shivering again. He touches her spine, kisses her lips and neck as he finishes. Eventually she rolls off of him so he can go get out of his condom and slip his boxers back on.
"Did you want something to wear?" He joins her under the covers.
"Mmm, maybe later," she yawns, working her way into his arms. Her leg hooks over his hip, and she pillows her head on his shoulder, hair spreading over his chest.
Corin traces her knuckles.
"Tell me what you meant by putting your dreams to shame."
"No, no," Maeva shakes her head against his clavicle, "I don't have to explain the things I say, and they aren't brought up again. It's a clause of pretending."
He looks at her faraway expression. He still doesn't know what she meant by pretending. After that, he wants to know even less. Corin just kisses her forehead and gives in to exhaustion. The last thing he feels before unconsciousness is Maeva, waffling her dainty fingers through his and squeezing them over his heart.
Later, Corin wakes to an empty bed and the murmur of thin scratching in his ears. He sits up and blinks against the buckets-full of moonlight still spilling into his window, reaching up to rub his hair. Maeva is outlined in silver on his floor, sitting cross legged with drawings scattered around her in a wide arc. She is swimming in one of his shirts, a soft gray henley that slips off her shoulder and swallows her hands in fabric. Something very deep in his heart sighs as he looks at her. He gets to his feet and finds his jeans from last night, tugging them up over his boxers. Maeva makes an acknowledging noise as he sits down behind her, engrossed in shading something.
"Have you been drawing all night?"
"No, just for the past hour or so. I woke up and actually felt creative," she whispers, leaning into his hands on her waist.
He wraps arms around her and muffles his words in her hair, "as if you don't feel creative every day."
She resumes her sketching, "no, I don't, because I'm not."
"What do you mean you're not?" He laughs, "I'm fairly certain that rainforest heart piece isn't anything I've seen before. Nor is the one hanging over my piano."
"Yes you have. It's a heart, an anatomically perfect representation, and an impressionist rainforest, layered over the top of each other. Things I've seen," her pencil digs into the page a little bit harder, "I can only paint things I've seen, I just twist them or layer them to make it beautiful. I don't make new things. I'll never invent cubism or pull Starry Night out of my head, I can't do that."
She takes a short breath and sets her sketch down. Corin glances at it and sighs into her hair.
"And just where do you think Starry Night Came from? Or even cubism?"
"That's the whole point, I don't know, I don't have that," she grumbles.
Corin kisses her ear, "Starry Night didn't just pop out of Van Gough's head, Maeva, he was mad when he painted that, he was just translating whatever was happening in his head. Or, look at what I do," he shrugs, "I definitely don't make new things, I just take what I feel and rearrange it into something that sounds good when I scream it."
"See, but it comes from inside you. Nothing I paint comes from inside me or has any of my insides in it. I just plagiarize the world around me."
"Mhm... but you said you were feeling creative." He picks up her sketch, "so what is this about?"
Her shoulders rub his chest as she shrugs, "I don't really know. I just woke up and it came to me while I was lying in bed."
"Well how did you feel while you were lying in bed?" He tilts his head and kisses below her ear, making a soft, sucking trail down the side of her neck.
She arches her neck into his lips, "hm...I felt sore."
He laughs, and she considers, "and... safe, I suppose. I felt very settled and comfortable, despite waking up in an unfamiliar place. Extremely warm."
She hums and draws his hands up under his shirt, pressing them against her stomach. He spreads his fingers, tracing her hips and her breasts and the squishy planes above her naval.
His mouth moves on to her shoulder, "anything else?"
"I felt fluffy. Like a soufflé or whipped cream or something."
"And how ironic, your sketch looks like fluffy swirls."
He hunts along her throat for the sweet spot he had found last night. Her stomach clenches under his hands when he reaches it.
"When did you want me to take you home?"
"Not for a while."
"Alright," Corin raises his head and picks up a handful of her hair, slowly wrapping it around his fingers, "do you want me to leave you be so you can sketch?"
"No, I'm finished," she slouches back into him and guides his free hand to the inside of her thigh, "with sketching, not with you."
He gives her hair a soft tug, reeling her head back so he can kiss her. She twists and presses into him, all soft lips and playful stings of her teeth. One of her hands comes up to cradle his jaw, drawing him in deeper, the other traces his knuckles and tendons where they rest above her knee. He slips his fingers up, moving over her skin in slow circles that have her squirming in between kisses.
She growls and flips herself on his lap, legs circling his hips to draw him into her hands. She touches him furiously, digging her fingers into his ribs and his chest and the long lines of muscle wrapping around his arms. He tightens his grip on her hair and reaches under his shirt to cup the bottom of her breast. Her body presses into his touch, she moans into his mouth and he can smell her getting wet, feel the warmth of it pressed just above his jeans. She squeaks as he picks her up and drops her on her back at the edge of the bed. Her breaths shorten as he pushes his shirt up and lowers his lips to her stomach. He flicks his eyes up to hers, and she gives him a breathless nod, falling back onto the sheets as his lips and teeth come down her hip to her thigh. He nibbles at the thin skin along her bikini line, teasing her until she is tugging on his hair. A whimper leaves her when he finally nestles his face between her legs.
The last time doing this had been too frenzied of a moment for him to notice much, so he takes his time now. Memorizing the curve and softness of her, tracing the teardrop shape of her clit with his tongue. She likes that, pushing herself into his face. He does it a few more times before he moves down, teasing, measuring, and finally slipping his tongue inside her. Her legs grip around his head.
"I should have known you'd be good with your mouth," she breathes.
Corin laughs and is met with her gasping and pulling his hair. He laughs again, replacing his tongue with his fingers and licking figure eights over her.
"Mhm. And I bet you are very good with your hands," his lower lip brushes her clit as he speaks, vibrating with his words.
She likes that too, rippling around his fingers. Sucking makes her squirm, makes his shirt ride up her ribs. She grabs the hand on her stomach and guides his fingers over her nipple in circles.
He tilts his head back down and follows the pace she sets, slow passes of his tongue, soft sucks, and gentle nibbles, pumping his fingers in and out of her. The moans stroking his ears turn into cries, and with a last flicker of his tongue, she comes melting down in tremors. Her legs soften around his neck, fingers releasing the death grip on his hair. He kisses his way back up her stomach to her breasts. The little gap between them smells of her perfume, and he nuzzles the skin there.
"Should we see if my hands are as good as your mouth?" She pushes his jeans down his hips.
"I'd love that," he kicks everything off and rolls her under the covers, "I would also love to be inside you right now."
Maeva cradles his jaw for a kiss, all gentle lips with brief brushes of her tongue. He rolls them onto their sides and hooks her leg over his hip, settling her against him while he reaches under the bed for a condom.
"Here, I'll take that."
Corin watches as she holds it between her teeth, and then he is gasping as she wraps her hands around him and rubs up and down in slow, experimental motions. He had been beyond right about her hands. Soft and warm and precise. She finds the motion that makes him groan and plays with rhythm and pressure, watching herself touch him. Her eyes are gleaming, lips wet where her mouth is watering. He looks down with her and nearly finishes at the sight of her delicate hands around him.
She stops stroking though, drawing him against her and reaching up for the condom in her mouth. She rubs against him while she opens it, still rubs after it is on. Finally, she tilts her hips and he is sinking inside her. A long groan leaves his throat as she wraps around him. He rests his forehead against hers and follows her eyes to where he glides in and out of her. Long, hard strokes, their breaths tripping each time they come back together. She slides her leg up his side, guiding him deeper, closer. He wraps an arm around her and tilts her head up for kisses. The meeting of their mouths is full of careful feelings.
They come quickly, almost at the same time. He sighs into her lips and feels the heat travel up and down her skin. She nuzzles his nose and crawls over him to get his boxers off the floor. Something in him cringes at how sticky he is, how sticky they both are. But then she cuddles back against him. Holding her suddenly becomes the most important thing in the world. He shifts to hug her against his chest and times his breaths with hers, watching the sea crash outside.
There is a long moment where he feels any of the weight inside him evaporate. Where he feels like Maeva's drawings, fluffy and insubstantial, empty in the best possible way. Home, in his own bed with his beach to run on, ocean to swim in, all the oranges he could eat, and Maeva, sleeping soundly in his clothes. There is a feeling like things could stay this way forever, mostly real with the sliver of longing that tells him it is only a flight of fancy. Corin doesn't remember falling asleep, but he remembers right before, wondering if this is what she had meant by pretending.
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A/N: Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts--please comment!
Song Credits:
"Wasp" by Motionless in White.
"The One" by We Are Harlot.