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It is loud.

Messy.

Wet warmth is everywhere, but it does not end with me.

It ends with him.

With us.

Poet fucks me through it, but he is not done. We are not done.

I spread myself wide. “Do it. I want to feel you come inside me.”

Poet growls, his whole body taut with exertion. With restraint.

“Do it,” I say again, in Lithuanian. By mistake.

But it doesn’t matter. Poet hears me. He leans down and mauls my lips, tension shaking his muscles. He hunches over me and fucks me harder, as though he is being unwound from a spool I cannot see.

It should hurt, perhaps. I am so spent.

But I am mesmerised by him. By his unhinged jaw and flushed skin. By the wild light in his eyes that makes him look like the pagan god I see in his sun-soaked fields, as he comes as though it is the only thing—as though I am the only thing—he has ever needed. As he trembles and shakes until he collapses on my chest and for the longest moment is completely and utterly still.

Or maybe it is me who is still.

My surroundings slip sideways.

A blur of shadow in the dark. A current pulling me under. I register fragments of reality. Poet’s weight lifting from me. His quiet apology as he eases out of me and I miss the fullness—the connection—of him. He cleans us up, strong hands on my skin with the same reverence as when he strokes my hair back from my face.

“Oscar.”

His thumb brushes my cheek, his other hand firm on my chest. I need to tell him I’m awake, but my body doesn’t remember how.

“Oscar.”

I drag my eyes open.

Poet is above me, the wildness of before replaced by focused concern. “Drink.”

Sweetness floods my mouth, painfully bright in the haze I’ve slipped into.

“Good,” he murmurs. “Eat these too.”

He takes the juice bottle away and slips jelly beans between my lips.

I eat them, a smile already forming as the sugar does its job. “You are so good at this.”

“What’s that then?”

“Everything.”

Poet lies down beside me, sweat-damp hair pushed back from his face. “I’m terrible at lots of things. But none of that seems to matter when I’m with you. I feel like you see all of me and you like me anyway.”

I think I might love him anyway, and the epiphany I had while we were fucking comes back to me, but I’m too wrecked to unpick it. “I’m sorry,” I say instead.

Poet frowns. “For what?”

“For this.” I hold up my shaky hand. “It is irritating.”