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I wipe the snot and tear combo dripping down my face with the bottom of my shirt. “You don’t have a choice, unfortunately. It’s not like you can spring free from the stupid fucking iPod you’ve been trapped in.”

“You’re right, but I can do this.” His voice drifts, not that I could hear him with the way I haven’t stopped crying. All I hear is the array of insufferable sounds spewing from me as the floodgates of emotion take over me. That is until I hear footsteps.

Great, as if today couldn’t get any worse, now what? Someone broke in?

Rennix

I knew my surprise would summon some sort of over-the-top reaction from her. What I didn’t see coming was her sucker punching me in the jaw before fainting. In hindsight, sneaking up on her from behind probably wasn’t the best way to go about things. Oh well. At least she can see—and feel me—for real this time.

“Am I hallucinating?” Her voice is weary.

“No, baby, you’re not.”

She goes to spring up from where I have her head resting on my lap on the couch, but the motion is too fast after having just fainted, and she forfeits. “You feel so real,” she observes while she pokes and prods me all over.

I lean over, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “That’s because I am.”

Stubborn as always, she tries sitting up again, this time much slower. “How?” Her gaze darts around our apartment. “Am I being punked? How is this real? What’s going on?”

“Ssh.” I open my hands for her to fall into my chest. Apprehensive as I know she feels, she obliges, blessing me with her scent—Love Spell, I believe she said it was—as I squeeze my arms around her, never wanting to let go. “It’s our birthday, remember? We’re thirty-five today.”

It takes her a moment or two to string together the gravity of what I’m saying.

“Wait, so my wish was granted after all?”

I shrug. “I guess you can say that. All I know is I woke up this morning with my head buried under a pillow in our bed, and I’m not questioning it.” I’m back with my girl.

A tinge of color floods her cheeks. “Sorry about that. I usually sleep with you, in your iPod form, that is, under my pillow. I wasn’t trying to suffocate you.”

I grasp her chin, stroking it in my palm. “I wouldn’t care if you did.”

Her lip becomes trapped between her teeth, kneading at it a bit. “You little masochist.”

I lean in closer, brushing my lips against hers. “If you’re the one punishing me, I’m okay with the pain. I’d welcome it, just as long as it meant I could be near you.”

As much as I want to stay like this forever, I can’t. Not when I’ve spent the last year deprived of the other set of lips I’ve been dying to get a taste of, among doing other things. “I think we’ve both gone through enough pain not being able to see each other like we’ve wanted to. All I want to do now is remedy that.”

The look in my eyes speaks for itself. She knows it as well as I do. Still, it doesn’t stop her from asking, “How?” Not because she doesn’t know, but because she wants me to spell out exactly what I have in mind. Something you’d think she’d grow tired of with how much talking we’ve done when being intimate. But if that’s what my girl wants, then that’s what she’ll get, while I get on my knees and spell it out for her to hear with my words and to feel with my tongue.

“Panties?” I ask, making myself comfortable kneeling on the floor in front of her.

She shakes her head no.

“Good.” I latch onto her hips, scooting her to the couch’s edge, lifting her skirt up in the process. “I’m ready for my dessert, now.”

Admiring her already present arousal, I push my glasses up as far as they’ll go on the bridge of my nose.

I spread kisses onto her inner thigh, starting high, taking my time until I reach her mound. My tongue darts into her warmth, plunging as deep inside as I can go. Her back arches just as her sweet moans fill the air, and it takes everything in me not to continue fucking her with my tongue. I will. Don’t worry. I am nothing if not a vessel for her pleasure. I know what she likes, how she likes it, how many times she wants it all done, and no matter what, that’s what I’ll give to her, even if it means I am temporarily denying myself. And it’s because of that I do what I do next.

Ignoring the growing ache of blood rushing to my groin, I retract my tongue, painting a line with her arousal from in between her swollen lips to her clit, all the way up to her stomach, to her chest, until I reach her mouth.

I hold out my tongue, waiting for her to hollow her mouth around it, sucking it in.

The groan of approval that vibrates through my entire body as she sucks my tongue becomes contagious and before I know it, I’m moaning, my knees weak, ready to return back to them after she sucks all of her lingering arousal from my tongue.

“You’re such a good boy,” she praises once she decides to let go. “You really do listen.”

I nod my head eagerly. “I do. To every single word. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a years’ worth of making every fantasy you’ve whispered to me through those earbuds come to life, same way I have. All I want from you is to lean back, open up for me, and drape your legs over my shoulders. Come as many times as you need. I won’t stop until you tell me to. Can you do all that for me, pretty girl?”