I pulled my knees in and wrapped my ankles around his waist so that he could drive deeper. The shift in angle let his cock hit me in all the right places, let his pelvis grind against me with just the right pressure. But it wasn’t only the new stimulation that sent me soaring toward my next climax. It was his eyes, locked with mine. As open as my body was to him at the moment, it was JC’s soul that was open to me. He spoke secrets in that look. He told me things I wasn’t supposed to know. He told me that I wasn’t what he planned. He told me that I was everything he needed. He told me that he wasn’t fucking—that he was making love.

I’m sure I said all the same things back. I’m sure I said more. And when I went again, it was with him, my orgasm crashing and mingling with his so completely that I couldn’t tell which sounds were his and which were mine. Couldn’t tell if it was my heart pounding in my chest or his pounding against mine. Couldn’t tell whether it was me sobbing into his skin or him sobbing into mine.

But what I did know was that we’d flown together. He’d loosened me before this. Today, whatever fetters had caged him, they’d been released as well, and we met there in the sky, wild and free, two birds that had been imprisoned too long.

***

He held me long after we’d settled, sweeping light strokes down my back with his fingers and intermittently kissing my forehead. Our legs tangled together and our chests fell and rose in tandem. We never cuddled after sex, and while it hadn’t been awkward before, this was the easiest we’d ever been.

There was a part of me that was tempted to analyze the situation, wonder what the day meant for our future and try to interpret whether or not I was okay with the change. Whether he was okay with the change.

But I didn’t let myself fall into that. Maybe JC’s efforts to teach me to let loose had really taken a hold of me. Or maybe I just didn’t want to face the possible reality of our relationship. Either way, I let myself linger in his touch, in his scent, in his embrace. Let myself enjoy the exploration of my lover that he’d never allowed before.

“What does this say?” I asked after a while, my hand dancing across the tattoo on his torso. “It’s Chinese, right?”

“Japanese. ‘The current age is but a brief moment in the greater scope of existence.’”

“Um…what?”

He chuckled and I liked the pleasant way my nipples rubbed against his chest as he did. “It basically means live for today. It’s Buddhist.”

I put my hand on his chest and rested my chin on it to look up at him. “Are you Buddhist?” It seemed like I’d have figured this out already if he were. Like, shouldn’t there be tantric sex or something? That was a Buddhist thing, wasn’t it? Maybe that’s what we’d been having. I was so ignorant about Eastern religion.

But he shook his head. “No. I just liked the sentiment.”

Live for today was the epitome of my relationship with JC. “It fits you. That’s for sure.” I couldn’t see the image on his bicep in the position we were in, but I asked about it next. “And the compass? What made you get that one?”

He raised his arm and looked at the black etched compass, as if he’d forgotten what it looked like. “Don’t you think it’s cool?”

“Actually, it’s rather hot.” I’d never known I liked tattooed men until I’d seen JC strip, but now I realized that inked men hit my buttons.

Or maybe just JC hit my buttons.

He returned his arm to my back and smirked. “I can live with hot.”

I wouldn’t doubt that he’d earned the attention of plenty of women with both the positioning and choice of image. Yet, I doubted that he’d gotten it in hopes of hooking up. He didn’t need skin art for that.

I tapped his chest playfully. “But does it mean something? Why did you get it?”

He groaned as if he didn’t want to tell me. After scrubbing his hand over his face, he said, “Honestly? I don’t know. I was drunk.”

“You drunk-tattooed?”

“It’s why I don’t drink anymore. I do crazy things and have no recollection. Once when I was drinking, I remember wanting street tacos. Next thing I know, I was waking up in a cantina in Mexico.”

His eyes sparkled when he talked, and I bet that mine sparkled with his. “You woke up with a compass tattoo?”

“The compass was another drunken event.” His tone said he was still embarrassed about it. “I’d never even considered a compass before it showed up on my arm.”

“At least you didn’t pick a flower or a MOM tattoo. Drunk JC has good taste.”

“I can’t even think about what I could have gotten. Like I said, no more alcohol for me.”

“You don’t drink?” I was asking so many questions. Too many probably, but it felt so liberating to finally get them past my lips. And his answers…I drank them up like they were the only water on a deserted island.

“I’ll have an occasional glass of wine, but nothing harder unless I want to lose several hours of my life and end up as the real life study for the next Hangover movie.”

“Hey, those are good movies.” I ran my fingers across the grid of letters on his forearm. Four rows that spelled out a date—December seventeenth. Had he flinched as I touched it? Or was that just my imagination? This was the tattoo that interested me the most. The one that I was sure shed the most light on the man I’d unexpectedly fallen for. “Is this one also the result of overindulging?”

“No. That one’s not.” He brushed against a spot on my back. “What’s this from?”

“What?” I looked over my shoulder, but I already knew what he was talking about. I hadn’t thought about it in a while, and since it was under my blade, I didn’t see it all the time to remind me of its existence.

“This mark.” He leaned up so he could see it better. “Is it a scar?”

“Yeah, it is.” But I wanted to know more about his tattoo. “So what’s important about December seventeenth?” He’d said his birthday was in July, so it wasn’t that. What kind of a date would a man mark on his skin? Someone else’s birthday. An anniversary. A date that he fell in love. Like I could so easily have today’s date tattooed on my body. It would already forever be tattooed on my heart.

I couldn’t help but think his date had to do with a woman.