Four Of A Kind

She smiled, that rare genuine smile that transformed her entire face, and then she was moving down my body again with clear intent. Her lips traced a path across my chest, my stomach, lower, and when she looked up at me through her lashes her expression was pure mischief.

"If I only have one night, I should probably make the most of it."

"That seems like a waste of good sleeping time."

"You can sleep when you’re dead."

Her mouth closed around me before I could respond, and whatever clever comeback I’d been formulating dissolved into static. Sabrina was thorough. Patient in a way that bordered on torture, building sensation in waves until I was gripping the sheets hard enough to tear them.

She pulled back right before I tipped over the edge, crawling up my body with a smug expression that should have been illegal.

"Not yet."

"You’re evil."

"I’ve been called worse."

She positioned herself above me, her thighs straddling my hips, and then she was sinking down onto me in one smooth motion that made both of us freeze for a heartbeat. Her back arched like a drawn bow, spine curving in a way that made every line of her body visible in the silver moonlight streaming through the window. Her lips parted but no sound came out for a long moment, just a sharp intake of breath that matched my own.

The moonlight caught the planes of her body as she adjusted to the feeling, and I watched the way shadows pooled in the hollow of her throat, the valley between her breasts, the dip of her waist. Her pale skin looked almost otherworldly in that light, like she was made of porcelain and starlight and something too fragile to exist outside this moment. I filed the image away in some part of my brain that kept things sacred, because there were some sights that deserved to be remembered forever.

When she started to move, it felt less like sex and more like we were having a conversation in a language that didn’t require words. She’d roll her hips forward and I’d thrust up to meet her. She’d lean back and I’d follow, hands sliding up her sides to steady her. Push and pull. Give and take. Her body asking questions and mine answering in the spaces between breaths.

Sabrina rode me with the same single-minded focus she brought to everything else. There was no hesitation, no self-consciousness about the way her breasts moved with each roll of her hips or the small sounds that escaped her throat despite her best efforts to stay quiet. She was completely present in this, in us, in the sensation of our bodies moving together, and the weight of her attention made me feel like I was the only thing that existed in her universe.

"Isaiah."

"Yeah."

"Look at me."

I opened eyes I hadn’t realized I’d closed. Sabrina was watching my face with an expression I couldn’t quite read, something between hunger and tenderness and a desperate kind of hope.

"I’m going to say something, and I need you to not run away screaming."

"Right now? Really?"

"Right now."

She rolled her hips and I saw stars, my hands tightening on her waist hard enough to leave bruises.

"I love you."

The words hung in the air between us, impossible and terrifying and somehow exactly right.

"I’ve loved you since September. Since you walked into that coffee shop looking like you hadn’t slept in three days and still somehow managed to be the most interesting person in the room. Since you stood up to Cassidy when everyone else just let her bulldoze them. Since you started tutoring her and didn’t give up even when she made every single session a battle."

She moved faster, harder, and the pleasure built at the base of my spine in a wave I couldn’t stop.

"I love the way you take care of Iris. The way you work yourself into exhaustion so she can have a better life than you did. The way you act like nothing touches you when everything cuts too deep." Her voice broke. "I love you, Isaiah Angelo. The version you show people and the version you hide. The parts you’ve convinced yourself are too broken to be worth anything."

I dragged her mouth to mine and kissed her hard enough to feel it in my bones. My hips drove up to meet hers and she made a sound against my lips that might have been my name or a prayer or just surrender. Her whole body went taut in my arms before she shattered, trembling through it while I held her together.

I lasted maybe three seconds longer. Buried myself deep and went over the edge with her name caught in my throat, the world narrowing to nothing but the heat of her skin and the way she was looking at me like I’d hung every star in the sky just for her.

We ended up in a heap of tangled limbs and racing hearts, both of us trying to remember how breathing worked. Sabrina had her face pressed to the curve of my neck and I felt something wet there, tears she’d probably stab me for acknowledging.

"You don’t have to say anything back."

"I know."

"I just needed you to understand. Before my sisters figure this out. Before my mother starts circling like a shark who smells blood in the water. Before all the complicated, messy, terrible things that are waiting for us on the other side of this room." She raised her head and I saw everything she’d kept locked away for months written across her face, raw and unguarded in a way that made my chest ache. "I needed you to know this matters to me. That you matter. Whatever else happens, that part’s not negotiable."

I thought about what Iris had told me. About Sabrina watching me before I’d ever looked her way. About the girl who’d been falling in love from across coffee shops and crowded hallways, keeping it buried because she’d convinced herself she wasn’t allowed to want things for herself.

"I’m not there yet."

Something flickered in her eyes. Pain, maybe. Or acceptance.

"But I could be. With time." I tucked her hair behind her ear again, traced my thumb across her cheekbone. "You’re the first person who’s ever looked at me and seen something worth keeping. The first person who didn’t run when they found out about the train rides and the double shifts and the sister who depends on me for everything."

"Isaiah..."

"I’m falling for you, Sabrina. Slower than you’d like, probably. I fall slow. Guard things too carefully. Push people away before they can leave on their own." I pressed my forehead against hers.

"But I’m falling. And I don’t think I’m going to stop."

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