Every day, he sits in the back of the room with his friends, sex and spitfire, metal and ink. I wander into the lecture hall, coffee in one hand, laptop bag in the other, my body so close to his as I allow myself that one small brush against his leg, skirting past him in the narrow space between the rows of seats. Every day he nods at me as he lets me pass, a smile and a wink, and then those warm green eyes are buried back behind his laptop screen, his attention absorbed, that mysterious mind engaged.

And every day, I am glad the screen possesses him so; because if he could see how many times I glance at him throughout the lecture, he would know.

He would know how I want to run my hands across the lines of ink that wrap around his forearms, muscles flexing with every keystroke. How I think the little metal barbell inside my tongue would fit perfectly inside the loops that line his ear and his brow. How I want that flaming crown of red and brown hair brushing lush between my fingertips, desperate to know if it's really as soft as it looks.

Only he doesn't know that.

How could he?

It's not as if he ever looks at me.

For an hour every day, I sit there at the opposite end of the row from him, ignoring the professor's less than insightful commentary on the material I have already read the night before. I hide behind my own glowing screen in the semi-dark, stealing furtive glances at the dance of soft blue light across his jawline and over the bridge of his nose, sharp highlights on the thick black plastic of his glasses.

And I worry sometimes that his friends must know. That they must see the way I am always staring at him, only pretending to type, the chat window displayed across my screen just a ploy I use to hide my real reason for being in class each day.

Because it's my only chance to stare at him.

---

It is a class on social media, an elective for communication majors with no plans for the future or for jocks trying to fill a humanities requirement.

Or for writing majors looking for material.

The professor stands at the front of the room, trying to pretend for all he is worth that his idea of social media extends beyond the innovation of the telephone.

Someone with an eye for the meta has decided that a class on social media would be incomplete without incorporating it, and so as we sit there, listening to the incessant drone, we also stare at screens. A virtual discussion section in a 300 person lecture hall. Intimacy through anonymity.

Another opportunity for the yahoos around me to pretend to know something.

The list of unoriginal usernames scrolls by day after day, their banal commentary on the professor's lecture driving me insane. All the suck-ups that are desperate for a TA's attention post the most idiotic things, and it's all I can do not to either throw the laptop across the room or post something about what I really think.

Suddenly, something interesting floats by, and I sit up a little straighter.

Hellokitty003: Yes, prof is right. It's sad people text instead of talking.

~MetallicaRulez~: TA. Social interaction is dying and it's all Twitter's fault. There's no such thing as community any more.

Apadravya: But what if this is just what social interaction is becoming? Why does the fact that we communicate electronicallydemean the intimacy of the communication?

I practically choke on my coffee, sputtering wildly, and it's not only because I've never seen an intelligent comment scroll across the screen during this class before.

Rather, I do a spit-take in the middle of class because I know what an Apadravya is.

Quiet chuckling rings out from the opposite end of the row, and as is my habit, my gaze shifts immediately in his direction.

And for the first time, those warm green eyes, full of mirth behind thick plastic frames, are staring right back at me.

He heard my reaction. He knows that I know what an Apadravya is.

Wait, does that mean that he knows what one is?

I break his gaze just long enough to take in the three silver hoops in the eyebrow he's quirking up at me, the pyramid stud of his labret below those lips that look like sin and honey, twisted up in a knowing smirk. Our eyes meet again for just one moment more, and in the wake of his amusement, I do what any mature, lust-driven woman out to entice the man she's been dreaming about for months would do when she realizes he might have a piercing in his cock.

I stick my tongue out at him.

He laughs at my gesture right up until I twist the tip of my tongue up, clacking the barbell against my teeth and dragging the line of it across my lip.

And then I bury my head back in my screen.

When did I ever get so bold?

Feeling the flames of embarrassment rising up my cheeks, I stare intently at Apadravya's comment and the stunned silence in the chat window that has gathered in its wake, willing my body to a calm.

And then, still emboldened, I begin to type. My comment floats across the screen, and I sit back, pretending to focus on the lecture but really just trying with every shred of will I have not to look back over at the man whose presence burns through me from half a row of hard plastic seats away.

Inkella: Yes, electronic media allows people to form attachments based on interest and education, not geography. Community can be strengthened instead of undermined. As Apadravya said, communication can be just as intimate, if not more so.

A few seconds later, an alert pops up at the bottom of the screen.

Hmm, didn't even know they had private messaging on this thing.

Apadravya: Intimate, you say? ;)

I glance around wildly, looking everywhere for the person who might be behind that username. It does not fail to occur to me that the very object of my lust-filled daydreams is the most likely candidate, and I flush to think I might actually be 'talking' to him at this moment.

It would be the closest thing to actual contact we've had these thirteen weeks.

Intimacy, indeed. Words in intangible flashes of ones and zeroes behind the pretty colors of an LCD. Communication without contact.

Even though contact is exactly what I crave.

Resuming the bravery I feigned earlier, I place my cursor in the new little chat window and reply,

Inkella: Absolutely. In fact, I would go so far as to say that virtual intimacy has a leg up on personal experience in certain situations.There are lots of things I would type in a chat window that I might never dare say to a person's face. Online I am fiery and fierce.

I do not add that I am anything but that in real life.

Apadravya: I can tell. I like the spark of your fiery fierceness. It sets you apart from the sheep.

Inkella: I like your willingness to stand up to the sheep. Your comment was the first intelligent thing I've read on here all semester.

Apadravya: Then yours was the second.

Less than a minute goes by before he continues,

Apadravya: I'm much the same you know.

Inkella: ?

Apadravya: Feeling more comfortable with virtual intimacy. I am fire and venom online.

Inkella: Self-conscious and speechless IRL?

Apadravya: haha exactly.

There is a long pause in the series of messages from my mystery conversant, and I hazard one quick glance across the way at the other source of mystery in my life, wishing I could see what's on his screen. But as always, it's turned away from me. Allowing my eyes to settle for just a moment on his face, I see that he is absorbed again, his eyes trained fully in front of him, the glow from the monitor casting sharp highlights on the metal hoops that line his ear.

The metal loops I want to lick.

I can scarcely dare to hope that he's the one I've been chatting with, and I wrack my brain for something intelligent to say in the hopes of furthering this connection. But then my heart sinks to remember it could be anyone. It doesn't take an ink addict to have a barbell through your dick. Goodness knows I'd found that out through experience.

Desperate to revive the conversation, I return it to its origins.

Inkella: So exactly what kind of intimacy do you pursue online?

Apadravya: Mostly gaming communities. Fantasy worlds like World of Warcraft. But I also engage in some artistic ones. Body modification for one.

Inkella: I guessed as much from your screen name.

Apadravya: Recognized it did you? Most don't. It's a nice way to sort the enlightened from the sheep.

There's no safe way to respond to that one, so I don't, just sitting there and basking in the fact that my dream lover might think that I'm enlightened. Fortunately, he picks right up again, changing the topic to save us both from an extended conversation about cock jewelry.

Apadravya: How about you? You sounded pretty passionate about online communities yourself.

The list of forums I troll in my lonely evenings flits through my mind, and I smile slyly at myself, uncertain about exactly how much to reveal.

Considering again, I opt to stick with the simplest answer.

Inkella: I write.

Apadravya: Oh? What sorts of stuff?

I chew my pencap for a moment before deciding to go for broke.

Inkella: Erotica.

Behind me I hear the vague sound of choking, and I feel excitement between my legs and in my throat.

Because at this point I'm almost certain my pierced peen is the same as my pierced god.

Apadravya: More virtual intimacy? Or based on personal experience?

I blush reflexively, resolving that, at this stage in our non-relationship, it would not be wise to tell him most of my personal experience of late has involved a little purple vibrator.

And visions of his face between my legs.

Inkella: A mix, of course, like most things.

Apadravya: A vague answer. Surely you could elaborate.

I glance over my shoulder one more time to see the man I hope might live behind the words hunched over intently, his eyes focused and his hands for once stilled.

As if he can feel my gaze this time, he looks over, our eyes meet and I can't control the flood of wetness in my sex.

I stare at him meaningfully for a moment, answering the silent question, and then bow my head to type, looking up again the moment the words make their way across the screen.

Inkella: As much as I'm a fan of virtual intimacy, perhaps I could elaborate in person?

As soon as I hit enter, his head is buried in his screen again, and the timing cannot be a coincidence. He looks up and quirks that steel-hooped eyebrow in my direction again, a smile that looks like sin lilting softly across his mouth.

Apadravya: Perhaps.

My pulse rises, and I am delirious with possibility; or at least that is the only explanation I can think of for what my hands type next without my bidding.

Inkella: 312 Larson Hall. Anytime after 9.

At just that moment, the house lights turn on again, and all of the false intimacy of a conversation in the dark dissolves, too impermanent and ethereal to withstand the harshness of the glare.

I duck my head down, all my fierceness gone except the fierceness of my shame. Within moments, my laptop is packed up, and I leave via the other end of the row for once. I don't try to squeeze past him or look at him. I don't watch for him to wink at me.

And I definitely don't try to feel him up to see if there's a piercing in his peen.

---

Nine o'clock comes and goes, and I am sitting in my apartment alone, a new story about a woman taking a man with a frenulum ladder in her throat open on my laptop and a pint of Chubby Hubby at my side. I stare at the carton, wondering how many more nights like this I will have to spend before I become too chubby to ever have any hope of attracting the elusive hubby.

It is almost midnight when the doorbell rings, my heart in my throat and the scent of my own sex in the air, all my arousal peaked from the story I write that I imagine might someday foreshadow the passion in my life. I close my laptop without a second thought, and I am at the door in an instant, the handle turning easily and all my hope pinned on just one sight.

And for once, I am not disappointed.

My fantasy stands before me, auburn hair in delightful disarray, metal and ink on full display, a thin grey t-shirt showing all the curves of muscle I have never had a chance to observe in close proximity before, and I cannot breathe.

"You," I whisper, realizing for the first time that I don't even know his name.

But it doesn't really matter because I feel like I know everything else about him.

His face is a mask of surprise as he takes in the sight of me. My breathing catches as I exhale jerkily, uncertain if he is about to run or if this was what he expected. If he knew it would be me when he made the decision to pursue.

All the doubt erases itself when that heavy, steel-laced eyebrow raises up appreciatively instead of scornfully and he enters my apartment the way I hope he will enter my body. Forcefully. Confidently.

"You," he echoes huskily, kicking the door closed behind him, and he is so close.

I take in the scent of him as his body hovers close to mine, mere inches of static and wanting separating us, and I whimper from the proximity, my head swimming with need and desire. With an absolute air of certainty, he stalks forward as I lean back, those same six inches of space following us as I unwittingly lead him into my home.

I stop when my ass hits the back of the couch, and we pause, breathing raspily back and forth. I am shocked to find my own hand reaching up and forward, the tips of my fingers grazing, as they have so often dreamed of doing, over the row of piercings in his eyebrow, down the line of his jaw and to his lip. The flesh there is soft and rosy, a stark contrast to the red-brown stubble that scratches my palm and to the silver stud between his lip and his chin. He darts his tongue out at just that moment, the pointed tip painting a short wet line across my fingers, and I moan.

And then he's on me.

He grabs my hand away from his mouth and pushes it forcefully into the hair I have been so desperate to touch these many weeks, and it's softer than I ever imagined. His mouth tastes like blood and fire as it descends on mine, our lips entangled and our breathing mixed, his lust and desire clear from the hardness pressed against my stomach and from the tang of longing on his lips. I feel the palm of his hand trace its way down and away from my hand, descending firmly, roughly over my arm, to my shoulder and back again. Tugging at the buttons, he slides the fabric of my cardigan away from my chest and off my shoulder, his hand trailing roughly over the naked, inked flesh that is revealed.

Breaking his kiss, I move my mouth wetly over his skin, over the line of his jaw and to the metal loops in his ear, letting the barbell in my tongue tease them as my breath washes hot across his face.

"Do you know how long I've wanted to lick you here?" I pant, and his hands seize my arms more tightly, bringing our bodies even harder into contact as his hips push into mine. My sweater is a pile on the floor, his hands ripping it from my body, and I stand there in a tank top and jeans, and it is still too much. Too much fabric in between because I want all of him against all of me.

"Every fucking day," he swears, and it's only the second time I've heard his voice, rough and musical and deep. His mouth begins a long and steady assault on my neck, the hot trail of his tongue across my pulse making me shiver and sweat as my nails dig into his back. "Every fucking day you sneak by me and don't even give me a second look. It's all I can do not to grab you and make you sit on my lap instead of across the row from me."

"God, I wish you would have. Fuck!" I cry out as his teeth dig hard into the flesh just below the line of my tank top, into the soft rise of my breast, into the head of the leopard that wraps all the way around my breast and across my ribs. "Why didn't you?"

"Remember? Fire and venom online," he whispers, pushing down the cup of my bra to tease my nipple and groaning when he tastes the steel of the horseshoe through the rosy flesh.

"Self-conscious and speechless IRL?" I actually laugh as I'm saying it, my hands gripping his hair and pushing his face against my flesh. "I have a hard time believing that at the moment."

He pulls away from my tit and stands to his full height again, capturing my head in both his long and tapered hands, kissing me harshly as he groans into my mouth, "Believe it. Right up until you blurred the lines."

We kiss so roughly, so passionately that I feel his fuck-hot glasses against my face, the thick plastic of the frames pushing against my brows. He shifts his hands to remove them, but I stop him.

"Don't," I growl. "I like them on."

Something feral rips out of his lungs, and his hands are on my hips, lifting me until my ass settles on the back of the couch, the apex of my thighs lined up perfectly with the steel in his jeans. He settles there, our bodies making hard pulsing motions against each other through our clothes. Each thrust of his denim-covered cock against my center awakens a new blossom of pleasure, my head dropping backward until it feels like I'm floating, teetering, falling.

Only he catches me. Just as I'm about to fall backward, I'm wrapped up in his arms, held close against the muscles of his chest, my breasts heaving into him with every breath.

"Careful, Inkella," he breathes into my ear, and I clutch at his back harder as my legs wrap around his waist, pulling him into me.

"Bella," I correct him.

"Bella," he repeats, groaning as he pushes against my pussy again with my legs secured around his body. "Beautiful."

My hands drift from his back, up and over his shoulders and down his arms, as he begins to stroke his fingertips over my thighs from my knees to my hip and back again. His skin under my touch is so warm, my hands tracing black curls of ink on pale skin, an abstract pattern that resolves itself into a lion on one arm and a lamb on the other.

"Beautiful, indeed," I pant before he captures my mouth again. I begin to push at the hem of his t-shirt, desperate to see what the curls of ink evolve into beneath the fabric. He shifts my body in closer to him, still taking care not to let me fall. His hands let go of my body for just a moment to lift his arms up over his head as I pull his clothing from him, revealing the upper half of his body and his art.

I only have a moment to take in the sanskrit lines that mark his side and the lone kanji character over his heart before he is pulling my own shirt up and over my head, my vision blinded for just an instant by the fabric over my eyes. I reach behind my own body to unclasp my bra, letting him push the straps down my arms as he kisses wet lines over the bare skin of my one uninked shoulder, moving softly across my collarbone and ribs and down and back again to my breast.

"I love this," he speaks into the pale, clean flesh before sucking hot across my ribs to the other side. To my ink. "And I love it all the more because of this."

He traces even further down my body, pulling his hips away from mine, and I whimper at their loss. I am feeling unsteady again, light-headed from want, and it's been so long since I've had a man touch me. Since I've had a man inside me.

I brace myself with one hand on the edge of the couch by my side while the other scratches at his scalp, caressing the untamed mess of his hair as it slips softly through my fingertips. His mouth descends over my stomach, his tongue dipping into my navel, on a straight line to my clit, and I'm impossibly wetter, impossibly more ready for him to fill me and remind me what I am and what I crave.

And after so many months of virtual intimacy, I'm desperate for this to be real.

With his teeth and hands he teases apart the button of my fly, pulling down the zipper and revealing the lacy black line of my underwear. He licks and sucks his way to my hip as his long hand palms my abdomen on the other side, his thumb skirting under the edge of the lace and descending lower until it meets bare, wet flesh, grazing my clit as he parts my folds.

"Fuck, Bella, you're dripping," he curses, his head all but collapsing into the joint between my hip and my thigh.

"For you," I groan. "I've been wet for weeks just from seeing you."

He snarls again and rips the hem of my jeans down, tearing them from my body to leave me in just my panties, pushing my naked thighs up and over his shoulders so his head is nestled between them, just where I want him.

I can barely contain the hysterical tone of my breathing, the fast, short pants which echo my absolute need to feel his hands and mouth on me. In me. All over me.

Inhaling deeply, reverently, he runs the tip of his nose over the lace edge of my panties where my sex hits my thigh, and I can't breathe. He wraps one hand around my leg while the other creeps back behind my body to hold my ass in place, keeping me from squirming or retreating or falling as he peels the soaked fabric to the side, revealing my bare pussy to him. His thumb descends onto my clit, and a pulse of sheer need and desire and pleasure rockets through me from the first direct contact he's had with my swollen flesh; I all but scream. He circles it with a firm pressure, staring up at me with those eyes that I have coveted, those sexy glasses still in place.

And then he kisses me.

There.

The moans coming from my chest don't even sound like me as I am reduced to a writhing mass of sheer sexual need, his lips entangled with my lips, his thumb working my clit as his tongue darts out to taste me, entering me. He traces the edges of my entrance with it before licking forcefully inside, and I feel the pressure rising, everything building until I'm exploding, my thighs clenching around his face, my entire body in flame until I am ash.

I fall over the edge.

And then I actually fall over.

When my mind re-enters my body, I find myself draped out over the back of the couch, my neck twisted awkwardly with the top of my head just grazing the seat cushion and my arms draped limply over my head while my thighs are still anchored to his shoulders. He stares down at me, quizzical and satisfied, and I am all over him, his mouth practically coated in me.

Smirking sexily, he wipes his mouth with his forearm and leaves me like that, awkwardly fallen as he peels my panties down my body, leaving me completely naked for him and unable to rise. He runs a finger along my opening, my body still pulsing and singing one of the most intense orgasms of my life as he dips gently inside.

"Is this what you want, Bella? My hands inside you?"

And I don't know how to respond, because it is and it isn't. If he just fucked me with his hands for the rest of my life, I could probably die happy, but damn if I don't want more. I want his cock inside me, I want him hovering over me. I want to trace his ink and put my tongue ring through his piercings while he's thrusting into me.

"Yes. No. God, your cock."

He quirks that pierced eyebrow up again, still on his knees with his fingers buried in me. "You want my cock?"

"Yes," I pant.

"Where?"

And even though I know exactly where I want him, fuck if I care at that moment. I just need it. "My hand. My mouth. Between my tits. My pussy. Everywhere."

My thighs vibrate with the force of the growl he presses into them, and his fingers are gone, my body empty. Then he uses one hand to secure my hips to his body and to the back of the couch, rising and sliding my slick sex all over the line of his torso until his erection is pressed against me again. Leaning down over me, he scoops my limp body up and presses it to his, kissing me with such acute need I can scarcely stand it, feeling how hard and long and desperate he is as his body grinds against me.

"How would I take you if you were writing this?" he breathes into my mouth, and my mind is racing with the possibilities.

I push him off of me wordlessly, and he looks at me like I've rejected him when really all I need is the space to slide my ass off the couch and to drop to my knees.

He groans deeply as I run my own nose over the thick line of his cock through his jeans, feeling it twitch into my face with his need. With my hands, I pull his pants and boxers away, finally revealing his dick to me, long and hard and thick and covered in precum.

Even the long, chrome piercing through the head of his cock is slick with it.

"Apadravya, indeed," I mutter, breathing across the length and making it throb in my hands. I feel the weight of it, the softness of his skin over the thick firmness within.

"Actually, it's Edward," he chuckles, panting, and I look up to find him hovering over me, naked except those fucking glasses. He has a look of intense concentration on his face, one arm braced against the back of the couch, green eyes watching me intently, silently begging me.

"Edward," I breathe, blowing hot across the tip of him, and he groans, his other hand dropping to the back of my head and gently urging me forward.

"God I want to feel your mouth on me," he groans, and I have to taste him. I open my mouth wetly, closing my lips over the head of him, letting my tongue ring trace the underside of the head, the metal there and the flesh. "Fuck, Bella."

I pull off of him before I can take him too deeply, letting my mouth part as I run it all down the underside of him, wetting him and pushing my nose into the trimmed hair around his balls. He's practically whimpering, so I pump him twice with my hand, moving the moisture over him before plunging him all the way into my mouth, relaxing my throat. But even still, I can't fit all of him, and I rub my thighs together hungrily, knowing how perfect he'll feel when he finally fucks me.

I suck up and down repeatedly, achingly slowly, and I can feel his pleasure and his frustration in the repressed motion of his hips. I can tell he wants to move, wants to fuck my mouth, but I hold him off of me, letting his hand guide me but keeping his hips still. His legs positively shake, and I know he's close, so I pull off, leaving him panting, his length naked and throbbing.

Kissing the sharp bone of his hip, I pull his pants the rest of the way off of him as he toes off his shoes. Before I can throw the jeans off into the pile with the rest of our clothing, he stops me, saying huskily, "Back pocket, Bella."

I look up at him through narrowed eyes as I retrieved the little foil package, noting for future reference that there are at least two more in there. Either the boy must have amazing recovery time or he was planning to stay a while. Both possibilities excite me.

I play innocent for a moment, sitting on my heels with my back against the couch and his cock in my face, holding the condom between two fingers as I ask, "Whatever might we need this for?"

He tugs at my hair almost violently to lift me back to standing before crashing his mouth back onto mine, pulling away just long enough to growl in my ear, "So I can fuck the hell out of you with a clear conscience."

At that, he grabs the package from my hand, tearing it neatly and rolling the length of it over his cock from tip to base. He pushes his sheathed length against my hip, so close to my sex, our naked bodies pressed together without an inch of space, and I am delirious again with want.

"Turn," he commands, pushing at my shoulder, and I do. His hands shove me down, roughly and yet gently, bending me from the waist and positioning my elbows on the back of the couch. When he has me where he wants me, he settles those hands firmly on my shoulder blades, a searing presence that threatens to melt right through my skin and burn him onto me permanently.

As one, his hands move so slowly down to my sides, over my ribs and waist and hips to settle on my ass, rubbing it appreciatively. The edges of his fingers graze my lips, parting them, and my whole body jerks backward to feel the scalding hot flesh of his cock resting on my back.

"Wider, baby," he coos, the backs of his hands sliding over swollen flesh and then to the insides of my dripping thighs. I close my eyes, overwhelmed by so much sensation and do as I am told, spreading my legs for him and feeling him settle there, his knees bent between mine as the tip of his cock runs from my clit to the back of my slit, thickly brushing against but not penetrating my entrance.

"God, Edward, please," I pant, ready to beg I need him so badly.

But apparently he's not beyond begging, himself.

"Please let me fuck you," he whispers in my ear, that same motion again of his length drawing itself over my wet flesh, dipping just a little bit deeper to part my lips but not filling my need.

"Yes," I groan, and he does. Finally, finally, I feel the head of his cock pressing hard against my entrance, slipping into me inch by glorious inch and nothing has ever felt this intense. "Fuck, yes," I moan, his one hand gripping hot at my hip while the other wraps around the back of my neck, keeping me steady.

And it's so fucking hot not to be able to move, even though all I want to do is rock backwards and pull him into me more fully.

My body stretches as he keeps pressing forward, achingly slowly until he's fully seated inside me, his hips flush with my bottom, and I exhale, animal sounds falling out of my lungs because he's filling me so completely. There is a deep and delicious pang inside my body as he rocks back slightly and surges forward again, the combined power of his huge length and the hot tip of metal banging up against the walls of me making me crazy with need.

I am a chanting chorus of 'yes' and 'fuck me's, and before long, he is finally obeying me, finally fucking me with abandon, his body thrusting harshly, faster and faster. It's almost to the point of pain except it feels so good. He tightens his grip on my hip, his other hand sliding to the middle of my back, pushing down, and I feel his movement getting more erratic, less steady, so close to coming inside of me.

But I don't want it to be this way.

Not after all this time.

"No, stop," I breathe. He freezes in an instant, a pained sound erupting out of him.

"Please, Jesus, Bella, you can't - "

I look over my shoulder at him, squeezing him internally and making him moan. I shake my head when I see the look of absolute rejection and frustration on his face. "After all this time watching you," I whisper, meeting his eyes, "I just - I need to see you, Edward... I need to see you come."

He is out of me in an instant, my body turning in his hands, lifted roughly until I feel the edge of the couch pressing against my ass again. With one hand supporting my back, he parts my thighs roughly, stepping into them and impaling me all over again, and I scream.

His face is so close to mine as he starts to move inside me again, quick short thrusts that start to build, our bodies finding a new rhythm. Our sweaty brows collide, those three metal hoops scratching my skin, but I can't begin to care, his name spilling through my lips as we catch each other in another fiery kiss. I think I could die in his lips, his body buried in mine, the swirling lines of ink knowing no ending and no beginning, surrounding us both.

His patience begins to wear, and he kisses me harder, his body pushing more insistently into mine. I feel the fiery bloom of pleasure building again, hot intensity and need and desire, and I want him hard and fast again, a deep physical connection without restraint.

He must feel my need too as he quickens his pace. "Hold on, baby," he instructs, and I do, my arms and legs wrapping around him tightly so he can brace his arms on the back of the couch beside me, drilling into me, his pubic bone hitting my clit with every thrust, the metal of his piercing hitting hard against my spot and I am spiraling, hovering just on the edge of release.

"I'm coming, Bella. I'm coming inside you," he moans, his face a twisted grimace of pleasure as he slams into me even harder, the intensity of his motions and his words sending me into my own oblivion, my body pulsing with his, white and light flashing hot across my open eyes and mingling with my vision of him. Of him in my arms, in my body, in the throes of ecstasy.

We return to our senses slowly, his cock still twitching slightly inside of me and my heart racing as we kiss. After a few moments of gentle caressing and relaxing, he pulls out of me, slipping off the condom and disposing of it in a wastebasket beside the couch.

He looks at the pile of clothes at our feet and back at me, and I feel his indecision. To stay or to go, and I feel like our entire connection hangs in the balance. A pattern we will set in this moment that will propel us forward into whatever does or does not bloom between us.

How I want it to bloom.

I bite my lip, still naked and balanced on the edge of the couch, before sliding down to set my shaky legs firmly on the floor. He watches silently as I approach, apprehensive even. Like maybe I will ask him to go.

I don't.

Instead, I hold my hand out, deciding to be fiery and fierce in my own life and not just in that of imaginary people on a glowing screen.

"Stay with me," I whisper, my hand against the characters that cross his heart.

He nods and lets me pull him into my arms.

We turn the lights off one by one and slip naked into my bed, my head resting on his shoulder. We drift off to sleep together, my fingertips tracing the lines of ink and muscle at his side, contemplating the merits of virtual intimacy versus personal experience.

And I think maybe I'm OK with blurring the lines.

.

.

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