Beautiful Stranger

layer of clouds. His skin was warm, and smooth, and I turned my face into it, inhaling.
    “I like the deodorant you use.”
    He laughed. “Why, thank you.”
    I kissed his shoulder, and hesitated, afraid to ruin the moment. But I had to. “You took a picture of my face.”
    I felt more than heard his laugh. “I know. I’ll delete it now. I just want to look at it a couple of times.” He dropped a heavy arm to the blanket and blindly searched for his phone beside him. It was under my hip, and I pulled it up, handing it to him.
    Together we flipped through the pictures. My hands on my shirt, on his chest. My breasts, my neck. We paused at the picture of my hands unbuttoning his jeans, pulling him out. When we got to one of my thumb sweeping over the head of his cock, he rolled over onto me, hard again.
    “No, wait,” I said, the words dying inside his mouth as he kissed me. “Delete the face ones, Max.”
    With a groan, he rolled back over and showed them to me. I couldn’t deny they were some of the most sensual things I’d seen: my teeth bared against his hip, my tongue touching the tip of his cock, and, finally, my mouth spread around him while I stared directly into the camera. My eyes had grown so dark it was clear I would suck him as long as I could. With a photo like that, I would remain in that position forever.
    He clicked the delete button, confirmed the request, and then it was gone.
    “That was the hottest thing I’d ever seen,” he said, rolling over onto me again and kissing my neck. “I really despise that no-faces rule.”
    I didn’t say anything. Instead, I pushed his pants the rest of the way down his legs, then he shoved my shorts off and pulled my legs around his hips.
    “Get a condom,” I mumbled into his neck.
    “Actually,” he started, pulling back just enough to look me in the eye, “I was hoping we could move past the condom rule.”
    “Max . . .”
    “I have this.” He pulled a paper out from under the blanket. Ah, the ever-romantic test results . “I haven’t gone bare since high school,” he explained. “I’m not fucking anyone else and I want to be bare with you.”
    “How do you know I’m on birth control?”
    “Because I saw the pills in your purse at the library.” He shifted back, positioning himself to press against me, and rocked his hips. “Is this okay?”
    I nodded, but asked, “Aren’t you worried about my history?”
    He smiled, kissed along my shoulder, and ran a hand up and over my breast. “Tell me.”
    I swallowed, breaking eye contact and looking to the side. He put a finger on my chin, turning my face back to his. “I’ve had one other lover,” I admitted.
    Max’s eyes stopped smiling. “You’ve been with one other person?”
    “But he fucked everyone else in Chicago while we were together.”
    He let out a quiet curse. “Sara . . .”
    “So, if you consider that I’ve been with everyone he was with, then I’ve been with far more than one.” I tried to smile to take the sharpness out of my words.
    “Have you been tested since?”
    “Yes.” I shifted my hips up against his, wanting this more than I realized. Andy had started using condoms halfway through our relationship; that alone should have clued me in somehow. At the time it felt depressingly distancing, although he told me it was to be sure we didn’t have kids before we were ready. Now I realized he afforded me at least that one courtesy.
    But Max was doing it all backward. Distance at first, and then careening headlong into this strange monogamy we had.
    Crap, Sara. That’s how most people do it.
    I tugged at his hips, lifted to suck at his neck.
    “Okay then.” Max moved back, reached between us, and slid inside with a low groan. Slowly, slowly, slowly he filled me. And then he covered my body with his, kissed his way up my neck, and pressed his lips against mine.
    “Fucking brilliant,” he whispered. “Christ, there’s nothing like this.”
    A strange desperation took over me. I had never felt his weight on me so fully, felt every bit of his bare skin, and it was a completely different type of possession. His shoulders were so broad, every muscle bunched and defined under my hands. Inside and over me, Max felt like his own planet.
    He continued to kiss me as he moved, starting so slow, letting me feel every inch. “Someone could look over here. See you beneath me, thighs spread, your bare feet on my legs.” He lifted himself on his elbows, looked down at