“My turn,” I say. I lift her up and she wraps her legs around my hips as I sink inside her. She’s so hot and so sweet, and I know I’m going to shoot my load, so I push her back against the tiles so that I can thrust harder. I need to take her. I need for her to be mine.

“Make me come like this,” she says.

“Tell me how,” I say. I kiss her, covering her cries with my mouth, taking them inside me as fuel.

“Harder, Tag!” she urges. I hook my arms beneath her knees and hold her up so I can pound into her.

“God, you’re so pretty when you come,” I say, just as her eyes flutter closed and her spasms start to milk me. I’m on the edge now. “Can I come inside you? Can I, Finny? Can I come inside you? Please say yes. Oh, God, please say–”

“Yes! Do it, Tag!”

I slam hard into her one last time, and I come deep inside her as her orgasm sucks me deeper, farther, and deeper still, until we can’t join any more completely. Until I can’t do more to fill her up. I have never come so hard, so long, or so powerfully. This woman, she fills me up. And she empties me out. And she makes me whole, while taking a piece of me at the same time. I don’t know how to explain it.

“God, I love you,” I tell her.

She kisses me, and I ease her legs down so that she can stand up.

“I feel weak as water,” she says, giggling nervously.

“Stay there. I’ll clean you up.”

I lather up a washcloth and begin to clean her all over, when she hisses. “Easy,” she warns. “I’m a little sore.” So I take special care to be gentle between her legs.

“Did I hurt you?” I stand up and kiss her.

“No,” she breathes against my lips. “It was perfect.”

I wash my come off of her and clean her up completely, and then I wash myself. I turn off the water and wrap her in a towel, and sling one around my hips.

She turns back the covers on the bed and climbs between the sheets naked, and I slide in behind her, drawing her back so we fit like two spoons in a drawer. “Are you okay?” I kiss her shoulder.

“Yes.” She turns her head and kisses the inside of my upper arm, where her head is resting on it. “I’m okay.”

I yawn and close my eyes, and fall into an immediate and perfect slumber, with the woman I love in my arms.

Finny

When he’s still, I lift up the covers and slide out of bed. I look back when he stirs, and I cover his arm with my hand until he settles again. When he’s quiet, I get up and get dressed, pulling on my pajamas and a robe. Then I put on my slippers and go into the hallway.

I know where Marta and Emilio’s room is, so I go there and knock softly on the door. I know they’re not both asleep because they have two babies with them.

Emilio comes to the door, his hair standing out like a ratty halo around his head. He’s bouncing Benji in his arms. “Hey, Finny,” he says. “Did you need something?”

He steps aside so I can walk past him. “Not really,” I say. The hair on my arms stands up, and I rub up and down them to calm myself. “Is Marta up?”

He shakes his head. “Do you need her?” He tilts his head at me. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I just wanted to talk. That’s all.”

He points to a chair and falls into the one beside me, still bouncing Benji in his arms. “What’s up, Finny?” He stares hard at me. “You better start speaking before I have to go kick that boy’s ass.” He starts to get up, but I rush to sit him back down.

“Tag didn’t do anything,” I tell him. My cheeks flush. “Well, he didn’t do anything bad.”

His brows shoot up. “But…” he prompts.

“But nothing,” I say quietly. I shrug.

“Fuck but nothing,” he barks. “I know you, Finny Vasquez, and I know you have something on your mind, so you might as well spit it out.”

Benji is fussing, so I reach for him and take him into my arms. He immediately settles into me and I hold him close.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Emilio says. “They finally got you.”

I heave a sigh. “Both of them got me, Melio.” I stare down into Benji’s perfect little face. “I am pretty sure I love them.”

He nods. “You got time for your old man to tell you a story?”

“Yes, please.” Benji makes a snuffly little noise as he roots around his pacifier. Melio passes me the bottle he must have been feeding him, and I pop it into his mouth. His rosy red lips close around it and he looks so content. So well cared for. So happy.

“Once upon a time, there was this little birdie named Finny,” he begins. He smiles at me. His eyes go soft. “And she had these perfect feathers, and a perfect beak, and she was smart. She flew all by herself without even needing to hold anyone’s tail feathers. She was always independent, and the daddy bird always worried, because she liked the boy birdies a lot.”

I roll my eyes.

“But the daddy bird, he never worried about the Finny bird. He worried more about all the hearts she broke as she jumped from nest to nest.”

“I don’t think I like this story,” I grouse.

“You see, Finny was afraid to stay in one nest too long, because she thought that getting comfortable would make her nest unstable, and she might fall out.” He slaps his palms together. “Splat! No more Finny.”