5

As soon as we arrived at the hotel Baekhyun had booked for a few weeks “while he finished up the contract deal for the apartment,” I sprawled out on one of the two double beds. The tray ceiling and its smooth white paint, tinted cream from the lamps’ dim, yellow illumination, faced me. Appreciating the hotel’s design was all I wanted to do after having been slammed by immense positive and negative news in the span of thirty minutes. I told Baekhyun this. He laughed in response and left me to wash up first. That had been fifteen minutes ago.

The shower jet inside the ensuite bathroom shut off. I raised my arm up at the ceiling. The white-yellow backdrop blurred as my sight sharpened on my outstretched hand. I counted the number of seconds I could get by without blinking; one, two, three…

…sixty-one, sixty-two… My shoulder and elbow joints were starting to ache. I had lost halfway through both the blinking game and my count. It could have actually been fifty seconds or seventy, for all I knew.

“What are you doing?” Baekhyun entered my field of vision by looming over me, his weight as he positioned himself on all fours causing the mattress to sink around us. His cheeks were rosy from the hot shower and rounded from trying to stifle his amusement at my dazed behavior, though his twinkling eyes betrayed it anyway. I blinked. Commanded by a sudden surge of affection, I dropped my hand to the back of his head, entangling my fingers in his wet locks, and pushed. Our lips connected like magnets and I brought my other hand to his neck, pressing gently to lever myself further into the kiss.

After a few seconds, he pulled away and stared at me with a faint smile and drooping eyelids that I knew replicated my own. He returned slipping his tongue into my parted mouth. We engaged in a dance, lining and coating each other’s concaves, and a desire for more took pulse in me. As if I’d verbalized it, Baekhyun began to caress my waist, first ove