Chapter 13 Just the Two of Us #3
I reach for his shirt. I pull it up and he helps me get it over his head and I put my hands on his bare chest. His skin is warm.
His body is lean and hard from years of discipline and I can feel the definition in his stomach and his shoulders when I run my hands across them.
There are scars on his left shoulder and his forearm, raised and pale against his skin, and I trace one with my fingertip and he watches me do it without explaining.
He reaches behind me and unclasps my bra. He slides the straps down my arms slowly and lets it fall and then he looks at me and I feel the weight of his attention everywhere at once. Nathan looks at me the way he reads a book. With complete focus. With nothing else competing for his attention.
He puts his mouth on my neck. I tilt my head back and his lips move down my throat to my collarbone and across my shoulder and his hands are on my ribs and then higher and when his thumbs brush across my bare skin I make a sound that surprises both of us.
We get out of the rest of our clothes. His jeans. My jeans. Everything. We stand there in the low light with nothing between us and his body is long and solid and I want every part of it against every part of mine.
We lie down together. He's above me and his weight settles against me and our bodies press together from chest to thighs and the contact is overwhelming in the best way. I can feel him hard against me and I pull his hips tighter and his breath catches against my neck.
His hand moves down my body. Along my side, across my hip, and between my thighs.
He touches me there with the same careful attention he gives to everything and my back arches off the bed.
He watches my face while his fingers work and he adjusts to every sound I make and every shift of my body until I'm gripping the sheets and breathing his name.
"Nathan. Please."
He reaches for the nightstand. He opens the drawer and finds what he needs and I watch him and the brief interruption only makes the wanting sharper. Then he's back and he positions himself and he pauses one more time, looking at me, checking, always checking.
"Yes," I say before he can ask.
He pushes inside me slowly and we both go still for a moment. The feeling is full and deep and right. He starts to move and I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer and his forehead drops against mine and our breathing mixes between us.
We find our rhythm together. Slow at first. Then faster.
His hands grip the pillow on either side of my head.
My fingers dig into his back. He says my name once, low and rough, and the sound of it in his voice does something to me that makes everything tighten and build.
I lift my hips to meet him and the angle changes and I can feel it building toward something that is going to take me apart.
It does. It hits me hard and sudden and I arch against him and my mouth opens and his name comes out broken and breathless and he holds me through it, his rhythm steady, his body braced above mine.
Then his pace changes. Faster. Harder. His jaw clenches and his breath goes ragged and he buries his face against my neck and his whole body tenses and I hold him while he lets go.
Afterward I'm lying against his chest and his arm is around me and his heartbeat is steady under my ear. The room is quiet except for our breathing and the distant sound of a car passing on the street outside. Our skin is damp and cooling and I don't want to move.
"Stay," he says. His voice is low and wrecked and entirely different from the careful, measured Nathan I've been getting to know in public. This Nathan is softer. More open. Unguarded in a way that I suspect very few people get to see.
"I was going to."
"Good."
I trace a line along his forearm with my finger. He watches me do it.
"Thank you," I say.
"For what?"
"For waiting. For being patient. For asking if I was sure twice."
"You deserved to be sure."
I lie there in Nathan's bed listening to his breathing slow down and I think about the last man I shared a bed with and how different this is.
With Blake the bed was a crime scene. The place where I lay awake cataloging lies and holding myself together.
With Nathan the bed is just a bed. A comfortable, safe place where two people who like each other are resting after doing something that felt right.
I fall asleep. I don't dream. I wake up in the morning with Nathan's arm across my waist and sunlight coming through his window and for a few seconds I don't think about Blake or Hailey or receipts or motel rooms or any of it.
I just think about coffee and whether Nathan has any and what he looks like in the morning.
He looks good. Of course he does. His hair is messy and he has a pillow crease on his cheek and he opens his eyes slowly and sees me watching him and he smiles. The full smile. The one that changes his whole face.
"Morning," he says.
"Morning."
"Coffee?"
"Please."
He gets up and walks to the kitchen and I hear him filling the coffee maker and I lie in his bed and I look at the sunlight on the ceiling and I feel something that I recognize even though it's been a long time.
Hope.