Chapter Thirty-Three. Rory
Rory
They were lying on a blanket by the heather, their shirts in a heap beside them, lost in the late spring grass.
Daye sprawled on her stomach in a patch of sun like a contented cat, honey-golden.
Rory’s hand glided up and down her back, dipping in and out of the pools of shadows collecting across her skin.
Rory’s hand flattened, curving around her shoulder, and he leaned down to press a kiss to the nape of her neck.
Daye’s back rose with an inaudible, pleased sigh.
Rory smiled against her skin and pressed a kiss to her shoulder.
Her neck. Daye smiled, head turning to catch his lips with hers, and soon they were entangled in each other, hands grabbing and caressing.
They came up for air when a soft weight settled against their entwined arms. Daye, laughing silently, untangled herself and lifted the rabbit that was trying to huddle against her. She dropped a kiss on its forehead before she placed it on the grass with a small shove to send it hopping away.
“It’s the third one since we got here,” Rory said, propping himself on his elbow. “I wish I could figure out their deal with you.”
Daye shrugged languidly. Her hair fanned around her head as she lay back, lips red from kissing. Indecently red. Overripe-strawberries red. Rory wanted her so much it literally ached. A relentless, ever-tightening hunger, even when she was in his arms.
“Do you … Do you like this?”
‘This?’ Daye questioned.
“This.” He gestured at the blanket, at them. “The kissing. The, um … touching. All of it.”
Daye nodded, a lazy gesture, eyes half closing.
His heart squeezed, the edge of fear curling around his throat. “What do you like about it?”
Daye opened her eyes and wrinkled her forehead in thought.
‘I like seeing you smile and knowing it’s because of me.
And I like being close to you.’ Her hands flared and stilled like she was trying to pluck words from the air, mouth curving in frustration.
‘Connected? Linked?’ She threw up her hands. ‘I don’t have the word for it.’
“It’s okay,” he said, covering her hand with his. “I get it.”
She smiled gratefully, squeezing his hands once before pulling away to continue talking. ‘I like how it feels, this closeness. The touching. And I like being with you. Spending the day with you.’ Her eyes held his, earnest. ‘I missed you so much. I hated us being apart.’
“I’m sorry,” Rory said, heart squeezing for a different reason. All the time he’d missed. All the days he’d spent avoiding her when he could have been doing this. Having this.
Daye’s hand was on his arm, pulling his attention back to her. ‘You’re here now.’
“I am. And I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
She smiled, so sweet, so full of trust, that he couldn’t help but lean down and kiss her.
Taste the trust on her lips, capture her silent sigh with his mouth.
And that should have been the end of it, only instead of deepening the kiss, he leaned back, asking again, “So you like this? Us being together?”
Laughing, Daye signed, ‘Yes, that’s what I just said.’ She propped herself up. ‘Do you like it?’
“Yes.” Rory swallowed. “Yeah, I do. More than I can say.”
Daye’s smile widened. Her palm absently swirled through the grass, fingers gliding up and down the stem of a dandelion as if to the rhythm of a song he couldn’t hear.
Rory could feel the movement all the way to his groin, a bolt of wanting arching through him, leaving afterimages in its wake.
Daye’s hand gliding up and down, the languid, warm taste of her skin on his lips—
He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t ask. He wouldn’t.
“Have you ever thought about—” He stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. “What if there was a way for us to be even closer? More intimate? And that would be even more, um, pleasurable for you?”
‘What do you mean?’
“Um.” His cheeks were a furnace. “We could have sex.”
Daye made a confused gesture, eyebrows arching in question.
“It’s a way for our bodies to be even closer. For us to fit together. Like with my tongue in your mouth. Only, with, um, other parts.”
‘But … how? Which parts?’
Rory didn’t know exactly. But over the last two years, he’d accumulated a repository of glimpses—in anatomy textbooks, in the backroom of the penny bookstores next to the university, in the books Wynne hid at the back of her bookshelf.
Enough to have a pretty good guess as to what goes where and how.
Enough to fuel long winter nights of fantasies, imagining how it’d feel to slowly sink into Daye, to feel her around him.
He looked down, thinking about how to explain it. “Do you know how sometimes we see deer, how they fit together, between their legs? How the boys have something that sticks out, and the girls have an opening it can fit inside?”
Daye nodded uncertainly.
“I could, with, um”—he gestured helplessly to his pants, still slightly tented—“inside you,” he gestured to the juncture of her thighs. Unable to meet her eyes, he mimed it with his hands, his right forefinger dipping in and out of his clenched left hand.
Daye was looking intently, a crease between her eyebrows. ‘Inside me? But how? There’s nowhere to fit there. I don’t have any holes between my legs, do I?’ She made as if to check.
“Um, no. You don’t. But I think I could maybe make you one, if you’d want me to.
” He couldn’t look at her now. “Maybe, next transition, if you want … I could make it so … it would feel good for you. To be touched. Better. And so it would be possible for us to … um, if you want me to.” There were enough bits and pieces scattered through the older books that he was pretty sure how to piece together.
It wouldn’t be complicated. At least, he didn’t think it would.
He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. Opened them.
“Would you want to? Um, be able to. Have sex. With me?”
‘Would you like to?’
“Ohgodmorethananything.” The words were out so fast, before Rory realized what it was he was saying.
He gulped, horrified. “But you don’t have to.
” Oh, no. Shit, shit, shit. “Even if you want me to make it so that you’ll be able to, you wouldn’t have to, you know, do anything.
With it. Unless you’d want to. If you even want me to. Which you don’t have to—”
Daye started laughing, teeth flashing in the sun. Even Rory had to laugh at the knots he managed to tie himself into.
‘Have you ever …’ she started asking, but seemed at a loss how to continue. ‘How should I say it? The thing we are talking about?’
“Sex?”
Daye nodded. ‘I need a word for it.’
“What about, like this?” Rory made an interlocking gesture with two fingers.
‘Too close to—’ Daye made the gesture for the word tie.
“Right,” Rory conceded. “And this”—he interlocked all his fingers—“is too close to ‘please.’ ”
Daye nodded.
“Hmm. Okay, what about this?” He closed his left fist over his right pointer finger.
‘Yeah, that could work.’ Daye copied the motion. ‘So, have you ever? Had sex?’ She slowly curled her fist around her finger, somehow making it look both dainty and indecent. Or maybe it was just Rory’s imagination.
“No. Of course not. I never did any of that. With anyone. Other than what we did together.”
Did he just imagine it, or did she look relieved?
‘But you want to,’ Daye signed.
“Only if you want to. And we’re not in any hurry. What we’re doing right now is more than enough. It’s perfect.”
‘But this would be better? Closer?’
“I think so, yeah.”
‘Okay,’ Daye said, ‘let’s try.’