39. Chapter Thirty-Nine
Percy
“Hi,” she says when she opens the door.
“Hey.”
And then neither of us knows what to do. I’m standing in her doorway in a jacket that’s too warm now that I’m inside, and she’s got her arms half-crossed, not defensive, just — not knowing where to put them either, and it’s the first time I’ve seen her since I kissed her.
“You found parking okay?” she whispers.
“I walked.”
“Right.” She steps back to let me in. “Sorry.”
I come in. She shuts the door quietly, and then we walk to her bedroom. I walk in the middle of her room as she closes the door behind us.
“You didn’t get to play both games,” she says.
“No, I didn’t play either, but I dress every game.” My voice comes out low. “Doesn’t mean much.”
“It means something.” She’s not looking at me now. She’s looking at the sketchbook on her bed. “Gianna said that backups matter.”
I stare at her face. I’ve thought about her face all weekend.
She grins. “I don’t know why I’m talking about hockey.”
“I don’t mind.”
She picks up her sketchbook and sets it down on her desk. Then she turns around, and there’s a beat where we just look at each other.
“Percy,” she breathes.
“Yeah.”
She inhales. “Come here.”
I go to her. I put my hand up to her face first, because I have to touch her. I run my palm along her jaw, and my thumb along the corner of her mouth. She pulls in her bottom lip, licking it then biting it. I forget about everything when I lean in and kiss her.
Her lips are soft as we kiss. Then she tugs my bottom lip between her teeth, and I open my eyes to look at her — she’s already watching me, smiling against my mouth.
She grabs a fistful of my shirt and pulls me in.
I kiss her again, deeper this time, and when she makes a small sound into my mouth I chase it, my hand finding the small of her back and bringing her in against me until she’s up on her toes, meeting me all the way, and every place she touches me lands like a struck match.
Her fingers slide up under my shirt and then tug at the hem, and she pulls back an inch, her eyes coming up to mine, asking.
I can’t get a word out. I just nod, and reach back, and pull it over my head, and drop the shirt on the ground.
Her eyes travel down and stay there. She catches her bottom lip in her teeth, and I swallow hard.
Then she pulls her own shirt off, and it’s my turn to forget how to breathe.
Black lace and a stretch of skin. I put my hand flat against her stomach just to feel her breathe.
She shivers when I lean in and kiss her.
And then I stop — I pull back an inch and watch my own hand move up her side, slow, because I have never once in my life gotten to do this, and I want to see it.
“You’re shaking,” she says, against my jaw.
“Yeah.” My hand’s not steady on her ribs. “I am.”
She kisses the corner of my mouth, and then her hands slide up my side, landing on my chest. I have to shut my eyes to calm my racing heart.
“You okay?” she whispers.
I open my eyes, looking down at her. Then I nod.
We get to the edge of the bed and she pulls me down onto it and it climbs fast from there — her under me, my weight on my forearms, her mouth on my throat, my hand sliding up the back of her thigh — and it’s going somewhere, we both feel it going somewhere, and I get about one more minute into it before I have to stop.
I pull back. My arms are shaking, holding me up over her.
“Wait.” It comes out rough. “I have to — wait. I have to tell you something.”
She goes still underneath me. Her hands come to rest, one on my arm, one on my chest. She doesn’t say anything. She just waits, flushed, her hair everywhere, and looks up at me.
I can’t look at her for this. I drop my head, my forehead nearly to hers.
“I’ve never done this.” The words come out broken, one at a time, dragged up. “I told you before how I never––”
She nods when I can’t finish the rest of the sentence.
My jaw works. I make myself say the real thing. “Nobody’s ever been this close to me. Ever.”
The room’s dead quiet. I can feel my own pulse in my hands.
And she doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t make it small, and she doesn’t make it big either. Her hand comes up off my chest to the side of my face, and I feel her breathe out, and something in the air changes.
“Okay,” she whispers softly.
She turns her face and presses her mouth to the inside of my wrist, where it’s braced by her head, and it nearly finishes me.
“We don’t have to—”
“I want to.” It’s out before she finishes. “I want to. I just — I don’t know how to—”
“There’s no how.” Her thumb moves along my cheekbone. “There’s just us.”
She nods, so I nod once.
I kiss her again and it’s heavier now, both of us breathing it in. She takes her bra off, and I still at the sight of her. Her fingers undo my pants button, then the zipper. They slide off with her help. I press my mouth to her shoulder and just breathe there until I can move again.
I take my time because I don’t know how not to, and because I can’t believe I’m allowed to have her like this.
I run my hand down the length of her like I’ll never have her again.
I learn what she feels like under my palm, I learn the exact color of her soft skin, and my heart is like a fucking rocket in my chest with nowhere to shoot off to.
She whispers my name, and it wrecks me to my fucking core.
She unclips her pants and tugs them off.
My heart does a somersault when she slips off her lace underwear. I pull my briefs off.
Her mouth parts, and mine dries. She kisses me once before I pull back.
“Are you sure?” I ask, pushing her hair out of her face. “We don’t have to.”
She nods. “I want to.”
“Okay,” I say, reaching to kiss her.
“Do you?” she whispers before my lips touch hers. “Are you sure?”
I look at her mouth, then her eyes. “Yes.”
She kisses me. I let her tongue play with my bottom lip, and then I kiss her hard. My hands stay on her hips and then slide down to her center.
“Is this okay?” I ask, slowly learning what she feels like.
She nods.
When I touch her, she goes taut and grabs at my forearm. I watch her face the whole time because I can’t look away from her. She’s beautiful.
“Percy.” Her voice is thin. “Come here.”
I settle over her with my weight held off her on one arm, and there’s a second where we’re right at the edge of it, her leg coming up around me, both of us gone still, my heart going so hard she can probably feel it.
“Okay?” I manage.
“Yes.” She pulls me down by the back of the neck. “Yes.”
And then I’m pushing inside her slowly, and the whole world goes to one point, and I have to stop.
I drop my forehead to hers. I can’t move.
It’s landed on me all at once — how close this is, how there’s nothing between us, no wall, no inch of held-back anything, that I’m giving her the last thing I had folded down under everything and I’m handing it over right now and there’s no getting it back.
And I can’t move.
I’m breathing hard against her mouth, and my arm’s shaking.
“Hey.” Her hands come to my face, both of them, holding me there against her. “I’ve got you. I’m right here.”
I open my eyes. She’s right there. All the way there, holding my eyes, holding my face, and I’ve spent my whole life making sure nobody ever got to see me and she’s seeing me right now, all of it.
I push into her, watching her breathe through it. She gasps, scratching at my back, and every inch of me goes tight because she feels so fucking good. Too fucking good.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She nods.
I start to move, feeling her clench around me. She moves with me, pushing her hips up, and I lose myself completely. I bury my mouth in her neck and let go of every last thing I’ve ever held onto.
After, I can’t move for a different reason.
I’m on my back and she’s tucked against my side, half on my chest, and I’ve got one hand in her hair and the other moving up and down on her back, like if I stop touching her she’ll slip away.
Her leg’s thrown over mine. Her breath’s warm on my collarbone and going slower.
I keep waiting for the panic to come, and it doesn’t. There’s just her weight, the warm room, my hand on her spine, and a quiet in me I’ve never once had.
And then I get tired. Not wired-tired, the way I always am.
Warm-tired. Heavy. My eyes going down on their own, my whole body loose in a way it never gets, and I fight it out of pure habit, because I don’t sleep, I’ve never slept anywhere I couldn’t watch the door, and I’ve sure as hell never slept with somebody in the bed, and I feel myself losing it anyway.
Her breathing’s slow and even against my chest. Mine keeps trying to match it.
There’s a feeling at the very edge as I go under.
That she’s got all of me now. That there’s nothing held back, everything I am handed to her.
I feel the danger of it. The risk. But her hair’s under my hand, and her weight’s on my chest, and I’m warmer than I’ve ever been, and it doesn’t clamp around my throat.
It doesn’t get me tonight. I go under to the sound of her breathing.
I sleep.
The gray of almost-dawn wakes me, and for a second I don’t know where I am, and then I remember.
Penelope’s against me. Half under my arm, her hand loose on my stomach, deep asleep, her hair across my shoulder.
I slept. All the way through, no waking, no watching the door.
I lie there a minute and think about last night.
I could stay. I want to. I could say fuck it and choose this, but there’s a house across town and guys who’ll be up soon and a whiteboard with a list of rules on it. I move out from under her an inch at a time.
She stirs. Her hand chases my arm. “Stay,” she says, thick with sleep, not really awake.
Those words stab because I want to. I want to so fucking bad, but the consequence of losing Hawthorne screams too loud in my head, so I remove myself from her bed completely. I find my clothes on the floor.
I lean back down, press my mouth to her forehead, and she’s already sinking. “Go back to sleep.”
I dress in the dark. At the door, I look back at her once — warm, mine, in a bed where in a few hours it’ll be like I was never in it.
The cold hits me the second I’m out, and I pull my jacket close and start the walk home through a sleeping gray town.