Chapter 17 #3
And just like that, he put all my thoughts into the world, gave them shape and direction. Put a name to this state I was in.
“And yet I keep thinking,” I said, inspired by him, “maybe it’s both.” Maybe I could be both.
March thought about it for a long second. I could see the wheels turning in his head even though he was staring at the floor, and I could only see his profile.
“Maybe.”
I analyzed him some more in silence, the soft, tired lines around his eyes, the curl of his hair falling across his forehead, the mouth I’d drawn a hundred times and had hoped and prayed and dreaded to see in real life.
But that was back when I thought I never would.
“Can I tell you something?” I said without really thinking.
March didn’t miss a beat. “Please.” Like he was as desperate to know the inside of my mind as I was to know his.
“I don’t think I’m the girl you…claimed before.
I don’t even know who she was.” I rubbed my palms against my knees, trying to think of the best way I could explain this to him.
“I signed up for the trials to run away from home, to catch a break from my life. And I don’t know what happened in forward or backward, but I know that people change.
Especially people who survive all the stuff they said we went through—they become… different people.”
He listened instantly, watching my mouth like he wanted to absorb every word I said.
I licked my lips without meaning to, instinctively, and when he looked up at me, his eyes were…dark. Bloodshot. Like they hadn’t been before.
Heat under my skin.
“But the person I am right now,” I said, and my voice came out as a whisper now, and my body was moving, leaning to the side on its own. “Can’t stop thinking about kissing you.”
Which might be the truest thing I would ever say, and I wanted to congratulate myself on the courage to say it—very unlike me—but instead I just focused on March.
He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. His eyes were locked on mine, all those wonderful shades of red painting stories for me in real time. I just didn’t understand them yet.
“I want…I want to know what it feels like,” I whispered, raising my hand to his face—brave Ora.
I really was feeling mighty brave right now, but there was something about his lips that I needed to touch.
Something about the way he sat so close to me, the way he watched me, like he was in disbelief, and also perfectly grounded in the moment.
“I want to know what you feel like without the story. Without what they told us.” I swallowed hard when my fingertips touched the sharp bow of his lips.
So smooth. “Just me. Just you. Just…now.” Not backward or forward—the present.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but when he leaned in closer the next second, I held my breath.
“Okay,” March whispered just barely when our lips were less than an inch apart. Okay.
So, I closed my eyes, breath still held, and I waited for the feeling. I waited for his lips.
They touched mine so softly it almost didn’t count. Almost as if he was asking me.
My answer was to press back a little bit, as much as my body allowed.
Then, the kiss became real.
His hand moved from my cheek to the back of my neck, fingers threading through the hair at my nape, and every part of me that had been holding back came apart at once.
His lips were indeed soft, softer than they’d looked. Warm. Careful, at first, then less so as I leaned in and my hand found the front of his shirt, my fingers curling into the fabric like I might float away if I didn’t hold on.
There were a lot of things on my mind in that moment, but one was louder than the rest: this isn’t new.
It wasn’t new. My body knew this. It knew the angle of his head, the way his hand cupped the back of my neck. The slight catch of his breath when I leaned closer.
All of it was familiar in that same wrong-right way everything was lately. My skin’s own memory that my mind couldn’t access.
But underneath the familiarity, there was something else—something brand new.
A fire so bright it flooded every dark corner of my mind with light, and suddenly where we came from or how we got here didn’t much matter.
Suddenly, I wanted this new thing more—to see it, explore it, analyze it, make it mine from the beginning.
Before I knew it, I’d turned to face him with my whole body, and my arms were around his neck, and my fingers were in his hair. Familiar but new—absolutely perfect.
Then his tongue slipped between my lips.
March groaned. Fireworks exploded behind my closed lids.
His hands were no longer around my neck but on my waist, and he grabbed me.
As if I weighed nothing at all, March raised me up and put me down—right on his lap, and then his arms were around me tightly.
He squeezed me to his chest as he explored my mouth, and everything old and new burned to ashes and rose again within seconds.
The kiss was frantic, tongues tasting, lips kissing, teeth biting. The taste of him was life itself, and the tighter he held me, the tighter I held him, the more of it I felt.
Time’s Teeth, I’d unlocked a brand-new world sitting there on his lap, getting to know the taste of him.
It was incredible how my body fit him, how well all my curves fit into the shape of his arms, his torso, how his hands knew where to grip and where to slide, where to chase the shape of my waist up to my breasts.
I was hardly breathing, and I didn’t mind it one bit.
I slipped a hand underneath his shirt to feel the warmth of his back, his smooth skin my fingers glided over, then pressed onto the hard muscles underneath.
I had the urge to rip all that fabric off his body just to see what my hands were touching, just to find out if he looked as perfect as he felt.
Then we stopped.
Both of us pulled back a bit at the same time, gasping for air, looking into one another’s eyes, stuck in disbelief.
Holy Hour, I felt like I’d been running and flying and swimming all at once.
The corners of his lips curled up as he brought his fingers to my jaw, grabbed it as if to hold me in place, analyzed my lips like he was doing it for the first time again, but this time with much more wonder.
“Well?” March whispered, and we were both still breathing so heavily, but I could whisper, too.
“It felt…new,” I told him. “And old.”
An eager nod, and March leaned in and planted another kiss on my lips.
“Exactly,” he said, never moving back. “It felt…timeless.”
Timeless.
It sounded right. New and old together, something that had deep roots and brand-new flowers at the same time.
I nodded a million times, eyes closed, smile wide, and March kept me right there. On his lap, our lips almost touching while we breathed each other in, while we…settled into the feeling.
Sparetime save me, my chest was so full so suddenly I thought I might break open.
“Ora,” he whispered next, just said my name like he was testing it. Trying it. Getting used to the letters rolling off his tongue.
They did so perfectly. I had never loved my name as much as I did when he said it.
“Will you stay with me tonight?” he asked, and I leaned back again, looked at him, a little confused.
If he thought that there even was an alternative to that, he was delusional. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He slammed his lips to mine so fast I forgot to breathe all over again.
The world faded away so beautifully, so softly, like falling on clouds. He shifted us both until we were lying down together on the narrow cot, too small for two people, which was why it was perfect. I didn’t want us to be two right now. Just one.
The kiss slowed naturally as our bodies settled on one another, our arms around each other, and I was practically lying on top of him. His chest might be the most comfortable thing I’d ever lie on.
I fell asleep with my lips against his jaw while he rubbed circles on my shoulder with one hand and caressed my hair with the other.
For the first time in weeks, I felt…complete.