Chapter 24
The moment we walked into March’s room again, and I saw the glass floor and the old gears underneath, I went for him, took his face in my hands, and kissed him.
No word, no hesitation, no guarantee that he’d kiss me back, but he did.
We stayed there, frozen in that kiss, my hands on his cheeks, his over them. We absorbed one another, the feel of our lips pressing, of our breathing slowing down, falling into the same rhythm.
Then March stepped back, took my hand in his, and pulled me to the cot.
He sat at the very edge of it, looped my hands around the back of his neck, and wrapped his arms around my thighs as he hugged me.
His head was pressed to my stomach, and my fingers immediately found their way into his hair, and it was such an intimate moment I feared I’d cry if I thought about it too hard.
But I didn’t—there was no need. Our bodies knew exactly what they were doing.
Eventually, March leaned back and pulled me with him, sat me on his lap, then settled us both on the cot, just like before.
Except this time I was lying on his pillow, and half his body was over mine.
His arm was underneath my head, and he held himself up on his elbow, his hand around my neck, gently stroking my skin as he looked at me.
In those moments, nothing existed except him.
He said, “Do you want to sleep?”
I shook my head slowly. No, I did not want to sleep.
The corner of his lips curled a bit. “Hmm. I wonder what else you’d want to do.”
Heat on my cheeks. Of course, he was teasing me and I knew it, but still. I couldn’t stop my smile from spreading all the way.
“Nothing. Just-just rest,” I muttered, and he knew it was a lie.
That was why he was chuckling, and my toes curled, and there was a new warmth in my chest that came out of nowhere, but that was always there at the same time, waiting.
Time’s Teeth, that might be the best sound my ears had ever heard.
“Just rest. Got it,” March said, and when I turned my head away to breathe for a second, he gripped my chin and held me in place. “Don’t ever hide your face from me,” he whispered.
“Okay.” I surrendered so easily it could have been a little pathetic.
March didn’t think so, though. “I don’t know what we did before, but I never want to stop looking at you. Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”
Fire, fire, fire on my cheeks and my chest—and between my legs.
It was hard to carry the weight of his gaze after he said that—I was a very shy person by nature, but I bit my tongue and didn’t even try to turn away, not for a second.
“I could look at you all day. I could count your smiles forever. I could touch your skin for hours and hours…” His hand slid down my neck to my chest, and I was no longer needing air to survive. “Velvet-smooth. Exactly right.”
My eyes closed—not because I was trying to hide, but because that was exactly how he felt to me, too. Exactly right.
“I want to know your body the way my hands seem to know it,” March whispered, and his hand moved down the shape of me, over my breasts and to my waist while I burned in silence. “I want to see you the way I already feel you. That okay?”
I nodded, too fast and too many times, but I wasn’t entirely sure I could produce voice if I tried to speak. This was more than okay—it was everything I wanted. Maybe even more than I wanted my memories back.
When he kissed me again, it wasn’t slow—it was deliberate. It was…exploration.
It was fantastic.
Holy Hour, I could lay here under him all day and all night and forever.
His tongue in my mouth did wonders to fill me up so that I could have sworn I’d never been empty a second in my life.
He knew exactly how to kiss me, how to suck on my bottom lip, how to caress my tongue with his, how to keep the kiss going, never break it, even when he was biting me—just like I liked.
But more than that—I knew exactly how to kiss him, too.
I knew because his moans got a little louder and he pressed onto me harder when I gripped the back of his neck tighter or when I slipped my hand underneath the collar of his shirt to touch his back.
My hands knew his body perfectly. I was grazing his shoulder with my nails instinctively, and March growled as he bit my lip when I did. Pressed his hips onto my thigh so that I felt his hard cock clearly.
I was melting, even if a part of me was aware of this whole thing happening from outside. Like our bodies were having a reunion my mind couldn’t really attend.
Every new inch of skin I touched, and every time his hand moved farther up under my shirt, was simultaneously brand new and ancient. Our bodies were fluent in a language that we didn’t even remember learning.
But the bigger part of me felt every single thing he did to me clearly, too.
Such a strange state to be in. Myself, but not quite.
March continued to explore.
He let go of my lips after a while, and moved down to my neck, and I knew exactly how to angle my head to give him access to where I needed him, just below my earlobe. He kissed the soft skin there gently, then licked and sucked with just the right pressure until my eyes rolled back in my head.
Yes, fluent was definitely the right word.
He moved lower, settled between my parted legs, whispered under his breath as he pulled my shirt up my chest and kissed a straight line to my belly button.
My hands were in his hair, and I watched him when I could, watched how he looked at me, both with awe and with purpose, how he pulled down the cups of my bra and took my nipple in his mouth.
It was intoxicating. The way he played with my other nipple with his hand, and knew just the right amount of biting and kissing I liked to bring me to the brink ten seconds in.
My hips moved and my blood rushed and my center screamed for his attention, and for a second there, as I imagined his mouth on my pussy, I could have sworn I knew the feeling.
Which was why it was so terrifying at the same time.
Every touch and every kiss was proof of something stolen from us. The way my hands knew the shape of his head, the rhythm of his tongue—it was written on our skin, our muscle memory, in the way our bodies fit together with an unmatched precision.
Yes, we had definitely done this before. But when March began to pull down my trousers and kiss the soft skin of my pelvis, I had already lost myself again, but in a brand-new way.
He murmured about how good I tasted, how much he craved the scent of my skin.
“I’ve thought about this so many times, long before I was willing to admit it to myself,” he said when he leaned up to pull my trousers and panties off. Looked down at me like he was in awe—so in awe he paused for a second as his eyes scrolled up my half naked body. Stopped on my face.
“This okay?”
If he asked again, I was afraid I was going to scream in frustration.
For now, I nodded. Only looked at him, absorbed him with my eyes. Said, “Take it off.” Because I wanted to see him, too.
A mischievous grin stretched his lips so perfectly I yearned to somehow find ways to create moving drawings just so I could replicate it in my sketchbook. My hands itched to touch his face, but I settled for watching him pull his shirt off in one swift motion, then throw it on the floor.
There.
Smooth skin and perfect shapes, toned muscles and wide shoulders—I was salivating as my eyes raced over his torso to see more in the least amount of time possible.
And it still wasn’t enough when he leaned in and pulled my clothes off just as fast, then lowered himself between my legs.
I propped myself up on my elbows, cheeks red, near melting for real, but I had to see it. While he whispered under his breath and planted kisses all over my thighs, I watched with my lips parted, mind clear, eyes burning because I refused to blink.
Better than my fantasies, I thought he whispered. Made for me, absolutely made for me—and then kiss, kiss, bite.
Meanwhile, I was trying my best to not let my head fall back or my eyes roll in my skull, but I only managed to do that until he kissed me right on my center.
Then I fell back—and it felt like returning. It felt like slipping into my body again, like putting on my own skin after a long time.
Such a strange, strange sensation, but then March nudged my clit with his tongue, and I lost all rational thought.
My hands were in his hair. My hips tried to move, my body on fire, but he had a good grip on my hip and held me down, said something like: let me take my time—don’t rush me—do you have any idea how you taste?
I didn’t care about words, but I wanted more of what he was giving me, and I wanted all of it at once.
But again, March knew my body better than I did because he didn’t rush.
He held my hips down and took his time in tasting me properly like one tastes their favorite meal, and by the time he picked up the rhythm, I no longer had a sense of time, either.
Could have been seconds or minutes or hours before I came with his name on my lips like it had always belonged there, and the feeling was more intense than anything I’d ever made myself feel, even when I thought of him.
Even when I tried to imagine this. My imagination could never.
When March started kissing his way up my stomach, climbing higher on the bed, I was completely spent in the best possible way, still reeling with the aftermath of the best orgasm I’d ever had. My eyes were half open, a lazy smile on my face that he kissed with a grin on his own.
“See that? That was perfect. All of it—perfect. How do you taste like that?” he said in a whisper, planting kisses all over my face while I was still lying on clouds.
I laughed a little. “How do you know how to do that so well? Did you, by any chance, make me yourself?” I said, the words slurred together, but he understood.
And he laughed, too. It was short and sweet, and it pulled strings somewhere deep in my chest that finally cleared my head a little from all that pleasure that had infused my every cell.
It was incredible how much I’d changed since lying here, how much power the right way of being touched had. It was all physical, but it was also way deeper than that, something I couldn’t quite catch with my mind to name.
“Oh, no. I’m not the one who made you,” he said—and he said it with such certainty that I had to laugh again.
“How do you know? Maybe you did.” He’d convinced me.
“I didn’t. Whoever made you made the stars in the sky and the rivers on the ground, possibly in one breath.
Unfortunately, I simply do not have the expertise for that,” he said—in all honesty, too.
And my cheeks flushed and I giggled again, and I hid my face under his neck this time, so he had no complaints.
“Oh, you’re good with words. You could get a girl into a whole lot of trouble,” I muttered against his neck, then bit—instinctively.
And March pressed himself harder against me with a hiss, and I thought maybe I hurt him but I didn’t.
He grabbed my jaw and held me there, and my mouth knew exactly what to do, how to kiss him, how to lick and suck on his soft skin.
My hands moved on their own, too, reached down for his stomach, his smooth skin, the dark curls that formed a line down his chest and bellybutton and disappeared under his trousers.
But before I could reach the button or slip my hand underneath his waistband, March caught my hand and brought it up and kissed my fingertips slowly. Lazily.
“We’ve probably done it before,” I whispered, cheeks on fire still, but I was way past being embarrassed now. I liked the sounds he made and how he reacted to my touch and kisses far too much to care about anything else.
“I know,” he said. “And I want the next time to be ours. Not a memory we’re replaying—ours. We’ll have that if we take our time. If we get to know each other a little bit first. Don’t you think?”
Yes, actually. That was perfectly put, and it made a lot of sense.
I leaned in and kissed his lips the way I hadn’t kissed anything or anyone before—with all of me, the things you could touch and the things you could only feel.
“You’re something else, you know that?” I leaned back and touched his face, ran my fingertip over the heart-shaped curve of his lips, the tip of his nose. My heart was about to explode right there in my ribcage when our eyes locked.
All those colors. All the beautiful shapes and silhouettes they made.
“I want to know what you’re thinking. All the time,” he whispered. “Tell me about you.”
“Well, what do you want to know?” I’d tell him in detail, if he only wanted to hear it. I’d hold nothing back.
“Everything.”
My toes curled. My heart broke and came together again in a single beat.
March said, “I’m all ears, beautiful. Tell me everything about you and start with your favorite color.”
I told him the truth. It was red.