15. Jessica #2
Our fingers laced without either of us deciding to.
I looked down at our hands — intertwined, his knuckles against mine, his thumb resting in the groove between my thumb and forefinger — and I didn't know who had reached for who, and I didn't care.
His hand was warm and large, and his fingers were threaded through mine with a certainty that had nothing fake in it.
"Getting clingy.” The armor. The joke. The first thing I reached for when something was too real and too close.
He didn't smile. He turned his head and looked at me with the expression from across the marquee — the naked one, the one with nothing behind it but the truth — and said, quietly:
"You were incredible tonight."
No joke back. No deflection. Just the truth delivered in that low voice and the words hit me and my armor cracked. Not a hairline fracture this time. A split. Wide and clean and right down the middle.
I had nothing to cover it with. No punchline.
No quip. No sharp, funny thing to bridge the gap between what he'd said and what I could handle hearing.
I stood there with my hand in his and my throat tight and my eyes stinging.
And for once in my entire life, I didn't have a single fucking thing to say.
His thumb brushed across my knuckle. Once. The gesture of a man who could see the crack and wasn't going to push through it. Who was going to stand there and hold my hand and let me feel it at whatever speed I could bear.
Hunter was driving me home. The fundraiser was done, the crew was handling breakdown, and my car was at the ranch — the logical choice was for him to drop me off, and he had offered, and I had said yes because the logical choice was the logical choice and also because I was a glutton for punishment.
He pulled the truck out of the ranch driveway and onto the highway, and the headlights cut through the dark, and the cab held the two of us like the closed palm of a hand.
The quiet between us had teeth.
This wasn't the comfortable hush of the workbench or the porch swing.
This was loaded and pressurized and humming, the kind of air that happens when two people are sitting three feet apart and both of them know exactly what the other is thinking and neither of them is going to be the one to say it.
I was aware of every inch of space between us.
His hand on the gear stick. The way the dashboard light caught the line of his jaw.
The way he wasn't looking at me, and the not-looking was louder than any look he had ever given me.
I should have said something. Made a joke. Done the thing I always do — filled the air with something sharp and funny and safe.
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. The armor was gone. The jokes were gone. There was nothing in the cab except the two of us and the heat and the absolute certainty that if either of us moved, everything changed.
He pulled up outside my apartment, put the truck in park, and left the engine running.
I didn't move to get out.
The engine idled under us. The dashboard light gave off its low hum.
Hunter’s hand was still on the gear stick, his thumb resting against the side of the leather grip, and I watched it — the calluses, the line of the tendon running into his wrist, the small white scar on his knuckle that he had told me at fourteen had come from a horse and at sixteen had come from a fence and at nineteen had come from a fight he wouldn't name.
My hand moved without me. It slid across the console and settled over his, and his fingers turned under mine and slid up through the spaces between mine and locked.
He looked at me. I looked at him. His pupils were blown wide and dark, and the muscle at the corner of his jaw was flickering on and off in a rhythm I could feel in my own teeth.
I leaned across the console, and I kissed him.
The first contact of his mouth was a shock that ran the whole length of me.
He was warm. He was so warm. His lips parted under mine on a sound I felt against my mouth more than heard — low, broken, somewhere between a breath and a word — and the small desperate noise that came out of me met his halfway and got tangled up with it.
His free hand came up and slid into my hair the way I had imagined it sliding into my hair, only better, only slower, his fingers raking up through the length of it from the ends to the roots until his palm cupped the base of my skull and he could hold me there.
He angled my head. Held it where he wanted it. Then he kissed me properly.
His mouth was hot and unhurried and absolutely sure of itself, and his tongue slid against mine with the same patience he gave to everything else, and the taste of him hit me — whiskey, warm and smoky, the bourbon Owen had been pouring on the back porch — and something inside me unspooled all at once.
My bones went soft. My fists closed on the front of his shirt and pulled him toward me, and the gear stick caught me hard in the ribs, but I didn’t care, because his teeth had just grazed my lower lip, pulling a sound out of me I didn’t know I was capable of.
He answered the sound with one of his own.
Lower. Rougher. The same sound he had made into the side of my neck under the marquee, and the vibration of it traveled out of his chest into mine and down my spine and into the soft burning place between my legs.
I clenched against the seat and breathed out hard through my nose because I didn’t trust my mouth to do anything except beg.
His hand slid out of my hair and down the side of my neck.
Slow. Deliberate. His fingertips light against my skin, and his thumb stopped in the hollow of my throat and pressed, just for a second, into the pulse that was hammering there.
Then his palm kept going. Down to my collarbone.
He spread his fingers and laid them flat against the bone, his fingertips grazing the curve of skin above the neckline of my dress, and the heat of his palm against the bare skin was so much heat that for a long second I couldn’t breathe through it.
My nipples drew tight under the fabric of my dress.
I felt them tighten. I felt the dress drag across them as my back curved up off the seat without my permission, pushing my chest into the spread of his hand.
He made a low, helpless sound into my mouth that was almost a swear word, and his palm pressed harder into my collarbone.
I felt the tremor in his fingers, and I felt him not moving his hand the last inch.
The cab was hot. The windows were fogging.
My breath was sawing in and out of me. His was worse — short and ragged, hot against my mouth, broken on the in-breath.
The whole length of me was wet and aching, and the sound climbing up the back of my throat was the kind of sound a woman only made once she has decided she was done deciding.
He pulled his mouth off mine.
He didn’t go far. His forehead came down on mine and stayed there. His hand stayed on my chest, his fingers spread wide, his thumb still resting in the hollow above the bone. His chest was working against the front of his shirt, his heart hammering beneath my hand.
“Jess." His voice broke on the J.
He didn't say anything else. He didn't have to.
His breath was on my mouth and his hand was on my chest and the air between his lips and mine was so thin it was barely there.
Every cell in my body was leaning forward into the half inch of space that was left, and I felt his thumb twitch on the hollow of my throat — once — and felt the hand on my collarbone curl, very slightly, into a fist of cotton at the front of my dress, and I knew he was holding himself still by main force.
I pulled back. Just far enough to see him.
The dashboard light caught his eyes. They were the eyes from under the marquee, only closer and hotter and stripped of every layer of armor he had ever put on. His mouth was slack and red. He was looking at me as though he was waiting — waiting for one syllable, one nod, one inch of forward motion.
I felt the shape of the word yes sitting in my mouth like a coin.
I didn't say the word. Not tonight.
I squeezed his hand. His fingers tightened on mine — a pulse, a hold, a letting go that took visible effort. I opened the door. The night air hit my skin, and the cool of it was a shock after the heat of the cab, and my legs were not entirely reliable as I stepped onto the pavement.
I walked to my apartment door on legs that were not reliable.
My heels caught on the pavement. My hand missed the lock on the first try.
I didn't look back. Because looking back meant going back and going back meant the truck and his hands and his mouth and the edge we'd been standing on and the fall that was waiting on the other side.
My keys found the lock on the second try.
The door opened. The apartment was dark.
I stepped inside, closed the door, pressed my back against it.
I stood there in the dark with my breathing ragged and his taste in my mouth and the place on my collarbone where his hand had been still burning like a brand.
My lips were swollen. My hair was wrecked from his fingers. My underwear was damp, and the ache between my legs was a steady, insistent pulse that had nowhere to go and no intention of quieting down.
Almost ready. The distance between almost and yes was shrinking every time he touched me. Every kiss closed the gap. Every look. Every touch.
I pressed my fingers to my lips. Closed my eyes. His breath was still on my mouth. His name was still in my throat. And the almost sat in me like a promise I was going to keep very, very soon.