Chapter 17
Esme
The bed is a king, so there’s plenty of room between me and Wizard.
It still feels like we’re pressed right up against each other.
Hearing his deep, even breaths, feeling all the heat he’s throwing from his side of the bed, smelling the lingering woodsmoke, fresh air, cologne scent that’s uniquely his… it turns me inside out.
After we got in from the fire, we changed and brushed our teeth in separate rooms, but we got into bed together.
We were as stiff as two people could be, more boards than humans.
We laughed about it, which was nice. And then, he turned on his side, told me goodnight, shut his eyes, and was just… out. Hard.
Fresh air, emotional turmoil, hard work, and a lack of sleep finally took their toll on him.
I might have been through most of the same, but tonight, it works the opposite.
I keep running everything through my head, repeating Wizard’s sweet words and gentle promises from earlier like a mantra, until I can fit inside of them comfortably.
I replay all the details from earlier. The press of his body against mine, the way we swayed and bumped together, the sounds he made as he poured himself into our first, and second, and third kiss.
Thinking about building a life with him, about there no longer being just me is already changing and rearranging me from the inside out.
If this works—no, when it works, when we work, it’s going to be epic.
It might feel like throwing that Hail Mary pass, an all-out, pedal down to the floor, balls to the wall, wild and crazy leap, but I’m leaping with someone who always felt, at the heart of me, like home.
Like an extension of myself. I want those tight stitches threading us together in seams that can’t be torn apart.
Day by day, stitch by stitch, I want to relearn what home can actually look and feel like.
Wizard grunts. His breathing changes. It goes from steady to sharp inhales and forced exhales. His chest rises and falls, but jaggedly, in panting bursts. Is he having another nightmare? I definitely want to cut that off.
“Wizard?” He wakes up as soon as I shake his shoulder.
He blinks up at me, pupils blown out, eating up all the green.
The glow from the lights outside illuminates how beautiful he is, rumpled and sleepy, how soft and sweet and unguarded he appears right as he wakes fully.
“Hey. Sorry.” I stroke his cheek. “I thought you might be dreaming again. I wanted to wake you up before it got bad.”
“Thanks.” He’s awkward and the word groans out like wind through a long tunnel. His eyes dart away and won’t meet mine.
“Are… you okay?” I lay facing him. I want to wriggle closer.
I want him to pull me into him, to twine our bodies together until every part of us is touching again.
Golden light spills over the bed, broken by shadows from the trees and the roofline.
I take a chance and reach for his hand. It’s on top of the covers already.
“Wizard?” Our fingers brush. He doesn’t jerk away.
I don’t mind being the one to make the first move, but I also don’t want to do something he doesn’t want.
Sharing this bed is intimate on a completely different level, even if we’re not touching.
He seems to be struggling for air, then as soon as he gets it, he blows out a long breath. “I was dreaming, but it wasn’t bad.”
His words are weighted. My heart squeezes tight before I realize what he means. “Oh. Is that… does that happen often?” Probably. Because he’s been fucking tortured half to death with my silence and obliviousness over the years.
He mumbles something under his breath. When I have the courage to look at him again, I know it’s not a trick of the lights. He’s really that red.
“I—sometimes. Not all the time. I’m a guy so… probably more often than it should.”
“I don’t think dreams are something to be ashamed of. I don’t think giving yourself pleasure is shameful either.”
He groans like I’m killing him. “Esme…”
“Would you like to?”
“To what?” he gasps.
“To touch yourself.”
“No!” His eyes fly wide open. “God. No.”
I swallow nervously, but it’s only because my heart is pounding.
Desire explodes through me, nearly taking me away like a flash flood.
I kept asking myself why there weren’t signs earlier.
Why didn’t my body tell me that Wizard was it?
Maybe there were some signs, though. A racing heartbeat.
A small flutter in my stomach. I just didn’t recognize it for what it was.
I had so much going on in my head that I wasn’t fully aware of what my body was trying to tell me.
With Wizard, what I felt wasn’t all damp palms and a fluttering tummy. It was feeling safe. Coming home. Being heard. Being seen. Knowing that I could tell him anything. It was sky high sunflowers and gardens. It was staring up at the stars.
And now, it’s also this. It’s all the roadblocks gone in my mind and my body coming awake, coming back online, wanting.
It’s me, imagining him waking up, stiff and hard.
Aching. It’s me wanting to be the hands he wraps around his cock.
I want to feel him, hard and velvet in my palm.
I want him slick and arched, panting and devastated at my touch.
I want him in my mouth, the salt of him coating my tongue, the musk of him deep in my nostrils.
I want to hear the sounds he’d make. His moans of pleasure wrung from him because of me.
I want to bring him to life right alongside me.
I want… I want too much. None of it slow.
I just, straight up long for him. I’ve never felt anything like this, like the air is fire, like I’m trapped in an inferno, like I’m raging with fever. Like I’m going to crawl out of my skin. Yes, I’ve felt desire, but it was nothing like this.
There’s nothing perfunctory or obligated about the way I feel. I want, but I also want to adore. I want to worship. I want his pleasure far more than I want my own.
“I know we said we’d go slow… but… could I touch you?”
His whole body jerks so hard that the bed jumps, the log headboard bumping up against the pine paneling. “I’d probably last five seconds. You’d just look at me and I’d make a mess all over myself.”
“I could just close my eyes and listen.”
He snorts. “That’s weird.”
“Do you not like weird?”
No, this is all wrong. What he needs is for me to create a safe, shameless space for him.
He’s trained himself for years to not want this.
To bury it down and stuff it deep. He never believed this would happen.
He never wanted anyone else. I haunted him.
I know that’s not how he would say it went, but he’s thirty years old and he just had his first kiss today.
No one has ever touched his body. No one has made him feel good.
My fingers trail up the sensitive skin of his inner arm and he shivers again. “I don’t think that touching you is going too fast. Not when you’ve waited all this time, and now that I’m finally clued into it, I feel like I could maybe die if I don’t.”
He groans. Shivers again.
“I’ve never had a sexy dream. That sounds half like it would be really good and half like torture.”
“It’s something like that.”
There are things I can say and things I will definitely never tell him.
If anything is awkward, it’s that. “I—haven’t wanted to touch myself in a long time.
I didn’t feel ashamed. I didn’t feel anything at all.
I’ve been so dead inside. I don’t feel dead now.
I ache. I’m alive. I want. If you want to go to the bathroom and take care of it, that’s okay.
I could get up and give you privacy. But if you want to kiss a bit and touch a bit, I would really like that with you. ”
“Esme,” he gulps. Shudders. He rolls, reaching for me.
I scoot across the bed and lean over him, my leg pressing up against his under the blankets.
His skin is so hot and a little bit damp.
I cup his face and brush my lips over his.
I taste his breath, the mint of his toothpaste from a few hours ago.
He groans and his lips part beneath mine.
I chase the kiss, grasping his shoulders and sweeping my leg over his waist. My thighs brush against his, my toes reaching down to his knees.
Bare skin. So much. I lick Wizard’s lower lip and he opens again.
The space between us charges, electrifies, and goes molten.
I’m not touching him in the right spots.
I haven’t brushed against his erection. I want to, but that might be too much.
I drive him deeper with the kiss, coaxing his tongue out.
He thrusts it into my mouth and they tangle.
I stroke his with mine, whimpering and arching down, getting closer and closer to lowering myself all the way.
I want to. I want so much. He’s trembling, and he’s not the only one.
I slow down the kiss on purpose, telling myself to wait, trying to use some control.
I keep going and going, until when I pull away, I’m satisfied to see that his lips are swollen.
I trickle my fingers down off his shoulder, trailing a path over his heaving chest. His t-shirt is damp.
One day, I want him to tell me every detail of his dreams. I want to sit back and watch him touch himself.
I want him to make himself come right in front of me.
Maybe I’d want to do that for him too. It’s my face going red hot with those thoughts.
I keep working my hand down, skimming over his pecs and his hard abs until I reach the hem of his shirt. I push it up a fraction and caress the strip of skin right above the waistband of his boxers. It feels shockingly intimate even though it’s such a little thing.
“Can I?”