19. Sex Is The Small Part #2
I had spent most of my life telling myself something about kissing. You didn't kiss a person like that unless you meant it. That your body could do plenty on its own. Present or detached. But kissing was the part you saved for the woman you wanted to keep.
I never intended to ever kiss a woman in that way. And now I was kissing Alyssa with a kiss I didn’t know had been waiting in my mouth my whole life.
I tilted her head and went deeper. I couldn’t get enough air and didn’t want it. I’d come up for a breath and she’d chase me and I’d go back in before I inhaled.
I didn't want to stop. I kissed her until my breath was uneven and she was leaning into me with her hands on my chest, and then I kissed her again, and then I leaned my forehead against hers and held her there with my eyes closed.
I shifted on the couch and pulled her onto my lap, and the second she settled, our restraint broke even more.
Her thighs bracketed my legs, chest pressed to mine, and my hands were everywhere.
We kissed more desperately. Her hands braced my head pulling me in, and I let my hands wander down to her waist, then lower, gripping her ass, squeezing, guiding.
When she rocked forward and felt me hard under my sweats, she gasped, hips stuttering. A jolt went through my spine as she rolled her hips, dragging over my erection, and I groaned into her mouth. That feel of her, even through layers of clothes, was enough to damn near make me explode.
She continued grinding, a slow, rhythm as her moans slipped between our kisses, and I answered pulling her in tighter, urging her on.
I got my mouth on her throat and she threw her head back and gave me a sound I'd be hearing for the rest of my life.
I slid a hand under her shirt, up the bare skin of her back, caressing until she shuddered into me.
She found a rhythm against me, and I held her hips and helped her into it, feeling the exact moment it stopped being something we were doing together, and turned into something happening to her. Her breath fraying, her hands twisting into my shirt, her whole body drawing tight.
I pulled back to watch her.
Her eyes were shut, her head tipped back, so she never saw me looking.
Didn’t see whatever was on my face right then as I stared at her.
It wasn’t desire. Or not only desire. I knew this woman, deeply.
Somewhere between our runs and her child and the hazelnut coffee I’d never drink, I’d let her in past every wall I built and I’d never heard the door crack.
“Julian!” she gasped and tried to slow her grind to a halt. “I think I’m—”
I grabbed her by the hips and moved her back and forth against me. “I know, Lyss. Let go. It’s okay.”
Her breathing became labored, her eyes rolled back, her mouth hung open and she was the most gorgeous sight I’d seen in my life.
“That's it, Lyss,” I growled against her skin.
Her whole body began to tremble as she came apart on my lap, muffling her self into my shoulder to keep quiet. I gathered her in and held her through it. My own need pulsed heavy and hungry, fighting to choke back every part of me that wanted to devour her and take it the rest of the way.
I could have. She'd have let me. And that was what stopped me. Because she'd have let me. She’d have given it all to me before either of us had said one true word out loud about what it would mean.
Years since a man had touched her. And she’d been treated carelessly before.
I was not going to be another man who took the deepest thing she had to give in a moment she didn’t get to decide clearly.
And Micah was asleep down the hall, and the first time she gave herself to someone again was not going to be a thing I rushed her into with clothes half on.
I wanted to lay her down. I wanted to take my time with her in a bed, with nobody else in the house, and I wanted to know we had both decided to go there with our eyes wide open. Not because we had been too far gone to stop.
Her body went weak and slumped against me and I ran my hands up and down her back as she came down, her heart thudding against mine. Then she reached for me, eyes shining, wanting to give me something back. Her hand slid over my erection through my pants, with an offer clear in her eyes.
I sucked in a breath through my teeth, then grabbed her hand gently to stop her, and brought my forehead to hers. “Not now.”
She was breathing as hard as I was. “If you say one word about being a gentleman,” she said, unsteady, “I'm putting you out.”
A laugh came out of me. “I’m not stopping because I don't want to, Lyss. I want you to be clear on that. I want you.”
“Then why?”
“Because the first time is not going to be a quickie on your couch, with you having to quiet yourself, one ear listening for an eight-year-old.”
She nodded and was quiet.
“And…I have a way I do things.” I wasn't looking at her, trying to find the words. “I worry I don't have what you'd want from this. From me. Not the way you'd want it.”
“What would I want from this?”
“More than I'd be able to give you. The whole thing. I have my family. The label. There hasn't been bandwidth past that for a long time. I'm not telling you that to push you away. I'm telling you because you deserve to know what you'd be agreeing to.”
“What you’ve already been giving me in friendship. What you’ve even given Micah. That’s what I’d want from this, Julian. What you just told me you don't have to give. You've been giving it. For months.”
She uncurled a little. “Can I tell you what I think is actually happening here?”
“Yes.”
“Sex is the small part. That's the only thing we haven't given each other. Everything else, we've been giving. Neither of us thinks the physical is the deep end of this.”
I nodded.
“So what are we drawing the line at? Because if it’s sex, that’s the easiest thing … I don't think that's actually the line. I think the line is something else and we're calling it sex because that’s simpler to argue about.”
I sat with her there, and thought about it head-on. If she walked out of my life tomorrow with no warning, it would take me apart. The thing I'd built my adult life around never letting happen, had happened. I’d already handed it to her.