Chapter 7 #3
"This. Right here. You are the most beautiful thing on this farm, Harp. And that includes the sunrise."
I laughed. I laughed once, half a laugh, that turned into something breathless halfway out of my throat.
He kept going. He kissed the inside of each thigh — slow, his mouth warm, the rasp of his stubble against the soft inside of my leg making my whole body go tight in a long low pull I felt at the base of my spine.
He kissed the back of each knee where I am ticklish and I jumped, and he laughed against my skin, and kept going up.
By the time he came back to my mouth I was undone in a way I had never been undone for a man, and I held his face in both my hands and I kissed him with everything in me, and he made a small low sound into my mouth, a sound I had never heard out of him in any of the six years, a sound that I felt drop through the middle of me like a stone going into deep water.
He braced himself on one forearm beside my head.
His free hand came down the side of my throat, slow — a long warm palm-drag down over my collarbone and the full curve of my breast and the dip of my waist and the rise of my hip — and my body went soft under his hand the way bread dough goes soft under a baker's palm in the second pass.
I had never, in any of the men before him, felt my body do that under any hand at all.
I reached down between us. I worked the button at the front of his jeans with hands that were not entirely steady, and he helped me.
He pushed up off the quilt for the half second it took to shove the jeans down and off, and then he came back to me, and there was nothing between us anymore.
No cotton. No denim. No six years. The first long press of his bare body down the whole length of mine — chest to chest, hip to hip, the warm hard length of him against the soft skin of my belly — made me make a small sound into the side of his neck I had not known I knew how to make.
He held still over me a long second.
He held still with his weight braced careful on his forearms and his face above mine, and he looked at me with the lamp light gold on the side of his jaw and his hair falling forward, and he said, very quiet —
"Tell me you want this."
"I want this."
"Tell me again."
"Everett. I want this. I want you. I want this."
He kissed me. He kissed me slow and deep, and his hand — the same big steady working hand I had been pretending not to look at for six years — came down between my legs, careful.
The first touch of his fingers against me was so light I almost did not feel it, and then it was not light, and I felt my hips lift up off the quilt without my permission, and he murmured there against my temple, and he kept that slow patient steady stroke going, listening to my breath, learning me.
He learned me in about thirty seconds. He found exactly where to be and exactly how slow to be and he stayed there, and the slow tight pull at the base of my belly started gathering, and my hands gripped his shoulders, and his name came out of me a third time, and he said against my throat —
"Not yet. I want to be inside you when you come, honey. I have been wanting that for six years."
I made a noise.
He laughed once, soft, against my throat.
He took his hand off me. He came down over me again and braced on his forearms either side of my head, and he kissed me, slow, and I felt him press against me where I was open and waiting, and he held there — held there at the door of me, his forehead against mine, his eyes on mine in the lamp light. He said, very quiet —
"I love you, Harper Kincaid."
And then he came into me.
He came into me slow. He pushed forward steady and careful, watching my face, and the first slow joining was a thing I felt in every part of my body at once.
I felt full. I felt full the way a bowl is full when it is exactly as full as it can be, and I felt my body open around him, and he settled in deep, and he held still — held — watching my face, his breath coming uneven now for the first time, his weight a warm careful steady thing braced over me, and I held his face in both my hands and I said into the lamp light —
"You're home, Boone."
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I am."
He started to move.
He moved slow at first. He moved the same slow patient way he had kissed me, the same slow patient way he had worked his mouth down my body and back up it, and the rhythm we found between us on his grandmother's quilt was slow because we had time.
Because we had waited. Because every long unhurried stroke of him deeper into me felt like a year of the six being given back.
He braced on his forearms over me and he watched my face and he moved, and I rose to meet him, and my hands found his back and ran the long lines of muscle on either side of his spine and felt them work under my palms, and the rain came down on the tin roof in long heavy sheets, and the lamp on the bedside table burned steady gold in the window glass, and Everett Dalton was inside me and over me and around me, saying small things against my mouth, against my throat, against the soft place behind my ear — I love you, Harp.
I have you. I love you. I have you, I have you, I have you.
I held on.
I held on to the back of his neck with one hand and I let my other hand find his on the quilt beside my head, and he laced his fingers between mine and pressed our two hands flat together on the pillow above my shoulder, and the slow rhythm went on a long time, slow because he made it slow, slow because he watched my face and read what I needed and gave me exactly that, and the warm low tightening that had started under his hand five minutes ago started building in me again, this time deeper, slower, bigger, the slow rise of a wave a long way out from the shore, and he felt it building in me — he felt it through every place his body was touching mine — and he kept his rhythm steady, and he kissed me, and he said into my mouth —
"That's it. That's it, honey. Let me give it to you. I want to feel it. I want to feel you let go."
I broke open.
I broke open around him in a wave that started low in my belly and rose up through my whole body and crested in my chest and came up through my throat as a small high sound I did not know I was going to make, and I shook all the way through it with him deep inside me, and he held me through every second of it — his forehead pressed to mine, our hands laced on the pillow, watching me, watching my face come apart in the gold lamp light — and the second the wave eased he said, low, ragged —
"Harper—"
And then he followed me. He pushed deep and held there and shook against me, and I felt the long warm pulse of him let go inside me, and I held him with my whole body, and he laid his full weight down on me for the first time, his face buried in the side of my throat, his breath warm and ragged against my collarbone, and I wrapped my arms around the back of his neck and I held him with my whole body against my whole body, and we stayed there a long time without moving while the rain came down on the tin roof.
He whispered something against my throat. I did not catch it.
"What."
"I said," he murmured, " thank you ."
"For what."
"For coming and getting me."
I cried a little. I cried in a very small unspectacular way, two more slow tears that ran down past my temples and into my hair, and he kissed them off again, and after a long minute he rolled us slow onto our sides, still joined, and held me against his chest, and we lay there like that on his grandmother's quilt with the rain on the tin roof and his hand running slow up and down the long line of my back.
I do not know how long we stayed exactly like that.
It was long enough that the rain eased some and the cicadas started up again in the wet field beyond the window.
He pulled the corner of the quilt up over our shoulders.
I tucked my face down under his chin. He smelled like cedar and clean sweat and underneath that of something I had not been able to name until that moment, which was the smell of a man who was finally not holding anything back from you.
At some point — twenty minutes, thirty, an hour, I had no idea — the smoke alarm downstairs started going off because the biscuits had burned to charcoal in the oven.
Everett swore softly against the top of my head.
He laughed. He got up. He went down the stairs naked because there was no version of him that was going to put pants back on for a smoke alarm at this point, and I heard him swearing softly down in the kitchen and the sound of the back door opening to let the smoke out and the sound of a sheet pan banging into the sink, and he came back up the stairs six minutes later with the burnt sheet pan still smoking faintly in one hand and an embarrassed grin and an apology, and I laughed at him, I laughed at him hard, sitting up on his grandmother's quilt with the sheet pulled up to my collarbones, and he set the pan on the dresser and climbed back into bed and pulled me against him.
The second kiss — the long slow second kiss after the biscuits — was just as slow as the first one had been.
And then he started over again.
The second time he was not as patient. The second time he was slower in some places and faster in others, and his hands knew me a little now, and his mouth knew where to land, and the second time was longer, and quieter, and at the end of it when I broke open again it was a slower softer wave that rolled through me a long time and he stayed inside me through every minute of it with his hand at the small of my back and his mouth on the side of my throat saying I love you, I love you, I love you into my skin like a small low prayer, and when he came after me the second time he came with a sound that was barely a sound at all, half a breath let out against my collarbone, and we collapsed together onto the quilt damp and tangled and breathing each other's breath.
Around midnight he held me against his chest and said into the top of my head —
"I am going to spend the rest of my life learning you, Harp."
I said, "Take your time, Boone."
We slept, eventually, sometime past midnight.
I did not sleep deep. I slept in pieces.
I woke up once around two and the rain had stopped and the room was full of the silver clean light that comes after a storm.
He was asleep on his back with one arm still under my head and the other lying loose across his belly, and his face in sleep was a face I had not seen in any version of him in six years, and I traced the side of his jaw with one fingertip just to know that I was allowed to.
He woke up. He turned his head. He smiled at me, sleepy, slow.
"Harp."
"Mm."
"We have to tell Cade."
I said, "Tomorrow."
He said, "Tomorrow."
Neither of us slept after that. We lay on his grandmother's quilt with the silver light coming in the window and the rain dripping off the eaves outside and the cicadas starting up again in the wet field beyond the glass, and we did not want to miss a single minute of being on the right side of the line.
The bee was home.