9. One Bad Decision #3
Upstairs, Maisie sleeps.
Outside, Silver Mesa breathes in the dark.
It starts with Laney setting down her coffee mug.
It's such a small thing. She just sets it down on the counter, deliberate, final, like she's putting something aside she doesn't need anymore.
Then she looks at me across the kitchen island, her hair loose around her shoulders, her eyes clear and steady.
All the careful distance she's been maintaining for weeks is gone from her expression, like she simply decided to stop holding it there.
"Beckett," she says.
That's all.
Just my name.
I come around the island.
Slowly.
She doesn't move back. She tilts her chin up and looks at me when I stop in front of her and the space between us is nothing, barely a breath, and I bring my hand up slowly and tuck a strand of hair back from her face and feel her exhale against my wrist.
"Still not yet?" I ask quietly.
"No," she says. "Not anymore."
I kiss her.
It starts soft and careful, the way you approach something you've been thinking about long enough that the reality of it needs a minute to settle into place.
Her hands come up to my chest, curling into my shirt as she kisses me back with a quiet certainty that undoes every careful thing I've been telling myself for weeks.
I pull back just enough to look at her.
Her eyes open slowly. Her expression is open, unguarded, fully present in a way that hits me harder than the kiss did.
She smiles a smile that sends electricity through me.
Then she pulls me back down by the front of my shirt and the careful part of the evening is finished.
She tastes like coffee. Warm, real, entirely Laney. My hands find her waist. She shifts forward on the stool, closing the last of the distance between us, her hands moving up from my chest to my shoulders, into my hair.
I pull her closer and she comes without resistance, her body fitting against mine with an ease that feels like something recognized rather than something new.
I walk her back toward the counter, her hands still in my hair, her mouth still on mine.
She goes willingly, her breath quickening when my mouth moves to her jaw, then lower to the soft skin below her ear.
She makes a sound low in her throat that I feel more than hear and tightens her hands in my hair.
"Upstairs," she says against my jaw. Not a question.
"Maisie," I say.
"She sleeps like the dead. You said so yourself."
She's not wrong. I said exactly that two weeks ago and I cannot believe it is being used against me this effectively.
I pull back and look at her, flushed, her hair disheveled, her eyes dark, her mouth curved into a small smile that I have never seen on her before. It's softer than her usual ones. Less defended. It does something to my chest that I don't have a word for yet.
I take her hand.
She follows me up the stairs with the particular quiet of two people navigating a sleeping house.
I push open the bedroom door. She comes through it without hesitation, I close it softly behind us.
The ranch house is very still around us.
She reaches for me in the dark.
I meet her there.
What follows is slow, unhurried. The particular luxury of two people who have been patient long enough that patience is no longer available to either of them.
Her hands are sure, her body warm, and she gives as much as she takes, which somehow surprises me and shouldn't.
There are no walls between us here.
Not a single one.
I undress her with no resistance from her. She pulls my shirt off over my head. She works at the buckle on my jeans and pulls it all down as the stiffness is now making itself very noticeable. I lay her naked body down gently on the bed.
I lay beside her just exploring and taking my time to map out her whole body. I start at her neck kissing and caressing. Her breaths are getting shorter. I kiss my way down her shoulder and move to her breast one at a time. Nipples are hard as pebbles.
I take one in my mouth and one in my hand. Her body arches as she almost shrieks with pleasure. She says my name in what sounds like desperation. I work my way down her body taking note of every pleasure spot.
I spread her legs, I can see just how ready she is for me. I kiss her inner thighs. I tongue her clit and watch her squirm. I adjust and settle over top of her. I enter her slowly while she is pulling me into her.
We move together. Our breathing getting heavy.
The rhythm picks up faster and faster until she moans and tells me she is coming. We finish together as both of our body's arch with moaning sounds coming out of both of us.
Afterward she lies beside me in the dark, her head on my chest, her breathing evening out. Her hand rests flat over my heart like she's checking that it's still there.
I look at the ceiling.
I look at her.
I don't think I'm in trouble anymore.
I’m just falling in love.
That thought should probably scare me more than it does.
It doesn't scare me at all. Some people wait their whole lives to feel like this. I got this feeling in a matter of weeks.