38. Every Almost Leads to You #4
Reyna felt that look everywhere Charlie hadn’t touched.
So she reached for Charlie’s shirt, Charlie's arms lifting before Reyna said a word.
The ease hit harder than hesitation would have.
Charlie simply gave herself to the moment.
Arms raised, eyes on Reyna, breath already uneven.
No joke to make it smaller. No attempt to turn away from the enormity of what they were finally able to do.
Reyna gathered the shirt and began to lift it.
Her fingers passed over Charlie’s waist.
Warm skin, that was all, but it was also everything.
Charlie’s stomach tightened beneath Reyna’s touch. Her breath left her in a small rush, and Reyna slowed without meaning to, caught by the discovery that she could do that. That the lightest pass of her hands could pull an answer from Charlie’s body.
She moved the shirt higher.
Reyna followed the fabric over Charlie’s ribs. Charlie’s arms stretched fully above her head, and Reyna watched her emerge beneath her hands, soft and strong in ways no stolen glimpse had prepared her for.
The shirt caught on Charlie’s chin, then her nose, and stayed there.
“Oh, for—” came from somewhere inside it.
Reyna laughed heartily, something she wasn’t anticipating, but quickly worked the fabric free of Charlie’s face. Charlie came out of it with one eye squinting shut.
“Very smooth,” Charlie said.
“It was.”
She let the shirt fall. Charlie lowered her arms and Reyna looked at her.
For one stunned second, she understood why people knelt.
Charlie stood in front of her flushed from the kissing, her hair disordered around her face, her chest rising quickly.
Reyna had seen parts of Charlie before. Bare arms, a strip of her waist when she reached above her head, even the line of her body beneath clothing when she leaned over a console.
Charlie was softer than Reyna had expected in some places but stronger in others. She was real in a way that made every version Reyna had envisioned suddenly feel unworthy.
Charlie was standing there letting Reyna look.
“You’re staring,” Charlie said.
“I know.”
Charlie’s mouth curved.
“Should I stop?” Reyna asked.
“No.” The answer came so quickly that Reyna nearly laughed.
Instead, she put both hands against Charlie’s bare waist.
Charlie inhaled.
Her body leaned into Reyna’s touch. Reyna’s hands moved slowly across her skin. Charlie watched Reyna’s face while she did it, as though Reyna’s reaction to her mattered as much as the touch itself.
“Rey,” Charlie said.
Reyna kissed her.
Charlie’s arms came around her neck. Reyna pulled her close, and the thin layer of her tank against Charlie’s bare skin became the only thing in the universe she hated.
Charlie seemed to agree.
Her fingers found the hem.
She tugged once, impatiently, and Reyna smiled against her mouth.
“Arms.”
Reyna lifted them.
Charlie pulled the tank upward, her hands traveled with it, fingers grazing Reyna's skin. The rose followed, color pouring across Reyna’s skin beneath Charlie’s fingertips, rising over her ribs, spreading across her chest and shoulders as the fabric climbed.
Charlie stopped halfway, watching the light move beneath her hands.
“God,” she whispered.
Reyna could hardly breathe.
Charlie finished pulling the tank over her head, the fabric clearing Reyna’s face.
Her arms came down, and Charlie forgot to let the shirt go.
It hung from one hand while she stared at Reyna. Openly.
Her eyes moved over the shifting rose first, following the color across Reyna’s skin. Then they roamed across her shoulders, down her chest, along her waist, and back up again.
The shirt slipped from Charlie’s fingers.
Reyna had been looked at before. Admired, desired, evaluated. She knew the difference between someone seeing her and someone seeing what she represented to them.
Charlie wasn’t looking at a captain, or at a Kaelari bloom or a biological impossibility.
She was looking at Reyna, simply, irrevocably, completely ruined by everything she saw.
Charlie’s eyes had gone bright. Her throat moved as she swallowed. When she tried to speak, nothing came.
“Charlie?”
Charlie shook her head once.
“I—” She stopped, breathed, tried again. “I can see all of you."
Reyna almost smiled. “You did just take off my shirt.”
“No.” Charlie’s hand came up, urgent now, and settled over the rose above Reyna’s heart. “I mean you. Not Captain Solas, not Kaelari markings." She looked up at Reyna now. "You.” Her fingers spread against Reyna’s skin. “And I didn’t know seeing you would do this to me.”
The humor left Reyna. Charlie’s palm lay warm against her, and the markings flared beneath it. Reyna watched Charlie’s face change with the light.
Wonder moved through her, but it didn’t soften the desire.
Somehow it made it more. Her gaze dropped back to the rose, her fingers spread over Reyna’s skin.
She looked as though she couldn’t decide whether to touch every part of Reyna all at once, or spend the rest of her life exactly where she was.
Reyna covered Charlie’s hand with her own.
“You’re beautiful,” Charlie whispered, raising her gaze slowly to Reyna.
The words were simple, but they struck like something enormous.
Reyna kissed her before the feeling behind her eyes could become anything she’d have to explain.
Charlie met her immediately.
The kiss lost what remained of its patience.
Charlie’s hand stayed pressed against Reyna’s heart while the other gripped her waist, holding her close. Reyna’s hands moved up Charlie’s back, across her bare skin, learning her by touch now because looking had become not enough.
The rest of their clothing had to go, the need for it passing between them without discussion.
Charlie’s fingers found Reyna’s waistband at the same moment Reyna reached for hers. Their hands collided, but neither was deterred.
Then Charlie laughed, breathless and disbelieving, her forehead dropping against Reyna’s.
“This is ridiculous.”
“I’ve always been perfectly capable of managing a fastening,” Reyna said, her fingers drifting along the bare skin at Charlie’s waist as her mouth brushed the edge of her jaw.
“Not while you’re doing that,” Charlie grumbled.
Reyna’s mouth moved deliberately to the place beneath Charlie’s ear.
“This?” Reyna said, letting her lips graze against Charlie's neck.
Charlie’s fingers clenched against her.
“Exactly that,” Charlie gasped.
Reyna smiled against her skin.
They tried again.
It wasn’t graceful. A fastening slipped in Charlie's fingers. Charlie had to look down then immediately forgot what she was doing when Reyna kissed the base of her throat.
Reyna stepped out of one pant leg and nearly caught her foot in the other because Charlie’s hands had moved to the bare curve of her back.
Charlie caught her around the waist.
“Very graceful, Captain.”
“Don’t,” Reyna warned, though she was already smiling.
Charlie kissed her anyway.
They undressed each other in pieces. A waistband being eased down, a leg lifting free. Fabric pulled upward and over, then dropped wherever neither of them would have to think about again.
Every new stretch of skin changed the room.
Reyna’s hands kept returning to Charlie as though each layer removed had revealed some place that needed to be touched immediately.
Charlie did the same to her, palms moving over Reyna’s sides, her back, her waist. And she would stop often to just look.
That was what made it unbearable. Charlie kept looking.
Each time she uncovered something new, she stopped as if she needed time to comprehend every reveal of Reyna's body.
Reyna saw her eyes widen, saw the sharp pull of her breath, saw her lips move around words that were never revealed.
And for Reyna, the wanting kept growing, not easing with access, but multiplying. Every part of Charlie she was permitted to see made her need the rest. Every place Charlie touched left the skin beside it begging.
The distance between them had become a living thing, however little of it remained.
At last, there was nothing else to remove.
They stood facing each other.
Close, not touching, the room going impossibly quiet.
Reyna looked at Charlie, and this time there was no fabric for imagination to complete. No stolen glimpse to preserve or need to look away before someone noticed.
Charlie was simply there, all of her, and Reyna let herself see.
She saw the body of the woman she loved. The body that carried Charlie through every impossible thing she asked of it. The hands that could rebuild an engine and trembled now at her sides. The heart beneath the skin that had chosen Reyna without ever once making her earn it.
It was too much, but not in a way that made her want less of her, but instead in a way that made her wonder how one body was supposed to contain loving another person this badly.
Charlie’s gaze traveled over her in return, slowly enough that Reyna felt it.
The rose brightened wherever Charlie looked, answering her attention with shameless precision. Reyna wanted Charlie to know, wanted her to see that every inch of Reyna understood exactly who was standing in front of her.
Then stop holding it.
Charlie's gaze reached Reyna’s face again.
Her eyes were wet.
Reyna lifted a hand to her cheek. “Hey.”
Charlie let out a small laugh, but it broke halfway through. “I’m okay.”
“I know.” Reyna’s thumb brushed gently beneath her eye. “You don’t have to be anything else right now.”
Charlie leaned into her palm. “I think that’s the problem.”
She turned her face and pressed a kiss to the center of Reyna’s hand.
“I’ve wanted you for so long,” she said.
Reyna’s chest tightened.
“I know now.”
Charlie looked at her, something open and unguarded passing across her face.
Reyna shook her head. “No. That’s not enough of an answer.”
“No,” Charlie said softly. “It really isn’t.”
“I’ve wanted you longer.”
Charlie gave a watery laugh. “Yes, I remember.”
“Five whole minutes.”
“Five whole minutes,” Charlie repeated softly.
Reyna kissed her and Charlie’s arms came around her.
And then their bare bodies met.