Chapter Eighteen #2
After, I head into the kitchen, where Everett’s already started the prep.
Together, we make dinner, with me directing and Everett assisting.
The salty citrus smells of stir-fry with fresh Thai basil and miso-glazed sweet potato fill the air, making my mouth water, and I feel, not for the first time, that I could be happy with this quiet kind of life.
Exploring. With Everett.
Cooking. With Everett.
And when he pauses to trail a finger over the top of my hand, brushing away the bit of chopped basil that clings there, the thought comes easy and unbidden to my mind.
Sleeping with Everett.
I drop the knife. The carrot I’d been cutting skitters across the wooden board, and Everett catches it gamely before it can fall onto the floor and hit Chicken upside the head.
The way he looks at me as he returns it to my board feels like the warm brush of his fingers all over again, this time down the soft skin of my neck, the hollows of my collarbone, along each slope of my breast until they tip the taut flesh of my nipples up into his hungry mouth.
I turn toward him, watching with parted lips.
He knows what I’m thinking about. Ever since I grabbed his face earlier and kissed him like he was mine to take whenever I want, my feelings have become as transparent as the ocean’s icy water that licked up our legs. He can see right through me; he knows.
And he wants me, too.
The thought burns down my core, puddling between my legs.
That night in the White House, I was able to deny us both.
My survival instincts still had control over me, still valued safety over risk to my heart.
But after we almost died escaping the hordes of D.C.
, after spending last night wrapped in his arms in that cold little fort, after this morning shouting all my truths at Gramps, I know now that I’m done for.
My survival instincts have nothing on the power of my want for him.
At Everett’s full height, he stretches tall over me, his chest broader than the full width of my shoulders.
For someone with such a soft and gentle heart, his presence has an imposing physicality to it that my body responds to all on its own.
He steps toward me, his hands finding either side of the counter until he surrounds me, my back to my work.
Why do I like this so much, this feeling of being trapped in his arms?
Or maybe it’s not that I’m trapped at all. Maybe it’s because in here, I feel safe.
He leans down, draws the tip of his nose across my cheekbone, the soft brush of his lips following close behind. A wave of heat surges inside me, grasping for him, ready to crash ashore on his body and rake him back into mine. His mouth pauses at the shell of my ear.
“Can I teach you what it’s like to come on my cock tonight, Maisie?”
I exhale harshly as every inch of my body lights up with needling sensation.
His hot breath against my neck, my ear, the cold press of the hard countertop digging into my back.
“It’s—we—well, yes,” I pant out as Everett’s mouth opens in a languid kiss against my neck.
“But we still have to—um, have dinner, though.” It becomes increasingly difficult to string together coherent sentences as my skin riots between the soft wet of his mouth and the sharp prick of stubble that follows each kiss as he drags his way down. “It’s—ah. Not—time yet?”
“This lesson’s going to work a little bit differently.
” Everett’s teasing voice is a low rumble of thunder against the column of my throat.
“Because sex doesn’t start when I take you to the bedroom, Maisie.
It begins hours before, when I wrap my arm around your shoulders and you press into my side during a walk on the beach,” he says, slowly kissing his way back up.
“When you climb into my lap and drive me absolutely wild.” He reaches my face, then cups me with both hands, holding me like a bowl of water he’s desperate to drink.
His thumb drags over my parted lips, and a sound of want hums from his own.
“When I kiss you here”—he dips down, pulling my bottom lip into his mouth—“and here”—he softly kisses the underside of my jaw—“and here.” His index finger trails down the hollow between my breasts, his mouth following soon after.
“It’s all a prelude,” he says into the swell of my chest.
My head falls back as my hips press forward, finding him, hot, ready, and waiting.
All thoughts of dinner have fled my mind.
His hands slide down my ribs, following the curves in and out until they settle onto my hips possessively, then spin me around.
An exhale punches out of my chest as my palms land flat on the counter.
Everett’s hands, still locked around my hips, are strong and confident as he tugs me to him, commanding my ass flush against the jut of his thick erection.
He leans over my back to whisper into my ear, “We started having sex the moment I woke up in that fort and saw your beautiful face next to mine, Maisie.”
He…thinks I’m beautiful. The words twirl through my belly, sending giddy warmth rushing into my limbs.
“And when it’s time for you to fuck me, Maisie, when you’ll sit on my cock and take in every inch, you’re going to be ready. Hot and slick and ready.” He bites my neck lightly, his right hand moving down, rubbing my aching clit through my clothes. I whimper in response. “Aren’t you?”
“Yes, Professor,” I breathe out, so turned on I feel almost confused.
Disoriented. Where am I and what was I doing and—ah, Everett.
Mentally, I’m two steps ahead, can almost feel him slide my pants down, pressing his palm into my lower back until I arch up for him, the phantom pressure as he pushes his way inside.
But instead he straightens, running his palms up my arms, hovering close behind.
“How about I finish up here for us?” He tucks his chin against my shoulder and wraps his arms around my middle, and it’s so—so intimate, it steals the words from my throat. Chicken dips between our ankles, mreowing for her own dinner, and all I can do is nod.
It’s probably best I don’t handle a knife right now.
We eat in the historic dining room behind the ropes, opting to sit beside each other in the straight-backed rustic wooden chairs instead of across the rough-hewn table, both facing the large picture windows.
By the time we finish our meal, pink paints the sky above the silhouetted pine trees, and we grab the last of our things to walk down the little pathway between buildings and make our way up to the top of the lighthouse, where Everett’s set us up for the night.
The spiral staircase goes on and ever upward, each flight bringing more assurance that tonight we won’t be bothered by the undead.
When we reach the top, panting and glazed with a light sweat despite the chill eddies seeping through the cracks, we enter the lantern room.
It’s open and tall, at least two stories on its own, the spiral stairs continuing around the glass-paneled room one more flight up to where the lantern sits above, shining like a diamond in its slowly spinning setting.
Here, Everett’s created a cozy pocket while I finished the last of the cleaning up.
Three of our camping lights sit placed on the stairs surrounding us, casting a warm glow that will fill this space once the sun fully sets.
Our thick foam pads line the smooth slab floor beneath the lantern, covered by our sleeping bags.
But instead of two separate ones lying side by side, Everett’s created a bed for us.
My cheeks burn with anticipation. This is really going to happen.
We’re going to have sex tonight.
Unless I screw it up again. Unless I say something so stupid or terrible or na?ve that Everett changes his mind. Unless I get scared. The thought’s so upsetting, it works like glue in my mouth, rendering me unable to speak. I desperately don’t want to mess this up.
Everett waves me over to where he stands, his elbows propped on the iron railing encircling the room.
The paneled glass surrounds us on all sides, refracting images of ocean and sunset skies, sand turned pink in the last fading rays, the crowd of pine trees turning black in shadows.
From up here, we see a boat offshore past the breakers, its prow raised unnaturally into the air, crashed and lodged deep in the rocky coastline this lighthouse was meant to deliver it from.
“Come on,” Everett says, his soft smile its own lantern for me to follow.
He leads us up to the very top, where an old wooden bench, worn smooth, rings the room.
He sits on the bench sideways so that it’s the ocean view that will have to fight for his attention, not me.
“The sunset paints the whole ocean pink. You’ve got to see it. ”
“Oh, yeah?” At least, that’s what I try to say. It’s more a croak than language. Wordlessly, Everett passes me my water bottle, which I take gratefully and drink too much of, too fast.
Everett watches this with an amused lift of his mouth. “Feeling nervous?”
“A little,” I admit, fixing my eyes on the purpling waves. They’re still reaching for me, all the way up here. “Maybe a lot?”