Chapter 28 Now #2
I lean toward him, but he pulls back, out of reach.
I give him my best pout, making a soft laugh rumble in his chest. “I’ve waited years to do this, Ted. You think I’m gonna just let you plant one on me, after all that?”
“I wish you would,” I grumble. “Besides, we’ve kissed before.”
“Not the way I wanted to kiss. That was a tease, a hint, a torment.” He curves his hand around my jaw, my cheek, his thumb brushing my lip. “I’ve thought about this so many times,” he mutters, his gaze roaming my face. “In pure times and in impure times,” he admits.
Heat rolls through me.
“It was pretty great, each time,” he says.
“Alex,” I plead.
“Now it’s your turn to wait,” he tells me. Gently, but firmly. It makes want tingle through my limbs, reverberating like a plucked string.
“When you told me the other morning that you were worried the ocean wouldn’t hold up to all you’d imagined it to be, that it might let you down, and I told you it wouldn’t because it was yours, because—”
“It was real,” I tell him.
He nods. “All I could think was, that’s how kissing you would be—better than the best thing I could imagine, more satisfying than I could have ever fantasized. So…” He leans in, eyes on my mouth, “I’m going to prove myself right.”
For a moment it’s nothing but silence, not even the ocean’s roar reaching my ears, and I wonder if time’s stopped, just to torture me.
But then he’s there, his lips brushing mine, warm, firm, air gusting out of him, washing over me, and I gasp, like I’ve been revived, shocked back to life.
It’s nothing like our first, fearful kiss. And yet I can’t help but think that somehow it’s tethered to it, that this kiss now, like the many ways we’ve loved each other, is inextricable from where we started.
Alex deepens the kiss, opening his mouth, groaning into mine, a slow, savoring stroke of his tongue that makes my hips arch into his, heat pool molten between my thighs, where he presses into me, hard and thick.
I crush myself to him, so desperate for every part of my body to feel every part of his, licking into his mouth, earning another groan from deep in his throat.
His stubble scrapes my skin as I kiss him frantically, sucking at his bottom lip, tasting his cupid’s bow. I’m wild with want.
“Ted,” he rasps, squeezing me against him, rolling me onto my back.
I barely muffle a cry at the pleasure of feeling him over me, his body pinning mine to the mattress. My breasts ache where his chest rubs against them. My hips arch up, chasing relief for the pounding throb between my thighs.
“Tell me to stop,” he whispers. “If you want, okay? We don’t have to—”
“I want to,” I gasp, running my hands up his shirt, madly tugging it off. “I want to so bad.”
He helps me, yanking off his shirt, but then his back twinges; I can see it, and he grimaces.
“Alex, lie down.” I guide him off of me gently, settling right against him as we lie how we started, side by side, face-to-face.
Clumsily, I tug off my shirt and chuck it aside. “Let’s…” I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I know it’s the right thing. That Alex has waited for me, wanted me, and I have made him wait long enough. Now it’s my turn to be patient.
We could make it work tonight—people have sex in all kinds of positions, with all kinds of bodily needs and limitations, and I have no doubt it would be wonderful.
But I know Alex. I know how he wants this—he wants to take me, have me, and feel like himself when he does, not held back by pain. I don’t want the first time we do this to be tinged with his hurt.
“Let’s touch each other,” I whisper, drifting my hand down his chest. His stomach jumps, his hips buck as I sweep my finger along the waistband of his shorts.
“And sleep in this bed, together,” I tell him.
“And after a muscle relaxer, and a good Thea massage, and a night in a decent bed, we can do… everything else.”
Alex looks tortured. “I hate past Alex.”
“Why?”
“Because he stupidly slept on the floor, and if he hadn’t, he’d be doing everything tonight.”
I cup my hand around his cheek, kissing him softly, wondering at the sparks that dance across my skin, the desire that hums through me from just this, the faintest brush of lips.
“I love past Alex,” I tell him, before kissing him softly again.
Alex melts against me, groaning as I open my mouth, as he skates his hand down my back, then over my ass and wrenches me against him.
“I love present Alex,” I whisper.
His hips rock into mine as I reach between us and wrap my hand around him through his shorts. “I love all the Alexes you’ve ever been and ever will be.”
“Ted,” he gasps, reaching between my thighs, stroking over my sleep shorts.
I whimper as he drags two fingers over me, then rubs, a swift, sure circle.
I’m so close, already, stars dance in the edge of my vision. “Alex—”
He crushes his mouth to mine, pulling me tight against him, as our hands fumble and learn, stroking, caressing, hard, then soft, fast and slow. “I love you,” he whispers, his voice breaking as his hips falter, as he holds my eyes.
I arch into him, shaking as release slams through. “Love you,” I gasp. “I love you.”
He takes my mouth, his tongue plunging into me the way I know he wants to with his body, the way he will, soon, and, I hope, over and over for a very long time after that. For as long as we have.
I’m panting into his mouth, soaking up his grunts, his ragged breaths, the need trembling through his voice as he says my name over and over, until he buries his face in my neck, biting down as he comes with a pained groan, spilling hot and long, seeping through his shorts, to my hands.
I stroke him, drawing it out, until he reaches down, takes my hand, and brings it to his pounding heart.
I hold his eyes as long as I can, as I lean in and kiss him, gentle, savoring. He sighs into our kiss, drawing me with him, as he eases onto his back, and I curl around him, hiking my thigh high over his, splaying my hand over his heart where it slams against his ribs.
“You were right,” I say. “It was better.”
He sighs sleepily, turning to kiss my hair. “I know.”
I laugh, dazed, incandescent. I kiss right over his thundering heart. “Want me to get you that muscle relaxer?”
He shakes his head slowly. “Nah. This?” He swats my ass, then yanks me close, plastering me to him. “Did the job even better.”
“Better,” I tell him, “seems to be our theme tonight.”
“Even better than that,” he says drowsily, kissing my forehead. “Best.”