Chapter Twenty-Six #2
I look at her. She's not waiting for me to say it back.
She's not standing there with expectation or need or any of the things that would make this a transaction.
She said it because it's true and she wanted me to know and that's enough for her.
She'll walk back to her stool and drink her mule and tell me more about the fire and she won't bring it up again because Zoe doesn't need reciprocity on a timeline. She just needs to say what's true.
"Zoe."
"Yeah?"
"I love you too."
Her face does something I've never seen it do before.
It goes still. Completely still. The broadcasting stops for one second, two seconds, and I see the underneath, the part she doesn't show because she's always showing everything else, and the underneath is a girl who's been loud her whole life and just heard the quietest, most important thing anyone has ever said to her.
Then the grin comes back, wider than before, and she walks back to her stool and sits down and picks up her mug and she's glowing, full broadcast, every frequency, and I'm standing behind the bar I'm going to own someday and I just told a twenty-two-year-old firefighter I love her and I meant it.
After closing, after the register count and the chairs up and the last glass washed, I walk to the door with her. She's got her bag over her shoulder and her jacket zipped and she's sleepy now, the adrenaline finally gone, the day landing on her in full.
"Stay at my place tonight," I say.
"I was going to anyway."
"I know."
We walk. The streets are quiet and the air is cool and she leans into me as we walk and I let her because I've stopped keeping score of who leans first. We pass the laundromat, dark now, machines quiet, and we go up the stairs and I unlock the door and her sneakers are by the entrance where she left them and her toothbrush is in the bathroom and her charger is plugged in by the bed.
She brushes her teeth. I brush mine. We stand side by side at the sink and the mirror shows us together, pink mohawk and dark hair, rings and clean nails, and I look at the two toothbrushes in the cup and I don't examine it anymore. I just let it be.
She turns to me. Toothbrush still in the cup, mint on her breath, and her eyes are doing the thing, the full broadcast, but it's different now.
Darker. Focused. She's looking at me with intention and I recognize it because I've been on the other side of it twice and both times we didn’t come back from it.
"You told me you love me."
"I did."
"I want to take you to bed now."
She doesn't ask. She states. This is what's changed. The first time she was trembling and breathless and I led her through it. This time she walks me backward out of the bathroom with her hands on my hips and her mouth on my jaw and there's nothing tentative in her.
She pushes me onto the bed. I sit and she follows, one knee on either side of my hips, settling into my lap. Her weight is warm and solid and she's still in the t-shirt from the bar and she smells like smoke underneath the soap and I pull her down and kiss her.
This kiss is different from the one in the bar.
That one was public, careful, a declaration in front of witnesses.
This one is private and open-mouthed and her tongue finds mine and her hands are in my hair, pulling the mohawk, not gently, and the sting of it sends a line of heat down my spine into my hips.
She rolls against me, grinding down, and the pressure of her through two layers of cotton is enough to make my fingers dig into her thighs.
I pull her shirt off. She lifts her arms and it's gone and she's in a sports bra, dark skin, and I put my mouth on her collarbone and taste soap and salt and the faint residual smoke that's still in her skin no matter how many times she showered.
I bite down. She gasps and her hips jerk forward and I feel the heat of her against my stomach.
"You taste like the fire," I say against her throat.
"Good or bad?"
"Good. Come here." I pull her closer by the hips and grind up against her and she drops her head back and exhales hard.
She pulls at my shirt. I raise my arms and she takes it off and her hands are on my ribs, on the geometric tattoo, tracing the lines with her thumbs. She does this every time, maps the ink before she maps the skin, and I let her because her hands on my tattoos feel like being read.
"I love these," she says. She traces the edge of the geometric piece where it meets bare skin. "I love that you chose them. I love that Vanessa put them on you. I love that I get to touch them."
She pushes me back against the pillows. Leans over me, hands planted on either side of my head, and looks down at me with a focus that makes my breath catch. She's twenty-two and she's been doing this for weeks and she reads me like I'm the only text she's ever wanted to get right.
She unhooks my bra. Pulls it off. Cups my breast in her hand and runs her thumb over my nipple and watches it harden under her touch. Then she pinches, slow and precise, rolling the nipple between her fingers, and my hips buck up off the bed.
"Fuck," I breathe.
"Tell me what you want," she says. Her voice is low, confident, a voice she didn't have a few weeks ago.
"Your mouth. On my tits. Now."
She lowers her head. Her tongue circles my nipple, slow, then closes around it with a suction that makes my hips roll up against hers.
She sucks harder, flicks her tongue across the peak, and I grip her shoulder and she responds by grinding down against me and the friction through our underwear is constant, steady, building.
I'm wet and she's wetter, soaking through the cotton, the heat of her pressing against my thigh.
She switches to the other breast. Teeth this time, a scrape and then a bite that's sharp enough to pull a sound out of me that's louder than I expected, and she lifts her head and grins.
"Found it," she says.
"You found it weeks ago too."
She looks so smug. "I like finding it again."
She kisses down my stomach. She doesn't rush. She kisses my ribs and my hip and the soft skin below my navel and each kiss is placed with the same deliberate care she brings to everything, and I'm watching her move down my body and I can see her face and her face is focused and hungry and sure.
She hooks her fingers in my underwear. Pulls them down. I lift my hips and she slides them off my legs and drops them on the floor and I'm naked and she's between my thighs looking at me with those dark eyes and her hands are warm on the inside of my knees, spreading them wider.
"I love you," she says. Looking at me. Looking at my pussy, spread open and wet because she's been winding me up since the toothbrush and my body doesn't hide what it wants.
"I love you and I love doing this." She runs one finger through me, teasing my clit, slow, and my whole body shudders. "I want you to come in my mouth."
"Then put your mouth on me."
She laughs, warm breath against my inner thigh, and then her tongue is on me and I stop thinking.
She's learned. That's what a few weeks and total attention will do.
She knows where to press and when to pull back and how to use the flat of her tongue and the tip of her tongue and exactly how much pressure makes me arch off the bed.
She wraps her arms under my thighs and pulls me closer and her mouth is hot and wet and she eats me out like she's starving for it, tongue pushing inside me and then dragging up to my clit, and I grip the sheets with both hands and stop trying to be quiet.
"Fuck. Right there. Stay right there."
She stays. Her tongue working my clit in a steady rhythm that's building something at the base of my spine, tight and climbing, and I can feel her shoulders flexing between my legs and her breath coming fast against my skin and her mouth is so wet, spit and my own arousal slicking her chin, and it's filthy and perfect.
I reach down and put my hand in her hair and hold her where I need her and she moans against me and the vibration goes straight through my clit and pushes me closer.
"Harder. Don't stop."
She presses harder. Flattens her tongue and drags it up and circles back down and sucks my clit into her mouth and I'm close, the heat building in my thighs and my stomach and the place behind my clit where everything converges, and I can hear myself making sounds I don't control, sharp and rhythmic, and she doesn't stop, doesn't change, just holds the rhythm with her mouth and her arms and her whole body and I come.
It hits hard. My back arches and my thighs close around her head and my hand fists in her hair and I'm shaking, the orgasm rolling through me in waves that start deep and spread outward into my limbs and my chest and my face, and she stays on me through all of it, tongue slowing as I come down, soft now, gentle, until my body stops shaking and my hand loosens in her hair.
She kisses my inner thigh. Rests her cheek there. Looks up at me with her chin wet and her eyes bright and an expression on her face that's pure, specific pride.
"Good?" she says, the smugness is thick in her voice.
"Get up here."
She crawls up my body. Settles beside me. I can smell myself on her mouth, on her chin, and I kiss her hard, tasting us both, salt and slick, and then I roll her onto her back and pin her wrists above her head and she inhales sharply and her hips lift off the mattress.
"My turn," I say.
"Yeah." Her voice is wrecked. "Please."
I take her bra off with one hand, the other still holding her wrists, and the coordination isn't smooth but she doesn't care because my mouth is on her breast before the bra clears her arms and she gasps and arches into me.
Her nipples are hard and dark and sensitive and when I bite down she says my name in a voice I only hear in this bed, low and broken and real.
"Teague. Fuck."
"I've got you."