Track 22 Delilah #2
Emmett looks up at her, those clear gray eyes suddenly even clearer and grayer against the dark background of the charcoal liner. For a moment, Delilah envies them their ability to draw and wonders if they’d let her take a photo of them, just like this. “Until I’m nothing more than dirt,” they say.
It would be sweet, Delilah thinks, if they didn’t look at her like they were already trying to figure out how to say goodbye.
For some reason, that scares the hell out of her.
It’s not like she doesn’t know she’s going to lose Emmett.
To fate and stone if she can’t find some loophole in that horrible old man’s notes, and even if she does, to betrayal and entirely well-deserved fury when they see what she’s done with the secrets they trusted her to keep. But she’s not ready. And it’s not fair.
Suddenly, the idea of losing them in a crowd of dancers seems like the furthest thing from what she wants.
“Hey,” she says. “What if we didn’t go out?”
Emmett blinks up at her. “I thought you wanted to. You’re already all dressed and everything.”
She is, with her hair and makeup done and her curves zipped into a dress just as formfitting as the last one, the glittery black fabric hugging her hips and breasts.
She’d caught Emmett trying not to look as she shimmied into it, pulling the stretchy fabric up over her bra and underwear and the lacy spandex bands she’d put around her upper thighs to keep them from rubbing together.
The bands are a little more daring than the shorts she wore last time, but she’d chosen them on purpose, because she feels almost sexy tonight and has decided to give herself permission to be.
Asking Emmett to zip her dress for her had been a bit of a test to see whether their hands would wander.
They hadn’t. But she’d wanted them to.
She wants them to now.
“Sure,” she says, and holds out her hands.
She waggles her fingers until Emmett takes them, and she pulls them up to their feet, then twines her arms around their neck, looking up at them.
Her eyelashes are heavy with mascara, but she can still flutter them, and she does.
“But what if I wasn’t all dressed and everything? ”
She sees the moment it clicks. Their lips part, shining slightly from the gloss she’d applied.
Their expression is uncertain, but not reluctant.
Not at all. “What…” they say, and then stop.
They lick their bottom lip, then bite it, then let it go.
Their teeth leave a slight imprint in the gloss. “What would we do instead?”
Delilah cups Emmett’s face in her hands and coaxes them into a kiss.
They shiver into it, fingers slipping into the fabric of her dress, skimming along her hips.
Their touch is light, but not hesitant, and she remembers them talking about memory being stored in the earth.
She tucks her teeth into their bottom lip, and Emmett breaks away with a small, breathless sound, then shudders and tucks their face into the crook of her neck, even shakier than they were the first time.
Delilah strokes a hand through their hair. “Is this okay?”
They nod once, not lifting their head. Delilah tilts her own just enough to brush her lips over their temple, tasting sweat and glitter. “Will you talk to me?”
Emmett’s grip on her hips flexes, tightening briefly before relaxing. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Whatever you want. There’s no right answer.” Delilah considers, then adds, “Unless you don’t want—”
Emmett cuts her off with a kiss.
Delilah still doesn’t know what to expect with Emmett, who had been so uncertain the first time they kissed, so hesitant the first time they slept together, who still looks at her like she’s something wondrous and unexpected and maybe even dangerous.
She’s ready to be patient, to be gentle, to let them find their footing, to take the lead if they seem unsure.
Instead, Emmett walks her out of the en suite and into the bedroom.
The backs of Delilah’s knees hit the bed and Emmett tips her onto it, sliding between her legs with a confidence that takes Delilah’s breath away.
Their hands are sure and steady as they slide her dress up, baring skin, their touch just light enough to send lightning along her nerves.
When she gasps into their mouth, Emmett licks the sound away, mimicking the way she’d bitten their lip, and when Delilah digs her fingers into their hair—still longer, still messy, still tousled—their laugh buzzes through her mouth.
It’s been years since the last time she started sleeping with a new person, but Delilah distinctly remembers that there’s supposed to be awkwardness, supposed to be fumbling.
There’s meant to be an uncertainty to the way she touches Emmett, the way Emmett touches her, the two of them finding the ways their bodies fit together, the way their pleasures align or find friction, what feels good, what doesn’t.
There had been, that first time, pauses and questions and hesitation.
But now Emmett moves against her like they’ve known each other all their lives, scooping her up and into their lap so they can slide the zipper of her dress down and the straps off her shoulders, leaving the black fabric pooled around her torso where it’s been rucked up over her hips and down over her breasts.
They break away from her mouth to slide their lips against the lace trim of her bra, tongue just barely dipping into her cleavage, and Delilah pulls their hair, hard. “Emmett—”
Emmett lifts their head to look up at her, their usually pale eyes now the deep smoke of gathered storm clouds, charcoal eyeliner making them look deeper, darker.
Their lips are a swollen pink, and glitter is smeared over their temples.
They look debauched, and beautiful. Delilah curls her fingers around their jaw and bends for another kiss, intentionally soft, then slides her touch down and over their neck, relishing their shiver.
She draws back. “What do you want, love?”
The endearment slips out, and Emmett takes in a sharp breath.
Before Delilah can take it back, they shake their head once and lean in to kiss her again, and again, and again.
“I want to see you,” they whisper against her lips, breath ghosting against her mouth.
“I want to make you feel as beautiful as you look.”
Her first instinct is to scoff. She hates compliments like that, because they always feel fake.
They bring back memories of middle school dances, boys pretending to ask her to dance only to laugh with their friends at how eagerly she’d said yes, of trying to find a prom dress that didn’t make her feel like a sausage or a cream puff, of learning she couldn’t get her wedding dress at the same store as Sam’s because they didn’t make her size.
She knows she’s pretty enough—she’d never have gotten a foot in the door in the music industry if she wasn’t—but she’s not stunningly beautiful. Not like Sam.
Not like Emmett.
But they look up at her like she’s something divine, like they’ve found something to worship, and even if she doesn’t feel beautiful, she believes, in that moment, that Emmett could change that.
They brush her hair back. “Yes?”
Delilah swallows. “Yes.”
Emmett smiles like the sun and presses her back, one hand curled under the back of her head to cushion her impact against the pillows.
She cups their face in her hands and draws them back into another kiss, shivering under their touch as their fingers skim over her breasts again, their thumbs brushing her nipples, already tight and hard against the lace.
Her gasp gets lost between their mouths, but Emmett must take it as encouragement all the same, because they repeat the motion again, and again, and then break the kiss altogether to replace one thumb with their lips and tongue.
Their other hand slides lower, slipping between Delilah’s legs even before she starts squirming her hips up to try to guide them there, and the pressure of their fingertips against her core through the damp fabric of her underwear makes her moan.
Emmett pauses, just for a moment, and then lifts their head.
They’re flushed, their irises reduced to only the smallest ring of silver-gray against their wide-blown pupils, and Delilah realizes that this is the first time they’ve done this in the light.
“Delilah,” they say, very softly. Their lips brush her nipple on every syllable.
Delilah swallows, threading her fingers through their hair. “Please.”