Chapter 34 Criss
CRISS
It wasn’t the bond he felt before he heard it.
Not the directional pull or the shared heartbeat or any of the supernatural architecture that connected them now.
This was simpler. The creak of the cabin's front door.
The soft thud of a field pack dropped on the floor.
The particular rhythm of her boots on the hardwood, faster than her usual pace, with a lightness in the step that made his tiger lift its head.
He was standing in the bathroom doorway, shirt already off, hands on his sweat pants, when she appeared at the end of the hallway.
Her cheeks were flushed. Her curls were loose, the pencil gone, and she had that look on her face that he'd only seen a handful of times.
The woman who lived below the archaeologist, warm-eyed and wanting.
"I thought you were going to the site," he said.
"I was." She walked toward him. Each step closing the distance between them. "Changed my mind."
"What changed it?"
She stopped in front of him. Close enough that he could smell coffee and the faint sweetness of Twyla's pastries on her breath, and underneath that, the green botanical scent. Her eyes moved down his bare chest, across his stomach, to his hands still resting on his band.
"You," she said. "Naked. In our cabin. While I was sitting in a café talking about napkins."
"Twyla made you talk about napkins?"
"Sparklers, actually. But the point stands.
" Her fingers replaced his on the sweatband.
Her knuckles grazed the skin below his navel, and the contact sent a ripple of heat through his abdomen that made his muscles clench.
"I want you, Criss. Not fast. Not because adrenaline is making us crazy or because the world just tried to end.
I want you because we're getting married and you're mine and I walked away from my dig to come find you, and if you knew what that meant for me, you'd already have your pants off. "
"I'm working on it. Someone's got my drawstring."
She smiled. Untied the string with a flick of her fingers and dropped his pants.
Her palms pressed flat against his stomach and slid upward, slow, tracing the lines of his ribs, the ridges of muscle across his chest, the curve of his shoulders.
She touched him like she touched artifacts: carefully, attentively, reading what was beneath the surface.
He let her. Held still while her hands mapped him, her fingers finding the places she already knew and lingering there anyway, learning them again with the patience of a woman who was no longer in a hurry.
Her thumbs traced his collarbones. Her nails drew light lines down his arms. She circled his wrists with her fingers, lifted his hands, and placed them on her waist.
"Touch me back," she said. "Slowly."
He pulled her shirt up over her head and let it fall.
Her bra was plain, dark cotton, and he unclasped it with steady hands and watched it slide down her arms. She stood in front of him, bare from the waist up, the morning light from the bathroom window warm on her olive skin, her dark nipples already tight.
He cupped her face in both hands and kissed her.
Soft. No urgency, no teeth, no collision.
Just the warm press of his mouth on hers, tasting coffee and wanting, his thumbs stroking the line of her jaw.
She melted into it. He felt her shoulders drop, felt the tension she carried in her body like scaffolding loosen and release, and she kissed him back with a tenderness that undid something in his chest.
He undressed the rest of her in the hallway between the bathroom and the bedroom, piece by piece, unhurried.
Her jeans then her boots kicked against the wall.
His socks, which she pulled off while kneeling and then stayed there for a moment, her cheek pressed against his hip, her arms around his thighs, just holding him. He stroked her hair and let her stay.
When she stood, he lifted her. Not the urgent, wall-pinning carry of before.
He gathered her against his chest and she wrapped around him, legs at his waist, arms at his neck, her face tucked into the curve of his shoulder, and he held her with the careful attention of a man holding something he planned to keep for the rest of his life.
He laid her down and stretched out beside her, propped on one elbow, his free hand resting on her stomach.
She was beautiful in the morning light. Not the word he'd used before, too small for what he meant.
She was real. The freckles on her shoulders that she didn't know she had.
The thin scar on her left forearm from a dig.
The curve of her waist into her hip, the softness there that she hid under field clothes.
The way her hazel eyes watched him watching her with an openness she'd never allowed before the bond, before the ring, before the morning she'd walked away from her work to come find him.
He kissed her throat. Slowly, his mouth opened, tongue tasting the salt on her skin.
She tilted her head back into the pillow and her hand found the back of his neck, fingers curling into his hair.
He kissed lower. The hollow between her collarbones.
The swell of her breast, circling inward in a slow spiral until his lips closed over her nipple and she arched into him with a sigh that vibrated through her ribs.
He took his time. Tongue tracing the peak, drawing it tight, then switching to the other while his hand cupped the breast he'd left, thumb rolling the wet nipple gently. Her breathing changed. Deepened. Her hips shifted on the mattress, a slow restless movement that she wasn't trying to control.
His mouth moved lower. Down the center of her stomach, lips brushing the soft skin below her navel, his hands sliding to her hips.
She opened her legs for him, her knee falling to the side, and the scent of her arousal hit him, warm and heady, and his whole body responded with a slow, deep pull of want that settled into his bones.
He kissed the inside of her thigh. Then the other. Then the crease where her thigh met her hip, his mouth so close to where she wanted him that she shivered, her hand fisting in the sheet.
"Criss." His name in her mouth, half request, half surrender.
He lowered his mouth to her.
The first touch of his tongue drew a sound from her that he wanted to live inside.
Low, broken, caught between a moan and his name.
She was wet, slick against his lips, and he tasted her slowly, the flat of his tongue tracing her from entrance to clit in one long, unhurried stroke.
Her hips bucked and he pressed them down gently, one hand splayed across her lower stomach, holding her still while he explored her with the same focused patience she'd used on him in the hallway.
He learned her again. The spot just to the left of her clit that made her thigh tremble.
The pressure that drew the deepest sounds from her, steady, not too light, not too hard.
The way she responded when he slid two fingers inside her while his tongue worked circles, her inner walls gripping him, her breath fracturing into short, sharp gasps that fogged the quiet bedroom.
He built her up slowly. Every time she got close, her body tensing, her hand pulling his hair, he eased back.
Softened his touch. Let the wave recede before building it again, higher each time.
She cursed at him. She praised him. She said his name in ways that ranged from reverent to threatening, and he savored every variation.
"Please," she finally said, and the word was stripped of everything except need. "Please, I want you inside me when I come."
He kissed her inner thigh once more, tasting her on his lips, and moved up her body.
She pulled him into a kiss and moaned into his mouth when she tasted herself on his tongue.
Her legs wrapped around him, heels pressing against the small of his back, and he could feel the heat of her against him where he was hard and aching.
He positioned himself at her entrance and paused. Foreheads touching. Breath mingling. Her eyes open, looking into his from inches away. The gold in them was vivid, alive.
"I love you," he said. He'd never said it before. Not to her, not to anyone. The words felt new in his mouth, strange and enormous and truer than anything he'd ever spoken. Yes, they were getting married, but they had never said the words to each other. Not yet.
Her eyes went bright. Not tears exactly. Something beyond them. "I love you too. Now get inside me before I lose my mind."
He pushed into her slowly. One long, continuous stroke that let them both feel every inch, every degree of stretch and heat, the gradual joining of two bodies that knew each other's rhythms but had never taken this particular road at this particular speed.
By the time he was fully seated, her breath had gone shallow, her nails pressing half-moons into his shoulders, and he held still, savoring the feel of her surrounding him, tight and hot and trembling.
He moved. Slow, deep rolls of his hips that pressed him into her fully with each stroke and withdrew almost completely before sliding home again.
No urgency. No desperation. Just the steady, deliberate rhythm of a man making love to the woman he was going to spend his life with, taking his time because for once there was no crisis driving them together, no adrenaline, no fear. Just this. Just them.
She matched his rhythm. Her hips rose to meet each stroke, her body undulating against his, her hands moving across his back in long, slow lines that mapped the muscles shifting under his skin.
She hooked one leg higher on his waist, changing the angle, and the next stroke hit deep enough that they both groaned, the sound tangling between their mouths.
"Right there," she breathed. "Stay right there."