Gabe #3
She’s good at this, at giving and taking in the same breath.
Even with her legs locked tight around my waist and her mouth bruising mine, there’s no sense of helplessness in her, nothing that says she’ll ever truly let go of the reins.
I want to see if I can break that. Even long enough for her to be shocked at her own need.
Knock, knock.
I freeze.
Willow’s hand is under my shirt, her mouth at my jaw, the two of us mid breath.
I don’t know how long it takes me to process it, the sound of the world outside this sealed room, but when I do, I pull away, maybe a centimeter, maybe less.
Willow doesn’t move. I think she didn’t hear it, but then her hand goes very still, fingers flexing against the plane of my stomach, drawing a perimeter around what she doesn’t want to lose.
Knock, again.
“Gabe,” Julian calls, honeyed and insufferable. “I was expecting a little more noise.”
I rest my hand on Willow’s thigh. Anchor. She’s not laughing now; there’s a knife edge between us that’s panic and possibility, and I don’t want to lose even one second of it to Julian’s performance of nonchalance.
I want to stay exactly here, suspended, with the heat of her pressed against me and the taste of her mouth burning at the seam of my lips. I want to see what comes next, unscripted and unprepared.
Willow watches me, green eyes gone animal bright in the light. If there’s a plan left in her, she’s keeping it hidden.
Neither of us breathes. Her palm is still at my bare skin, fingers splayed wide, memorizing their span, or staking a boundary. I’m scared to break the moment, but she beats me to it. Her forehead leans in, rests against mine, and for one brief heartbeat we’re both still.
“Tell him to fuck off,” she whispers, lips almost at my ear.
“You know I can’t,” I groan back even though I desperately want to. “Because soon it’ll be his turn to be in heaven with you, and he might kill me if I stop him…”
She laughs, and the sound peals through my ribs, shattering my last coherent thought. “Fine. We’ll give him his show.”
Her hand slides out from under my shirt, cold stinging where her palm just was, and she leans in to press one bite to the hinge of my jaw.
She cleans it up with a sweep of her tongue, then pushes me upright, both hands flat on my chest.
“But we’re not done.”
“Fucking hell,” I mutter, pulse wild in my wrist. “That wasn’t seven minutes.”
She shrugs and hops down from the desk, skirt barely righting itself before she yanks me down into a final, quick kiss.
I chase it, not caring that I’m transparent about it, and she laughs into my mouth. I want to ask her to stay, but I know that’s not how this works.
I know it as surely as I know the current through her, the way she recalibrates every plan as she walks out ahead of me, shoving the door open with a swing equal parts swagger and bravado.
I follow, shirt still half-unbuttoned, brain positively hammered by the whiplash shift from absolute oblivion to the well-lit, faintly mocking reality of the kitchen.
Julian sits on the counter, drinking from the bottle itself now instead of his glass. He downs a mouthful, wipes his lip with the back of his hand, and pins us both with a look so shining with anticipation that it’s almost embarrassing.
Xander stands with his arms folded, leaned against the fridge, and if he’s at all amused by this circus, he’ll take it to his grave. Willow tosses her hair. She’s done something to her lipstick, who knows how, because her mouth looks redder than before than it did going in.
No one says anything.
Julian asks, “So, is it just me, or is that bottle dying for another go?”
Willow doesn’t look at either of us as she walks past, snatching up the bottle with one hand and giving it a little flick, as if daring it to object to her touch. I step to a safe distance from whatever next chemical experiment is about to happen at this table.
My hands feel raw, the skin over my knuckles abraded, somehow. My shirt’s probably misbuttoned. I don’t care.
Julian waits, patient as a saint or a spider, until Willow sits.
Xander comes to the table at last, knife blade set down on the wood with a hint of a click.
The four of us arrayed at the edges, a quorum at trial.
I don’t know what’s happening anymore, and I don’t care, because every nerve ending is shrieking for more.
Of her. Of this.
“Xander,” Willow says, “you want in?”
I can’t decipher the look Xander gives her, but he sits, shoulders tight, chin up, and rests his hands on the table. Julian crooks a finger, inviting Willow to set the bottle back where it belongs.
“You’re not scared?” he asks Xander, and there’s none of his usual bite in it; it’s less a provocation than a benediction.
Xander shrugs. “I don’t think we need the bottle. I think it’s my turn.”
As he grabs her hand and walks off, I realize I can’t catch my breath.
Fuck.
How am I supposed to sit here and wait for them to come back, knowing what’s going on now?
How the fuck am I supposed to wait and see where this leads?