Chapter 5 #2
I brought my hand up under her jaw. The heel of it at the angle of the bone, my thumb at the hinge where it met her ear, my fingers sliding into the warm place at the nape of her neck where her hair started.
I tilted her face up. I did not rush it.
I had been thinking about how I would do this for three months and a handful of weeks, and I had earned the right to take my time.
I lowered my mouth to hers.
The first contact was light. Closed. The dry warmth of her bottom lip catching against mine, the smallest brush of skin to skin.
I held it there. I let her decide whether to move toward me or away.
She moved toward me. A short forward press.
An answer in her body before her mouth gave me one. That was when I let it open.
My lips parted against hers. Hers parted back.
Her breath came out warm and a little quick, and I caught it, and I gave her mine.
The first slow slide of my tongue against hers undid something in her shoulders.
They dropped. She made the smallest sound, barely there, a soft catch at the back of her throat, and I felt it land in my own chest like she had set a finger there.
I went deeper. I tilted her head a degree with the hand at her jaw so I could fit my mouth more completely against hers, and she let me move her, which broke loose something I had been holding shut all morning.
Her taste was clean and a little sweet. Her mouth was hot.
I took her bottom lip between mine, slow, and the small noise she made against my mouth that time was not small.
Her hand came up. It found my ribs through the t-shirt and her fingers spread wide there, splayed flat, pressed firm, the way a hand presses when the body it belongs to is reaching for something to hold on to.
The heat of her palm came through the cotton like she had set a coal against me.
I felt every finger. I felt my own ribs lift against her hand on the inhale.
My other hand went around to the small of her back.
I drew her in. She came. She came with the kind of soft willingness that broke something in me at the same time it lit something else.
Her body lined up against mine without thinking about it, her knee lifting onto the bed beside my hip, her chest fitting against the side of mine through one thin layer of cotton.
I kissed her deeper. The teaching kiss was gone.
This was a kiss that had been kept in a cellar for a long time and was getting its first daylight.
My mouth on hers, hers giving back to mine beat for beat, the slow building rhythm a body finds when the other body is meeting it.
Her fingers curled against my ribs. The nails caught through the shirt, small and blunt and real.
My pulse was loud enough to drown the bowl on the side table.
I let some of my weight onto her then, slow, careful, enough that she would feel it was there and could push it off if she wanted to.
She did not push it off.
She leaned in under it. Her free hand came up and found the back of my neck and she pulled me down to her with the kind of grip a woman uses when she has stopped pretending she is not doing what she is doing.
Her fingers slid up into my hair. The pads of them dragged across my scalp.
A heat I had not been ready for went down my spine and broke somewhere low.
The sound I made was new.
I felt her smile against my mouth. She had felt the sound land.
I gave her one more deep kiss because I would not have been able to stop without it. I let it stretch. I let her feel me. I let her feel exactly how much of me was wanting her right now, and exactly how much of me was holding it back so she would not have to ask me to.
I pulled my mouth back from hers by half an inch. I left my forehead against hers. My breath was not steady and I knew she could feel it on her lips, and I let her, because I was not going to lie to her about what she had just done to me. I waited one beat. I made sure of my voice before I used it.
"We will stop here. Or I will end up doing something you are not ready for."
"Yeah. I got carried away too. Sorry."
"Do not apologize. I liked it. It is you I am thinking about."
"Such a gentleman."
"Trust me. I do not want to be a gentleman right now."
She laughed. The laugh shook against me where my mouth was still close to hers, and she leaned the last inch back in and pressed one quick light kiss to the corner of my lips, fast, almost shy after what we had just done, and then she pulled back and tipped her chin at the side table.
"Finish the soup."
"I am full from kissing you."
"Finish or I go home."
"Finishing it."
I picked the bowl back up. I sat back against the headboard.
She tucked her feet up under her on the bed and laid her hand flat on my thigh through the sheet, palm down, light, and she watched me eat.
The barley had gone the rest of the way soft.
The dill was darker now in the broth. I ate every spoonful.
I scraped the bottom of the bowl and I set it back down on the cloth on the tray and I let my hand close over the small one she had left on my leg.