Chapter 19 #2
I think I’m going to cry, just a little, just at the corners of my eyes where Mila’s eyeliner isn’t going to forgive me, because Blue Golding has just said fuck in his own bedroom at the sight of me in my bra and my tights, and my throat’s so tight I can hardly swallow around it.
He reaches for my face and brushes a piece of hair behind my ear. His thumb catches a tear I didn’t know was there.
He kisses the corner of my eye and doesn’t say anything about it.
He kisses my mouth again, watching me with his bright blue eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them this light. Or this open. Or this mine.
I reach for the hem of his shirt and lift. He raises his arms, and I pull the shirt up and over his head. His hair flops down into his eyes. He pushes it back with the heel of his hand.
I look at him.
I haven’t seen him in real life since we were seventeen.
He’s changed.
He’s grown into himself in a way that’s so specific I don’t have words for it for a full second.
His shoulders are broader. His chest is heavier.
The line of him is the line of a man instead of a boy.
There’s a thin white scar across his collarbone I don’t recognize.
He has a body that has been used. A body that’s been hit and recovered, hit and recovered, season after season.
A body that has been built into a man. A body that’s mine to touch.
My fingers twitch with the want of it. I run my hand down his chest.
He shivers under my hand. The shiver runs all the way down to his stomach.
The muscles there jump and contract. His breath catches, and the small involuntary motion of him reacting to me makes something molten pool low in my belly.
I keep my palm moving down his body, slow, watching his face. I stop at the waistband of his sweats.
I look up at him.
He’s looking at me. His pupils have gotten bigger. His mouth’s parted.
He sits back on the edge of his bed and pulls me between his knees by both hips. He undoes one boot, slides the boot off, and drops it next to the bed. He does the other one. The other one comes off.
He looks up at me from the edge of the bed.
I’m shaking. I know he can feel me shaking under his palms, and he just holds me there, steady, his thumbs stroking small circles into the silk of my tights like he’s saying I’ve got you.
He hooks his thumbs into the waistband of my tights and pulls them down.
He’s going slow again on purpose, savoring every moment of this.
His fingers brush the outside of my thighs, and goosebumps chase the touch.
My breath comes out shaky. The tights slide down my hips.
Down my thighs. Down my calves. He gets them past my knees, and I lift my feet one at a time so he can slide them off the rest of the way.
He balls them up. He sets them on the nightstand without looking away from me.
Now I’m in my bra and underwear.
He stands up and pulls me to him. He kisses me again. The kiss is slower this time, the kind of slow that comes after the want’s been confirmed, and his hands slide up my bare back to the clasp of my bra. He’s fumbling at it.
A small laugh bubbles up in my chest. I reach behind myself with one hand and unhook it for him.
He huffs into my mouth. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Golding.”
“Sorcha.”
The way he says my last name — low, half a growl — does something to my knees. They almost buckle.
I lower my arms. The bra falls. He catches it on the way down and sets it on the nightstand on top of the tights.
He looks at my chest.
Everything in me wants to fold my arms across my body the way I’ve spent two years folding them in front of Chase.
Chase looked at me like I was his, and I always covered myself because I wasn’t.
My breath stutters in my throat as I watch Blue’s eyes take me in.
My hands twitch at my sides. I don’t cover myself.
I don’t let myself do any of the small protective small-girl things I’ve spent two years doing in front of another man.
I let Blue look at me completely as I am.
Because Blue Golding has had my heart and soul since the very beginning. I refuse to be embarrassed of my body in this moment. Because this –– this –– is always what I wanted.
He looks for a long second.
“You are —”
I shake my head. My eyes are burning again. I can’t — I can’t do compliments right now. I can’t take it. I’ll break. I’ll dissolve.
“Melly.”
“Blue, you don’t have to —”
“Melia Caroline Sorcha.”
My heart stops.
“You are so fucking beautiful.”
I tremble. From the soles of my feet to the crown of my head.
A shiver so deep it almost takes my knees out.
I do not have words. I have nothing but a shiver and electricity shooting down my spine and a hot tight ache between my hips and a heart that’s pounding so hard I can hear it in my ears.
The words land right in the center of my body, hitting some old soft bruised place I didn’t know was still bruised, making me ache for him in ways I didn’t know could deepen.
He sees me lose it. He just steps closer and kisses my forehead.
I reach for the waistband of his sweats, desperate for him. He remembers my full name. The sweats come off in one motion. He kicks them away from his feet.
He’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.
He picks me up — picks me up, with an arm under my back and his other arm under my knees, and the bad shoulder doesn’t flinch, so I wonder if he’s feeling better, or if he just doesn’t care right now, or if adrenaline’s doing the work — and he carries me to his bed and sets me down on his mattress.
The bed dips under me. The comforter’s the color navy. The pillows are soft. The sheets smell like him, and I turn my face into the pillow for one half-second to breathe it in, and my whole body sighs.
He climbs onto the bed. He leans down and puts his mouth on mine. His chest against my chest, skin to skin for the first time, and I gasp into him because the feel of him — warm and solid and real and pressed against the whole length of me — is more than I can hold.
I inhale sharply at the pleasure rolling through my body.
His mouth goes to my collarbone. Then to the top of my shoulder. Then to the side of my neck. My hand grabs the back of his head without me deciding to.
He huffs into my neck.
He kisses lower.
His mouth on the line of my throat.
I close my eyes. My back arches off the mattress on its own. My breath is coming in uneven hitches now. There’s a thread tightening in my belly with every place his mouth lands, and I’m dizzy with it, dizzy, my hands fisting in his sheets, in his hair, anything I can reach.
He pauses.
He stops with his mouth on my sternum and his hand at my ribs, and he lifts his head and looks at me.
“Melly.”
“Yeah?” It comes out small.
A long beat. His eyes hold mine. His chest is rising and falling fast. His mouth’s parted. The line between his eyebrows is gone, smoothed out, replaced by something I don’t have a name for.
“I love you.”
The room stops.
The whole world goes quiet. The sound coming from downstairs goes quiet. My heart, which has been hammering, goes quiet for one long suspended half-second. Then it slams back to life so hard it hurts.
He said the three little words.
So soon.
He said it first.
He said it before me.
He said it without even a full hour into a real relationship with me.
He said it like a fact. Like a man stating something he knows in his bones. Like a man who’s been holding the sentence in his mouth and couldn’t hold it for one more second.
My eyes flood.
They flood before I can stop them, hot and sudden, and the tears escape down the side of my face into my hair.
I look at him through the blur of it. I have one hand on his chest where his heart’s going so fast under my palm, and I have one hand at the back of his head where his hair’s between my fingers.
I look at the boy I’ve loved since forever, and I say it back.
“I love you too, Blue.”
He drops his head, resting his forehead on my shoulder.
His breath’s hot on my collarbone. His shoulders shake once — just once — the smallest possible shake, the kind of shake that isn’t crying but a man releasing a thing he’s been carrying for a long time.
I lift my hand to the back of his head and hold him there.
My eyes are streaming now. I don’t bother stopping them.
He lifts his head, and he kisses me deeply.
He tastes like salt.
He reaches into the nightstand drawer and pulls out the small foil packet. He sets it on the pillow next to my head. He looks down at me and kisses me again. His mouth on mine. His mouth on my neck. His mouth on my breast.
I whimper — a small broken sound I couldn’t have stopped if I tried. I’m shaking.
He sighs into me. His hand on my ribs slides down, and his fingers find the band of my underwear.
I nod when he looks at me. I can’t speak.
He hooks his thumb and pulls them down. I lift my hips. He gets them off me. He drops them off the side of the bed, and they land on the floor.
He looks down at me for a long time and doesn’t say fuck this time. He doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me like I’m the only thing in the world, and then he closes his eyes for half a second like he’s praying, and then he opens them again.
He kisses my hipbone.
I jump.
He kisses the inside of my thigh. My thigh shakes against his cheek, and he hushes it with his palm flat against the outside of it, steady, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.
He kisses up to my mouth and back down. He’s touching me with his hands.
He’s kissing me everywhere he can reach.
I can’t believe I’m under Blue Golding in his own bed with our friends’ downstairs, and he’s taking me in pieces.
Finally.
Finally, like a dream come true.
A small moan hitches in my throat. From the relief of it. From the finally of it.