Ella #2
I realize I've stopped. I inhale, and he smiles—a small, private thing—and his fingers trail down. Along the side of my neck. Over the ridge of my collarbone, left to right, slow and deliberate, following the bone like he's memorizing its shape.
"Clavicle," I whisper, because apparently my brain defaults to anatomy when it's short-circuiting.
"Good girl. What's it connected to?"
Fuck me, my nipples are hard at the sound of Bernard Houser calling me a good girl.
"The…" His thumb traces the hollow of my throat, and I lose the word. "The scapula. And the sternum."
"Mm-hm." His fingers drift along my collarbone to my shoulder, where the neckline of my hoodie stops him. He doesn't push past it. He just traces the edge, fingertips following the fabric line, and I realize he's mapping the boundary between clothed and not-clothed without crossing it.
"You're staying on top of the clothes," I say.
"For now. Yeah."
"Why?"
"Because you've only been kissed, Ella. We're not going from that to naked today."
This is so reasonable it irritates me. I want to argue—I'm an adult, I can handle it—but I also recognize the logic. Start with the basics. Build competency before advancing. It's how I learned to start an IV, and it's probably how I should learn this.
"Fine. Can I touch you, too?"
"Anywhere you want."
"Where do men like to be touched?"
He laughs, a real one, surprised out of him. "I mean, the obvious answer is our dicks."
"I'm aware."
"But the real answer is anywhere. If it's someone you want touching you, it all feels good.
" He takes my hand and places it on his chest, palm flat against the Henley.
I can feel his heartbeat, fast and hard.
Not as calm as he's pretending to be. "See?
Just that. Your hand is right there. That's… yeah."
I spread my fingers against the cotton. His heat radiates through the fabric. I can feel the contour of his pectoral muscle, the ridge of his sternum, and beneath it all, that rapid heartbeat that tells me my brother’s best friend is not remotely as composed as his voice suggests.
I move my hand up, over his collarbone, and along the side of his neck. His pulse jumps under my fingertips. I reach his jaw, roughened with stubble, and he holds perfectly still, barely breathing.
I trace his eyebrow. There's a scar there, a thin line through the hair where it doesn't grow back, the kind you get from a high stick or an elbow. My finger follows it, and Bernard's eyes close.
"When did you get this?"
"Juniors. Kid caught me with a stick in the eye. Eight stitches."
I touch the scar again, gently, and his breath stutters.
Without planning to, I slide my fingers into his hair.
It's thick and soft, curls wrapping around my knuckles, and when I drag my nails lightly across his scalp, he makes a sound that I recognize.
The same low groan from the other night.
The one from when he was pressed against me in the dark.
My whole body flushes.
"Ella." His voice is rough.
"Is this okay?"
"This is very okay. This is…you should know that if you keep doing that, I'm going to…it's just, my body is going to react, and I don't want you to…"
"Bernard."
"Yeah?"
"I'm a nurse. I understand physiological responses."
He exhales something that's almost a laugh, and I keep my fingers in his hair, scratching gently, and I feel it—the shift of his hips, the subtle press of his thigh against mine as he adjusts, and the unmistakable evidence that Bernard Houser is aroused.
Hard against my hip. Just like the other night, except this time we're both awake, both choosing this, both here on purpose.
I don't pull away. He doesn't pull away. We sit like that on the stupidly expensive couch, my fingers in his hair, his hand resting carefully on my collarbone, and it feels nothing like tutoring. It feels like standing at the edge of something very high and deciding whether to jump.
His face is close. I can see the gold flecks in his brown eyes, the scar in his eyebrow, the way his pupils have blown wide. He's looking at my mouth. I'm looking at his.
"Can I kiss you?" he asks.
"Yes."
He leans in. His hand slides from my collarbone to the back of my neck, cradling my head, and his mouth meets mine.
It's slow. It's warm. His lips are incredibly soft and plump, like pillows pressed gently against mine.
It's nothing like the kisses that came before, no aggression, no tonsil excavation, no fumbling.
Bernard kisses me like he has all day and intends to use every minute of it.
His stubble scrapes my chin, and when his tongue touches mine, I make a sound that I couldn't suppress if my life depended on it.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. "Good?"
“Yeah. Really good. But am I doing okay? I don’t know what to—”
He kisses me again. Deeper this time, one hand in my hair, the other braced on the couch beside my hip.
I grip his Henley with both fists, and my back arches toward him, and I can hear myself making sounds that I should be embarrassed about, but I'm not, because Bernard makes a sound right back every time I pull him closer.
I don't know how long we stay like that, kissing on the couch, fully clothed, his hands never straying below my collarbone, mine tangled in his hair.
I realize we are lying down side by side, pressed together from chest to knee, his leg wedged between mine, my fingers tracing the scar in his eyebrow over and over because it makes his breath catch every time.
His hand is on my waist, over the hoodie, and I can feel every finger like a safety belt.
And I can feel him, hard against my thigh, and neither of us pretends it's not happening.
He kisses the spot below my ear—the one his fingers found earlier, the one that makes my spine dissolve—when we both hear it.
Keys in the lock.
We separate so fast that I nearly roll off the couch.
Bernard is on his feet in one fluid motion, crossing to the kitchen like he's been standing there the whole time.
I grab the nearest textbook and open it to a random page, sit upright, pull my hoodie straight, and try to slow my breathing from its current rate of “patient hyperventilating.”
Jason pushes through the door, smelling like processed meat and hair product. "Hey. What are you guys doing?"
"Studying," I say, holding up the textbook. It's upside down. I flip it.
"I'm quizzing her," Bernard adds from the kitchen, where he's opened the refrigerator and rummages inside.
"Nerds." Jason drops his bag and heads for his room. “Don’t drink my shakes. I need a shower."
His door closes. The water starts.
I look at Bernard. His hair is wrecked. His face is flushed.
His Henley is stretched where I grabbed it.
He looks at me, and I look at him, and we both start to laugh—silently, shoulders shaking, because Jason is twelve feet away and has no idea that his best friend and his sister were just tangled together for sex lessons.
“I give you an A,” Bernard whispers, and he chugs my brother’s green smoothie mixture while we both laugh until our ribs ache.