Chapter 19 Mara — Day 50 #2
I take my time. I sink the rest of the way and my thighs settle against his, and for a second I don't move at all.
I live in the fullness of it, in his eyes, in his ragged in-and-out.
He looks like a man trying very hard to be patient.
I love that. I love a lot of things I'm not saying out loud yet.
I start to move.
Slow at first, the way I said. Long roll of my hips forward and back.
His hands are on my thighs, then my waist, and then he sits up and puts his mouth on my collarbone and I gasp and his arm comes tight around my back to hold me steady.
I keep moving on him. He kisses the hollow of my throat and I feel the roughness of his jaw against my skin, and my hand goes into his hair and holds him there.
He smells like our soap. He smells like something that's mine now.
“Good?” I say.
“Perfect.”
“Tell me.”
“You feel — Mara — you feel like home.”
I make a noise that isn't a word. I roll my hips harder. His hand slides down between us; his thumb finds me and I jerk against him.
“There?”
“There.”
“Keep going. I've got you.”
I keep going. He works his thumb in the small deliberate circle he learned last week, and I ride him, and the lamp throws our shadow up on the wall, and I can hear my own breath and his and the small wet sounds of the two of us and the low creak of the old bed frame under it all.
It should feel exposed and it doesn't. It feels safe.
It feels held. I bend forward and put my forehead against his.
“Look at me,” he says.
I look at him. His eyes are wide open, blue and dark. I keep looking at him. He keeps looking at me. I move on him and he moves under me and we don't stop looking.
“I'm going to,” I say.
“Yes. Come on.”
“With me.”
“With you.”
It builds. I feel it build the way weather builds — I know it's coming before it comes. I press down harder on him and he groans, both his hands on my hips now, guiding, not forcing, letting me set it, letting me have it. His thumb doesn't stop. My breath breaks.
“Beau —”
“I've got you. Right here.”
I go. I go with my forehead on his and his hand tight on my hip and his other hand splayed across my back holding me together while I come apart, and I hear the sound I make and I don't care, and a second behind me he goes too, quiet, into my throat, a bitten-off word in French I don't catch.
His arms lock around me. I stay there. My hair's stuck at my temple.
My thighs are shaking a little. I don't care about either.
He kisses the side of my neck. Slow. Wet. Reverent.
“Hey,” he murmurs.
“Hey.”
“You alright.”
“I'm alright.”
“Come down.”
I ease off him after a while, careful. He handles the condom. I collapse onto my side of the bed on my back and I laugh, once — a small tired stunned laugh — and he laughs too, quiet, and turns his head to look at me. His hair's damp at the temple. The lamp light picks it up.
“You're something,” he says.
“You are.”
“Come here.”
He pulls me to him. My cheek on his chest. His arm around me. His fingers in my hair, combing, slow and steady, the way I've come to sleep to. My eyes are already closing. I can feel his heart working itself back down to normal under my ear.
“Sleep,” he says. “I've got you.”
“Mm.”
“Mara.”
“Mm.”
He doesn't say the rest. Or he does and I've already dropped too far to hear. The last thing I feel is his hand on my hair, still combing, gentle, gentle.
The lamp goes off. He must reach across me to click it. I feel the small click of the switch and the drop of the room into dark, and I go down after it.
I don't know what wakes me. Not a sound.
Not the wind. Some small drift up from the bottom of sleep to the surface.
My cheek's still on his chest. His arm's still around me.
Downstairs the kitchen clock ticks, faint through the floor.
The room's that dark blue that isn't night anymore and isn't morning yet either.
His breathing isn't the slow deep breathing of a sleeping man. It's careful. Awake.
I don't lift my head. I don't want to spook whatever this is.
I open my eyes enough to see the shape of him in the dark — his throat, his chin, the underside of his jaw.
He's looking straight up at the ceiling.
He isn't blinking much. His free hand is flat on his stomach, spread wide, like he's holding something in.
I've never seen him lie that still. Not in his sleep. Not awake.
The clock on the nightstand says four-oh-seven in dim green numbers.
We went to bed a little after midnight.
I stir a little, deliberate, so he knows I'm surfacing, and his hand tightens on my shoulder and his other hand comes up and strokes my hair.
“Sleep,” he says softly. “Not morning yet.”
“You okay.”
“Yes.”
“You're awake.”
“I'll sleep in a minute.”
I lift my head a fraction and look at him. In the dark his eyes are wet shine. He looks — I don't have the word for it. He looks like a man doing math he doesn't like the answer to.
“Beau.”
“Shh.” He kisses my forehead. His mouth is warm. It lingers a second too long. “Tomorrow.”
“You said that.”
“I know.”
“Whatever it is.”
“Tomorrow.”
I want to push. I don't. I told him it could wait until morning, so it can wait until morning. That was the deal I made when I gave him what I gave him tonight, and I don't take deals back the same day.
He curls his arm tighter and pulls me back down against him, and I don't fight it, because I'm still half-asleep and he is warm and his hand in my hair is enough to send me back under.
The last thing I see, before my eyes close, is that he still hasn't looked at me.
He's still looking up. Whatever the math is, he's still doing it.
I sleep.
Somewhere in the dark, he doesn't.