28. Chapter 27
Chapter 27
James
I look back up at her before I do anything but she’s looking down at my hands biting her lip, which she must absolutely stop doing right this minute.
Blood on her knees, dirt on her hands and still the most beautiful thing I’ve seen. I remind myself what I’m doing and start to wipe her knees gently.
She lets out a hissing noise and lunges forward grabbing my shoulder with one of her hands as the other braces her on the counter top. Her nails dig in a little.
“Sorry,” she says sheepishly and removes her hand. I wish she wouldn’t. With her at this height, we’re pretty much face-to-face and it’s unbearable. “I’ll stop being a baby,” she tells me, smiling, and I go back to her knees trying my absolute best to not be distracted by my hands on her bare thigh.
I can feel her eyes on me and I’m not so worried about what her eyes will tell me but what mine will show her. The last hour or so with her have been painful in a totally new way, in a way I don’t want to stop being with her. In a way that makes me want to stop whatever this thing is we’re doing. Because we’re doing something, even if I’m not too sure what it is.
Dancing with her might have been the breaking point, her hands in my hair and my hands on her, I thought I was going to drop dead right there but hearing her speak about her dad the way she did on the beach, that was something else.
She trusted me.
Knowing that, knowing that she trusts me, even just a bit, that did something to me. I know people trust me; Ella trusts me with her business, Maddie trusts me with literally everything, but this is just further proof to me that Katherine is different. Because when she trusts me, I get a light and dizzy feeling like nothing I’ve felt before.
Knowing she was being real, completely real with me, that was something else. Because I get the feeling she doesn't do that often. I’m only guessing from the way I’ve seen her with other people, it’s in the way she smiles. When she smiled at me today, it was the kind that reached her eyes, that had her glowing even more. That’s how she looks when she’s being honest, too.
I wasn’t lying about her giving her everything to everyone, but I don’t know how other people feel about it. I only know how I feel, I meant me, she makes me feel special like I matter. To her. And I’m scared to think about why that matters so much to me.
“Will I survive, doctor?” she asks me and I can only guess she’s looking at my hands that have stopped moving. Her voice is light and soft and not a shred of the hate I thought she felt towards me.
But I can’t move, I can't physically get myself to move my head and it’s like she’s reading my mind, because the next second, her hand is under my chin. She tilts my head up until my eyes catch hers.
She looks back at me like she’s letting me see all of her in that moment and I have no doubt I’m looking back at her in the same way.
She’s here.
Here with me.
Everything today would have been far too much if it hadn’t been for her. Keeping me calm and keeping me in one piece. I could have so easily fallen apart a million times today but I didn’ t.
Because of her.
Now as my chest constricts, I know it’s because I feel like I’m falling apart but in a completely different way. Because of her. I can’t tell if I like it, hate it or want to run like the real coward I am.
And then all at once I forget everything else as I move her hand from my chin back to the counter top, and straighten myself.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks me, her voice quiet, matching the silence in the room that’s threatening to swallow us up.
God, I want to think of something smart to say to her but I can’t.
“Kissing you.” It just comes out, it just falls out of my month.
Her lips part slightly like she’s going to say something but doesn’t and I want to crawl out of my own skin. It’s like a disaster you can’t look away from no matter how much you wish you could. I wish I hadn't said it. Because this is so much worse than just wanting her, knowing she doesn’t want me to hurts.
The noise from outside seeps into the room and my head moves towards the window knowing full well I have to go back out there.
Her fingers make contact with my cheek moving my head back to face her. If her hands don't feel like pure lightning, pure electricity on my skin, I don’t know what will. Her eyes tell me she feels it too but she doesn’t voice it.
I can see it in her eyes, the cogs turning, she’s calculating everything in that perfect head of hers but I wish she wouldn't. I wish she would just do whatever she was feeling in that moment, let her heart guide her for a moment. One moment would be all I’d need from her.
Because I know I’m not the one for her, not her true love, her soulmate. But I could be just for a moment.
“Tell me what you want,” I plead.
“You. ”
I don’t waste a second because I know her and I know she’ll think of a million cons why to take it back. But I want to show her why we should give this a shot.
My lips crash onto hers, and holding the counter is all I can do to not fall totally over. I kiss her softly and gently as if we have all the time in the world, even if we don’t, but she makes me feel like the rest of the world slips away.
The way she kisses me back makes my head foggy. I’ve thought about our first kiss more times then I care to admit, practically memorising the way she felt on my lips. And kissing her now feels like a homecoming, like that first kiss was just a taste of what life with her could feel like.
She moves her legs, letting me stand in-between them to be closer to her. Once I am, she cups my face with her hands and rubs my cheeks with her thumbs, and my god, I don’t want to do this with anyone else.
It’s an alarming thought.
My fingers dig into her hips slightly but the touch makes her gasp giving me the perfect moment to get acquainted with her tongue and she doesn’t fight me for long, and the soft sigh she lets out makes me think she’s thinking all the same things as I am.
That maybe I’m the best kiss she’s ever had too, that maybe she could do this forever with me too.
The hand on the back of her neck keeps her there like I’m worried she might run away from me any second. But as my hand moves from her hip to her thigh, she pulls me closer to her with her foot and I know she doesn’t want me to go anywhere. And neither do I.
The waistband of my slacks begin to get tighter and tighter the longer her hands are on me and I’m trying my best to be controlled with her, to hold back. To treat her the way she should be treated, to touch her delicate skin with all the care it deserves .
But when we’re this close, I can feel the points of her nipples rub against my shirt and she lets out a moan, deep in her throat and it travels down my whole body. Then another moan when I shift and they rub against me again and I know the sound is just for me. Only for me, it eats at me. The last few threads of my sanity snapping one by one.
My fingers inch their way up under her dress, landing on the soft skin on her hip. I can feel the deep breath she takes while my mouth is still attached to hers, the goosebumps rising on her back where my other hand is trailing down and it turns parts of me inside out. The hold I have on myself starts slipping through my fingers.
But this feels good. Too good.
I only pull away when I think the both of us might suffocate and lean my forehead on hers. Our heavy breathing is the only noise through the silent house, with the soft sound of music and laughter leaking through the window behind her.
“Wow.” I don’t have the capacity to make a whole sentence. She’s stolen every word I know with that kiss.
“Right,” she says back laughing a little at our current state. I lift my head so I can look at her properly again, to check that she’s real. I don’t know what’s going on in her head and I hate that. I don’t know if she’s thinking the same as me, that was the best kiss I’ve ever had in my life.
I was quite content pretending with her tonight, to have her for just tonight. And then tomorrow, I’d wake up and we’d go back to what we were before and I’d forget everything I felt and thought about her. I’d go back to remembering why she’s here and that would be enough for me.
That will not happen now.
I need her like I need air and water and surfing. What do I do now?
I can’t do this to her.
But I want to, I want to be selfish with her .
“We should—”
“Do that again?” I cut her off, because kissing her again would at least calm me down, stop my brain from spinning out.
“Not what I was going to say.” But as she says it, she looks at my lips and her hands find their way back into my hair.
I hear the shuffling of feet from outside the kitchen, I’d most completely forgotten anyone else was even here. My mum's head appears around the door as I look over my shoulder.
“Hey, Lee is going to make a speech, will you guys come back outside?” She’s gone before either of us can respond, like she was never here. But our bubbles burst. The moment is gone.
Our moment, and before I can even blink her hands are back in her lap, the feeling of her hands in my hair a ghost of the memory. She slides off the countertop and moves around me toward the door.
“Come on,” she tells me, holding a hand out for me as I look at the countertop, hating the space she’s left behind. Wishing she was still here. Still with all the possibilities of us.