Chapter 14 #3
Neither of them moved. The tap was still running, and Cordelia reached over and shut it off.
The kitchen went quiet enough that Wren could hear the rain on the roof two floors up, and then Cordelia turned around.
Her eyes roved over Wren's face like she was looking for something she'd lost there, and her mouth was open a little, and she was breathing wrong.
Then she brought her hand up and put it along Wren's jaw.
Wren closed her eyes against the physical contact, and she focused all of her sensory attention to that one spot where Cordelia touched her.
She could feel the water on Cordelia's skin cooling against her own.
She could feel her pulse where the fingers were.
"Wren," Cordelia said, her voice low and wrecked.
She turned her face into Cordelia’s hand and put her mouth against the base of it.
Cordelia made a sound she had never heard from her, and before she fully realized what was happening, Wren was pressed against the edge of the counter with Cordelia’s mouth on hers, the wet shirt soaking cold through the front of her own.
It wasn't hurried. That was the thing that undid her.
Cordelia kissed her slowly, thoroughly, the way you do when there was no reason on earth to stop.
She bit down lightly on Wren's bottom lip, then opened her mouth and let Wren’s tongue in.
Her hand went into Wren's hair and closed there, holding her in place.
Wren got a fistful of the wet shirt and pulled.
Cordelia pressed against her, all of her at once, and Wren felt the whole length of her body meet her own and heard herself make a noise into her mouth.
The rain continued, and the road was all but washed away.
Nothing was going to interrupt them, and they both knew it.
Cordelia broke the kiss and pressed her forehead to Wren's and stayed there, breathing.
"Upstairs," she said.
The stairs were dark. The power had flickered twice already and the second time it had stayed off.
Now, the only light came from the wind-driven rain against the windows, a shifting gray nothing that made the walls look like they were swaying.
Wren ascended first, and she felt Cordelia’s hand at the small of her back, fingers spread wide, guiding her up each step with a pressure so light it was barely there.
The staircase was narrow enough to where Cordelia’s body was so close behind her that she could smell her—something clean and mineral, like wet stone, like the coast itself had gotten into her skin over the years she'd lived here.
At the top of the stairs, the hallway stretched in both directions.
Wren could make out two doorways in the dark, maybe three. Cordelia's hand left her back.
Cordelia stopped at the first door on the left. Wren saw her hand find the frame, saw her stand there for a beat, two beats. Then she walked past it. Down the hall to the second door, which she pushed open without ceremony.
Wren said nothing. She registered the implication completely, wordlessly, and with the deliberate decision not to examine it.
Not here, not now. She followed Cordelia into the guest room where she had already unpacked.
When she walked in, Cordelia crossed to the window and pulled the curtains shut, though there was nothing to see, and the gesture felt private, like she was closing something inside herself.
Wren instinctively looked at the leather bag on the floor next to the dresser and thought about what was inside it.
She thought about the things she'd put in the front pocket before she'd driven up the coast, packing with her jaw set and her mind carefully blank, telling herself she was being practical and thorough, the kind of person who prepares for every contingency.
The vibrator was in there, as was the harness and the dildo she'd bought two months ago and never used.
She'd put them in the bag with the same energy as when she’d stash an umbrella in the car.
It was less that she believed it was going to rain and more because she didn't want to be caught unprepared.
Cordelia turned from the window. In the dark, she was just a shape, tall and straight-backed, the line of her shoulders unmistakable even without the suit jacket she'd taken off downstairs. Wren could see the pale collar of her blouse and the small buttons catching what little light remained.
"Come here," Cordelia said.
Wren went to her, as if drawn by an invisible string.
The kiss this time was slower. In the kitchen, there had been a velocity to it, the same urgency as the office during their first collision—their hands gripping and mouths open, the whole thing driven by the fact that either of them could have stopped it at any moment and neither did.
This was different. Cordelia kissed her with her hands on Wren's face, thumbs at her jaw, holding her still while she took her time.
Wren felt the pearl earrings cool against her temples and the fine chain of the reading glasses hanging between them, pressing into her collarbone.
Wren's hands found the buttons of Cordelia's blouse.
She worked them one at a time, and her fingers were not entirely steady.
The shell buttons were small and smooth and the holes were tight, and each one required a kind of attention that felt almost devotional.
She got three open. Four. The fabric parted, and she could feel the warmth of Cordelia's chest, the rise and fall of her breathing, the edge of something lace underneath.
Cordelia pulled back. She reached up and undid the clasp of one earring, then the other, and set them on the dresser with a small clink.
Then the glasses, folded and placed beside them, each gesture precise and deliberate, the way she did everything.
Wren watched her unmake herself one object at a time and felt something in her chest pull tight.
She finished undoing the buttons. The blouse came off Cordelia's shoulders, and Wren dropped it over the back of a chair.
Underneath was an ivory camisole, thin enough that she could see the shape of Cordelia's nipples through it in the cold air.
Wren put her mouth on one through the fabric and Cordelia made a sound that was almost like a gasp but quieter, a release of air that had been held.
"Slowly," Cordelia said.
Wren slowed her pace. She pulled the camisole up and over as Cordelia raised her arms, and then she was bare from the waist up.
Wren stepped back to look at her. She had seen her before, in the office, in the dark, but never like this—never standing, never still, never with the time to savor her body with her eyes.
Cordelia's body was lean and strong and older.
The skin at her neck and chest creped faintly, and her breasts were small and soft, the nipples dark and already tight.
There was a small, pale scar at her right temple, barely visible.
Wren kissed it and felt Cordelia go still.
Wren unbuttoned her own shirt methodically.
She needed to feel her own hands doing something while the enormity of what was happening settled into her body.
She shrugged off the shirt, and the air hit her skin.
She knew she was thinner than she'd been before, the bones of her collarbone too visible and the weight loss from months of not eating enough showing in ways she usually hid under layers of clothes.
Cordelia looked at her, and Wren saw her face change, something raw and pained moving through it before she shut it down.
"Don't," Wren said softly. "Don't do that."
"What? I'm not doing anything."
"You're looking at me like I'm something to pity."
"That wasn’t pity."
Cordelia unhooked her bra and slid the straps down her arms, then spread her hands over Wren's ribs, thumbs in the hollows between the bones.
Wren kissed her again, hard. They undressed the rest of the way in a tangle—Wren's pants, Cordelia's tailored slacks, underwear stepped out of and kicked aside.
The bed sheets were cold when Wren pushed Cordelia back onto it, the coverlet rough under her knees.
She lowered herself down over Cordelia, and the full length of their naked bodies touched for the first time.
Wren heard herself make a sound she didn't recognize, something hungry and involuntary.
She kissed Cordelia's mouth, her neck, the ridge of her collarbone.
She worked her way down with the slowness Cordelia had asked for, mouthing the skin between her breasts, the soft plane of her stomach, the sharp edge of her hip.
Cordelia's hands tangled in her hair. When Wren settled between her legs and put her mouth on her clit, Cordelia's hips lifted up off the bed and her fingers tightened hard enough to pull her hair.
Wren took her time. She used her tongue in slow, flat strokes, then she pointed it and just used the tip in quick swipes, then she slowed down again, finding the rhythm that made Cordelia's breathing fracture.
She could feel Cordelia getting close, how her thighs trembled, the way her back arched, the sounds she was making losing their shape.
When she came, she came with Wren's name in her mouth, broken into pieces, and her whole body went rigid and then loose.
Wren stayed where she was, her cheek against Cordelia's thigh, breathing.
The storm was loud against the window. She could feel Cordelia's pulse against her lips slowing.