26. Allowed To Touch
Allowed To Touch
Natalia
Iknock softly.
Nothing.
Knock again.
Still nothing.
My anger spikes and I knock a third time, louder.
A thud comes from inside, then a muffled curse followed by footsteps.
Finally, the door opens a few inches. Kiri peers out at me with one eye half shut.
His hair is standing in every possible direction.
One side flattened, the other sticking up like he’s been electrocuted.
He looks like I woke him up from sleep, real, actual sleep.
I'm mad at the concept, that he has the nerve to be able to sleep when I can't.
He’s wearing black sweatpants and nothing else, his chest creased from whatever position he fell asleep in, the art of his tattoos displayed perfectly on the canvas of his body.
My brain, being a fucking traitor, immediately forgets why I came here at the sight of him.
I'm quickly losing a tug-of-war against my own hormones and it's pissing me off.
Blood rushes to parts of me I try to pretend don't exist.
He looks a little destroyed, but the room behind him is worse.
Clothes are everywhere; there's an open suitcase on the floor and food containers from Rithy's deliveries abandoned on the desk.
A towel over the back of a chair. The bed torn apart as if he climbed into it and barely moved afterward. He blinks at me.
“Nat?” I push past him before he can stop me.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Uh, sure, come on in,” he says as he closes the door slowly.
“You're such a dumbass.”
His face shifts from sleep-confused to guarded.
“Did you wake me up to call me names? Because I'm well aware—” he mumbles, rubbing a hand over his face.
“You jumped into an angry mosh pit. What if you'd been crushed?”
“I wasn't.”
“That's not the point.”
“It's not?”
“No, the point is you can’t just throw yourself into thousands of people like your body is disposable!” I shove his shoulder in frustration but he doesn't move at all. He just stands there like a block of perfectly muscled stone.
My voice carries more bite than I mean it to and something wounded passes behind his eyes. He shuts it down with a shake of his head.
“The kid was getting stepped on. What'd you want me to do?”
“Wait for someone whose job it actually is?”
“He didn’t have time for everybody to finish reviewing their job descriptions.”
The answer is simple, but the way he says it, it's like that just settles everything. Maybe for Kiri, it does. I stare at him, livid and sick with admiration at the same time.
“That’s not fair.”
His brows pull together.
“What isn’t?”
“You! Ugh.” I raise my hands to the sky, exasperated.
He lets out a tired laugh. “Thanks, it's my goal in life to become an insult. Now if you don't mind—” He reaches to open the door but I interrupt him, the anger rising in the pit of my stomach.
“You ran into a crowd because a stranger needed you, but you can’t walk across a hallway to talk to me? To say goodbye?”
The humor disappears as silence drops between us.
He crosses his arms over his chest. My attention catches on the movement because his arms are tools of Satan himself.
His muscles move with the tension, making the shadowy snake on his arm and along his back seem almost alive.
I realize, suddenly, that I've never seen this much of his skin on display without a screen between us. I swallow and will the thoughts away.
“You were dealing with shit, grieving. I was doing the right thing, giving you space,” he says.
“I didn’t ask for space.”
His gaze snaps back to mine. He takes a breath, visibly trying to control himself.
“Look, you were drunk, I'd had a few. You were hurting… it was a one-time thing. You get back to your life; I get back to mine.” He tries to toss the words out like this is no big deal, but the act doesn't reach his eyes.
“Wow, really? Just like that? So, it meant nothing to you?"
"I didn't say that. It was a mista—"
"I woke up smiling.” Kiri stops, the tension in his shoulders changing. “After we—I woke up smiling,” I repeat. “Like an idiot, over a mistake, apparently.”
His mouth opens but nothing comes out. I step closer.
“I can't believe you're calling what happened between us some mistake. Which range of your bullshit is this? Just denial or full-on asshole?"
He laughs, but there’s no humor in it.
“You want the honest answer?”
“Kurwa! Yes, please, finally!”
His eyes look tired, his patience seems worn down by time and being woken up in the middle of the night.
“I'm trying to let you go. That's why I stopped watching, stopped all of it. You're driving me crazy. I’m sick of fighting this, of torturing myself. I know it can't happen but knowing doesn't stop how I feel. It's only been a few days around you and I'm already fucking exhausted, Nat.”
The air changes around us. One second, we're fighting, the next, every breath feels too loud. I’m suddenly aware of our bodies.
That I’m standing only a few feet from his bed.
That his room smells like soap, sleep, and the same sandalwood scent that clung to him when he held me. Kiri steps closer and my pulse spikes.
“You think I’m not? Do you know how ridiculous you sound? You can jump into a mosh pit,” I say, quieter now, “but you’re so scared of me, you can't even be in the same room?”
“No, I can't.” His jaw flexes. “Because I don't give a fuck about what happens to me, but I care about what happens to you.”
Everything inside me stops, Kiri’s breathing turns uneven.
He looks like he regrets saying it. The admission steals the next argument from my mouth.
He doesn’t dress it up or make a joke of it.
Just stands there, bare-chested and exhausted, looking at me like fear and hunger have become the same thing.
I close the remaining distance, then search his face for a long moment.
The silence between us grows thicker, until I finally speak.
“Is that all you think you are? Something that happens to me?”
His eyes move to my mouth and I don't give him time to second guess it before I grab the back of his neck and kiss him.
He makes a rough sound against my mouth, something halfway between relief and surrender, and then his hands are on me.
One clamps around my waist, the other disappears into my hair.
He drives me backward until my shoulders meet the wall beside the door, his body pressing close enough to erase every inch of space between us.
This kiss is nothing like the others before it.
This is a battle of wills continuing through teeth and breath.
I bite his lower lip and he grips my waist harder in response.
“You’re so god damn stubborn,” he mutters against me.
His mouth crashes back onto mine. I drag my nails over his shoulders, catching the marks I left before.
He shudders when I touch the bite, and satisfaction burns through me.
He pulls back just enough to look at me, then his resolve breaks.
Kiri lifts me against him. My legs wrap around his waist on instinct, and he carries me away from the wall without interrupting the kiss.
My hands knot in his hair as he sets me against the edge of the desk, sending an empty water bottle rolling to the floor.
Something crashes behind me, but neither of us checks what.
His mouth moves down my throat. I tip my head back, breath catching as his teeth graze the place where the rush beneath my skin beats hardest, like it's trying to escape.
“You're one to talk,” I whisper.
He kisses the same place harder. “You're the one who showed up here.”
“To yell at you.”
“Basically naked?”
“I'm not naked.”
His hand slides beneath my oversized sweatshirt, spanning the bare skin at my waist. Then he travels higher, moving along my curves until he brushes the tip of my nipple beneath it, then back again.
The heat of his palm finally gripping my breast destroys the last of my argument.
I pull the sweatshirt over my head and throw it somewhere behind him.
Kiri freezes, then his gaze drops. The look on his face turns into something darker, intense enough to make me forget how to breathe.
“You’re fucking devastating.” His eyes lift to mine. “You're the most beautiful thing I've ever been allowed to touch.”
He steps between my knees, his mouth finding mine again, harder than before. I pull at his sweatpants but he catches my wrists, pinning them gently against the desk, kissing me until my attempt is forgotten.
“Control freak,” I whisper.
“Impatient.”
“Are you some kind of Dom?”
His smile brushes my mouth.
“Are you some kind of brat?”
Then he lifts me again and the desk disappears beneath me.
The bed catches my back a second later, bouncing under the force of him coming down over me.
We shed the rest of our clothes like snakes.
His sweatpants are kicked away as he drags my shorts down and tosses them somewhere near the foot of the bed, watching my face the whole time as I bite my lip.
The last scraps of fabric become obstacles we remove with impatient hands, neither of us willing to stop kissing long enough to do it gracefully.
Kiri covers me with his body. It's heavy and hot and everything I've imagined.
His hard length presses against me until my legs open around him without thought.
He settles between them, and the sensation of him there, separated from me by almost nothing, pulls a helpless sound from my throat.
My hands move over his back, feeling muscle shift beneath hot skin.
His shoulders. The long line of his spine.
The scars I can feel but can't see in the dim light.
I move beneath him, opening myself, pulling him closer.
His whole body tenses and just as he's about to finally give in to what we both want so badly, he stops. I make a sound of pure frustration.
“You can't be serious.” It comes out as a pout and then I instantly regret how pathetic it sounds.
He kisses my jaw.
"Kiri…" It's a plea but he ignores it as his kisses move along my body. Next it's my throat, then my collarbone.
He starts moving down my body and the realization reaches me slowly. My breath catches at the thought. He presses a kiss low on my stomach then looks up at me. His hair is already wrecked from my hands, mouth pink and angry, eyes almost black in the dim room.
“You spent all day teasing me,” he whispers against my skin.
“You deserved it.” The words come out more breath than sound.
Another kiss along my hip.
“So now it’s my turn.”
The first touch of his mouth against me steals every clever response I have.
My back arches from the mattress. Kiri’s hands close around my thighs, holding me open without force, just certainty.
His mouth and tongue move with the same terrible patience he used the first night, slow enough to make every nerve feel exposed.
I grip the sheets. His eyes lift to me, watching while he does it.
There's nothing unsure in the way he looks at me.
Only Kiri, learning me with that burning focus, reading every movement like my body is another instrument and he refuses to miss a single change in rhythm.
My hands find his hair again. He groans softly against me, and the vibration sends heat tearing through my entire body.
“Oh God, fuck—”
The words break apart in my mouth. He takes his time, attentive to everything, every small motion.
As soon as I start to find a rhythm, he changes it.
Each time I think I know what’s coming, he adjusts the pressure just enough to leave me chasing him.
I pull harder at his hair and his grip tightens on my thighs. He doesn’t stop.
“Y-you’re evil.”
His answer is another slow, devastating sweep of his tongue.
My head falls back. The bed moves beneath me with every restless roll of my hips.
I can hear my own breathing, embarrassingly loud in the quiet room, but I don’t try to hide it.
He wanted to hear me and I let him. Every gasp and curse.
Every single broken version of his name.
His patience begins to fracture when my body does.
I feel it in the way his hands grip me, in the rough sound he makes when I pull him closer instead of away.
The pressure builds until there's nowhere left inside me for anger, grief, pride, or thought.
Only him and the perfect, unbearable attention of his mouth.
The way he always holds me steady while everything else comes apart.
“Kiri, I'm—”
He knows and his hand slides over my stomach, keeping me grounded as the tension snaps.
The release crashes through me so hard my entire body lifts from the bed.
My fingers grasp at his hair so tightly I'm sure I've ripped some out. His name leaves me louder than I mean it to, and he stays with me through every shaking breath, refusing to let me retreat from any of it. When I finally collapse, I’m a puddle, in every possible way.
Kiri presses one last kiss to the inside of my thigh.
He climbs back over me, settling at my side, swiping stray hairs away from my face.
I stare at him through the haze, trying to remember why I came here beyond the fact that he is the most infuriating man alive.
His mouth and chin are wet with me. That's so embarrassing it makes me want to die. His hair is destroyed but he looks so damn pleased with himself.
“I hate you,” I whisper.
“You're welcome.”
His smile finally appears, the real one I saw when he was unloading the luggage. Tired and warm and so perfectly him that my chest aches. I weakly lift a hand to cup his jaw.
“You could've been hurt.” Tears sting my eyes, and one escapes before I can shut it down. Everything inside me blurs together, too much and all at once. Whatever wall I usually keep between myself and everything underneath is gone, and he’s the reason.
The smile fades as his hand comes up and closes gently around my wrist.
“I'm okay, Nat. See? I'm fine.”
He takes my hand and presses it to his chest, letting me feel the hard, frantic beat.
I curl into him as his arm closes around my waist, and little by little, the panic loosens its grip.
Tomorrow is still waiting. The flight. The distance.
Every stupid, reckless thing he might throw himself into when I’m not there to stop him.
Every excuse he might use to disappear from me again.
But his heart is beating beneath my ear, and for once, he isn’t pulling away.
Tomorrow can be a problem when it gets here.
Tonight, neither of us is going anywhere.