Chapter 10 #2
Violet nodded, and he pulled her closer and pressed his mouth to her stomach through the thin fabric of her dress.
She shuddered. His hands moved to the hem, pushing it up slowly, his fingers trailing along her thighs.
Violet was trembling, and he was trembling too.
She could see the effort it cost him to go slow, to be careful, to make this about her.
He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of her underwear and drew them down. Violet stepped out of them. He kissed the inside of her thigh, and she gripped the edge of the counter because her knees were giving out.
When his mouth found her center, she gasped.
Her head fell back. Her hand went to his hair — that thick dark hair, longer than she'd ever seen it, curling against her fingers — and she held on.
He was gentle at first, exploratory, his tongue slow and deliberate, and then less gentle, reading her body the way he'd read her story, finding the center of it, the turn, the place where she stopped being passive and became the one who moved.
Violet came apart with her hand in his hair and her back against the kitchen counter and the sound of the ocean through the open French doors, and he held her through it, his hands steady on her hips, his mouth soft against her skin.
When the trembling subsided he pressed his forehead to her hip bone and stayed there, breathing.
He kissed her hip and stood up slowly. Violet reached for his belt, but he caught her wrist. "That was for you, Vi." His voice was rough, low and absolute. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her forehead. "You've been giving to me for years. Everything. All of it. Now it’s my turn to give."
Jake kissed her, deep, slow and thorough, his mouth communicating everything his voice couldn't. Then he lifted her.
His hands under her thighs, her legs wrapping around his waist, her arms around his neck.
He carried her out of the kitchen and up the stairs, his mouth never leaving hers, and the ease with which he held her — his arms sure, his step steady — sent heat flooding through her.
He laid her on the bed. The master bedroom, the one she'd been sleeping in alone for weeks, moonlight coming through the window, the sound of the ocean through the open glass.
Jake stood over her and pulled his shirt over his head.
Violet looked at him: the broad shoulders, the chest she used to press her face against when he held her, the dark trail of hair below his navel, and she wanted him with an urgency that erased every careful wall she'd built this summer.
"Come here," she whispered.
He lowered himself over her. Kissed her collarbone.
Her sternum. The space between her breasts.
He pulled the straps of her dress down slowly, peeling the fabric away from her skin inch by inch, pressing his mouth to every new surface as it appeared.
He unclasped her bra, cupped her breast and ran his thumb across her nipple.
Violet arched into him, gasping, and he made a sound against her skin that was somewhere between a groan and a prayer.
Jake took his time. That was what undid her.
He took his time. He kissed her ribs, the curve of her waist, the soft skin below her navel.
He pulled the dress the rest of the way off and dropped it over the side of the bed.
He ran his hands along the length of her body as if he were memorizing it, as if he'd never touched her before, as if every inch of her was a revelation he wasn't going to rush through.
"You're so beautiful, Vi. My summer goddess,” he rasped, and his voice broke on the word. She believed him, because he was looking at her the way she'd spent six years yearning to be looked at. Like she was the only thing in the room. Like she was the only thing in the universe.
Keeping his gaze locked on hers, Jake pushed inside her slowly.
She gasped, and he gasped, and for a long moment neither of them moved.
Just the feeling of him filling her, stretching her, the intimacy so acute it bordered on unbearable.
Months of absence collapsing into one shared breath.
His forehead against hers, his eyes open, looking at her, and she looked back, and neither of them hid.
Jake began to move. Slowly at first. Rolling his hips with a patience she'd never experienced from him, a deliberateness that told her he was paying attention to every sound she made, every shift of her body, every catch in her breathing.
When Violet tilted her hips, he adjusted.
When she whispered harder, he gave her more.
When she arched her back and pulled him deeper, he groaned and buried his face in her neck.
She could feel his arms shaking with the effort of holding himself back, of keeping the pace she needed instead of chasing his own release.
Jake slid his hand between them and found her with his fingers, circling, pressing, his mouth on her throat. The combination — him inside her, his hand between them, his breath hot against her pulse — sent her climbing so fast she grabbed the headboard with one hand and his shoulder with the other.
"Look at me," he said. Violet opened her eyes, and he was right there, inches away, his blue eyes black in the moonlight, his face stripped of everything except want, tenderness and a focus so complete she could have wept.
Violet came with his name in her mouth, his body inside hers and his eyes on her face. He watched her, he watched the whole thing, and the look on his face — awe, gratitude, devastation — was the most intimate thing she'd ever experienced.
Jake waited until her trembling slowed. And then he kissed her eyelids. Her cheekbones. The corner of her mouth.
Then he began to move again, faster now.
She wrapped her legs around him and pulled him closer.
Jake pressed his face into her hair, drove into her and came with a shudder that went through his entire body, his arms locked around her, holding her so tight she could feel his heartbeat against her own.
They lay tangled together afterward, breathing hard, slick with sweat, her head on his chest, his hand moving slowly up and down her spine.
The moonlight had shifted. The ocean was louder than it had been, the tide coming in, the waves rolling against the shore in the darkness beyond the open window.
Violet pressed her ear to his chest and listened to his heart. Fast. Then slowing. Then steady.
"Stay," she said, though he was already there.
"I'm not going anywhere," he said.
Violet lay in the dark, listened to his breathing even out and waited for the fear to come.
It didn't.
What came instead was the memory of his voice in the library back room, saying she's the one who moved. And the memory of his text about the hallway closet paragraph. And the cookbook, open and splattered, on the counter of a house they'd promised to share and never had.
He was still here. He was here because he'd chosen to be, day after day, morning after morning, walk after walk, meal after meal.
He'd done the boring, unglamorous, patient work of showing up.
He was still doing it, and the woman who'd spent six years waiting for him to notice was starting to realize that he was noticing everything.
Violet closed her eyes.
His arm tightened around her, a reflex, as if even in near-sleep he was afraid she'd disappear.
She didn't. She would never let herself disappear again.