22. Theo #3
I learn her by taste and by the way her breath changes.
Slow at first, careful strokes of my tongue that make her thighs tremble around my shoulders.
I map every soft fold, every place that makes her hips lift or her fingers tighten.
When she gasps I do it again. When her breath stutters I stay right there, circling the swollen peak of her with the flat of my tongue until her whole body tightens.
I want to give her everything. I want her to feel chosen the way she makes me feel chosen.
Every soft sound she makes teaches me more.
Every time she says my name—quiet, broken, almost pleading—I grow bolder.
I slide one arm under her thigh to hold her open and keep going, reading the way her body softens and tightens, the way her breathing turns uneven, the way she starts rocking against my mouth like she can’t help it.
My other hand rests on her hip, steadying her, feeling the fine tremor that runs through her skin.
I press closer, deeper, tasting her until she’s all I know.
The wet heat of her, the way she opens for me, the quiet, desperate sounds that leave her throat when I find the exact rhythm she needs—all of it sinks into me like something I’ve been waiting my whole life to learn.
“Theo—oh—Star—”
Her hand fists harder in my hair. The pull sends a bright shock down my spine, but I don’t pull away.
I stay exactly where she needs me, tongue working in steady, devoted strokes, lips sealing around her as I suck gently.
Her thighs tighten around my shoulders. Her breathing breaks into short, uneven gasps.
I can feel her getting closer in the way her body starts to shake, in the way her fingers clutch and release in my hair, in the soft, helpless sounds that keep spilling out of her.
When it happens it is quiet and devastating.
Callie’s back arches, a broken little cry leaving her throat, her fingers locked tight in my hair as pleasure rolls through her in long, shaking waves.
I stay with her through all of it, gentling only when she starts to tremble too hard, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses to her as she comes down, tasting the last of her release while her thighs quiver around me.
Afterward, I can’t stop trembling.
Callie pulls me up slowly, like I’m something precious without making me feel breakable. I feel enormous instead. Hollowed out and filled at the same time, my skin humming, my hands clumsy as I try to help fix her clothes and only make her laugh under her breath.
“I’ve got it,” she murmurs, catching my hands and kissing my knuckles. “Come here.”
I go because there’s no part of me that wants distance from her now.
She tucks me against her in the nest, my cheek pressed to the soft curve of her stomach and her fingers sliding into my hair.
Her scent is everywhere, on the cardigan and the scarf and the mug, but also on me, on my mouth, on my hands, and I press my face into her shirt while my eyes burn.
“You’re shaking,” she says.
“Good,” I tell her, because it is.
Her fingers slow in my hair. “Good?”
I nod against her. “Said it.”
Callie goes still for one breath. Then she bends over me and presses her mouth to the top of my head, and the tenderness in that kiss almost hurts more than fear. “Yeah, Star. You did.”
The praise doesn’t sound like a command or a correction or a careful note written in someone’s file. It sounds like she understood, and the relief of that makes my throat ache.
“I like when you tell me,” she says, her fingers moving again. “With words, with your hands, any way you can. I like knowing.”
I close my eyes. The rain on the glass roof sounds farther away now, and the door under my ribs isn’t gone, but it’s covered by her hand, by her warmth, by the steady rise and fall of her breath above me.
“Don’t go,” I whisper.
Callie’s hand pauses.
I regret the words immediately. They’re too large in the little sunroom, too sharp after something so soft, too close to the fear I wasn’t going to hand her. Her fingers slide from my hair to the side of my face, coaxing me to look up.
“I’m right here,” she says.
I shake my head before I can stop myself.
Callie searches my face. “Theo, what happened?”
The office comes back in pieces: Garrett’s pen, the compass, the offer, farther than I’d like. I can’t make the pieces into a sentence without making them real, so I give her the only words that don’t crack open in my mouth.
“It’s okay now,” I say.
Callie doesn’t believe me this time either. She strokes my cheek once, and her expression stays gentle even though worry has entered it. “All right. We don’t have to talk about it right now.”
Right now.
My chest tightens around the words, but she’s still touching me, still here, and my body believes her more than my fear does. I turn back into her and let myself be held.
Callie pulls the first student paper into her lap as I stay curled against her thigh with her cardigan under my hand.
She murmurs comments at the margins of her papers, some of them too low for me to catch and some of them clearly insults aimed at comma usage, and every so often, her fingers return to my hair like she can’t help checking that I’m still there.