The kiss was soft and renewing like the sun. Until it wasn’t.
Because it was us.
And the need was so close to the surface. And maybe me wrapping myself around him would help take some of that pain away, even if it was only a little while.
I slipped off the straps of my muslin overalls and the whole thing slid down over my breasts and hips to float around my ankles, leaving me in just a pair of cotton boy shorts.
“Phoebe,” he groaned my name against my lips.
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and he lifted me right out of my Croc shoes. I lifted my legs to wrap around his middle. I poured all the love in my heart right into him through our lips and my firm hold. It was different kissing him without the full beard. The hair a little scratchier in its short form and his face was so much more angular. I slipped my fingers into his overlong hair, the sameness of that anchoring me as I relearned him.
He started walking with me out of the room, and I held him tighter. “Here,” I said against his mouth. “I want you here where the real you is all around us. Let me in.”
“Christ, you end me.”
I smiled, drawing away from the kiss. “Happy ending, maybe, if you’re lucky.”
His fingers dug into my ass, dragging me against his jeans. “I need to get to the medicine cabinet.”
I shook my head. “Just you. All of you.”
“Phoebe.” His eyebrows knitted together.
“I’m protected.”
“It’s not just that.”
“I trust you, Atticus.”
His eyes shut. “I wasn’t sure I’d hear you use my name again.”
“We just had a fight. We’re going to fight. You can be an asshole and I can be overly sensitive. It’s going to happen.”
He shifted me higher, his lips over mine again. The kiss wilder. The drugging kind I missed so much already. Days away from him then the hurt feelings made it feel so much longer than just a week. He moved to the corner of the room where some of his words were scrawled and along the bottom of the wall were my dandelions and woodland creatures I’d drawn all those weeks ago.
The first day.
He pressed me into the corner where he could prop me against the wall with his hips. “You sure you want to do this here?”
“You kept my drawings.”
He frowned. “What?”
I laughed. “Sorry, I just noticed that you didn’t erase my drawings. When I first invaded your space.”
“Just one.” He said against my throat. “And I hated that I smudged it.” He nipped my ear.
I looked over at the space where I’d drawn the little seeds of the dandelion that had reached up into the main part of his chalk wall. He hadn’t rubbed it all away, but it was smudged. He’d scrawled around the faint seed with the tufted pieces that made it fly through the sky. As if it was a wish just for us. “I’ll draw another.”
“Good.”
He dragged his teeth down my neck to the skin between my shoulder and neck. The nip of pain drew my attention away from drawing and to what mattered most. Him. Me. His mouth on mine. His big body pressing into me. The safety and the thrill ofhim that I needed more than I’d ever needed with anyone else. I liked my space. I liked my alone time because I was used to it.
But I didn’t realize just how much I’d been missing someone who cared that I was there.
Needed me there.
I tipped my hips a little so I could lock my ankles around his waist. “What does the wall say?”
