“I want—” she says, and stops.
I wait.
This is the part where she decides, and I will hold still for as long as she needs.
“I want to feel you everywhere,” she says. “Like last time. But I want to touch you too. I want to put my hands on you and inside you and feel what you feel when I—”
She breaks off, laughs once, shaky.
My palms flatten against the curve of her hips before she loses her courage, thumbs resting in the hollow above her hip bones, and I let my temperature shift, warming by slow degrees until she gasps softly and presses into the heat.
“Tell me what you want,” I say against her throat.
She pulls back enough to look at me, and the expression on her face is something I want to memorize.
Open and fierce and terrified and wanting, all at once.
“Everything,” she says.
Chapter 10
Body Work
Oz
Maisie pulls her hands frommy chest and reaches for the hem of her shirt.
She peels it off over her head in one motion, and the sports bra beneath is dark gray.
She picks up the jar of coconut oil from the counter, scoops ahandful, and works it between her palms until it liquefies in the heat of her hands.
Then she puts her hands on me again, both palms flat against my stomach, just above where my form becomes indistinct, and she slides them upward.
Gold erupts from the contact points.
Violet follows in deep, saturated waves.
My surface ripples under her hands like wind across water.
She watches the colors with parted lips, and her hands reach my shoulders and curve around them, pulling herself closer.
Her chest presses against mine, the thin fabric of her bra the only boundary. I feel the soft weight of her breasts flatten against my surface, the hard points of her nipples registering as bright sparks of heat.
She exhales shakily against my collarbone.
I shape myself to her.
My chest softens and conforms to the exact contour of her body, cradling her against me so every inch of her torso is held. The warmth I generate builds slowly, radiatinginto her muscles, her skin, the tight spaces between her ribs where she holds her breath.
I find the knot in her neck and apply pressure there, precise and deep.
She groans and drops her forehead against me.
My hands travel down her back.
I palm the length of her spine, feeling the tension still braided into the muscles on either side. I warm these too, working heat into the fibers.
My thumbs trace the dimples at the base of her hips where her body curves into the waistband of her jeans.
