I make a small, embarrassing sound in his mouth. He groans, pressing against me for a second. My skin crawls with sensation. I need him right now.
He pulls back and stands up. He pulls me up with him by both hands, and my legs almost don’t hold me. I’m shaking so hard my knees are loose. My dress is rumpled. His t-shirt is creased where my hand was on his chest. His hair’s sticking up in the back where my hand was. My lipstick’s half on my mouth and half on his.
I did that.
I did that to him.
The thought puts a fierce hot pride in my chest that I don’t even feel guilty for.
He turns me around gently with his hand at my hip, and he finds the small zipper at the back of my dress with his other hand and pulls it down. His knuckle brushes the bare skin of my back as the zipper goes down, and a shiver chases it the entire way, every vertebra lighting up one after the other, my whole spine is on fire by the time he reaches the bottom.
He huffs into the back of my hair, and the warmth of his breath at the nape of my neck makes me clench my thighs together.
He puts his hands on my shoulders and slides the dress off them. The silk drops past my elbows and falls past my hips. It pools at my feet on his hardwood floor. I step out of it.
I’m in my bra, tights, and boots in the middle of his bedroom. His hands have come around to my front and are flat against my stomach. My body jumps under his palms. His skin’s warm. The pads of his fingers are calloused from hockey, and they catch a little on my skin, and I feel that catch low in my belly. His mouth is at the top of my shoulder where the strap of my bra meets my skin, and he’s making a low sound at the base of his throat. Heturns me around again and looks at me for one full second longer than I’m prepared for. His eyes go down. His eyes come back up.
“Fuck.”
It’s the most articulate thing he’s said in three minutes, and my heart explodes. Just — detonates. Goes off in my chest like a flare. There were so many times I dreamed of this moment, but none of it felt real, and even as it’s happening, it doesn’t feel real.
I think I’m going to cry, just a little, just at the corners of my eyes where Mila’s eyeliner isn’t going to forgive me, because Blue Golding has just said fuck in his own bedroom at the sight of me in my bra and my tights, and my throat’s so tight I can hardly swallow around it.
He reaches for my face and brushes a piece of hair behind my ear. His thumb catches a tear I didn’t know was there.
He kisses the corner of my eye and doesn’t say anything about it.
He kisses my mouth again, watching me with his bright blue eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them this light. Or this open. Or this mine.
I reach for the hem of his shirt and lift. He raises his arms, and I pull the shirt up and over his head. His hair flops down into his eyes. He pushes it back with the heel of his hand.
I look at him.
I haven’t seen him in real life since we were seventeen.
He’s changed.
He’s grown into himself in a way that’s so specific I don’t have words for it for a full second. His shoulders are broader. His chest is heavier. The line of him is the line of a man instead of a boy. There’s a thin white scar across his collarbone I don’t recognize. He has a body that has been used. A body that’s been hit and recovered, hit and recovered, season after season. A body that has been built into a man. A body that’s mine to touch.
My fingers twitch with the want of it. I run my hand down his chest.
He shivers under my hand. The shiver runs all the way down to his stomach. The muscles there jump and contract. His breath catches, and the small involuntary motion of him reacting to me makes something molten pool low in my belly. I keep my palm moving down his body, slow, watching his face. I stop at the waistband of his sweats.
I look up at him.
He’s looking at me. His pupils have gotten bigger. His mouth’s parted.
He sits back on the edge of his bed and pulls me between his knees by both hips. He undoes one boot, slides the boot off, and drops it next to the bed. He does the other one. The other one comes off.
He looks up at me from the edge of the bed.
I’m shaking. I know he can feel me shaking under his palms, and he just holds me there, steady, his thumbs stroking small circles into the silk of my tights like he’s saying I’ve got you.
He hooks his thumbs into the waistband of my tights and pulls them down. He’s going slow again on purpose, savoring every moment of this. His fingers brush the outside of my thighs, and goosebumps chase the touch. My breath comes out shaky. The tights slide down my hips. Down my thighs. Down my calves. He gets them past my knees, and I lift my feet one at a time so he can slide them off the rest of the way. He balls them up. He sets them on the nightstand without looking away from me.
Now I’m in my bra and underwear.
He stands up and pulls me to him. He kisses me again. The kiss is slower this time, the kind of slow that comes after the want’s been confirmed, and his hands slide up my bare back to the clasp of my bra. He’s fumbling at it.
