He pulled back half an inch.
“Still good?”
“Still good.”
“Tell me if anything is too much.”
“I will.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
He kissed me again. His hand, the rough one, came up to the side of my jaw. He pulled back a second time about a minute in.
“Can I take this off?” he asked as he gently tugged on the hem of my gray flannel overshirt. The one I’d put on over a plain white T-shirt because the gray flannel was a Tuesday shirt and today was a Tuesday and I wanted to keep one thing on schedule.
“Yes.”
He took it off and folded it. He put it on the arm of the couch and kissed me again, then moved to my neck. His teeth grazed my pulse point, and I made a sound I had never heard myself make before, a small one, in the back of my throat.
His hand on my jaw tightened a fraction, and he murmured, “Yeah?” against my skin. I said, “Yeah,” even though I didn’t know exactly what I was saying yes to, except that I was saying yes to him.
An interval of time passed that I didn’t measure because, for the first time in possibly my entire life, I wasn’t measuring it.
He was half over me on the couch. My back was against the cushion. His weight was along my left side, and his forearm was under my shoulder, so I wasn’t being pinned, just held. His other hand was on my hip, low, fingertips resting just above the waistband of my jeans. He hadn’t moved that hand for at least a minute. Asking.
I put my hand over his hand and pressed it down.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Tell me if?—”
“I will.”
He kissed me again, and I rolled my hips up. Once. Just to find out.
He inhaled sharply against my mouth. “Chip.”
“Yes.”
“You good?”
“I’m… I want… can we keep… ” The sentence wouldn’t finish. I pulled back half an inch and looked at him. “Can we keep going like this without taking my pants off? I’m not ready to… y’know. I mean, I want to do this, but I don’t want to do more than this. Tonight.”
“Yeah, Chip. Yeah, that’s good. That’s perfect. Same. I’m the same.” He smiled against my mouth and shifted, his hips came down against mine, slow. The friction of denim on denim, the heat through both layers, and the deliberate roll of his pelvis were sensations that blew my control to nothing. He did it again.
My hand went to his lower back, and I pulled him closer. He made a sound, a low one, and pressed his forehead against mine, rolling his hips again, slow, slow, slow. I started moving with him. Apparently, it was a thing my body knew how to do without having to read a manual on it.
“Look at me,” he said.
I looked at him. “What?”
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
