He slowly lowers me onto his bed and crawls over me, trailing his teeth and tongue and lips over my ankle, my calf, my knee, taking so much delicious time that I grow restless and reach down, play at his hair until he looks up, the dark, almost hazy cast to his eyes overwhelming every part of me.
A breeze floats in through the window, waves crashing in far below, as he makes his way up my body, then hovers over me, propped on one arm. I try to finish unbuttoning his shirt, but only get halfway down before I’m pulling at it greedily. Ren stills my hands, lips curving into a smile against mine, and undoes the buttons I’ve missed, sits up to kneel between my legs so he can shuck off his shirt. I follow the movement, lean up to run my fingers over his taut stomach, lower until they catch on the waistband of his pants.
Our eyes meet, and whatever sense I abandoned earlier comes rushing back to me. I’m overeager, too excited, an embarrassing, obvious level of enthusiasm coming off me. I flop back against the bed and hide my face in my hands.
Ren shifts from between my legs and lies down on his side next to me. “Hey,” he says, cradling the back of my neck. “Talk to me.” The way his fingers, which were kneading at my hips not moments ago, now entangle themselves in my hair raises goose bumps up and down my arms, and in the most appalling show of self-betrayal my body has ever committed, I shudder.
Ren’s touch skims to my shoulder in a barely there way, then falls away from me.
I roll onto my side, grab his waist to anchor him next to me. “Don’t. Please don’t leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “I just want to give you some space.”
I think I can pick out every singular thing I’ve ever loved about him on his face, but they all read differently to me now, like my powers of observation had only been operating at 50 percent before. The way his eyes are constantly working, shuttering and opening and darkening is a whole new line of communication unlocked. The faint freckles across his nose, only visible to me this close and only ever out in the summer, even the white sliver of his teeth behind his parted lips light up previously undiscovered pathways in my brain. I thought I knew his face better than my own. But with him looking at me like this, everything is new.
“I don’t need space,” I say. I don’t, but I can’t explain what I feel. That I want him, but I need to catch up with myself. “I don’t want space.”
“Okay,” he says, but I can tell by the tone of his voice and the tension in his body that he doesn’t fully trust it. He places a hand on my waist, but it’s light, hardly there.
“I don’t want space,” I repeat. “I want you.”
“Okay,” he says again. His hair is messy from where I’d been running my fingers through it, and something about the sight, seeing him undone, only makes me want him more.
“Ren, I want this. I just…” My cheeks heat. I’ve never had to talk to him about something like this before.Not when it’s us. I’ve never really had reason to feel like this around Ren. “I’m embarrassed.”
Ren’s brow lifts. “Embarrassed?” he asks in a rough whisper. “Why?”
“Because I feel like I’m too excited about this. And you’re…” I gesture at him, like I might encompass his whole person, everything he means to me and that we mean to each other. I can’t tell if Ren is as shocked by this turn of events as I am. “Perfect, basically.”
Ren leans back. “Joni,” he says. When I don’t answer, he readjusts, propping himself up on one elbow and taking one of my hands in his. “Joni.”
“Ren,” I say in a low voice, copying his joke from yesterday. It’s a poor attempt at levity, but a thrill speeds through me when his lips twitch into a smile.
“Okay, I’m going to tell you something,” he says. His mouth flattens, his eyes go serious. “The amount of time I spend thinking about you like this is actually embarrassing. I have to actively put it out of my head more than I’d care to admit to you. I want this to such an uncool degree. And…maybe that’s something we need to talk about, but you wanting this?” He shakes his head, reaches up to brush my hair behind my ear. “Not embarrassing in any world, and the best thing to ever happen to me.”
I smile, a small thing that grows. “You’ve thought about this?”
Ren nods sheepishly. “So much. In excruciating detail. Where we’d be,” he says, his eyes dropping to my mouth. “What you’d taste like.”
I curve closer to him. “And?”
He parts my lips with the pad of his thumb. “Amazing.”
My heart starts to race at the picture of Ren wanting this. “What else did you think about?” I can’t help but ask him.
Ren’s smile is slow now. He slips his hand from my lips to my jaw, my neck, over my shoulder. “What you’d feel like,” he says, as his fingers trace across my chest. “All the sounds you’d make.”
“Good?” I ask, my chest rising toward his hand.
“So good,” he murmurs at my neck. My breathing hitches at the contact, and I can feel him smile against me. His fingers sweep my side, then higher, higher, until they brush against my breast. “Everything we’d do.”
The soft moan that comes out of me sets off something in both of us. Ren’s hands slide behind me, unclasping my bra. He casts it aside, dips his mouth to my breast, lips parting and tongue circling. My fingers thread into his hair as he moves down my body, his breath hot against me as he hooks his fingers into the waist of my underwear and pulls them down my legs. He resettles between my knees, kisses the crease of my hip, trails his mouth lower and lower, until it’s closing over me.
I grasp at the sheets. There’s no coming back from this now.
He holds my body to him with one hand, the other working in tandem with his mouth in patient, deliberate movements. His name rushes out of me as I shudder against him, vision going spotty as something coils low, spreading down my thighs. “Ren,” I gasp as my spine curves.
He positions himself over me again as I blink back into reality, my skin flushed and limbs heavy. I cup his cheek and he turns his face into it, lips warm, before he looks down at me again and kisses me, unhurried, slowly rocking his body against mine.
