Just barely.
A pull, not a push. Like she almost let it happen.
I stop.
I stop everything. Mouth on her jaw. Hand frozen at the top of her zipper. I don’t move.
“Jax.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m on my period.”
Flat. No apology. Just the information.
I lift my head. Get my forearm next to her shoulder so I’m braced over her and I can see her face.
“Got it. Copy that.”
Her face does something.
Doesn’t do anything for a second. Then it does something — not a smile, not a frown, just the specific stillness of a person who was braced for one thing and didn’t get it.
“That’s it?” she says.
“That’s what.”
“That.Copy that.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not — you’re good.”
“I’m good.”
She looks at me for another second. I don’t look away. I don’t make a thing of it. I don’t make her explain. I lean down and kiss her — same kiss as before, same heat, my body informing me very clearly that nothing about my situation has changed except the menu — and after another second she kisses me back.
I have been thinking about screwing her brains out all day.
That plan changed.
It’s fine.
Shit changes.
She’s still here. Still looking at me like that. Still breathing hard under me. I’m not far off from catching a case of blueballs, but I adjust.
Different math problem now.
We end up tangled.
My weight half on her, her hands back in my hair, the kiss going somewhere it shouldn’t be going for a man who just took penetration off the table, and I’m not stopping it because she’s not stopping it and her hips have started doing the thing her hips do when she’s getting close to something and my body is in a state I am going to have to handle later by myself.
She’s grinding against my thigh.
I let her.
That’s what I’m doing right now. Letting her get hers. Letting my body process the input it’s getting without doing anything about the output. It’s a math problem. I’ll solve it later.
