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“They’re beautiful and they’re never the same color twice. One minute they’re green, the next brown, the next gray. I spend way too much time thinking about what color they’re going to be when you wake up or when you smile at me. Or when I’m inside you.”
His words make my already too-fast heartbeat pick up even more. “Really?”
“It slays me that you don’t know.” He’s licking at my spine now, small, tender little swipes of his tongue that make my knees a little weaker with each second that passes.
“I love your hands,” I tell him, taking hold of one where it rests on my hip and bringing it to my mouth. “How big they are, how strong. How the callouses feel rough against my skin when you touch me. How easy it is for you to pick me up with them.”
I slide one of his fingers into my mouth, swirl my tongue around it and then start to suck. He groans a little in the back of his throat and I can feel him growing even harder against my back.
“I love your mouth,” he tells me, his voice harsher than it was just a minute ago. “I love the color of your lips, the way they get darker when I kiss you. I love the way your smile is always just a little crooked because your lips go up more on the left side than the right one. And I am fucking crazy about the way you taste—like vanilla and sugar all the time.”
It’s a sweet description, one that has me working his finger a little faster, a little deeper, in reward. And because I like the way his breath is coming faster, the way his hips are moving in short, little thrusts against my own.
He wants me. He really wants me. I think that’s the best part. That he sees me—not the sick girl, not the girl who needs to be protected—but me, Tansy, the girl who is too skinny and too awkward and who has no idea what she’s doing most of the time. And he wants me anyway. Almost as much as I want him.
“I love your biceps,” I tell him when I finally release his finger.
“My biceps?”
“Hell, yeah. They’re really good biceps.” I turn my head, kiss the area in question, pressing my lips gently against the kanji symbol he has tattooed high up on his inner arm. “You never told me what this one means. It’s beautiful.”
“It means sorrow. I got it—” His voice breaks. “I got it after my parents died.”
My heart breaks for him and I kiss the tattoo again, gently, sweetly. Ash is shaking a little now, and it’s not from cold—I can feel the heat of his body pressed firmly against my own. And when he presses his face into the curve of my neck and just breathes me in, I want nothing more than to hold him. To curl myself
around him and take away all the pain, all the guilt, all the sorrow that lives inside of him.
He’s so good, so kind, so generous, that it kills me to see him like this. Eaten up from the inside over a tragedy he didn’t cause and can’t change. I want to tell him that, to make him understand that sometimes bad things happen to good people and there’s no reasoning it out. No understanding it.
There’s only acceptance.
God knows, I’ve spent most of my life trying to find that acceptance and now that I’m healthy, now that I’m cured, I’m looking for a different kind of understanding. One that tells me why I got the winning lottery ticket. Why I get to live when so many others have to die.
But now isn’t the time for my issues. Not when Ash is trembling against me, shaking apart right here, right now, and he won’t even let me hold him. Won’t let me put my arms around him and kiss his lips and tell him that I love—
The thought breaks through the protective layers I have wrapped around me like a jackhammer, shattering me—and everything I thought I was doing here—into so many pieces.
I can’t love him. I just can’t.
This thing between us—it was supposed to be about fun. About losing my virginity. About having a good time. It wasn’t supposed to be about anything serious. He has too much going on right now to be in love with anyone and I—I need to just concentrate on being healthy for a while. On figuring out who I am and what I want. Loving Ash, no matter how wonderful he is, has no part in that.
Except, it obviously does. Why else would my heart feel like it’s breaking under the weight of Ash’s pain? Why else would I care so much about what he’s feeling, about what he’s going through? Why else would I want so desperately to make him smile?
To make everything okay for him again?
But I can’t. There’s no way to fix what’s happened to Ash. To his parents, to his brother. To him. No matter how much I want to.
And I do want to. Oh, God, I want that so bad.
He’s still shaking against me, but when I try to turn to face him, to hold him, he locks his arm around my hip. Keeps me in place. Keeps me facing forward.
It breaks my heart, shatters me just a little bit more. But I understand. I know how vulnerable he feels, how wide open his sorrow makes him feel. Something was bothering him even before he got into this shower—I knew it and let it go because he asked me to. But whatever it is hasn’t gotten better while he’s been holding me, kissing me, touching me. It’s only gotten worse and I can’t handle that. Any more than I can handle not being able to do something for him when he’s in this kind of pain.
Wanting to give him as much comfort as he’ll allow, I sag back against him. Press my back to his front as tightly as I can. He shudders a little at the extra contact, presses hot, open-mouthed kisses against my neck and shoulder, and I pretend the wetness I feel against my skin is all from the shower.
I don’t know how long we stand there, Ash kissing and touching and holding me.
Long enough for the bathroom to completely steam up around us.
