Page 145 of In Somnis

She looks between our joined hands and me, probably reading my desperation in my eyes. “Of course. Do you have stuff here I could cook?”

I draw her back to the couch and sit her down, then settle beside her without letting go of her hand. She’s close enough I can smell the lemon and sugar on her skin, and something that has no name but lives permanently in the back of my throat now.

“I’m not hungry,” I murmur.

“You’re not?”

“You have…” I start, and then stop, because the sentence I was building in my head sounds clinical compared to what’s actually happening in my chest. I try again. “There are billions of eyes in this world, and yet, I could pick yours out of every single one of them.”

She makes a small sound, not quite a word or a breath. It’s caught in between, and her lips part slightly with it, a soft unconscious gasp.

I move to cup her cheek, but my hand has a mind of its own, tracing her jaw until my fingers reach the swell of her bottom lip. She breathes out against my skin, and the warmth of it travels straight down my spine. My thumb presses into her lip, and the soft flesh yields beneath it. Things tighten and stir in my lower abdomen that I have no business feeling right now, and I am chanting you’re celibate, Paul, you’re celibate, you made a decision to take it slow with her, but the desire to act on that knowledge feels very far away.

I want to watch her reaction, not to miss a moment, but my gaze drifts down to the crystal. Her breaths heave in quick, shallow rises and falls of her chest.

I would give a significant amount to know if she’s wearing the pretty black bra I held in my hands underneath that sweater.

No. Stop. Celibate. Focus.

I look back at her face, and she’s already looking up at me, from under those lashes. Her whole expression has gone soft, open, wanting, and she leans, just barely a breath, into my hand.

“You’re extraordinary. Do you know that? I don’t think anyone’s told you enough.”

“Paul,” she whispers.

That voice.

That’s the one I listen to as I lean in and kiss her.

If our earlier kiss was a question, this one is the answer.

The world slows. Her mouth is warm and soft as she kisses me back without hesitation, like she’s been waiting too. There’s no rush in it, just this long, unhurried press of lips, her breath mixing with mine. Wings beat against the inside of my ribs, actual, honest-to-God butterflies, which I haven’t felt since I was a teenager who didn’t know yet how disappointing love could be.

This doesn’t feel disappointing.

This feels like the opposite of every disappointment I’ve ever had.

When she pulls back, I reach up with both hands and pull my glasses from my face. I set them somewhere on the couch behind me without looking, not willing to take my eyes off her for a full second, because she’s looking at me the way she looked at the yellow roses. As though she wasn’t expecting this and isn’t sure yet what to do with it, but doesn’t want to put it down.

I know exactly what to do with her.

My hands clamp on her delicious thighs, and I pull her to me. She makes a soft, startled sound as I settle her across my lap, her knees bracketing my hips. Her hair falls forward, curtaining me, and her chest moves fast right in front of my face.

Before I can get too distracted by that, I cup her jaw, tilt her face down, and bring her lips back to mine. I take my time with it, learning the softness of her mouth, the small sounds she makes low in her throat when I deepen it, and the pressure of her hands when she grips my shoulders.

“Lennon, my beautiful Lennon.” I kiss the corner of her mouth and her cheek before returning to her lips. After several long, intoxicating kisses, I pull away to catch my breath, but she chases me, pressing her lips back to mine as if she can’t do without.

Something about that undoes me more than anything else has.

Her hands slide from my shoulders up into my hair, and I feel the exact moment her self-consciousness fades away entirely. Her body relaxes into mine and is completely here with me, in this moment.

I could do this for a very long time. I am, in fact, doing exactly that, my hands moving up her thighs to her waist, when she shifts. It’s barely anything, a small, restless movement of her hips, but I feel it everywhere, that tiny involuntary grind, and the sound she makes against my mouth is so soft and wanting that every coherent thought I’ve had for the last five years arranges itself into a single very clear message.

She survived me, but I will not survive her.

She does it again, this time more deliberately. Her hips roll, and she presses down. I feel her heat through both layers of our clothing, and I have to break the kiss to breathe, my forehead to hers, my hands gripping the outside of her thighs hard enough that I’m certain it’ll leave fingerprints.

Think, Paul. Think.