Page 218 of Josephine and Clay

The last few weeks have felt endless.

Every day seemed to pile another problem on top of the last.

The injury, the money, the loneliness, and the feeling that everybody else had figured life out while I kept making the same mistakes.

Then today happened.

Now she's here.

The twins are real.

And somehow, I'm kissing the woman I've been thinking about every night.

“Come inside,” I murmur against her mouth. “I want you.”

She follows me in, still kissing. I shut the door with my heel and pin her against it, my hands landing on either side of her head. We're both breathing hard, and she's laughing, kissing me.

My hands slip under her shirt, greedy, flattening against her ribcage. She's right here beneath my hands, and I still want more. I want closer than skin ought to allow, live in the hollow of her chest where her heart beats out that stubborn, impossible pace.

She fists the front of my shirt, dragging me back into another kiss, making a low, hungry sound that goes straight through me. I laugh despite myself, feeling shyer than I should.

“I need you, Clay,” she says, matter-of-fact. “Give me what I asked for.”

There's more to it than stubbornness; it's this thing in her that needs, that takes. Maybe because the world always did its best to tell Josie no.

Maybe she’s never learned that she could be loved in any other way except by forcibly taking, wanting, devouring. Even now, it doesn't scare me. It makes me want her even more.

I hook an arm around her waist and guide us into my old childhood bedroom. Once inside, I back her toward the bed until her knees catch the mattress. She falls onto it with one arm flung above her head, hair wild, knees already drawing up.

“I missed you,” I say, and it comes out a gravelly rasp.

“Show me,” she says.

I crawl up after her, dragging her shirt up over her stomach, over the soft lantern curve of her breasts. The moonlight from the window silvers her skin. Out here, in my own house, in the bed where I learned to jerk off as a kid, Josie doesn't look entirely real.

I've spent days thinking about her, and somehow that still didn't prepare me for seeing her here.

I tug my shirt off, then push hers the rest of the way up, peeling it over her head, her arms raised in surrender, and pin her wrists to the pillow. She arches beneath me. The cool air sweeps goosebumps over her skin.

Her nipples are so hard I feel them tattooed against my tongue before my mouth even gets there. She shudders when I lick, a soundless gasp, and I could stay right here all night, at her chest, and never want for another thing.

But she’s wild for more. She yanks her wrists free, fumbles at my belt, not stopping for anything, not even to look at me.

She tears the button off my waistband. I let her. The pop of it hitting the floor is cartoonish, dumb, and somehow hilarious.

I’m grinning, and then she’s got hold of my cock through my briefs, nails raking, and I can’t choke back the little hitch that comes out of me.

I want to drag this out, but that’s never been possible with Josie. She's always thrown herself into things completely. I let her push me backwards so that I’m upright, and she follows by arching up and yanking her own jeans down.

Her hips lift, and I get a flash of her, the pale secret skin above her pussy, and then the jeans and panties are gone. She’s wearing nothing else. I watch her for a second, every inch, every inch of her, and I want to touch all of it. I must tell her so.

I run my palm up from her kneecap to her hipbone, catch all that unfamiliar wildness and say, “You’re beautiful.”

She snorts, gives me this look like she’s about to tell me to knock it off, but she doesn’t. She just swallows hard, chin trembling, and then she’s pulling at my waistband, shoving my underwear down, hand wrapping around me so tight I see stars. Every nerve in me burns for her.

It's always been like this. Me trying to hold on. Her making that impossible.

I press my mouth to her thigh, taste the salt of sweat and something else, the animal tang. I want to eat her alive. She crooks a finger in my hair, guiding me down, and I let her. I bury my face between her legs, and she opens for me, slick and hot beneath my mouth. I drag my tongue slow, then faster, until she's all I can think about.