Page 230 of These Tears

The steam at Nielsens’ house resurfaces unbidden.

He is close enough that I can feel the pull of him before he touches me.

‘Will you let me kiss you?’ he murmurs.

My attention drops to his mouth, to the restraint there, remoulding itself into a question. Words fail somewhere behind my teeth. I incline my head instead.

His breath changes just as the backs of my knees meet the bed.

‘And touch you?’ he asks, reaching for the fastening of my bra and undoing it.

My teeth clench tight. ‘Yes—’

One hand seizes my waist; the other catches the back of my neck, and he pulls me into him with a force that burns straight through me.

His mouth crashes over mine – no longer careful or uncertain, but the mouth of a starving man. All the things he had been holding back turn into the brutal pressure of lips and breath.

I clutch him close as the room tilts, fingers digging into his T-shirt, and he kisses me like there are no more walls left between us.

When he climbs onto the mattress, his body bends over mine until my knees give and the mattress accepts us both. He follows, pushing me back with the slow pressure of his front until my spine meets the wall and the mattress complains beneath our knees.

He catches the hem of his top, pauses long enough for my eyes to follow the movement, then pulls it over his head. His ink blooms over muscle, and I curl my fingers to keep from following it across the warm planes of his chest. The sweats follow, pushed from his hips and kicked aside.

He strains hard and flushed, and I can barely hold myself back from reaching for him there.

‘Touch me,’ he says, quietly.

His ribcage expands as he braces for it. The amber light of the fire spills over the bare lines of him, turning scars and muscle and ink into a perfect kind of damnation. He is breathing as though he hurts. As if standing still for me is the hardest thing he has ever done.

So I touch his cheek first.

My thumb brushes the edge of his beard, then my palm slides down the strong column of his throat, over the uneven rhythm beneath his ribs. Lower. Across the tense plane of his stomach. Something flutters in mine as my hand travels sideways to his waist. When it reaches his hip, my thighs attempt to draw together.

Suddenly, he goes rigid. And I stop.

His forehead comes to rest against mine, and his hand leaves my neck to cradle my cheek instead.

For several seconds he only breathes against me, as if every part of him is learning the shape of permission.

‘We can stop,’ I remind him as I wrap my arms around his neck.

‘No,’ he whispers. ‘More.’

It detonates in me. The words. The breath. The command.

My eyes close as I run the tip of my tongue along his lips before I claim them.

My hand starts moving again until the soft tickle of dark hair at the base of him brushes my fingertips, and his entire body pulls taut when I reach below his shaft and cup him.

He hardens further and a shiver of satisfaction slinks through me so sharply I bite his lower lip to keep from smiling.

That turns his hold tighter, and he rakes his fingers up my thigh, coaxing a tremor out of me.

‘I’m going to take it now,’ I whisper into his ear. The hand in my hair clenches for a brief moment, but in the next, his body bends forward in permission. And my hand closes slowly around him, lightly at first. Then tighter.

Tighter.

The rough groan that breaks from him against my neck shivers straight through my teeth.