Page 72 of Legacy Ascended

“Shut up and kiss me.”

So I do.

She's across the bed and in my lap before I've finished sitting up, and I get both hands on her hips and pull.

"Careful," I say, against her jaw. "Shoulder."

"Then stay off it."

"I'm always off it. I'm extremely—" she bites my bottom lip "—I'm extremely responsible—"

"You're really not."

I get her shirt off, which is a two-hand operation with the left sleeve and which I have got good at, and I take my time with it deliberately just to hear her complain, and she does, and I grin at her the whole way through.

Her hair's still damp at the ends. There's a dark line across her collarbone where it's been soaking into her shirt all evening, and I put my mouth on it, and she tastes like her soap and underneath that like her.

"You're enjoying this."

"I'm enjoying all of it." I put my mouth at her collarbone. "That's my whole thing. You've met me."

She gets my shirt over my head and then stops with both hands flat on my chest, looking at me, and I let her, which I'm not always good at.

I get to look back. Sitting up in my lap with her chestnut hair pushed over one shoulder, damp and starting to curl at the ends, her mouth already swollen from the kissing and the color coming up her throat. And those hazel eyes on me. She's never been as hard to read as she thinks she is, but this close she doesn't even try. It's all right there.

"What," I say.

"Nothing. You."

"That's a look—"

"You've got a bruise here." Her thumb moves over my ribs. "Declan?"

"Declan," I admit. "Eleven times. He's very patient about being hit and then extremely not."

She leans down and puts her mouth on it, and then lower, and I stop talking.

She takes my belt off and I lift up so she can get the rest, and then her hand's on me and my head goes back against the wall and whatever I was going to say leaves the building.

"Jess—"

"Shh."

"That's — okay, that's—"

She works me slow, like she's got nowhere to be, watching my face the whole time. That's her, that is. Everyone thinks I'm the one who pays attention. She's ruthless about it.

"Tell me," she says.

"Harder."

She does it harder. I get a fistful of the blanket.

"Tell me what you want."

"I want—" I have to stop and breathe. "I want you on your back, and I want to take about an hour, and I want you to be really loud about it, because I've been thinking about this since the corridor."

"Since the corridor?"