Page 41 of Every Time We Touch

Because I’m kissing Jen with unquenchable desire, but also with a tenderness that makes me want to slow down time. I can’t stop time, but I can slow my kisses. I can make them last—and make them all the more delicious for it.

Our bodies might need the time we don’t have to regroup, although that unmistakable pulse between my legs is back already. Maybe it is just sex? But as my tongue slips in and out of her mouth, licks along her lips, I know—I feel—very well it’s not.

Superficial desire is something I can easily resist—especially for my ex-boyfriend’s daughter. This is not how I get my kicks. I’m not out to get my heart trampled on—least of all by my own lustful actions.

The very fact that we’re here, our lips meeting again and again, is proof it’s more than sex. It’s something between us that we, perhaps, should never try to put into words. That we shouldn’t name, but only feel. That can only, briefly, exist wordlessly like this, confined to one night in my bedroom.

But it’s also for this same reason that I’m pushing my body into her again, slipping a knee between her legs—that I want to pin her hands above her head again because I so want for that kind of time machine to exist. So we can just endlessly repeat what just happened—and how it made us feel—and not have the night progress. To be suspended in time because we know that, out there, the two of us like this can’t exist.

I don’t get the chance to repeat my earlier actions, because Jen slips from underneath me. I happily topple onto my back for her. I more than willingly spread my legs for her again. If I’m honest, I need a break from her divine kisses, because it’s as though every single one of them awakens something more in me—more of what I shouldn’t feel.

Ironically, for the next couple of minutes, I need the respite of this being just sex. Of at least pretending that it is. But I’m too smart to fool myself. Neither my brain nor my body can be tricked into it. Because I already have feelings for her. She wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. And when she kisses her way down, when she wraps her hot lips around my nipple and traces a moist path down my belly, there’s no pretending this is just physical. I let her velvety hair slide through my fingers as she goes lower still, until she’s between my legs.

Her face is obscured by her hair and Jen doesn’t look up as she peppers kisses on my inner thigh, and I’m glad, because apart from another climax, something else builds inside me—something I’m not willing to deal with, but feel nonetheless. A prickling behind my eyes. A thickness in my throat. Like she’s a long-lost love I have to say goodbye to again after this.

Jen doesn’t waste any time and I can feel how much she wants this—wants me—as her tongue touches my clit. I can feel her intentions through the softness with which she licks me.

I let my head fall back and give myself to her, to this unnamed feeling. Jen’s tongue slicks through my wetness, circles my clit, coaxes more pleasure from me. I let go and I let myself have her with an abandon I should not allow myself anymore going forward. Because what I can, hopefully, still trick myself into believing is that we’re only skirting the line now. We can still go back. We can still forget about each other and move on. But that’s for later.

Right now, her tongue takes me to that place where my thoughts stop existing. Where I’m just a body in ecstasy. It’s a lot like dancing with a partner who knows exactly what they’re doing. That singular sensation of floating on air, of your feet, improbably, hovering over the floor with only the tiniest of touches, of two bodies in sync with each other and the music. It’s a lot like having music course through you, every note building on the previous one, taking you somewhere higher, somewhere more intense and gratifying.

By the time I come to—and feel like myself again—I have no earthly idea how many times I came at Jen’s tongue. Judging by how my muscles tremble, definitely more than once. And—oh, no. Is that a tear rolling down my cheek? I swallow whatever sound might come out of my throat next. I should be on cloud nine after that orgasm which might, quite possibly, also have been the climax of my life.

“Hey.” Jen climbs up to me, her lips glistening with my wetness. Her voice is soft and caring and it’s more than enough to elicit another tear from my eyes. Oh, goddamn it. “Are you okay?” she asks, swiping her thumb across my cheek.

I just nod because I’m not sure words can make it past the thickness in my throat. I pull her to me, bury my face in her hair, and hold her until this feeling I’m not familiar with passes. Because surely it will pass. It has to.

“I’m just a sentimental bisexual,” I whisper in Jen’s ear when my voice is working again. I can feel her strain against my arms, but I hold her in place. I’m not ready to look her in the eye again—I’m not sure I won’t start crying again.

“It’s a condition, you know.” Jen’s voice is muffled by my hair. “Crying after coming.”

I release her, happy for the light relief she’s willing to offer. But when she pushes herself up and I look at her face, it’s drawn into an unexpectedly serious expression.

“I forgot the name, but I can look it up for you,” she says.

“I know what it’s called,” I say, willing myself to smile. I’m not crying because I’m sad. It’s something else—something more. “Jennifer St James Syndrome,” I joke. “Only transmissible via your delicious tongue.” Jesus Christ. Maybe I’m being silly as well as a little pathetic in order to make it easy for Jen to leave later. But no.

Jen chuckles. “Damn.” She brings a hand to her still-glistening mouth. “Should I see a doctor about that?”

“Probably.”

“Hey.” Her face transforms again. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asks.

“Yeah, but…” I look at her and I can’t stop myself—not for the fucking life of me—asking the question we already know the answer to. “What if this is something?”

Chapter 23

Jen

When a woman as strong as Clancy breaks down in front of you, right after you’ve licked her to a thunderous climax, it does something to you. It also makes it impossible to answer her question with my guard up. To pretend I’m not feeling something—because, fuck, I am. But still.

“I don’t know,” is all I can reply.

Her cheeks glisten with the remnants of those tears she shed earlier—that took me by surprise but, perhaps, also not. I can still smell her on me. My body’s spent from all the pleasure it has enjoyed. If she hadn’t asked the question, I might have asked it myself.

I lie next to her again, like earlier, when we gazed into each other’s eyes and it felt like the most intoxicating foreplay all over again, as well as an act more intimate than all the sex we’ve already had.

She’s so gorgeous and kind and skilled. Of course, it’s something. Damn, Marcy. This night is the exact opposite of a dud. As if I didn’t know it would be, after that unstoppable locker-room kiss.