Page 110 of Her Wicker Guardian

He thinks about that for a moment, then nods. “Okay.”

No disappointment. No argument. No attempt to negotiate me into more.

His hand simply stays warm at my waist until I’m the one who steps back.

I make it as far as the sink before he says my name.

“Rachel.”

I turn. He hasn’t moved from the counter.

“Slowly,” he says, as if he’s filing the word away. Then: “Later?”

It’s the same word he used outside the shower that first day, when I told him privacy was a conversation for another time. He waited for that one too.

“Yes,” I tell him. “Later.”

For the rest of the afternoon, every time I look at his mouth, I remember the fresh green taste of him and exactly how much I wanted to keep going. And every time, I catch him looking at mine.

Chapter Nineteen

Locke

I wake on the couch with Rachel’s mouth still vivid in my memory. Not the first tentative kiss, but the last one, when neither of us was trying to figure out whether we wanted it anymore. Her hand at the back of my neck. Her body pressed close to mine. The sweet taste of her mouth still tangled with the warmth of her against me.

I lie still beneath the blanket I don’t need but like the soft feel of it. I remember her body, her hands, her kiss until I become aware of another sensation.

I am hard again. Yesterday, in Rachel’s kitchen, she gave me the word erection. She explained that it was something a male body could do when sexually aroused, and when I asked what sexually aroused meant, she told me it was my body responding because something felt really good to me. Something I wanted.

Wanting was the part I understood. This morning, there is no question what I want.

The cottage is still dim, the curtains holding back most of the early light. The television is dark across the room. Upstairs is quiet. I remember one hand against my shoulder, another sliding higher along my chest when she kissed me the second time. Her body pressed close enough that I could feel warmth through our clothes. Her lips parting beneath mine after I learned that a kiss did not have to remain the same from beginning to end.

My erection grows harder while I think about her.

I push the blanket down and look at myself. My penis has lifted away from my body, longer and much firmer than it is at rest, the living weave drawn tight enough that even the shape has changed. The fine strands that lie nearly smooth when I’m soft have tightened, raising shallow overlapping ridges along the length of me. I run my fingers over them, curious about another change I hadn’t known my body could make. I don’t know why being aroused makes the texture more pronounced, but it clearly changes more than the length and firmness of me.

When I’ve taken showers, I’ve touched myself because I was learning my body. Then I was more interested in what I was made of than in how the touching felt.

This morning, I know the sensation has something to do with her, and that changes the touching. I wrap my hand around myself carefully. Pleasure moves through me so sharply on the first stroke that my hips shift against the couch. I stop, surprised less by what I feel in my penis than by how far the response travels. The rhythm at the center of my chest strengthens, heat spreads through my stomach and hips, and the finer living strands give beneath my palm.

I loosen my grip and try again. Sliding my hand feels better than holding still. I draw my palm slowly from the base toward the tip, feeling the fine weave give beneath my hand, then stroke back again. The sensation spreads through me in a way water does not, in a way Rachel’s thumb against my forearm did not, although something about all three feels connected.

The next time I close my eyes, Rachel is there. Not Rachel standing in the kitchen or carrying coffee into the yard. Rachel close enough that I felt her breath against my mouth. Rachel saying yes when I asked whether I could kiss her. Rachel’s fingers curling around the back of my neck.

My hand moves again, and the pleasure sharpens. A low vibration travels through my abdomen, not loud enough to become a sound but strong enough that I feel it through my hand. My hips follow the next stroke deliberately.

I want to keep going. More than that, I want to know what happens if I do. Something is building inside me now, the pleasure gathering and tightening until I can tell my body is moving toward something I have not experienced before.

Then another thought arrives. I want Rachel.

Not only her mouth. I want her hand where mine is, to know whether the feeling changes when she’s the one touching me. I want to see her face while she does it, and I want to find out what makes her breathe differently when my hands are on her. I don’t only want to know what it feels like. I want Rachel to be part of it, and that realization makes me stop moving my hand.

For several breaths, I lie here with my fingers still wrapped around myself and the unfinished sensation pulsing through me. Nothing prevents me from continuing. I want to continue, but I want something else more. Whatever happens at the end of that rising pleasure, I do not want my first discovery of it to happen alone on Rachel’s couch.

Slowly, I let go and pull the blanket back over my hips. My erection remains, which seems both inconvenient and unfair, but eventually the tension eases. By the time I hear Rachel moving upstairs, I have learned two useful things: I can make myself feel very good, and I would rather find out how good Rachel can make me feel.

Footsteps cross overhead, and I smile before I realize I am doing it.