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“But you’re nervous,” I state softly.
Her nod is small. “I’m…scared I’m going togetscared in the—in the middle of it.” As her mouth nears mine, her voice grows softer. “I don’t want to be scared with you. I want to be brave.” I feel her palm slide away from my right shoulder, down over the words tattooed on my arm.
I draw a slow breath.
I can’t let the soul-deep compliment in her words overtake me after all. Part of me wants to lay her back and just go, just jump right into making it damn good for her, but the rest of me knows I’d be stupid to think it would be like that. Liv is strong in many ways, but I know so well the ways in which she’s fragile, and what she just told me needs to be handled with care.Sheneeds to be handled with care. And that matters to me because I love her.
So I wrap my arms around her in the most intimate of hugs, and as she closes her arms around my neck, I whisper, “I can talk to you while we try it, if you want. It might keep you with me. Keep you from being scared.”
Our hearts thump between us as she brushes her lips over mine. Shortly, she nods.
“Okay with that?” I check.
“Yes,” she breathes.
I take her face in my hands for a second so I can get a good look at it. Her eyes are unwavering as she nods again, so I draw her mouth onto mine.
For a time, kissing is all we do.
I don’t try to move her, not even to resume what we were doing before; she doesn’t do it either. We just take it easy, enjoy each other’s mouth, let our hands roam. The gentle curve of her back feels so pretty and her skin is so soft, her fingertips so sweet even as they dig into my chest from the close of my lips around her tongue.
The lift and fall of her on me comes naturally, and even though it’s much more languid than a few minutes ago, I love it just the same.
With her chest close to mine and my hands low on her back, I kiss away from her lips and murmur against her cheek, “Why do you want me on top of you, Liv?”
Her palms slide down either side of my spine as she exhales, “I love your body.” At the shift of my mouth, she tilts her head so I can easily press it to her throat. “Mmm…and you. And…maybe it’s stupid, but…I feel like you’d really be making love to me that way.”
I groan; that’s what I’d been thinking earlier. “No, it’s not stupid.”
Our mouths are together again. I marvel at how a kiss can be this relaxed and this passionate at the same time. Her teeth graze my lower lip and I burn so low, so deep, so hot for her that it’s making me sweat.
“I want to lay you down,” I whisper to her.
She nods without pause.
It takes a second to get ready with her straddling me like this, but I manage. I hold her tightly to me with one arm as I lean forward, ease her backward toward the end of the bed, and she puts a hand out to support us like I do. Then she’s on her back, her hair pooled prettily around her head, and I’m above her.
She immediately shuts her eyes and pulls in a shaky breath. I brace myself on one forearm, note how she’s got a hand pressing hard into my back while the other grips the blanket.
I give her a moment before I touch her clenched fingers and say lightly, “Look at me.”
Another moment. Then, swallowing hard, she blinks her eyes open to mine.
“You’re safe with me,” I whisper.
A softening in her expression, a loosening of her muscles as she huffs out a breath.
But even after I get a nod from her, I look at her closely and ask, “Do youfeellike you’re safe with me?”
She looks at me closely, too, and relaxes a little more. Nods again as her hand moves from my back to my hair. The tug of my face toward hers tells me she wants a kiss, so I give her one. She feels mostly steady to me, but not completely; her other fingers let go of the blanket and seek out my arm—‘BE BRAVE’—and I’m both amazed by her and pained for her.
When the kiss ends, I lift my fingers to her cheek and say, “I won’t keep going until you ask me to, okay?”
I finally get a word out of her, breathy and trembling and warm on my lips. “Okay.”
God, the only trembling I want her to do is the good kind. I don’t want her to be nervous.
Tracing her jawline with my fingertips, my face still close to hers, I ask calmly, “Who am I?”
