He took a long time to say, “I can do that.”
She swallowed hard on a lump of emotion. “I need your arms around me and your body close.”
He took another step forward, a hand outstretched. She reached for him, then stopped. “I need to hear your voice.”
His breathed jagged. “It’s not the same.” He dropped his arm.
“No, but it’s yours, so it doesn’t matter what it sounds like, it only matters that it comes from you.”
He groaned and the sound hitched, stuck in his throat, making him cough. “Oh God, Georgia, always on my mind.”
They moved together, crashing into each other inside her doorway. She buried her face in his neck, felt his pulse hammering wildly under her cheek. Her arms were around his neck, his hands roved her body, palms flat, fingers spread and gripping like he was testing to see she was all there.
He curled a hand in her hair and s
he lifted her face to his. “Everything hurts, Georgia, every fucking thing.”
She would kiss him better. She would help him mourn. She would give him back his sense of self the best way she knew how: with time, with care, with patience, with love. He was worth it. The way he made her feel made it so.
She pulled free, drew him further inside and shut the door. She took his hand and led him down the hall, but he propped outside her bedroom. She put her hand to his face. “What do you need?”
“To feel you, all of you. To know you forgive me.”
They had to talk, they had to prod at his hurt and expose his fear. She had to spill hers. They had to find each other in this different place and that needed words, full sentences, whole lines of dialogue said without a script, untimed, unrehearsed and shouted raw.
He put his hand over hers. “Please.”
She would lose herself in him; lose this moment to start a correction. “Damon—”
“I need you so fucking much.” His whole body pulsed with tension, but he did nothing to draw her in. He was letting her choose.
There was no choice.
She kissed his throat and a hard breath punched out of him. She went to her toes and kissed his lips, her hands going around his neck. He pressed back, but gently as if he was afraid to let go. His apprehension and hesitancy flayed her almost as much as his distance had done. They were the same and they were alien things, lodged in the heart of her hero. She would be his priest and exorcise them.
She dug her fingers into his hair and dragged his face down to hers, caught his lips and grazed them with her teeth, tongue following to wet, to trace, to plunder his mouth. He groaned as he took, as he gave, hands to her backside, his hips rolling, pressing their need together.
Both of them were blind, bouncing off the wall, stumbling through the bedroom door. Georgia whacked her elbow on the dresser and grunted, Damon backed her into the wardrobe, knocking the sliding door off its track, she pushed him towards the bed and he sat quickly pulling her with him half laughing, half groaning, letting go and taking control.
His hands roamed her body, plucked at her shirt. “What are you wearing?”
She wore hope and anticipation, belted by trust and daringly exposing her need to be loved by him. “Black leather corset, red suede mini, no underwear.” She flicked her tongue to his ear. “Come fuck me shoes.”
Another breath punched out of him, one hand going under her shirt, over her plain t-shirt bra, yanking it down to cup and mould her breast, the other tracing up the leg of her jeans, drawing her knee up so she was braced over him.
“How did I think I could live without you?” She felt his words said on sand and grit trickle through her abdomen, curling, cramping, making her scramble to slide her core on the hard ridge of him, bucking and breathing in gasps.
He sat, lips to her neck, stinging. Hands to the bottom of her shirt, lifting. He stripped her shirt, bra, defences. She was less his priest than his brainwashed devotee. When he sucked at her nipple and eased deft fingers through her zipper, past her underwear, inside her, she’d have turned sacrifice for him.
He flipped them, bouncing her on the bed, hovering over her, hands easing her jeans off her hips, down her legs, stopping to unzip her boots and pull them free with her socks, with her pants. He threw his head back and breathed deep, of her, of how her need for him smelled; not smoky, heady church incense, but worshipful all the same.
She’d felt withered by his turning away, but now she felt plump, moist, ripe to bursting. He stood and shed his own clothes and she stared at him as though it was the first time, as though she didn’t know his taste and smell, the places on his body that were sensitive to her tongue and touch, could make him tense and jerk and writhe; as though she hadn’t marked him with teeth and nails, with the salt of her tears and the juices of her body, staining him like he’d drawn indelibly on her.
He looked down at her. “I want all the colours of you.”
He could have colour charts and paint palettes, all the textures and patterns of the universe if he touched her.
He took a foot in his hand, thumb brushing back and forth over her toenails, his expression intense. “I want all the scars and freckles, the blemishes, the tones. I want to know it all.”