She was a trembling, shaking wreck when he rolled the singlet over her hips, under her bum and down her legs, laying a trail o
f kisses as he went. Doing the same with her undies gave her the worst case of what is going on with me. How was that act almost enough to make her come with no stimulation at all?
When he yanked her down the bed and went to his knees on the floor between her legs, used his thumbs to open her up, she nearly kneed him in the head, trying to what? Get close and get away at the same time.
“Sorry. I’m sorry.” She snapped her knees closed and sat, and when he lay his head on her thigh and simply stroked over her calf, she folded over him, resting her cheek on his back.
“Too much?” he said.
“I don’t know why I’m so—” What even was the word for how she felt? There had to be a word for when you thought you might die of anticipation. When you thought you might cry from too much emotion. It was embarrassing. “You don’t need to stop. I’m not going to pass out,” she said, trying to make this his problem.
He saw right through that and wasn’t buying. “If it helps, I feel a little out of my depth too. My hands were shaking just then.”
She kissed his temple, put her nose in his hair. “I want you so badly, but there are so many memories.”
“For me they’re all good.”
She tried to get her arms around as much of him as possible. “It can’t be the same.” That was the issue. In her heart, she’d never given him up and now the impossibility of him was a cliff she might plunge over.
He pulled away, resting a hand on her foot and looking up at her, eyes heavy-lidded, hair standing up all over, cheeks roughed with whisker shadows, and so dear to her she didn’t believe she wouldn’t ruin this.
“It doesn’t have to be,” he said, moving his hand from her foot to grip her ankle, then opening her leg out, nudging her knee aside. “It can be better.”
If by better he meant that she dropped back to the bed and surrendered, that she came twice from the devious way he talked to her body, wrangling secrets with his lips, dissecting lies with the gentle pressure of his teeth, and healing over old psychic wounds with delicious sucks on tender flesh—he wasn’t wrong.
And he wasn’t wrong when he flipped her limp body over to her knees, growled possessively over her butterflies and slipped his cock between her legs, dragging it against her wetness but making no attempt to enter her.
“Want this more than I want to sing another note, Evie,” he said, biting her shoulder, making her elbows buckle. “Missed you so fucking much. Hated you for too long. Give me your damn mouth.”
His gruffness made her moan. Between them they were dripping onto the sheet and she could barely remember what year it was, but she’d hated him too and that was too close to loving him and she needed to make new mistakes, not repeat old ones.
“This is all we get.” She used one hand to balance and the other to bracket his cock against her vulva, feeling his shudder right up her spine as he started to move.
“Jesus, Evie.” He lifted away from her back, took hold of her hips and jerked his. “How is this so fucking good?”
Not hate, not love. Some limbo in between like the sex they were having, built on lust, spiked by denial and respect, and pushing all the limits of pleasure.
“Come, Jay,” she said squeezing him, hand slippery, eyes down to watch, enjoying the bite of his fingers on her hips.
He came with a roar, filling her hand, spilling onto the sheet, dripping sweat onto her back. She had a moment of hoping the motel had added a mattress protector to the new bed before he pulled her onto his lap, arms banded around her, one at her waist, one between her breasts, hand against her throat to hold her head to his shoulder.
“You okay,” he said, smoke in his voice, possession in his hands, the heat of his chest against her back, luscious. She could feel his heart thudding, his lungs laboring.
She ruffled his hair and rubbed her face against his. “I’m very okay.” She managed to sound as if she hadn’t needed him more than air.
He kissed her shoulder. “You make my head spin.” Rested his lips there.
“In a good way?”
“Hard to tell,” he said, kissing her neck, which she gave him more access to by dropping her chin, sighing as he shifted her hair and nibbled along her sweaty hairline. He made her feel floaty, as if she might drift to the ceiling if he wasn’t holding her down.
As if she’d been drifting the whole time he wasn’t in her life, holding her.
But she couldn’t tell him that. She closed her eyes and leaned into his strength and when he rearranged them so he sat, leaning against the headboard, his legs outstretched, she sat between them, lounging back on him.
“A, D and E?” He took her hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing the notes inked between her fingers.
She could easily pretend that wasn’t a question in his voice and give it a non-answer. “Your basic three chord classic rock combo.” Had that ink done the night after she slept with a man who wasn’t Jay. Not in celebration for finally moving on. In grief.