I kissed him.
Slow. My mouth on his with my eyes open until his closed. His lower lip between both of mine. He tasted of coffee. His mouth was warm, unhesitating, and I stopped thinking about what came next.
I pulled back an inch.
"I want to be closer."
"Then be closer."
I stepped between his knees where he sat. His legs bracketed mine, his hands finding my hips to steady the distance betweenus. He tipped his head back, and I kissed the underside of his jaw, the tendon that shifted when he swallowed.
I reached for the hem of his t-shirt and then waited.
"Yeah," he said.
I pulled it over his head. The fabric caught on his ear, and he huffed a sound that was almost a laugh, the first one I'd heard from him in three weeks.
Heath's chest was bare beneath the kitchen light. I knew his body: the freckles scattered across his shoulders and the bruise on his forearm that continued beneath his shirt as a faded shadow curving along his left side. It was the shape of someone's shoulder from Tuesday's board work.
I put my palm flat against his chest. His heart pounded, steady.
"Keep asking," he said, and covered my hand with his, pressing it harder into his chest.
I leaned down and kissed his collarbone. The hollow at the base of his throat and the ridge of his shoulder where I could still see the faintest discoloration from a crosscheck three weeks ago. I put my lips on the place where it had been and felt his breath stutter.
His fingers swept into my hair and held without pulling. An anchor.
"Your turn," he said against my ear.
He stood. The chair scraped back against the tile. He was still taller than me standing, arms, legs, and sharp angles. He pulled my shirt over my head in one motion, and then his hands landed on my shoulders and traveled down my arms, thumbs pressing along the muscle of my forearms, reading me by feel.
"Bedroom," I said.
The hallway was twelve steps long. He rested his hand on my lower back, warm and steady. The bedroom was dark exceptfor the ambient light of the city and the blue-green glow of Wendell's tank on the nightstand.
We fell onto the bed the way we always did, in an awkward heap. His elbow caught the headboard. My knee pressed into his thigh with enough force that he grunted.
"Furniture still hates us."
"My apartment's worse," Heath said.
"Your apartment is actively hostile. My condo is just indifferent."
He laughed. Short and real, still rough at the edges from weeks of disuse.
I braced above him on one forearm as Heath lay on his back. The light from Wendell's tank washed across his chest in slow blue-green waves. His eyes were dark, pupils dilated, and he was breathing through his mouth now. Slow. Audible.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I want to touch you everywhere. And I want to take my time."
"Then take it."
I started with my mouth on his neck, slow enough to feel his pulse speed up against my lips. His jaw. The spot below his ear where his breath caught when I stayed too long. Down the center of his chest, following the path of the tank light across his skin. He arched into it, his stomach contracting as I kissed below his navel.
I traced the edge of the bruise along his side with my thumb—carefully, reading the border between discoloration and undamaged skin. He flinched once, then settled. Let me explore it. Let me acknowledge what it cost his body to do what it did every night, standing in spaces designed to punish his brand of stubbornness.
I moved lower. Let my hands tell him where I was going before I arrived. When I hooked my fingers under his waistband, I waited.
