Mouth to mouth, she says, “Bite my lip. I’ll heal quick.”
He hesitates but kisses her again, skimming his teeth on her bottom lip.
“Harder, you baby.”
Ever so slightly James bites down, drawing blood, the ink bitter on his tongue. Nelle reaches up to touch the wound. He is sure he hurt her, but instead of crying out, she takes her ink-covered fingertip and traces it across his chest. Halfway through, she taps her lip again, reopening the cut. When she finishes writing, she steps back to admire her work.
Nelle makes love to Jamesis scrawled in a sloppy line beneath his collarbone.
“Ignore the handwriting,” she says. “Haven’t had much practice.”
“Are you sure about this?” he asks. “What if it’s not the right—”
Nelle grabs his jaw and kisses him. “Fuck theright moment, James.”
She pulls him uphill, only he must be heavier than she expected because her feet start sliding on the grass. Laughter bursts out as James wraps his arms around her waist, wheezing in camaraderie.
Back in the cottage, their footprints tracking wet grass across the floor, James lifts her up. Her legs lock around him, wet skin to skin, as he walks them into the master bedroom and lays Nelle on the bed. She stares up at him, brown eyes like opals in the shadows.
His lips brush the nook behind her jaw. “I’ve wanted you for so long.”
He trails down her collarbone while he awaits her response, his tongue grazing the curve of her breast, and she lets out a ticklish gasp. She is cold and wet. A dessert he can’t get enough of but wants to savor.
“How long?” She lifts her neck.
“Since New York.” He kisses where she wants, right behind her ear. “Since the rooftop.”
His mouth slides to the shadow of her navel, farther, featherlight brushes down the slope of her pelvis. He holds her waist with one hand, her breast with the other, as his tongue finds her center, flickering over flesh.
“Holy shit.” Nelle’s back arches, her fingers curling into the bedsheets.
“How long have you wantedme?” James’s hands tighten on her thighs, lifting her.
“Since the night I fell in love with you.” Her nails dig ten indentions into his scalp, and she tilts back into the pillows.
James wants her so bad, he can’t stand it, a coil so tightly wound inside him, he is worried it will unravel prematurely. He didn’t know it was possible to love someone with such conviction.
“What night was that?” he asks as her fingers curl through his hair.Touch me more.
“The night of the house fire,” she whispers. “The night we ran off together.”
He loses himself in the taste of her and nearly comes himself when she does, thighs like an iron vise around his head. She shudders, digs her heels into the mattress. Breathless, James wipes his mouth.
Without warning, Nelle grabs the back of his neck and pulls him up, eye to eye. Her lips are lake water and salt and ink, her tongue like a live wire.
“I can’t imagine ever having not loved you,” he says.
Nelle flips him onto his back. She kisses his jaw. His body arches upward into her touch, a need to feel her skin burn against his. Her tongue on his neck. Nelle kisses his throat, the curve of his chest, down his stomach. He sees her hair and the dark bedroom before his world splits into oblivion—
She doesn’t take him but kisses him. Featherlight, treating that part of him with the same adoration she has shown the rest of his body. As she looks up at him from between his legs, her back arches, tan from the beach in southern France. He glimpses the smooth curve of her ass. Blond hair draping his inner thighs.
Her voice is low. “I want you, James.”
“Fuck,” he whispers, pulling her up against him.
Chest to chest, he turns her onto her back and positions himself.
“I know you said you can’t get pregnant, but—”
