“Please,” I add. A word I don’t use often enough.
She moves toward me in inches, braced for punishment. One wrong move from me and she’ll bolt.
I don’t rush her. I wait until she’s close enough, then wrap my arms around her and pull her in. She goes rigid for one heartbeat, then two, and then her walls collapse. She folds into me, her face buried in the crook of my neck, her whole body trembling.
I hold her. One hand in her hair, the other banded around her waist. Her tears fall hot on my skin.
“You’re safe,” I murmur into her hair. “I’ve got you. No one will ever touch you that way again. I swear on my life.”
She grips my side, holding on, crying silently. No wails, no loud sobs, just years of grief pouring out in silence.
I press my mouth to her hair and let her fall apart. I’ll hold every broken piece of her together if that’s what she needs from me.
Minutes pass—five or thirty, I can’t tell. Her shaking subsides. Her breathing calms. She stays pressed into me,and I keep my arms locked around her. I will not be the one to let go.
She lifts her face. Our mouths are inches apart.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
I brush a tear off her cheek with my thumb. Her skin is damp and softer than anything a man with my hands has a right to touch.
The moment stretches and shifts into a different register.
I lean in, giving her every opportunity to turn away.
She doesn’t.
I kiss her.
It’s not the chaste press of lips from the ceremony. This kiss has teeth. I take her mouth slowly, tasting the salt of her tears, coaxing her lips apart. She makes a sound—surprise, need, surrender—and her hands slide up to my shoulders, fingers digging in.
I deepen the kiss. She responds with a hunger that floors me. Her tongue meets mine, uncertain at first, then bolder, and the moan she releases into my mouth urges me on.
I pull back enough to see her face. Her eyes are glazed, her lips wet and parted.
“Don’t stop,” she says.
“Are you sure?”
“I want... I don’t know what I want. But I don’t want you to stop touching me.”
I again have to remind myself to take this slow. I shouldn’t rush things. We’re married now. We have time. The last thing I want is for her to think she has to fuck me out of some misplaced sense of gratitude.
“I’d like to pleasure you tonight without us fully consummating this marriage. If you’ll let me.”
She searches my face. “Okay.”
“Okay.” I kiss her again, deeper and longer, pressing her into the pillows as I settle over her and brace my weight on my forearms. “Tell me if you want to stop. At any point. Understood?”
“Yes.”
I kiss down her jaw, along her throat. I press my mouth where her pulse races—fast, alive.
My hand slides under the hem of my t-shirt. Palm flat on her stomach, skin on skin. She sucks in a breath, her muscles jumping at the contact.
“Still okay?”
“Yes.”
