I sit up and pull my shirt off because I want to feel the air on my skin while I say this. I want to be uncovered.
"The day I almost drowned," I say. "When the water was over my head and I couldn't breathe and the bar was getting smaller and smaller, I wasn't sad about dying. I was sad about you. About this." I put my hand on his chest. "About the life I almost had. I was in the water thinking I'm going to die and I never told you how I felt. I never let you hold me. I neverclosed those six feet. And then you came. You came running into the water like a maniac and you told me to wrap myself around you and I did and you were—"
My voice breaks and I breathe through it.
"You were the steadiest thing I've ever felt. In the middle of a rip current, with the waves crashing over us, I was safer than I'd ever been in my life. Because I was holding onto you and you had me."
Tex sits up to pull his own shirt off. The moonlight through the window catches the planes of his chest, the dark hair, the ink on his shoulders.
"Come here," he says.
"Wait, I need to say one more thing. Actually, two more things. The first thing is that I stole your shirt and put it under my pillow. I realize that's weird, but when I couldn't sleep sometimes, I would touch your shirt or smell it. Then I'd remember that I didn't need to be afraid of you. You were safe and you smelled good too. When I started sleeping in here with you, I washed the shirt and put it back in your closet."
He reaches over to push my hair back from my forehead and waits.
"The second thing is that you're so careful with me," I say. "So gentle. You hold yourself above me in bed like you're afraid of crushing me. You touch me like I'm breakable. You always give me room to move, room to leave, room to breathe. And I love you for that. I love you for every inch of space you've given me. But Tex, I need to say something."
I take his face in my hands. Both hands, palms on his beard, fingers behind his ears. I look into his brown eyes.
"You don't have to be careful anymore. I know you would never hurt me. I know you would never force me to doanything. I know that in my body, not just my head. My body knows you're safe. It figured it out before my brain did."
His eyes are wet and he's holding so still like he always does.
"I'm giving you permission to touch me. Really touch me the way you want to. Not hovering. Not holding back. I want your hands on me, Tex. All the way. I want to feel how strong you are. I love knowing how strong and big you are. I want you to stop treating me like I'll break. I won't break. I'm the toughest thing you've ever met and we both know it."
A sound comes out of him. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, you are."
"Show me how you want to touch me."
The leash he's been holding himself on, the restraint he's kept between his desire and his hands since the first day, loosens. I watch it happen. I watch weeks of careful, patient, agonizing control release in a single breath.
He moves fast and his hands come up and grip my waist and he pulls me into his lap, hard, decisive, no hovering, no hesitation. My legs wrap around him and his hands are on my bare back and his fingers are spread wide. He's not gentle. He's not rough, he'd never be rough, but he's not gentle. He's present. He's fully here with his full strength and his full size. His hands are pressing me against him as if he's finally letting himself.
I grab his face and I kiss him.
I kiss him like the dam is breaking, like everything I've been holding back is pouring through me at once, and he meets me there. His mouth opens under mine, and the kiss is deep and hot and hungry. His tongue finds mine and the taste of him floods my senses until there's nothing else.
His hands move. Up my back, his palms flat, feeling every vertebra, every rib, every inch of skin. Down to my hips, his fingers pressing into the hollows above my waistband. He pulls my hips against his and I feel him through the denim, hard and hot. I grind into him and his head falls back. The sound he makes from his throat vibrates through his chest into mine.
"God, Stormy." His voice is destroyed. Raw and low and coming from somewhere primal. "You feel so good. You have no idea how long I've wanted to hold you like this."
I push him backward. He goes, falling back on the mattress, and I follow him down, my body on top of his, chest to chest, skin to skin where our shirts are gone and denim to denim where they're not. I kiss his neck, his jaw, the spot below his ear that makes his hips buck. I drag my teeth along his shoulder and he hisses. His hands grab my ass and pull me harder against him. The friction through the jeans is maddening.
"Off," I say, pulling at his waistband. "These need to be off."
He lifts his hips. I yank his jeans down and he kicks them away. I strip mine off and then we're skin to skin, everything, the full length of our bodies pressed together. The heat of him against me, the hardness of him against my hip, his thigh between my legs, is overwhelming. My nerve endings are on fire. Every point of contact is a live wire.
I work my way down his body. I know the path now. I know the roadmap of him, which spots make him gasp, which ones make him swear, which ones make his hands fist in the sheets. His chest, his stomach, the V of his hips. I take my time because I want to. Because taking my time with his body is aluxury I never thought I'd have and I'm going to savor every second of it.
When I take him in my mouth, he groans loudly. His hand comes to the back of my head and this time he doesn't just rest it there. He grips. His fingers tight in my hair, and the weight of his hand on my head sends a bolt of heat through me.
"Your mouth," he manages. "Stormy, your mouth is... I can't... you're going to kill me."
I pull off. I look up at him from his waist. His chest is heaving, his stomach clenching, his eyes dark and half-shut and fixed on me.
"Not yet," I say. "I'm not done with you."
I go back to it. Deeper this time. Finding the rhythm that makes his body arch, that makes the sounds come faster and louder. I lose myself in the power of it, the intoxicating, addictive power of making this enormous man fall apart with my mouth. His thighs tremble under my hands. His breathing fractures into gasps. His hand tightens in my hair and his hips start to move, small involuntary thrusts that he tries to control and can't.
