When I press my mouth to her breast she inhales sharply and her grip tightens in my hair. I suck her nipple into my mouth, learning what makes her breath stutter, what makes her shoulders drop, what makes her go up on her toes slightly as if she could get closer than she already is.
I smile against her skin. “Like that,” I whisper.
“Yes,” she murmurs, “but I’m ready for more.”
“How much more?”
“I want… everything. I want you, Cal.”
I lay her back against the mattress and move over her, bracing on one forearm. The amber light catches the line of her collarbone, the curve of her ribs, the pale skin of her stomach. I take that in. I want to remember it exactly. Then I kiss her mouth again while my free hand traces a slow line from her ribs to the waistband of her hiking pants. Her stomach tightens under my palm.
I undo the button. Pull the zipper. Work the pants down over her hips and off, and her socks with them.
She giggles. “My feet are ticklish.”
"Sorry," I say.
"Don't be." She's still smiling when I kiss her again.
She's left in just a small scrap of cotton panties, and I trace the edge of them with one finger before I take them off too. She lifts her hips to help me, cooperative and unhurried, and I sit back and look at her stretched out in the amber light. The full length of her. The particular way she looks back at me — like she's not in any rush, like she's comfortable being seen — undoes me in a way I wasn't prepared for.
"Cal." My name in her mouth, with that specific edge on it.
"I know," I say. "I've got you."
I kiss down her stomach, trace the jut of her hip with my thumb, and take my time finding my way to her pussy. She goes still for a moment — that sharp, held-breath stillness — and then isn't still at all. Her hips tilt toward me. Her hands fist in the sheets. I kiss the center of her, carefully, circling her clit with my tongue. The sounds she makes are low and unguarded and I feel each one like a hand closing around my throbbing cock.
When she comes apart on my tongue, she comes apart completely. Her whole body, her voice, nothing held back. I stay with her until she's finished, until the tension drains out of her and she sags back against the mattress with a long exhale.
She's still catching her breath when she reaches down and pulls me up by the back of my neck. Kisses me hard. Her hands move over me with intention now — jaw, throat, shoulders, chest, like she's mapping things she plans to draw later.
I strip off what's left of my own clothes. She watches me do it with hungry eyes. Then I come back to her, and I take a moment to look at her again. Just because I can.
When I finally sink into her we both go still.
Her eyes open and find mine.
"Okay?" I ask.
"Very," she says.
I move slowly at first, watching her face, learning what makes her breath catch and what makes her pull me closer. She is not passive about it. She tells me with her hands, with the angle of her hips, with the pressure of her heel against the back of my thigh, and once — quietly, directly — with actual words. A specific request to go harder, deeper. I'm only too glad to fulfill it. I adjust, and she arches up into me, and the unhurried pace we started with begins to slip.
I press my forehead to hers when it builds too high to hold. Her hand finds my face in the dark. She says my name again, rough and certain, and I'm gone — both of us, at the samemoment — which has never happened with anyone, but which feels entirely inevitable with Alice.She’s absolutely perfect in every way.
Afterward she lies with her cheek against my chest, her hand flat over my heartbeat. I stare at the ceiling while my pulse slows.
"I came here to finish a book," she says eventually.
"I know.”
"I did not anticipate this."
"No." I pause. "Neither did I."
“I’m glad you found me.”
“Me too, sweetheart. Me too.”
