He releases a long breath at my nape and his arms come around my shoulders. His forehead grinds against the back of my head.
What happened here?
His lips graze my neck, press hotly on one spot. The gentlest nip that has pleasant shivers shooting. I’m suddenly suspended between two feelings: wanting to understand, and wanting tofold.
“Trent . . .”
Another nibbling kiss travels down the curve of my shoulder. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he answers.
I turn slowly, facing him. He shuts his eyes. Shakes his head. “You’ll run away.”
I bristle. “I haven’t run yet.”
“I’m afraid.”
“You can talk to me about anything.”
His lips sweep along my cheek to my ear. “Please let me keep this a little while?”
I hear his thick swallow.
I feel the vibration of something painful, something too much for him right now.
“Please let me be wrong. Just... just for a while.”
Wrong. Let me be wrong.
Did he mean giving in to these feelings?
Did he mean he must stop them soon but not right away?
Did he mean he just wants to give in to temptation temporarily?
I shiver with a sudden fear. Like under the surface, a big wave is building, awaiting the storm. I’m already losing something I haven’t yet had.
His nose glides over my brow and down mine.
And suddenly I’m grabbing his face, crashing my mouth to his. I’m pressing myself tight. I don’t want him to say it either. Don’t want it to break.
Not today. Let me fold briefly. “Too.”
He inhales sharply, and it sounds like relief. Like breaking the surface after holding breath too long.
His hands slide to the back of my neck, to my jaw, trembling and certain.
The kiss deepens, uneven, a stumble, a gasp, and then like the tapping of his finger to music in his head—a rhythm. Slow, deep, the kind that’s easy to sing over and over.
Salt, the click of teeth. The faint scent of sweat at his collar.
He tastes like I imagined and wanted. Like relief. Like home.
For a heartbeat, there’s no Ika. No Grandpa waiting in the next room. No ghosts.
There’s just us. The soft click of our mouths and the roughness of stubble, and the warm press of skin after so much distance.
I clutch his shirt, pulling him closer until the fabric twists in my hand.
He presses his forehead to mine, both of us rocking, unsteady.
