He splayed his hands over her ribs.
“More than that,” she chastened.
And so he slipped his hands beneath her sweatshirt, still heavy and damp from the river. One hand wrapped around the small of her back and tugged her close to keep her from falling off the cot. The other sculpted upward, and Eva sighed as he relearned the soft plane of her stomach and the valley between her breasts, aching from the pleasure she found in his touch.
The air between them pressurized with desire.
“Kiss me,” Eva husked.
Arthur moved at a glacial pace in the dark, so careful even now, making Eva’s body tense with anticipation. It was better that she couldn’t fully see him. Instead of becoming self-conscious, Eva felt grounded and present. She touched the soft give of Arthur’s beard under her fingertips, the edge of a sharp jaw underneath. She heard the catch and pull of his breath, so honest and rough it made her breath catch too.
Wanting was contagious.
Arthur’s kiss left the taste of rain on her lips. It settled her nerves. Glaciers were slow, but they carved whole valleys with their movements. So did he. Arthur took Eva’s face in his hands, pressing his lips worshipfully to the corners of her eyes. When a tear slipped free, Arthur caught it on his tongue, a low hum radiating from his chest.
He felt so good.
Eva’s shoulders dropped, and she wound her arms around his neck.
As a girl, she’d lived on folktales. They were the water to her family’s roots, and she’d grown up on stories of bargains and broken hearts. Even Dad’s stories often ended in tragedy. When she was young, Eva thought it terribly romantic to love what you were destined to lose.
Now she called bullshit. It was easy to say that you’d die for someone, but what Eva really wanted was the kind of love that stood its ground when things got difficult, the kind of love that chose to live.
For years, she’d fed her anger to survive, picturing her heart like a garden made to wither in the cold, and she’d blamed Arthur for killing the part of her that had believed in their story.
But his touch awakened something in her again.
As Arthur moaned into the skin of her neck, pressing his lips to her body and making goose bumps erupt down her arms, Eva wondered if maybe she’d been wrong all this time. Gardens never really die, after all. Seeds lie dormant, and soil goes fallow, all in the faith that one day, when the conditions are right, it will bloom again.
Eva crossed her arms and pulled the damp and dirt-stained sweatshirt over her head, leaving her in nothing but a sports bra and his boxers.
Arthur let out a breathless laugh. “I’m so glad you decided to sleep in those.”
“I needed shorts,” she said defensively. “It was only meant to be for one night.”
“I’m not complaining.” He ran a finger over the top of thewaistband, sending a shiver across her skin. “You are so beautiful, Ev.”
Warmth rushed over her skin. “Fever again?”
“Fever wouldn’t make me a liar.”
True. If anything, Arthur seemed to be letting more things slip. At least he had an excuse. Eva didn’t know what had come over her to explain the words tripping from her lips. “I missed you too, you know.”
Arthur groaned, slanting his mouth over hers again.
The energy in the room seemed to shift, a sudden uptick of urgency underlying every new touch. Eva’s restraint was unspooling by the second, every press and catch of his lips undoing her, shaping her, rebuilding her into something new. She clumsily helped Arthur out of his shirt. He was shivering, his clothes too damp on his chilled skin. She needed to get him warm.
Arthur lifted the sports bra over her head. The physical relief turned to pleasure as he warmed a path across her collarbone with his lips. The reverent brush of his fingertips up the curve of her breast was enough to drive Eva mad. An ache gathered between her legs. When his thumb brushed her nipple, she gasped, and he licked the hollow of her throat.
“So fucking beautiful,” he murmured.
Eva loved his dirty mouth. She tipped her head up, letting her eyes briefly close as she rolled her hips, seeking the relief of friction.
It was strange how this moment straddled the line between known and new, the past and the present colliding with simple shocks of touch. Eva had plenty of stolen memories she’d created with Arthur in every corner of her family cottage, the greenhouse, even the Honey Shoppe. He’d made his mark on every place that mattered to her.
Maybe that was why his absence had been such a ghost, haunting her through the years.
The cot was too narrow for Eva to stretch out the way her body craved, so she planted her hands on the wall instead. Moss softened under her palms, growing in the dark. Arthur gripped her waist.
