Oh God oh shit oh dear. I’m lost…
He stands abruptly, and thesquonkof the bench sliding back startles me. Our gazes fix on each other. I remember all the things we talked about over dinner, hundreds of details we shared, each like a pebble in that fable about the crow and the pitcher of water. We dropped them into a place seemingly inaccessible, raising our level higher and higher until it became… well, whatever this is. Something we can reach, something to quench a long thirst we’ve both had.
“Hey, Sandy,” I manage.
“Hey, Salvi.” He sidesteps to where I’m sitting and positions himself between my thighs. His hands comb through my hair. His dark-pewter eyes are intense, but I see how he’s fightingto appear aloof. With a defeated moan, he lowers his face to the curve of my neck. His breath is warm and alive, and when I grip his hair in both hands, I feel more than hear his small gasp.
“Don’t go,” he says.
Cautiously, I echo the words. “Don’t go?”
He shakes his head against my neck, like a child waking from a dream.
“I’m staying all night.”
“That’s not what I mean.” His words touch my skin as gently as snow.
I pull back, and the expression on his face is just this side of despair, like he fears he’s said too much. I nibble at the inside of my cheek, deliberating. “I really,reallywant to kiss you,” I admit.
He strokes one curled knuckle under my chin. “I know why you’d deny me, but why would you deny yourself?”
Guiding my head up, he leans to brush my lower lip with a touch of his upper. The sensation gives me goose bumps in the best way. I dig my fingers into his shoulders and switch the angle of my head to meet him again. The second kiss is longer, but still tentative for us both. The third is a passing slide, lips still closed, like we’re charting a blueprint of each other and don’t want to miss a single line.
I pull back an inch. “This is actually a great idea.”
“Brilliant,” he murmurs. His smoky gray eyes flick from one of mine to the other; then he closes the distance between us. My mouth softens, and when his tongue touches mine, I whimper like a stupid kid who’s never been kissed before. Iweave my hands into his hair and go in deeper, testing and teasing him, searching, tasting the forbidden mouth that I’ve been dying for so long to kiss.
When we pause, I whisper, “Fuck, I’m glad you’re good at this…” and he chuckles, giving my lower lip a bite, then soothing the spot with a tender lick before closing in again.
I can’t tell if we stay like this for a minute or an hour, exploring each other in a way that’s both desultory and half starved, but finally he lifts me and heads toward the bedroom. I’m raking his hair, lost in the skill of his mouth, our kisses ranging from restrained, taunting nibbles to deep plunges like we’re mining for our own damned souls somewhere down there.
He carries me into the hallway, where we bump the wall in the middle of a particularly intense kiss. He pushes me against the cool stucco and when I unwind my legs from his waist to put them on the floor, he makes a small, pained noise and murmurs, “Stay…” against my mouth, lifting me so we don’t break the momentum.
After another minute, he pulls back and studies me. The velvet light on him is so goddamned pretty, he’s like a Dutch Golden Age painting. I resist the urge to say one of my usual cavalier, horny things. I study him right back. Every freckle, the curve of his nostrils, the glint of light in his left eye, the white scar on the opposite eyebrow.
I trace my forefinger over the smooth, pale interruption. “Looks like a Morse code letter A,” I whisper. “Dit, dah…”
He kisses me, a ghost of a skim across my lips. “The beginning of a message. You’ll have to stick around to decipher the rest.”
Our mouths find each other again, and he moves us into the bedroom. What’s left of our clothes are peeled off and tossed, and we tumble onto the mattress in an urgent tangle, hands everywhere, as if we’re afraid that anything not being touched might disappear.
Rising over me on his beautifully corded arms, Alexander murmurs, “My bed will never look right again without you in it.”
There are a dozen clever replies on my tongue, but for some reason it feels like eleven too many. Right now I wantonething to say, and the right person to say it to, but… fuck, seriously? What the hell is happening to me? It’s almost intimidating to look at him, I’m feeling so much.
“That,” I tell him, pinching one of his nipples in an irreverent way, “is very corny.”
“But true.” He moves a knee to part my thighs and begins a leisurely trip down my body, his lips visiting every plane and curve.
It feels amazing, like he’s painting dabs of pleasure-static all over me. My body is taut with anticipation, and he responds so naturally to my subtlest cues—a muscle tensing, a slight intake of breath—elevating me to a state of longing I can barely stand.
“Why are you making me wait?” I groan.
“Why are you making me rush?” he serves back, amused.
When he kisses his way down the sensitive valley between my leg and mons, I nudge him with my thigh and start to sit up and scoot back. “Not to be discouraging, but you probably won’t get me off like that. Don’t, uh, be bummed if we can’t hit the mark.”
Sex-wise, there’s not much that’s as annoying as a guy who decides it’s his life’s work to make you come from oral even though he’s mediocre at it, and then seems hurt when it doesn’t happen. Usually only girls do it right, probably because they understand the landscape better.
