I blink up at him, then close my eyes again and shake my head, feel those fingers stroke, patient and soothing, against me. Of course he’d know. Of course he can read every code, every sign my body leaves for him.
“I’m not.”
“Don’t hide from me,” he says, and I open my eyes, look up at his triple-take face, set in patient determination.
He’ll protect you, I remind myself.This is practice.This is staying.
“I’m not easy,” I tell him, wrapping my arms around his waist, my fingers trailing up those fanned-out muscles, a big, blank canvas for the nervous, directionless loops I draw there. “I mean that it’s . . . not always easy for me to finish. To come.”
I’ve worked up the courage to tell exactly two men this before. The first was after the third time I had sex with my high school boyfriend, an excruciating conversation that mostly included him asking me impatient questions I didn’t know the answers to, all of them some version of “What should I do different?” as though I could produce an annotated diagram about my anatomy when I’d barely had enough sexual experiences to know the basics. Eventually, frustrated with my own limited vocabulary and his sullen, perfunctory responses, I’d simply stopped expecting to finish—with him or with the handful of guys I dated after him.
The second was a guy I’d gone out with two years ago, so sweet and kind and attentive on all of our dates until that one, when I’d told him and he’d said, with an undeserved, confident smirk on his face, “It’s only because you haven’t been with me yet, baby.”
I’d texted Sibby with our this-is-a-bad-date signal and three minutes later, she’d called to pretend she had an emergency that I absolutelyhadto leave to help her with.
I never saw him again.
But Reid, he doesn’t say anything at all at first. He only plants his hand back on the mattress and bends his head to kiss me again, his hair falling over his brow to tickle pleasantly across my forehead—another soothing, delicate touch.
“Okay,” he says simply, between the kisses he presses against my mouth. For a while we get lost all over again, and I come back to my body. I don’t think of anything except how good his warm skin feels on mine, how his shoulders make me feel as if I’m under the sturdiest shelter.
“Do you like what we’re doing now?” he murmurs eventually, moving to kiss at the corner of my mouth, the line of my jaw, the skin beneath my ear.
I make a noise, something I hope comes out close toMmmm-hmmm.
“Tell me what you like about it.”Direct, direct, direct.
“I like you above me. And I like the way you kiss me. The way you work up to it, same as you did in the park.” He does it again, now, thatone, two, threepattern over my face, and I shudder out a breath, whispering to him again when he pulls his mouth away.
“I like the way you make me wait. That’s how I am—everywhere on my body, I guess. I like the anticipation.”
“Good,” he says against my skin.
Andoh, the way he says thatGood. The sound says it’s pleasure for himself and praise for me, all at once.
“More,” he demands, pulling his mouth away, looking down at me with heat in his eyes, and I somehow know what he’s asking me to do with that look, and I can hardly believe I want to. It’s so intimate, so close, so honest.
It’s what you’d do with someone you really, really trust.
And I realize, with certainty, that I trust Reid.
I take my hands from his body, and I put them on my own.
It takes me a minute, long seconds where my palms rest somewhere safe, on the soft skin of my stomach, feeling myself inhale and exhale, gathering my courage, thinking of all the hidden parts of me I want to show Reid. It’s broad daylight in here, Reid’s window covered with a sleek, pale-gray shade that offers privacy but not darkness, and he’ll be able to see everything.
But maybe that’s right. Maybe that’s exactly right, for me and Reid.
“I’m sensitive here,” I whisper finally, letting one hand trace up, my fingertips lingering on the full underside of my breast, a curve of skin that always makes my nipples harden in response when I’m touched there. My face is hot, the skin on my chest dewing with sweat. I feel shy, exposed, but still unbelievably aroused. All I want is for him to tell meGoodagain; I want him to give me thatGoodwith his hands and lips and teeth and tongue, so I’ll show him everything.
I draw a single finger across my nipple, flicking it the way I’d want him to. He watches, his tongue darting out to lick at the corner of his mouth, his eyes hot and focused, and I know he’s seeing me, reading me, cracking this code I’m leaving, letters on this page for him alone, and suddenly I have a new, powerful rush of feeling, a different sort of passion: I hate every man who ever made me feel I shouldn’t say what felt right. I hate the way they didn’t try to understand. I hate the way they made me feel demanding and difficult for asking them to do something they hadn’t figured out on their own; I hate the way they got frustrated and impatient and wounded.
My hands grow rougher, more grasping, and Reid says “Good” again, and I forget about every other guy, ever.
“Where else,” he says, the muscles in his arms straining tighter now, and I don’t think it’s fatigue.
I want to reward him for the way he’s enjoying this, and for the way he holds himself back from it. For the way he doesn’t say,I’ll take it from here.
I raise my hips from the bed. “Take these off for me?”
