Then he moved, too: pulling his hand gently from his pocket, as though he wouldn’t risk jostling that one point of contact—her finger resting against his skin.
When his fingers were free, he followed her lead—he moved with intention. One slow twist of his wrist to capture her finger, cupping it first against the pad of his warm palm, then catching it, hooking it with his pinky, using it to turn her hand, palm faced up. He curled his pinky around her index finger, dragging it slowly around and into the space between it and her middle finger, then across the faint calluses at the base of each digit.
Her pulse thrummed. In her neck, in her belly, between her legs.Everywhere.
When he slid that finger between her pinky and ring finger, her knees wobbled. When he braided the rest of their fingers together—the most careful, erotic handhold she’d ever experienced in her entire life, she had to tip her head down, dizzy and unstable.
And when he took another step forward, she rested her forehead on his sternum, feeling the space beneath throb with the beat of his heart.
He lowered his head to speak, and Layla held her breath as she realized how he’d done it: his left side, his scarred side, against her hair. The crooked part of his lips against her ear.
“You don’t know how bad I want to go through this door with you,” he said.
What door?she thought, because the thing was, they were close enough now that she couldfeelhow bad. Could feel, against her belly, the hard ridge of him, insistent and irresistible.
But then she remembered: the sculpture garden. When he said the wordheaven. How it felt for him to be with her.
“But if I hurt you again—” He broke off, and she lifted her head—slowly, she knew she had to move slowly—to meet his eyes. She’d thought his fear was for himself: the pain,The Three Shades,The Gates of Hell.
But those dark eyes on her, the knife-edge of his voice like a caress now…
The fear was for her.
She thought it was almost all for her now.
“I can’t ruin this day for you,” he finished. “Not after everything you just told me about what it means to you. If I get—if what happens last night happens again…”
He trailed off, his throat bobbing, his eyes closing as his length pulsed desperately against her. She was, without realizing it, stroking her thumb up and back along his. She was thinking a thousand complicated things as she watched him struggle through this: that itwouldhurt if it happened again, but also it would somehow hurt worse if nothing happened at all; that he was right that it would be horrible to have the day end with his pain, but also the truth was, hewaswhat this day meant to her, hewasthe day; that she’d told himit’s not tomorrow yet, but also she thought that when tomorrow dawned she would still feel this exact way, forever snapped out ofthe post-divorce fog of dully moving through her days according to a schedule—
“What if,” she said, an idea cutting through the complication, simple and beautiful and inevitable, “we do what we did today?”
He furrowed his brow, frowned down at her.
“Keep…walking?” he said, so disbelieving that she had to bite her lip to keep from smiling.
He lifted the hand that wasn’t still holding hers, set the pad of his thumb on her chin and pulled gently, watching intently as he freed her lip, as she ran her tongue quickly across it.
“Wandering,” she whispered. “Like we did today. We go back to my room and we…wander.”
She held her breath as she waited, hoping he would understand—that he would play back the day and know what she meant.
Do you like—?
Can we stop—?
Want to try—?
He moved his thumb again. Across her cheek, behind her earlobe, along a cord of her neck until he reached the edge of her summer turtleneck, which she absolutely hated right now, and so did he, judging by his huff of frustration, his redirection—across the line of her jaw, back to her bottom lip. He pressed lightly, right in the center, and watched, transfixed, as it plumped back into its natural shape.
Shewoulddie if he didn’t kiss her again.
If he didn’t say yes.
He said, “No.”
But also, he kissed her. A soft brush of his mouth against hers, a slip of his tongue against her lip. He whispered his real answer against her mouth.
“My room,” he said.
