Even with the added height of the tub, he was considerably taller. His eyes grew large as he took in the glaze on her skin. Then he opened the towel and wrapped it around her tight. He didn’t let go, and for a moment they both stood mesmerized by the tendons on the back of his hand, holding the towel in place. When he lifted his eyes to hers, they were burning.
“Are we doing this?” he asked calmly. AJ felt a tug; after last night, he wanted to prove he could control himself.
And another swell of heat, this time her own. “Yes.”
Noah let go of the towel and took her face in both his hands. AJshivered as she felt the rush of his emotions: a bounding feeling, a boundless one. This was something new. This was hope.
AJ held her breath as his thumbs traced her cheekbones, his fingertips combing into her hair. His eyes were black, unguarded, his need so palpable AJ felt almost weak from it. As his hand swept the column of her spine, the towel hit the water with a billowy puff.
The air between them was giving now. Their next inhalation would belong to them both. AJ was still breathing it in as Noah’s lips tenderly brushed across hers.
And then he was kissing her as if he’d never stopped, as if the year and a half that had passed since they’d kissed atSNLhad been a thirty-second delay, and everything that had transpired between then and now had been an illusion. AJ was up on her tiptoes in an instant, pressing herself into the warm expanse of his chest, feeling the hard bulge in his pants as his enormous hands slid lower to cup her backside, pulling her into him. AJ gasped.
He helped her from the tub and led her from the bathroom to the bed, pushing her down with one hand, reaching for the light with the other. AJ was glad for the darkness. She felt his legs, now bare, swing onto the mattress, felt his mouth hot on her breast. He groaned, his body shaking with anticipation. AJ carded her fingers through his hair, pulling him up to her. She brought his lips to hers. She closed her eyes.
The force of him; the way he ground into her, the way his thighs felt pressing between her own. It wasn’t their first time doing this, but it was their first time that didn’t feel like their last time, and AJ didn’t want to savor it, she didn’t want to wait. She reached for him under the covers, helping him inside of her, andyes, this.Noah moaned as he filled her.
Then he began to move, his lips on hers, and now AJ understood why they had waited to kiss. Becausethiswas what kissing was supposed to be, ease and urgency, conflagration and communion, and through it, their joining was transcending flesh and bone. This was luminosity, and in a flash, the radiance of it exposed the rest of AJ’s experience as a wasteland.
Now she was feeling things she didn’t want to feel, bitter things, like how it hadn’t been thirty seconds since they’d done this, but six years;six years of forcing herself through endless encounters that could never be right because they weren’t with him.
Noah sensed the shift in her immediately. Above her, he stilled.
“Age?”
Fuck.
They were connected, and he was examining her, and there was no way to hide. So long a drought had left its mark. He could sense the wasteland now; he knew how dead she was inside.
“Sorry.” AJ turned her head away as hot tears ran down her cheeks, into her ears, into her hair.
Noah reached for her face, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“It’s okay,” he said quietly. “You can say it.”
The grief that she’d pushed down for so long was overwhelming every other sense.
“It was so many nights—” she sobbed. So many nights not with him, each as empty and long as the last. And the days. How many days could have been like this one?
“I know,” he said softly. “I know.”
AJ could hardly speak, her breaths were coming so fast. “This can’t be real.”
“It is,” said Noah urgently. “Look at me.”
AJ shook her head. She felt strangled by sorrow. “I’m all fucked-up.”
Noah’s forehead pressed into her temple. “So am I,” he said. “Please. Look at me.”
But she couldn’t. Her eyes jammed shut as uncontrollable anguish opened inside her, a fissure cracking every arid surface. This pain was all she was. It was all she would ever be. It was going to consume her, then it was going to void her entirely.
But Noah would not let her go. Through the breach, he stayed present, witnessing it all. Gradually, her cries began to ebb. She felt his lips brush her tears. AJ took one uneven breath, and then another. Noah shifted slightly; somehow, he was still hard inside her.
“Look at me,” he said quietly. There was something raw in the quality of his voice that reached her. Slowly, AJ met his gaze.
In the light of the moonlit window, his brow furrowed, a jagged edge to his cheek. His lips were swollen and sensual, but in his eyes AJ saw the haunted look she’d glimpsed onstage at Blue Con. His thumb swept her cheekbone, grasping her face.
“I’m here,” he said.
