“But first,” he says quietly, so hushed I can barely hear it, “I’d want to kiss you.”
My heart clangs against my ribs. My mouth tingles, anticipation humming through me. “I’d want that, too.”
He draws me closer, grunting with the effort, until I’m flush against him as we lie on our sides, one hand cupping his cheek, the other curled around his waist, gently kneading at his lower back. His eyes flutter shut. “Hold that thought,” he says. “Please.”
I still my hand.
He smiles. “I just want to be entirely focused on the kiss.”
I lean toward him, but he pulls back, out of reach.
I give him my best pout, making a soft laugh rumble in his chest. “I’ve waited years to do this, Ted. You think I’m gonna just let you plant one on me, after all that?”
“I wish you would,” I grumble. “Besides, we’ve kissed before.”
“Not the way I wanted to kiss. That was a tease, a hint, atorment.” He curves his hand around my jaw, my cheek, his thumb brushing my lip. “I’ve thought about this so many times,” he mutters, his gaze roaming my face. “In pure times and in impure times,” he admits.
Heat rolls through me.
“It was pretty great, each time,” he says.
“Alex,” I plead.
“Now it’s your turn to wait,” he tells me. Gently, but firmly. It makes want tingle through my limbs, reverberating like a plucked string.
“When you told me the other morning that you were worried the ocean wouldn’t hold up to all you’d imagined it to be, that it might let you down, and I told you it wouldn’t because it was yours, because—”
“It was real,” I tell him.
He nods. “All I could think was, that’s how kissing you would be—better than the best thing I could imagine, more satisfying than I could have ever fantasized. So…” He leans in, eyes on my mouth, “I’m going to prove myself right.”
For a moment it’s nothing but silence, not even the ocean’s roar reaching my ears, and I wonder if time’s stopped, just to torture me.
But then he’s there, his lips brushing mine, warm, firm, air gusting out of him, washing over me, and I gasp, like I’ve been revived, shocked back to life.
It’s nothing like our first, fearful kiss. And yet I can’t help but think that somehow it’s tethered to it, that this kiss now, like the many ways we’ve loved each other, is inextricable from where we started.
Alex deepens the kiss, opening his mouth, groaning into mine,a slow, savoring stroke of his tongue that makes my hips arch into his, heat pool molten between my thighs, where he presses into me, hard and thick. I crush myself to him, so desperate for every part of my body to feel every part of his, licking into his mouth, earning another groan from deep in his throat. His stubble scrapes my skin as I kiss him frantically, sucking at his bottom lip, tasting his cupid’s bow. I’m wild with want.
“Ted,” he rasps, squeezing me against him, rolling me onto my back.
I barely muffle a cry at the pleasure of feeling him over me, his body pinning mine to the mattress. My breasts ache where his chest rubs against them. My hips arch up, chasing relief for the pounding throb between my thighs.
“Tell me to stop,” he whispers. “If you want, okay? We don’t have to—”
“I want to,” I gasp, running my hands up his shirt, madly tugging it off. “I want to so bad.”
He helps me, yanking off his shirt, but then his back twinges; I can see it, and he grimaces.
“Alex, lie down.” I guide him off of me gently, settling right against him as we lie how we started, side by side, face-to-face.
Clumsily, I tug off my shirt and chuck it aside. “Let’s…” I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I know it’s the right thing. That Alex has waited for me, wanted me, and I have made him wait long enough. Now it’s my turn to be patient.
We could make it work tonight—people have sex in all kinds of positions, with all kinds of bodily needs and limitations, and I have no doubt it would be wonderful.
But I know Alex. I know how he wants this—he wants to take me, have me, and feel like himself when he does, not held back bypain. I don’t want the first time we do this to be tinged with his hurt.
“Let’s touch each other,” I whisper, drifting my hand down his chest. His stomach jumps, his hips buck as I sweep my finger along the waistband of his shorts. “And sleep in this bed,together,” I tell him. “And after a muscle relaxer, and a good Thea massage, and a night in a decent bed, we can do… everything else.”
