"I want to taste you. I want to give you what you gave me." She was looking at the pillow, not at Elise, and her voice had dropped low and unsteady. "But I need to tell you that I haven't... I've never done that. Not properly. Not well. The times I've been with women it was fast and dark and I didn't know what I was doing and I never stayed long enough to learn. And I'm worried that I won't be good enough. That you'll have to pretend."
"Sienna." Elise waited until Sienna looked at her. The brown eyes that met hers were wide and vulnerable and bright with want and fear in equal measure. "I promise you I will not have to pretend."
Sienna's fingers twisted in the sheet. "You can't know that."
Elise reached out and tucked a strand of dark hair behind Sienna's ear. "I can. Because I've been thinking about your mouth since the first time you smiled at me in the medical room. And because the way you kiss me already tells me everything I need to know about what you'll be like."
Sienna's lips parted. "What do you mean?"
Elise leaned forward and kissed her.
The kiss was slow and tender, a morning kiss, soft lips and warm breath and the faint trace of salt from last night's tears. Elise took her time with it. She kissed Sienna's lower lip, then her upper lip, then the corner of her mouth, then she opened her mouth against Sienna's and let Sienna's tongue find hers. The tongue. That was what she meant. Sienna's mouth was thorough and attentive and deeply, instinctively sensual, her tongue moving with a carefulness that sent heat straight down Elise's spine. Sienna kissed as she did everything: with focus and care and a commitment to getting it exactly right.
Elise pulled back. Sienna's lips were wet and parted and her breathing was faster.
"That," Elise said. "Whatever you do with your tongue when you kiss me. Do that."
"Do that... down there?"
"Exactly."
The pink spread down her throat. But Sienna's eyes were steady now, and behind the nervousness there was determination. The same look she wore in the medical suite when she was about to do a procedure that required skill and steadiness and absolute attention.
"I might need some guidance," Sienna said.
"I'll tell you what feels good. And Sienna?" Elise waited for her eyes. "You don't need to be good at this. You just need to be you. I'm already so turned on by you that this is going to work. I promise."
Sienna held her gaze, then nodded. The nod was decisive, the same nod she gave before she taped a shoulder or adjusted a rehab protocol. Clinical Sienna surfacing through the vulnerability, and somehow that combination was the most attractive thing Elise had ever seen.
Elise lay back against the pillows. She was wearing a t-shirt and nothing else, the shirt she'd pulled on in the dark when they moved to the bed, and when she pulled it over her head Sienna's eyes dropped to her chest and the look on her face was open and hungry and reverent all at once.
"You're beautiful," Sienna whispered.
"Touch me."
Sienna's hand came to Elise's stomach. Her fingers were slightly trembling and they spread across Elise's skin, gentle, as if Elise might break. She traced the line of Elise's ribs, then higher, to the curve of her breast, and when her thumb brushed across Elise's nipple Elise sucked in a sharp breath and Sienna's eyes flew to her face.
"Good?" Sienna asked.
"Very good."
Sienna's mouth followed her hand. She kissed Elise's collarbone, then the hollow of her throat, then lower, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses down Elise's sternum. Her hair fell across Elise's skin, dark and ticklish, and Elise gathered it in her good hand and held it back from Sienna's face so she could watch.
Sienna kissed her breast. Her tongue was tentative at first, circling Elise's nipple with careful strokes, and then thehesitation fell away and her mouth sealed over the nipple and she sucked and Elise's hips arched off the bed.
"Just like that," Elise breathed.
Sienna moved lower. She kissed down Elise's stomach with the thoroughness she brought to everything, her lips tracing the ridges of muscle, the small scar from an appendectomy at sixteen, the soft skin below her navel. Each kiss was slow and intentional and Sienna's hands moved with her, one gripping Elise's hip, the other trailing fingertips along the outside of her thigh. Elise could feel Sienna's breath quickening against her skin. The nervousness was still there in the slight hesitation between kisses, the way Sienna paused at the top of Elise's hip bone as if gathering courage.
"You're doing perfectly," Elise said.
Sienna looked up at her. The brown eyes were dark with arousal and fixed on Elise's face with an intensity that made Elise's stomach clench. She was between Elise's thighs now, her dark hair spread across Elise's hip, and the morning light caught the line of her jaw and the fullness of her lower lip.
She lowered her mouth. Elise's breath stopped.
The first touch of Sienna's tongue was cautious. A broad, slow stroke, flat and gentle, exploring. Elise's body responded before her brain could process it, her hips tilting upward, a gasp escaping that she couldn't control. Sienna pulled back fractionally, startled by the response.
"Don't stop," Elise said. Her voice was already rough. "That's perfect. Do that again."
