Page 22 of While I’m Still Here

Her breath catches. Her hands come around my head, cradling me there, and I can feel her trembling. Not from cold.

"Colin." It's barely a whisper. "I need to feel something that isn't fear."

"And this?"

"This is good."

I look up at her. "Only good?"

Her teeth catch her bottom lip. "Ask me again in five minutes."

I laugh, and the vibration makes her shiver, her abdominal muscles tense and release. The air helps. Cools the heat under my skin. It gives me just enough clarity to remember I'm supposed to be careful with her. That she's spent all day being handled by strangers with cold hands and clinical eyes.

So I go slow.

I let my mouth drift lower, tracing the underside of her breast with my lips while my hand finds her other hip. She arches into it. A small, involuntary movement that presses her further into my mouth, and I take my time learning the weight and texture of her, the way her breath goes ragged when I find the sensitive spot near her sternum.

"Colin." Her voice is higher now. "Five minutes is generous."

"Impatient."

"Terrified."

"Good. Me too."

She laughs again, and this time it turns into a gasp as my hand slides up over her breast. I feel the slight irregularity under my fingers. The thing the doctors found. The thing that's been threatening to take her away from me before I ever got to have her.

I don't flinch. I don't pause. I let my thumb pass over it the same way it passes over every other inch of her, because she asked me to make her feel something that isn't this. Because she deserves to be touched like a woman, not like she has cancer.

Her nipple pebbles under my palm. She makes a sound that's half moan, half word. Then her hips shift against mine, and I feel the evidence of her wanting pressed against my thigh.

"Bea." My voice sounds wrecked already. "We can stop anytime."

"Don't you dare."

I look up at her. Her cheeks are flushed, her lips swollen, her chest rising and falling fast enough that I can count the beats.

Her eyes meet mine.

And she whispers, "Make me feel alive."

"Stand up," I tell her.

She blinks. "What?"

"Stand up."

For once, she doesn't argue. She untangles herself from my lap and rises, and I follow, my hands finding her waist before she can second-guess herself. The knickers she's wearing are old cotton, soft from years of washing, and my thumbs hook into the waistband.

Her stomach tenses.

"Colin—"

"I've got you."

They slide down her hips, pooling at her feet. She steps out of them, and now she's standing in front of me in nothing, and I have to remind myself to breathe.

"You're staring again."