I took the key. “Thanks,” I replied, and grabbed his hand again, and we disappeared up the stairs with our suitcases in tow. I liked how he felt beside me. I liked the company we kept. And whenever he brushed his thumb against my knuckles, there was a shiver that went from my toes all the way to my scalp, and I couldn’t stand it. Not in a bad way.
But in a way that drove me crazy.
At the end of the hall was the hotel room with the wolfsbane on the door. I’d booked it again for old times’ sake, before I’d ever asked Ben to come with me. I thought I would be spending it alone. Funny how a few hours could change everything.
I unlocked the door, and he rolled our suitcases inside. Sunlight spilled through the sheer curtains, catching the dust motes that floated in the air. I remembered a lot about this room—from the fake wolfsbane in the vase on the dresser to the knot in the hardwood I kept toeing the night I wrote my dad’s obituary because I couldn’t stop pacing to the side of the bed where Ben slept the night things started to spiral, the night before Dad’s funeral.
The hotel room hadn’t changed at all. Still could use more purple, but I was far from caring what color the room was. All I could see was Ben drawing a shadow against the window, sunlight shining golden on his dark hair, and I’d read about aching before. I had ached before.
But this was—I was—
I remembered the morning we woke up together, and the things he said he’d do to me, for me, and it all came back in such vivid detail I had to tell my brain to slow down. Breathe. I wasn’t some weirdly horny teenager anymore—I was absolutely a refined woman with exquisite taste in rum and Cokes, thank you very much, and—
Oh, who was I kidding.
“Well, it’s nice to be alone finally,” he said, turning back to me, pocketing and unpocketing his hands, as if he wasn’t sure what to do with them.
“I feel like we need a chaperone,” I tried to joke, coming up next to him. My skin felt like it was on fire.
Don’t climb the man mountain, I told myself. Don’t climb the man mountain. Don’t climb—
“Florence, I think—”
“Don’t.”
Then I took hold of the front of his jacket and pulled him close, and to my surprise he met me halfway. Our lips crushed together, and then he pulled away, whispering, “Sorry, sorry, you’re just so beautiful and I finally get to touch you and—”
“I feel the same way,” I replied, our lips lingering together for a moment longer, before he decided to follow with another kiss, rougher this time, biting. He was so hot—like, furnace hot—and when his thumb brushed against my cheek, it was warm. He was warm, and a knot formed in my throat because how much had I wanted this months ago, when we were in this very room together? How much did I want him to kiss me—on my neck, behind my ear, trace my collarbone with the edge of his teeth, murmuring devotions into my hair?
A lot, it turned out.
In a scattered mess we tipped back toward the bed, stepping out of our shoes, dropping my purse to the carpet, his tie abandoned somewhere on the bench at the foot of the bed. He lifted me up and sat me on the bed, and kissed me like he wanted to devour me, teeth scraping against my skin, nibbling my lip, and I couldn’t get enough of him, either.
I wanted to explore the curve of his neck as my fingers slid down it, and I wanted to ask about the scar just above his collarbone, where his father’s wedding ring always seemed to catch. He kissed the birthmark under my left ear that I always kept hidden because it was shaped a little like a ghost and that was too on the nose for me. It was electric, our contact skin to skin, as if little sparks ignited between our cells every time we touched. If our pasts sang in the wind, our present was in the touch of his hands on my waist, the way his fingers trailed across my body, the breathless kisses he planted against my mouth, as if he wanted to write me into his memory—burn it there.