“Come here,” I tell her, easing up on my elbow, hand outstretched.
Kate stares at me still, firelight flickering in her eyes. Then she crawls over me and pushes me right back onto the bed.
? THIRTY-THREE ?
Kate
I thought the first time I found a person I wanted to share this with—nakedness, touch, desire—it would feel like a bridge crossed, a height ascended, a power discovered that I hadn’t known before.
But as I crawl across the bed over Christopher, seeing firelight kiss his body and turn his eyes to ochre flames, as my skin touches his and we both let out harsh, winded breaths, it feels nothing like that. Not like I’ve crossed a bridge, but like I finally feel safe to stay with a truth that was always inside me. Not as if a height’s been ascended, but as if I’m free-falling, rushing wind and the promise of a safe landing below, sweet and smooth, welcoming me into its depths. Not like I’ve discovered some new power, but like power itself has dissolved, leaving me and this man beneath me as naked as we were born yet infinitely more vulnerable—our innocence lost, our eyes open, knowing the loss and pain life can bring, embracing each other in spite of it.
“Kate,” he says, his voice low and quiet, his hand warm and rough, scraping back my hair, cupping my jaw. “Come here, honey. Let me touch you.”
I stare down at him, the beautiful breadth of his body, broad, heavy arms splayed wide across the bed, one leg lazily bent, the other hanging, thick and strong, off its edge. I have never wanted someone so much. I have never felt more overwhelmed.
Christopher seems to sense this, because he takes my elbow and gently tugs me with him across the bed, until we collapse together onto cool, downy pillows. He slips his arm beneath my neck and curls me against his body, his other hand low across my back, rubbing soothing circles. I tip up my head to see him, to try to orient myself amid this emotional vertigo. His lips brush the bridge of my nose, then one side, then the other.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
“What I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” he whispers back. “Kissing your freckles.”
My cheeks heat. “You like my freckles?”
“Like I ‘like’ your bird’s nest—I love them.”
“Oh.” My hand settles on his waist, then begins exploring his body—dense muscles, smooth, warm skin, these fascinating divots joining his hips to his backside that feel like they were designed for my hands to be there. “These divots are nice,” I tell him.
Christopher smiles against my cheek, then kisses me there, too. “Thank you.”
“I don’t feel like divots should make me feel . . . squirmy, but they do.”
His smile deepens. “Want to know a part of you that makes me feel ‘squirmy’？”
I nod quickly, as his hand slides lower down my back, his fingertips tracing the dimples at either side of my spine, right above my backside.
“These,” he says softly, his mouth trailing my jaw, below my ear, where his voice is dark and hushed. “When you gave me a taste of my own medicine at the apartment, took off your shirt, and made sure I saw your topless back—”
“Not my most rational moment.”
He grins against my skin and groans. “A back and two butt dimples have never been so erotic. You have no idea how much I’ve stroked off to that memory—your back and waist and those dimples—all the ways I’ve had you in my mind, pleased you, made you scream my name.”
My body moves reflexively against him. I feel wet between my thighs, a sweet, fierce ache building from touching him, from the words he’s saying.
“I like knowing that,” I tell him. “I like it when you tell me.”
He brushes a knuckle against my hardened nipple, kissing me gently. “I can tell.”
“I want you to touch me.” I take his hand and set it between my thighs. “Please.”
Christopher stares down at me as he tenderly parts my legs and strokes between them. “I want to touch you, too.”
I gasp and bite my lip against a noise that’s stuck in my throat, loud and uninhibited. He’s so gentle, so attentive, watching me.
“Tell me, Kate,” he says quietly.
“Faster,” I whisper. “Harder.”
I reach down and guide his hand, showing him what I’ve learned about myself, what I recognize has built my arousal in the past and yet don’t recognize at all. Because it’s different, when you show someone else your nakedness, your need; when they cherish and protect it by listening like he does, groaning in quiet pleasure as my hand falls away because he’s doing what I showed him, and I can’t do anything but lie there and grip his arm, his hair, his chest, as he kisses me and makes me fall apart.