He brushes hair that isn’t there behind my ear.
“Then I might just look at ye fer a minute.” He stares down at me, nodding. “Because I’ve thought about this since ye fell from the sky.”
I smile a tiny bit.
He nudges my nose with his. “And a wee bit of me cannae believe this is happening.”
I brush my lips over his quickly, still shy. He smiles, does it back.
“Next—” He gives me a look and flashes me his other hand that isn’t behind my head. “I’ll take this hand and run it down yer body,”
I nod once. “Okay.”
He does. My skin is so on edge, his lightest touch almost hurts.
He finds my waist, keeps it there.
“And then, I’ll probably start kissing yer neck.” He knocks my head to the side with his forehead and kisses down, from the base of my ears and down my neck and lower and lower— How much he wants me is the sun, and I am a cone, and he’s the ice cream melting over and down and around my body.
The “more” that Peter asked about, that feeling you get that’s like a strange new hunger that I’ve never had for anyone till now, I get it.
It feels a bit like being famished, like you’ve not eaten for days and days on end, like you’re dying for a drop of water. Everything starts to feel urgent, and I feel less worried about what my hands are doing. They’re just on him.
His mouth drags over my body, and every now and then, he’ll pull back and smile at me with these stormy-wild, perfect eyes all clouded at the moment by want for me before I pull him back down towards me.
“Okay.” He looks down at me eventually. “Could be time fer the main event?”
I nod solemnly.
He pushes some hair behind my ear, then keeps his hand on my face. “Are ye ready?”
I nod again.
“Are ye sure?”
Another nod.
“It may hurt ye.”
I take a deep breath. “Endeavour to survive, I will.”
He nods a couple of times, then brushes his mouth over mine again, holding my eyes with his. “Tell me if ye want me t’ stop.”
“Jem.” I shake my head at him. “I’m not going to want you to stop.”
He nods once more.
When he pushes inside me, the whole boat rocks with the wave that hits it. Funny timing that, don’t you think?
There’s this moment when you’re flying through the galaxy and you’ve taken a shortcut through a black hole, where once you’re on the other side of it, once you’ve pushed through, it’s just light and colour and every good feeling and everything warm, everything happy—and this. I feel this.
Jem is what I came for.
And suddenly I remember the snow on our noses and what the breeze told me—it did tell me something!—that day that I tried to forget about. It was a whisper, barely audible, and it was confusing at the time, but it isn’t anymore, because all the stars, all the planets, the moons, the galaxies, if I were looking at them （and believe me, I wasn’t, but if I were）， I’d have seen they’re in a row—perfect alignment. I wish I knew. It would be handy to know because it’s easy to forget the things we know in an abstract way, and I do know it now in that abstract way, but it’s harder to argue with space and time aligning for you, though one day eventually, I’d try to anyway.
Jamison takes one of my hands in his, stretches it up over my head, and kisses down my arm, back up my neck, and whispers, “How are we faring?”
I can’t speak. My voice is lost somewhere inside me.
I give him a wide-eyed nod.
He cracks a smile that’s half a laugh, but it doesn’t make me feel self-conscious. Actually it just makes me feel safe.
The best way I can describe sex is this.
You know when you’re lying in the sun at the edge of the water, and you’re quite close to where the tide laps on the sand but not close enough that the waves will get you every time?
It feels like you’re lying there, eyes closed, the sun is warming your whole body from the inside out, and you’re getting hotter and hotter, and you’re feeling it through you more and more, thirstier and thirstier, and you know a wave is coming. Soon something is going to crash into you and cool you down and balance will be restored, but until the wave comes, you’re this sweaty, breathy, grippy mess of a girl.
Jem starts to pick up pace. He’s in the sun too, both of us dying for water only the other one can give us.
His chest starts rising and falling, faster and faster against mine. My toes pinch to a ballerina point, and Jem’s whole body goes taut as he watches me and then—wave.*