Текст книги "The Plan"

Автор книги: Qwen Salsbury

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Day of Employment: 372…381…maybe 495…something. They all run together.

2:00 a.m.

*

Champagne

: I’m covered in it.

*

Petals

: Litter my entire room.

*

Balcony Door

: Open.

*

Room

: Effing freezing.

*

Nipples

: Probably hard enough to puncture this silk camisole.

*

My Heart

: Who the hell knows at this point?

THE CURTAINS FLUTTER OPEN. It’s not the breeze. It’s him. He steps into the room, watching his own feet move.

He barely resembles the man who makes grown men cry, who barters lives and livelihoods like wares at a flea market, who I have fantasized about for over a year.

His hair is slick and dark and drips champagne. A single, thick lock escapes, flipping forward as he rakes his fingers through it. His gaze never leaves the floor.

“Just tell me why,” he whispers, barely audible over the street below.

Every instinct in me screams to run to him, to wrap my hands around him, to lose myself in his touch…in him.

But I would do just that. Lose myself.

It’s all been make-believe.

“You don’t know me,” I say as softly as I can, as if for the first time I consider that I need to be soft, that he might actually be breakable.

His head snaps up, and his eyes—oh, God, his eyes!—they swim, an unfocused torment swirling in their depths.

“How can you say that? After all…after everything?”

“This is not me. I’m not what you think I am.”

“You are everything I want.” He moves to me. I move twice as far away.

“Alaric, I’m not who you think I am. I’m a liar. And I can’t be what you want.”

“Liar?”

“Yes.”

“You have lied to me…”

“Yes.”

“Lied…”

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes!” I would like to run my hands through my hair right about now—seems to be the thing to do in these instances—but the ol’ hands are otherwise engaged in a rumba-like series of gestures about my head. Or maybe I’m knitting a caftan. “Yes. Lies. All lies.”

“What is it you think you have lied to me about?”

“Think?” Frustrating! As if I don’t even comprehend when I’m not telling the truth…which may actually be a fair assessment given my conduct of late…but I’m not feeling generous enough to not be mad at him for thinking as much. My hands find their way to my soaked hair this time, threaten to uproot it…until I realize this maneuver has pulled the sodden camisole tight across my breasts. Nothing left to the imagination.

They are practically staring at him. He hasn’t noticed. I may be insulted.

“I don’t think I have…never mind.” Like weights, my hands drop. “These are lies.” I point to the bland clothes I’d been packing until I heard him at the door. He had gone straight to the balcony. I suppose he was giving me space.

“This.” I find a broken crescent of a button and hold it between my fingers. “I broke this lying. I don’t get aggressive in bed.”

He doesn’t hide his surprise at these particular words.

“I have pretended to be the sort of person who will hold my tongue. Who will follow, and take orders, and keep her opinions to herself, and play nice—far nicer than the people we’re dealing with deserve. I have made it so I can’t be taken seriously.”

“That is not lying,” he says. “That is deception. An attempt to deceive.”

“They’re practically synonymous.”

“For someone so together and determined, you certainly are being obtuse.” He rests against the wall. “Emma, that is the only thing you didn’t do perfectly. You did not deceive me.”

He moves. Just a step. Then turns only his eyes in my direction. “Considering I have been nothing but forthright about my intentions, my affections…at the very least, you might trouble yourself to explain your decision.”

“Explain…my…decision?” I ask, each word slower than the one before.

His agitation grows exponentially with each syllable. He is closer now. I don’t know when he moved.

He searches my face for something. It is not there.

“You know…you must know how I feel about you.” His words barely carry.

I nod. Yes. Yes, I know. Pretty sure anyway. I know how he feels because it is in every touch, in every look, in each breath and moment together and every ache when apart. I know it. I know it because whatever I feel leaving him, coming from him, it affects me in the same way or more.

“Answer. Me.”

There is a broken thread in the comforter. Just a few pulled stitches, a tiny frayed bit at the end. That is my focus.

This is so much more than I was prepared for. I just wanted him to notice me. I still want it. I want it all. But I have made him fall in love with someone else. Made him want someone else. Someone who doesn’t exist.

“Everything about me is a façade,” I begin, and he starts to say something but, as it seems there is little point in pretending any longer, I talk right over the top of him. “I do not take orders, I give them. I’d never even brewed a proper cup of coffee before this trip. My hair is curly. My clothes are colorful. I have been neglecting the things I need to do for myself—the things I need to do to improve my life—for this trip. Contrary…” I laugh dryly at my word choice; he has rubbed off on me. “Despite what it seems, I do not generally shove men around or rip their clothes or…”

I stop again. Straighten. Deep breath.

“None of that really matters.” I stand firm. “What matters is that today, when I needed to be myself, when you were on the verge of closing a big deal and making an even bigger mistake, I played my role. I sat quietly next to some flowers. Earlier, I didn’t insist you speak with me before we got to the point of closure. I played my role, and now you’re going to get hurt because I was so busy pretending to be this person that I’m not that I couldn’t even step up.”

“You think I have misjudged all that’s been happening.” He finally pushes wet hair out of his eyes.

“You have misjudged their practices. I have mislead you about me.”

“So this is what you think,” he says.

What I think is that I’m crying now. The room is blurry, and my cheeks are wet. “Please know…you are the last person—” I choke out, then sniff in a wholly unappealing way. “You are the last person I would have wanted to hurt.”

He’s quiet for a moment. I’m still fixated on the now very fuzzy thread.

“Why is that?”

He’s going to make me admit it, label it. I knew since he stepped into the room. I knew since he first looked up at me from beneath those wet bangs. I dared to hope differently, but it is going to happen. Canon always closes.

My words are less than whispers: “Because…really…because I really, truly care for you.”

He kisses me. Fierce and free. I rejoice in it. Memorize it.

Possessive and promising. I revel in it. And break it.

He looks unbelievably happy. Like there really is a tree and lights and that train set he always wanted but never got. Like someone knew what he wanted, exactly what he wanted, and gave it to him.

Then they took it away.

“Alaric,” I say. “You don’t really care about me.”

He shakes his head, his laugh sounding like relief, and pulls me in. I’m greedy; I take this last hug.

“Don’t attempt to tell me how I feel.” His hands run along my arms, warming me.

“You care about a lie. I am a lie.”

Pulling back, he runs a hand through my wet hair. Then steps away. Business mode.

“Ms. Baker, it’s time for your review.”

“Um, Al—sir, I tendered my resignation.”

“Fine. Exit interview. Suit yourself.” He waves a hand toward the bed, and I sit in spite of myself.

“As I was saying, Ms. Baker, we need to discuss the matter of your employment.”

“Yes, that is what you said.” And welcome to the weirdest break-up ever for a couple that never actually was.

Exaggerating each move slightly, he begins to pace the room with his hands behind his back.

“You did not apply for the PA position, correct?” Alaric asks, and I nod, taken aback by this question, but then I tell myself that he would probably do a check on any new assistant.

“Your primary reason for tendering your resignation?”

“Inability to perform my job effectively.” I fidget. He continues to pace. “Also…impact on my personal life.”

“Impacted—adversely or positively?”

“Um…just impacted. I have too many obligations…I don’t have room fo—”

He cuts me off. “Were you given a poor performance review by your supervisor?”

“Well, no.”

“Wouldn’t your supervisor be the one to determine whether or not your job was performed satisfactorily?”

He stops in front of me, eyes bearing down, hands still behind his back.

I do my best to level my puffy eyes at his from my place on the mattress. “Failing to prevent a problem by sitting idly by is the same as creating the problem. I am guilty by omission.”

“You put a great deal of stock in your ability to influence.” He resumes his movements, slower this time. “Do you think so little of your supervisor? That he is incompetent at evaluating information? Unable to take precautionary measures? That he doesn’t know exactly what his assistant is working on at all times?”

“No!” This is not what I meant at all. Does he mean…? Could he have…? “Did you alter the contract last night?”

He pivots and looks over his shoulder. “I’m not at liberty to discuss these matters with non-employees.”

Oh, fine. Play that way. My arms fold across my chest.

“Did you receive a raise in the past year?”

“No.”

“No, you say. But you seem to have had an outside source of income,” he says and touches his chin.

I feel my head pull back. I’m not sure where he’s going with this line of questioning.

“During your time with us, would you say that you were a dedicated employee?”

I nod. He must not conduct very many exit interviews.

“Consider your answer carefully, Ms. Baker.”

“Alaric, I don’t want to play this game any more.” I start to stand. He stops short in front of me.

“Fair enough,” he says. “No games.”

I start to stand, but now he’s directly in front of me.

“I know you. Don’t tell me I don’t.” Serious. He looks dead serious. “Your name is Emma Jacklyn Baker. You attended OU for undergrad and had a three-point-nine-eight GPA. You retook chemistry only to improve your grade. You have worked for our company for—” Alaric looks at his watch, pauses for effect “—three hundred and eighty-five days. You took your current position as a favor to your supervisor, Rebecca, who is also the only person whom you have told of your return to school.” He puts his hands in his pockets and leans back on the dresser.

I think I’m still blinking.

“You have a generous scholarship and will graduate with a juris doctorate next spring. You love movie theater popcorn, but hate microwave. You like Pepsi, prefer Coke, and never, ever RC. Your favorite sweater is electric blue; you wear it at least once every two weeks in cool weather. Since the day you started, there has been a woefully under-watered cactus on your desk. You have won approximately one thousand eight hundred and twenty-two dollars in the office’s personal assistant betting pools. It appears you purchased taupe suede pumps with the latest winnings. You wore them for the first time on the day you came to my office, the day you took this job, the day we officially met.”

Somewhere between 3-4:00 a.m.

SAME BAT-TIME. SAME BAT-CHANNEL.

In that moment, I knew the truth of what I would dared dream about. I couldn’t deny it.

Alaric cared about me. The real me. Deeply.

What is this uncomfortable, foreign feeling unfurling in my chest? Logically, I should be rejoicing…but disbelief and confusion still hold court. He has been fully aware of me and my persona from the get-go. Everything from frizzy follicles to sarcastic retorts, he has known that tame was not the norm.

And he had noticed me. All along, he had noticed me.

I have been aiming for blips while he has employed state of the art stealth technology. He is the B2 of too-hot bums. Not so much a cyborg, but an aerial strike drone.

I note the still space around us and the scant number of cars that pass outside below the window. How long have we been silent? I move enough to see his face. He looks at me with such concern, as though he is assessing me for injuries. Injuries which I have, all imaginary or self-inflicted.

My hand rises up to cover, maybe to finally protect, his heart.

“My God, Alaric.” My face presses into the hollow of his chest. For entirely different reasons than usual, it feels as though maybe I’m supposed to be here. Not that I could force myself to be selfless enough to move away regardless.

Barely audible over the blood pounding in my ears, I hear my voice waver and fall. “Alaric, what have I nearly thrown away?”

He makes a sound of understandable confusion. Perhaps he thinks I’m about to tell him yet more fuckery has been afoot. That I truly am someone else. I manage, miraculously, to not confuse him further by laughing at my own errant thoughts.

I rise from his chest. Trace a flat hand line from his heart up along his neck.

Up and up. Over champagne.

Over stubble.

Overwhelmed.

Just below his temple, a pulse pounds below my thumb. His or mine. Or both.

“Emma, you don’t have to explain—”

“Shh.” My lips find the corner of his eye and brush against it as softly as I can make myself. Because he is not invincible any more than I am invisible.

“Everything.” One whisper to quote the card and carry the promise. My pledge. “There is nothing I don’t want to share with you.” Cheeks align. Heat radiates within. Across and through. Throughout. I hear him swallow as he nods softly in understanding.

And I begin to understand, finally understand, and to accept that something real is happening. Something real, for perhaps the first time in my life. That everything else has been the actual playacting before I would meet this man.

Tonight, there have been avalanches all around. Champagne. Emotions. Epiphanies. There are no more doubts left here. They are swept away.

Because, despite my long held belief that I have suffered from the depth of attraction…fascination…obsession I feel for the man standing here, I have fallen short. True, he has made ludicrous demands and behaved like an entire bright orange metal box full of heavy duty Black & Decker tools. And hidden a fair few things himself, it seems.

But that does not change stone cold facts: He cares. And knows me. And us. And is not running in terror from the prospect of commitment.

In fact, he seems to being jonesing for that “C word” like Cookie Monster would for a snickerdoodle. That’s good enough for me.

Alaric has cared with purpose and direction and tethered patience. He held me fast while I slipped down the rabbit hole of my own daydream. It didn’t matter to him that I have been faking subservience because he knew all along it served a purpose with the best of intentions.

And I know, when I look back, this will be “the” moment. The moment when it all flipped. Stopped holding back. Started holding on.

It is a celebration, a relief, a barrel of rum finding me in the freeze.

His hand slides over mine. I look out the same hotel window as last night. Same stars. Same night sky.

Everything else has changed.

Or has it? Wouldn’t it be this life-altering, axis-tilting moment?

Where are the bells? Angels getting their wings and all that rot? Emma Baker, the man you have crushed on for over a year has admitted he really and truly loves you—what are you going to do now?

I’m going to The Knees Land.

Well, been there and done.

Outside where it is nearly empty, in the darkness of this Christmas morning, a silent pair of taillights disappears along the road outside.

He comes up behind me. Arms wrap warmly around my waist.

“So, um, you say you may have noticed me around the office once or twice,” I say, not looking away from the lightshow.

He leans in. Whispers, so softly. “Red dress and my face full of your hair in the elevator on your first day.”

Oh. That long, eh? So much for surreptitious behavior on my part.

I turn to face him. He’s right here in front of me, hands on my waist, arms bumping against my own. So near me, and finally—finally—I see him level.

He had always felt beyond my grasp. Too beautiful. Too aloof. Too…asshole-y.

To learn this is, in a way, to learn that I have never noticed myself in the way he has noticed me.

I had hoped for a glimmer. A blip. A wink. Then I feared I had deceived him. Changed him in the worst, most deceitful way. Unmade the man.

Instead, somehow, some way, I have unmade myself through whatever bad choices and inane machinations had brought us to this point. I had not shown him. I’d not spoken up. I’d not been together or self-assured enough to just approach him openly.

It occurs to me that there is this woeful, yet distinct prospect: He’s right. Which makes me wrong. I’m quite fond of being right, but I guess I’ll give him his turn.

I have just never let me out before, but I know, now, with him I can do this. His mere presence does that for me. I’m me. Present and accounted for. Willful and strong. Passionate and right. Right for him. The reasoning of why we are right for each other is of no importance.

Those mysterious places in the heart will open their chambers only for so long and to so few.

“I want you to know…” I lean in and place a kiss near the front of his ear. I can do this. I can put myself out there. He…we deserve this. “…me.”

It seems my words echo in the empty space of the room. Yet he listens, as if waiting for a cue. His still champagne-damp skin is nearly hot, humid against my own. “Just so you know…” I breathe. Move nearer still. Leave no room for pride. “I rather like your—” run my hand up his thigh “—taste.”

His low gasp borders on a rumble. Heated breath rushes along my neck.

Suddenly, hands twist within my hair, draw me back, pull my gaze to meet darkened eyes. Eyes that focus, dart from mouth to eyes. Back again.

“Pure, stiletto wearing evil. That is what you are.” He laughs in a broken growl. “Why would you tell me that?” He returns to a whisper. Loosens his grip on my hair. Looks a bit surprised to find his hand there. “Can you even begin to understand…what that does to me?”

I must shake my head in reply because a smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. “It is a dangerous effect.” Then, maybe I need to contact Miracle-Ear, because I think I hear low under his breath some horseshit about me being the most beautiful woman and exciting lover and that he should probably consult a cardiologist.

There’s a quake along my limbs as my body reacts to the tenor of his response. I hadn’t thought about how he would take what I said, but if I had, I wouldn’t have predicted something so…primal. He has always seemed so satisfied with my taking the lead. Not submissive to dominant, but aggressive to passive, if I were to classify it.

Our previous nights together: Me Jane. You Tarzan.

Those things are wonderful, precious.

This is different.

And I want to it happen again.

My hand runs up and along the planes of his face, trembling along its path. He leans into my palm. Eyes fixed on me. Intent. I cannot make myself look away from his mouth, his lips. Warm breath mixes with my own.

He is so beautiful, and though the term is over-used, his beauty is surreal. I run the tip of my index finger along his jawline and then to a perfect imperfection: a tiny scar near his chin. I will ask him about this someday. Someday in the future. Because, I realize, I am going to get more days with him.

Free of pretense, I want feel him, to kiss him. He is the man I have been thinking about for a year. Every waking moment and all the sleeping ones when Honest Abe would get the heck out of the way.

It would be in keeping with my newly minted sexual assertiveness to just lean in and go for it. It would be, but I don’t let myself.

I will force him to take charge. And, yes, I realize that is an oxymoron.

Now would be a great time to grab him and kiss him passionately. That is what I want to do. That is what Scarlett O’Hara would do. Or maybe not. Did she ever get assertive? Well, I heard once Vivien Leigh didn’t want to kiss Clark Gable. She complained he had bad breath. Her reserve comes across as coy on film. Do guys like coy? Rhett seemed to like it. What is coy anyway? Am I being coy now? Why am I thinking about this right now? Oh, my good God. Get a grip on yourself. The man of your (hot sex) dreams is leaning back and looking into your eyes and you are debating the outdated flirtation techniques of period piece cinema.

I draw in a long breath to try to calm myself. Problem is: I am not actually calm and I am freaking out about all this realness and newness, and my unrelenting staccato intake of air highlights that fact.

“Emma, I can hear the gears turning in your head.”

What is the objective goal of coy behavior? Is it sex? Because I’m thinking that just might be a goal at some point here. Yeah, it is. Sex is my goal. Really hot, make-him-forget-his-own-middle-name sex.

Alaric’s eyes narrow slightly, and he leans back and away from where we touch.

“Emma, are you…are you shivering?” His whisper makes the fine hairs along my cheek stand up.

My body goes full-fledged Benedict Arnold on me and answers him with a silent shudder that ends with a clench in my abdomen.

“N-No.”

Yeah, I will not be taking home any statuettes for that one.

The window we stand by gives off a faintly cool aura, but I am surrounded, cocooned on all sides in his warmth, his scent. He kisses the top of my hair, and I feel him shake his head.

“Listen,” I say, “I don’t know why I overthink things. I want to be in the moment with you. I want to…want to be with you. I’m just…” I stammer, and his features relax momentarily then transform into contemplation, followed by concern. Just like me. That’s what I am. “…concerned.”

He shakes his head slightly. “Enlighten me: This is much different than scared, how?”

I fidget with the straps of my dress. He twists the thin strap around his finger slowly, then smooths it back down, creating tingling pinpoints wherever his fingers contact my flesh.

“Emma, I haven’t treated you quite the way I should have.” He brings his hand to my chin then tilts me up when I haven’t even realized I have looked down. He holds me there and looks into my eyes. I feel myself swallow against the slight pull he creates along my throat.

“How can I be clear with you, to tell you what you need to know?”

I make to open my mouth but my voice fails me because at that moment Alaric turns his face to the ceiling. He kept his eyes fixed upward, suddenly unfocused and unblinking.

“I have never felt like this before…I think I have never felt other than with you. Is that what you want to hear? Or do you want me to say that I’m terrified, too?” His thumb and forefinger close lightly over my chin. “Because I’m not going to be able to give you that.”

“Oh.” My face falls.

“Emma, I am not going to tell you that because I am not scared about us or about being with you. I don’t, however, relish the idea of not being with you.”

My ears perk at a particularly appealing two letter word. “What do you want ‘us’ to be?” I ask.

“Is there even an ‘us’ already, as far as you are concerned? Is there a ‘we’ or…Hell, I don’t really know where I stand with you.” His voice holds a nervous tinge.

How much detail is too much? How in this am I?

I’m in all the way.

As ever. For always.

I run my hands up through the hair at the base of his neck and press his head down to me.

“This should be easy. Natural. It is…us,” I whisper against his lips. “You are here, and I’m here…and we can only show each other the rest.”

And I am done talking. Done thinking.

Done with everything but feeling.

Because there are no worthy words.

I press my mouth to his, and despite the smile I can feel forming on his lips, he presses back, kissing me for what feels like the first time in forever.

This has the potential to be just that: the first of forever.

He breathes in deeply, never breaking our kiss, always in contact. The intake plays along my skin, invisible feathers along my cheek.

As if my entire being exists only where we touch, I notice nothing beyond the silk of lips and heated pulse wherever we touch. All is recollection and recall. Smooth and satin. His tongue runs along my lower lip, then inside. Touches the tip of my own. Then further, further to skim sides, to taste me as I taste the sweet of him.

Yet this is different somehow. My moves are tentative, more so than when we were together before, more so than I have perhaps ever been before. This kiss carries the weight of a year’s worth of acknowledged and answered longing.

Where he holds my face is soft. Reverent. Not so with the hand on my back. It grips. Tight. Nearly hurting. As if he thinks I might evaporate and leave him clinging to mist and air.

It’s as though he is trying to remember and memorize me simultaneously. He seems to want to catalog this moment. Journal it. Hmm. Novel concept…

He’s sharing with me that he is still afraid this will end, that we will end. His kiss tells me that he’s as worried as I am, but that he’s done the calculations. Risk versus reward.

My hands wind their way under his shirt and move along the skin of his back. He moans into my mouth, the sound sliding down my own throat.

We continue to kiss, tongues entangled, never parting. I mean to bring a hand around and run it along his chest—the same chest that has rendered me near mute on all my not quite accidental hotel room barging-in recon encounters—but, instead, I encounter the coarse hair that stretches from the top of his suit pants in a narrowing trail toward his navel. I run my fingers across it, and it becomes my turn to moan.

“Emma,” he says, breaking our kiss and moving only enough to hover over my lips. His breath is warm, his voice a rasp. “Are you sure? I don’t know if—”

“Shh,” I say softly and place two of my fingers on his mouth to silence him. He kisses them quickly before his hand is there and his fingers close around mine, and then he brings our clasped hands to his side. He is still breathing against my mouth; each breath seems shorter, shallower. He seems to quit breathing entirely when he begins to walk slowly backward, gently pulling me by my hand, toward the bed.

By the time we reach it, we have separated enough that I’m able to truly see everything about his face. The point where his throat meets his sharp jaw. The slight turn of his nose. The faint, growing creases near his eyes that beg to be tasted. The light that plays and dances across his features reveals a mixed look of excitement and an unnamed something more.

The room is bathed in silver Christmas moonlight that spills in from the single window across the white sheets, leaving the rest of the room in shadow.

We near the bed. He glances away to gauge the distance and, still, I can’t label the look I have been seeing, but I can’t make myself dwell on deciphering it or anything else beyond wanting…and touching…and truly feeling.

And suddenly, it’s happening. Hands in hair. Cradle and crush. Against his chest. Align. More than aware of every breath, of coursing blood, of crumbling walls. He kisses me with a level of intensity that distances itself from all our earlier kisses. I feel him breathe in deeply, as if he is trying to bring all of me into him. His lips, mine.

My mouth. His tongue. He delves, locates the deepest recess of my mouth, stakes his claim.

Fingers, thumbs in deep pressure circles, entangle within my hair. Flat of a palm, small of my back. Lower us to bed.

Us.

He bends, sits, then moves back more, pulling me on top. Unbroken kiss. Reassurance. And his desire for me strains against my stomach.

Tugging, not yet frantic, at sleeves. My dress is a splash on the floor. His palms skid across my waist, back to front. Hand and arms close around me there. Nearly encircle. As though his hands and fingers may stretch and reach completely from my navel around to my spine in glorious, hot pressure.

Moan into his mouth and, now, stunned when the sound returns to me tenfold from him. From inside him. I want him inside me.

Shift against him. Try to retain balance along his length, along his frame.

But, he shows me, it’s not necessary for me to worry about falling off; one leg wraps around my own and secures me to him, his lean thigh aligns with mine, his calf braids against my ankle and foot. He pushes his other hand up between us, shoving his shirt out of the way. Pulling us together as if it hurt not to feel skin on skin.

He shifts our kiss, holds my locks back, presses his lips to me. To my face, my throat, my collarbone. Ripping, popping seams, he gathers what’s left of his shirt in his fist.

“Emma, I need…to feel…to feel you.”

I make a move, stretch up, yank at his clothes. His shirt peels most of the way off, but he holds me tighter yet. Relinquishes his grasp only when I can’t suppress a giggle at the catch-22 of it all. He begins to laugh, too, but the sound catches in his throat when I have my camisole halfway over my head. Once it’s completely off, I feel my hair spill down over my bare back and exposed chest. Reflexively, my hands cross over my breasts. His eyes narrow slightly, and he shakes his head once, slowly. He sits up and gently lowers first one of my arms, kissing its wrist as he displaces it, and then the other.

Never breaking the gaze we share, he reaches down and removes his shirt, making it as thin as possible before it slips over his head and lands in a distant corner. I grip his arm, trace the indentation where his shoulder and bicep meet.

Both his hands up my sides, thumbs pad under the swell of my breasts. Cups one. Rubs across. Tensing. Teasing. Taut.

Then his other arm slides around, draws me close to him. Close. Presses me into his chest, infuses.

His touch is no longer tentative; he blazes a trail.

Soft kisses along my neck are now nibbles, nearly bites along my collarbone.

Licks salt and skin between kisses. My fingers through his hair. He explores me. Again. More. Even when I think he knows all of me, he finds more. A spot. A pulse. A place that makes me quake, quiver.

Stealing moments, helter-skelter, whenever I can find my mind, I curve and kiss his forehead, the corners of his mouth, and the slight saltiness of sweat. Dew on breaking Christmas morn.

Of their own accord, my hands tug and pull his waistband. He notes my intent, breaks away from our embrace. Rests his head on my chest, panting and watching me work them down. Rise and fall, his chest heaves. He nods, head lowered. Some silent pact with himself, some secret I still yearn to know, wish to learn.