His hands gradually warm against me, and he pulls off my hat, and the cold wind over my sweaty hair feels good, too.
Evan scrapes my hair away from my face, breaking up the damp clumps, then twists my hair at my nape.
He slides my hat back on.
His mouth is warm and tastes like he has just eaten a mint, sugary.
I grab his face, scratch through his stubble with my nails and open to him. He’s a little too gentle, so I rake into his hair, fist the cool wetness of it, angle him over me.
“Jenny,” he kisses my top lip, my jaw, pulls apart my coat and kisses my neck, “will you tell me?”
“No,” I say. “Not now.”
I kiss his neck, his Adam’s apple, lick the hollow in his throat. I can’t hear him over the wind, the fans in the HVACs, but I feel his groan.
Then he holds my head still, and his kiss is deep, slow, his breath hard through his nose, and everything goes hot over my skin and the way the snow is touching us, dripping from our hair and skin as it melts, just serves as a contrast to this warm kiss, how it makes my blood rush in a scald over my chest.
He uses his kiss to coax me up, his arms under my coat and around my middle, until we’re standing, and he’s kissing my neck, letting us breathe.
“Does anything hurt?” He runs his hands over the side of my body that hit the ground. I hiss when he presses over my thigh, right under my hip.
When he softly touches the area again, I look down. He’s brushing handfuls of eiderdown off his hand, the wind picks up the tiny feathers and mixes them with the snow.
The ice and brick tore right through the coat my mother sent me, and it’s ruined.
“You’ve torn through your jeans, too,” he says, and shows me the bloody rip. “Come on”—he grabs my hand—“let’s get you cleaned up.”
I follow him.
The courtyard is a mess, and we pick through the chunks and patches of ice I exposed out from underneath the pretty snow.
* * *
I don’t let him treat me like a child.
I take off my coat, keeping the torn side up so it doesn’t spill too many feathers in his office. Then I untie my boots and put them carefully in a plastic boot tray he has under his coatrack.
Without looking at him, I unsnap my jeans and shimmy them off, easing them over the scrape, then I fold my jeans and put them on a chair.
Evan has taken off his coat and pulled out a first-aid kit. “Can you hand me an antiseptic wipe?”
Our eyes meet. He looks tired, his hair sticking up everywhere from the snow and my hands. His gaze drops over my side. I must look ridiculous, standing in his office in my sweater and flowered underpants and wool hiking knee-highs.
“Let me.” He looks back to his kit, pulling out the wipes, his eyebrows worried.
He sits in the chair next to where I am standing and tears open a wipe. The scrape is surprisingly deep for how many clothes were over my skin. I think a brick must have torn open my coat on the way down.
He starts at the edges, scrubbing away where the blood has dried. Then opens another and gently drags it through the raggedy grooves. My eyes water, it stings, but then he takes ahold of my thigh with his hand—I must have flinched—and his fingers are resting on my inner thigh.
Now nothing hurts.
He finishes cleaning it, takes his hands away to get gauze and tape.
“No, that’s okay, don’t dress it. It’s not bleeding anymore.”
He looks up at me. “Neosporin?”
“Okay.”
When he holds on to my thigh again, I close my eyes. I want to move my hips, or I want his hand to move. He swipes the ointment over the scrape but doesn’t take his hand away from my thigh. So I reach down and put my hand over his, guide his hand a few inches higher, then let go.
He rests his head against my stomach. “Jenny?”
“Just touch me. Okay?” I put a hand in his hair and ignore the way my throat feels like I should cry. I don’t want to cry.
I want Evan to touch me in that way he has, like he doesn’t believe he actually has permission but is so glad to be granted it.
He hikes my sweater and T-shirt up to rest his face against my skin. I step closer, and he opens his legs so I can stand between them. I jump a little when he kisses me over my navel, but then his hand soothes over my whole stomach, pushing into my skin, over my hip. He hooks a finger into the waistband of my underwear, and scootches it down over my hips, over my bottom, but no more.
His hands move over all the exposed skin, over and over. My waist, my hips, my stomach, the fronts of my thighs. At first, it’s strange. I’m standing in his office, my sweater hiked up, my underwear bunched down, and nothing’s happening but his hands playing over me.
I sift through his hair as it dries in the heat of his office. Touch the wrinkles in his brow. Follow the whorls in his ears. When I do that, he closes his eyes, so I do it over and over until his cheeks are pink.