The Girl Who Fell(67)
He unbuttons my coat and I wriggle free of it. He raises my shirt, his callouses skating across my flesh. He cups my breast and I arch closer to his touch, his warmth. He presses his kiss deeper into my mouth and I move my tongue against his.
He fumbles for the lip of his shirt and I tighten. Is this it? The It? I tense.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I don’t know.”
He kisses me softly. “It’s all going to be okay. I promise.”
The blanket slips to his waist as he draws his shirt over his head, lifts off his T-shirt. His torso flashes naked to the night, his flesh almost golden in the moonlight. “Man, it’s cold!” A shiver shakes along the length of his body.
“I kind of like it,” I say, even as a bolt of cold convulses my spine.
“Do you? Hmm.” He disappears under the blanket and pulls off one of my boots, cradling my heel. Then, the other. He tosses my boots behind him with a playful gesture that helps cut through my anxieties.
Alec pulls off my socks and my toes wriggle. He massages the arches, and I’m shocked by how good it feels. Then he slides his hands along the length of my legs until he reaches my waist. He pops the button on my jeans with an impossibly smooth motion. My hand flies to my stomach.
“It’s okay, Zephyr. We’ll go as slow as you need.”
“You’re sure?”
“Surer than sure.”
I lift my bottom and he slides off my jeans, abandoning them somewhere in the vicinity of my socks. The freezing December air rushes into our makeshift bed and shocks me with its intensity. I have never felt so alive. I wear my skin in a way that is truly mine for the first time. All because of Alec.
He undresses down to his boxer shorts. My breath quickens. His shoulders rise, a white crest against a dark wave. He crawls into our sleeping bag and folds me in his arms. He kisses my mouth, my neck, my jaw.
Then he stops. I hear the hollow snap of the elastic waist of his boxer shorts. “Would it be all right if I took these off? They can be quite cumbersome, you know.”
“Is that so?” A nervous laugh tickles the corners of my words.
“Seriously, Zephyr, it’s your call. I don’t want to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”
He locks eyes with mine for moments that suspend time. I think we will freeze out here, that they’ll find our frozen bodies in the spring thaw. But there is a current of heat, too. Just between us. Keeping us warm.
“It’s okay.”
“Positive?”
I nod softly. The gesture is fear and want coiled into one rope of movement.
Alec maneuvers out of his boxers, freeing one hip, and the next. I catch glimpses of the cut of his chest, the column of his hips, the flesh of his thighs.
“Now you. Sit up.”
I do and Alec reaches around me to find the clasp of my bra. Alec watches me, his eyes steady and transfixed. Slowly, he twists the clasp and the fabric releases. I move to hold my bra in place.
“It’s just us, Zephyr.”
I look around and he’s right, there is no one else with us. Only something. This thing between us that might happen tonight. That we talked about happening tonight. It crowds the space between us, this huge thing. But it also promises to erase any space between us.
I bite my lip as I peel aside the blue lace cups. I’m still self-conscious about my body, this new bra, the way he watches me like an eagle hunting prey. The way my flesh rises to the cold. But he accepts me with his eyes, the way his gaze lingers.
Alec leans back, his breath catching. “You”—he swallows hard—“look amazing.”
My breath buckles. I want to be beautiful, sexy, all the things he wants. But I need him in order to be any of these things.
He strokes my face and then my chest. I could stay like this for years. My breath trembles. Above me, a maze of early stars blaze white and I am alive.
“Tell me.” He nuzzles his face into the nape of my neck. “Tell me how much you like being here with me.”
“I don’t want to be anywhere else.” And it is the truth, even if I am petrified of all that could happen between us out here, under this blanket of moonlight.
He kisses me and I fold into him. His strong arm tucks me under the covers where we become heated, together. Outside our blanket, the world is another place, not our place, something separate from our two entwined bodies.
He raises my arms. One by one, he pins them onto the cold pillow. He kisses me deeply, warmly, his entire body coiled, inseparable from mine. My body becomes liquid beneath him, melting into his touch. I disappear in his breath, his heat, his fingers tracing my every inch. And then there is the quick rustle of plastic and then . . . an unexpected pinch on the inside of my flesh.