“What’s wrong?” she whispered, loosening her touch on him.
“Nothing.” He sounded drugged. “Keep going. It feels good.”
He gathered her skirt as he talked. The hem tickled her bare legs, sensitizing her, building anticipation so she throbbed between her thighs. He slouched lower and caught her leg to guide her knee over his muscled thigh, opening her to his touch. Her thigh was scraped by the abrasion of his and she flinched.
“What—?” Off balance, she fell into him, hand squeezing and making him grunt. “I’m sorry! I’m bad at this.”
“No, Fern, you’re not.” He laughed softly against her mouth as he caressed her through her knickers.
Her turned to gasp and pull away a fraction before he could kiss her. “What are you doing?”
“We’ll do this together.” He tucked his fingers into her underpants and let the cotton trap his hand against her needy flesh.
Her body responded with a rush of liquid heat, clasping with hollow need.
“This is really bad. It has to be,” she murmured, thinking, under the shirt, down the pants. Nothing good came of this, but it felt incredible.
“Do you want to stop?” His lips played along her jaw, enticing her mouth to catch up to his while her mind was filled with nothing but the delicate stroke of his fingers where she ached and throbbed.
“No,” she admitted on a sob, pushing into his hand for a firmer touch.
“Neither do I.”
* * *
Fern woke to a pleasant awareness of the flesh between her legs and a memory of holding the sun as it went supernova in her hands. Afterward, as they’d leaned there, shaking, his arm locking her to his pounding heart, he’d whispered, “It’s probably best we don’t go all the way, Fern. It might kill us.”
She smiled into her pillow as she thought of it again. The way he’d kissed her after they’d put themselves back together had been incredibly encouraging.
“It’s not bad, Fern,” he’d promised her. “It’s not smart,” he admitted in a dry whisper, “but what we’re doing isn’t sinful. I won’t let it go too far. You won’t lose your job or get pregnant. I’ll be discreet.”
“You’re saying you want to do this again?”
“Don’t you?”
“I do,” she’d breathed, massaging the muscles of his back, incredulous that she was in his arms, that he held her so close, that this was even happening. She had pushed aside reservations and worries about being the only fruit in the bowl, focusing instead on the way he kneaded her bottom and seemed reluctant to release her so they could find the things they’d dropped on the path and walk back to camp. He had kept her hand in his until the last moment.
Her mother would call this kind of sneaking around cheap, but even if he was taking advantage of her naiveté and inexperience, he was doing it tenderly. This was the kind of affair she’d always secretly dreamed of. She couldn’t imagine regretting it, especially if there weren’t any long-term consequences.
That word—long-term—made her bite her lip and lick at the sting.
Zafir and Amineh were close, but in the way of adult siblings who lived in two separate countries. They stayed in touch, but didn’t spend a lot of time together.