Page 117 of On His Mind

“You’re shaking,” she says, against my jaw.

“Yeah.” My hand’s not steady on her ribs. “I am.”

She kisses the corner of my mouth, and then her hands slide up my side, landing on my chest. I have to shut my eyes to calm my racing heart.

“You okay?” she whispers.

I open my eyes, looking down at her. Then I nod.

We get to the edge of the bed and she pulls me down onto it and it climbs fast from there — her under me, my weight on my forearms, her mouth on my throat, my hand sliding up the back of her thigh — and it’s going somewhere, we both feel it going somewhere, and I get about one more minute into it before I have to stop.

I pull back. My arms are shaking, holding me up over her.

“Wait.” It comes out rough. “I have to — wait. I have to tell you something.”

She goes still underneath me. Her hands come to rest, one on my arm, one on my chest. She doesn’t say anything. She just waits, flushed, her hair everywhere, and looks up at me.

I can’t look at her for this. I drop my head, my forehead nearly to hers.

“I’ve never done this.” The words come out broken, one at a time, dragged up. “I told you before how I never––”

She nods when I can’t finish the rest of the sentence.

My jaw works. I make myself say the real thing. “Nobody’s ever been this close to me. Ever.”

The room’s dead quiet. I can feel my own pulse in my hands.

And she doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t make it small, and she doesn’t make it big either. Her hand comes up off my chest to the side of my face, and I feel her breathe out, and something in the air changes.

“Okay,” she whispers softly.

She turns her face and presses her mouth to the inside of my wrist, where it’s braced by her head, and it nearly finishes me.

“We don’t have to—”

“I want to.” It’s out before she finishes. “I want to. I just — I don’t know how to—”

“There’s no how.” Her thumb moves along my cheekbone. “There’s just us.”

She nods, so I nod once.

I kiss her again and it’s heavier now, both of us breathing it in. She takes her bra off, and I still at the sight of her. Her fingers undo my pants button, then the zipper. They slide off with her help. I press my mouth to her shoulder and just breathe there until I can move again.

I take my time because I don’t know how not to, and because I can’t believe I’m allowed to have her like this. I run my hand down the length of her like I’ll never have her again. I learn what she feels like under my palm, I learn the exact color of her soft skin, and my heart is like a fucking rocket in my chest with nowhere to shoot off to. She whispers my name, and it wrecks me to my fucking core. She unclips her pants and tugs them off. My heart does a somersault when she slips off her lace underwear. I pull my briefs off.

Her mouth parts, and mine dries. She kisses me once before I pull back.

“Are you sure?” I ask, pushing her hair out of her face. “We don’t have to.”

She nods. “I want to.”

“Okay,” I say, reaching to kiss her.

“Do you?” she whispers before my lips touch hers. “Are you sure?”

I look at her mouth, then her eyes. “Yes.”

She kisses me. I let her tongue play with my bottom lip, and then I kiss her hard. My hands stay on her hips and then slide down to her center.