Page 75 of What We Don't Say: Part One

“Green,” I whisper. “Please.”

She keeps going, slower, palms gliding up my spine and then around to my stomach. I lean into every touch like I’m starving for it. When her fingers brush the waistband of my pants I make a small sound I can’t swallow, and Callie stills again until I nod. Only then does she continue, tracing the line of my hip with her thumb, grounding me even as the heat under my skin climbs higher.

“You can touch me,” she says. “Wherever you want.”

My hands are already at her waist. I push her shirt up carefully, watching her face the whole time. When my palms find the bare skin of her sides she inhales sharply, and the sound goes straight through me. I touch her like she’s something I might break and something I might never get to hold again at the same time. My thumbs skim the soft underside of her breasts through the thin fabric of her bra. She arches into my hands with a quiet, broken breath.

“Theo—”

My name in that voice makes my eyes sting. I lean in and kiss the place just below her ear, then lower, along her throat, tasting the warm pulse there. She tilts her head to give me more room. Her fingers tighten in my hair. I kiss lower still, across the slope of her collarbone, then down to the soft skin above her heart, breathing her in until honeyed pear and vanilla tea are all I can taste.

“Do you want my mouth on you?” she asks, voice low.

I shake my head quickly. That isn’t what I need. I need the opposite. I need to give her something.

“Want to,” I say, the words clumsy. “Want to make you… feel good.”

Callie goes very still. Then she cups my face with both hands and looks at me like I’ve offered her something precious.

“Yes,” she says. “I want that. I want you.”

She shifts back against the cushions and helps me settle between her thighs. The nest rearranges around us—scarf under my knees, cardigan still clutched in one of my hands until she gently takes it and sets it aside. I look up at her once more.

“Color?” I ask, because I need to hear it from her too.

“Green, Star.” Her fingers slide back into my hair. “You can stop whenever you want. I can stop whenever I need to. Only if it’s good for both of us.”

“Good,” I repeat, and mean it with everything I have.

I push her shirt higher and press my mouth to the soft skin just above the waistband of her pants. She shivers. I unbutton them with careful fingers, watching her face the entire time, and she lifts her hips to help me ease them down over her thighs. The scent of her hits me fully then—honeyed pear and vanilla tea and something warmer, richer, that makes my mouth water and my hands shake. I lean in and press an open-mouthed kiss to the inside of her thigh. Then higher. Then higher still, until I can feel the heat of her against my cheek.

When I finally put my mouth on her she makes a sound I’ve never heard from her before—soft and startled and already close to breaking. I freeze.

“Green,” she says immediately, voice rough. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

I don’t.

I learn her by taste and by the way her breath changes. Slow at first, careful strokes of my tongue that make her thighs tremble around my shoulders. I map every soft fold, every place that makes her hips lift or her fingers tighten. When she gasps I do it again. When her breath stutters I stay right there, circling the swollen peak of her with the flat of my tongue until her whole body tightens. I want to give her everything. I want her to feel chosen the way she makes me feel chosen. Every soft sound shemakes teaches me more. Every time she says my name—quiet, broken, almost pleading—I grow bolder.

I slide one arm under her thigh to hold her open and keep going, reading the way her body softens and tightens, the way her breathing turns uneven, the way she starts rocking against my mouth like she can’t help it. My other hand rests on her hip, steadying her, feeling the fine tremor that runs through her skin. I press closer, deeper, tasting her until she’s all I know. The wet heat of her, the way she opens for me, the quiet, desperate sounds that leave her throat when I find the exact rhythm she needs—all of it sinks into me like something I’ve been waiting my whole life to learn.

“Theo—oh—Star—”

Her hand fists harder in my hair. The pull sends a bright shock down my spine, but I don’t pull away. I stay exactly where she needs me, tongue working in steady, devoted strokes, lips sealing around her as I suck gently. Her thighs tighten around my shoulders. Her breathing breaks into short, uneven gasps. I can feel her getting closer in the way her body starts to shake, in the way her fingers clutch and release in my hair, in the soft, helpless sounds that keep spilling out of her.

When it happens it is quiet and devastating. Callie’s back arches, a broken little cry leaving her throat, her fingers locked tight in my hair as pleasure rolls through her in long, shaking waves. I stay with her through all of it, gentling only when she starts to tremble too hard, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses to her as she comes down, tasting the last of her release while her thighs quiver around me.

Afterward, I can’t stop trembling.

Callie pulls me up slowly, like I’m something precious without making me feel breakable. I feel enormous instead. Hollowed out and filled at the same time, my skin humming, my handsclumsy as I try to help fix her clothes and only make her laugh under her breath.

“I’ve got it,” she murmurs, catching my hands and kissing my knuckles. “Come here.”

I go because there’s no part of me that wants distance from her now. She tucks me against her in the nest, my cheek pressed to the soft curve of her stomach and her fingers sliding into my hair. Her scent is everywhere, on the cardigan and the scarf and the mug, but also on me, on my mouth, on my hands, and I press my face into her shirt while my eyes burn.

“You’re shaking,” she says.

“Good,” I tell her, because it is.