Page 38 of The Snuggle Is Real

Malcolm stares at the pile. “Yeah. Fuck those pillows.”

That makes me laugh, but only for a split second.

Because then he’s kissing me again and his hand is on my breast, fingers teasing at my nipple, and I’ve forgotten how to breathe.

His other hand is under my dress, stroking higher and higher until he finally brushes over my clit in a circle. Then he’s kissing me and easing a finger inside my panties.

That’s the moment I stop being nervous, because his touch is everything.

His tie goes first. I've untied his tie before—at the end of multiple receptions, when he's sitting in a folding chair looking wrecked and I loosen it for him affectionately and platonically. I have never once untied it slowly. I have never once felt him go still under my fingers while I did it, his breath catching, his hands flexing at my waist like he's holding himself back.

"Em," he says roughly.

"I'm working."

"You're torturing me."

"I'm being thorough. You love thorough."

The buttons of his shirt are small and there are approximately four hundred of them. By the sixth one he eases my hand off of him, and pulls the whole shirt over his head with the top buttons still done. At least two go pinging onto the floor.

I've seen Malcolm without a shirt many times. Beach weddings, a pool party in Scottsdale, that one disastrous summer we tried a sailing lesson. I have seen it, and I've silently admired it.

But now I get to touch. I put my palms flat on his chest, and revel in the warmth of his skin, the hard muscular plane that flexes involuntarily as my fingers explore. We’re in our thirties now and he isn’t surviving on tacos and cheap beer. Malcolm also spends more time at the gym purposefully sculpting his body and dang, I’m very grateful for that.

I undo the button on his dress pants, but he grips my wrist.

"Your turn," he says.

My dress has a zipper down the back. He finds it. He takes his time with it, the way I took my time with his tie, and his knuckles trace the length of my spine as it opens, all the way down. I make a sound I have never made in front of him in fifteen years of friendship.

It’s a gasp that turns into a low moan.

He growls. Holy shit. I made Malcolm Lennox growl.

The dress gets stuck on my hips since we’re sitting but Malcolm just grips the hem and rips it down off of me. It drops to the hardwood floor. The lamp on the dresser is still on, and Malcolm is looking at me like I'm the first fall leaf, the first frost, the first everything, and I leave it on.

"You're beautiful," he says. "I've thought so for so long, Em. I just never let myself say it."

"Say it again."

“You’re beautiful,” he says into my neck. Against my shoulder. In the soft place below my ear.

Then we're lying back on the bed, and the old frame creaks so loud we both grin.

Nothing. No Marlene. No knock.

Then Malcolm kisses me, his hips brushing over each corner of my mouth reverently.

His hands ease over me, undoing the back of my bra, and cupping my breasts.

I know Malcolm. I know how he takes his coffee and which side of the bed he sleeps on and that he hums in the shower and pretends he doesn't. I know his tells when he's bluffing at poker and the exact face he makes when a groomsman's toast runs long.

I don't know this.

I don't know how gentle he'll be, how he'll stop and look at me and ask okay? with his forehead against mine, and wait for my answer every time. How he'll laugh when my elbow hits the headboard and kiss the spot like it's his fault. How the man who plans for everything will lose his place entirely and murmur my name like it's the only word he has left. How safe I'll feel. How known.

How it won't feel like the first time with someone new, but like coming home to a house where every light is already on.