Page 33 of Harbor Me

My hand's already out. I wait. She looks at the hand, then at me. "Dance with you?” she asks with an audible gulp, before hesitantly putting her palm in mine.

She steps on my boot inside four bars. "Sorry. I'd like to tell you I'm usually better at this, but there was never a version of me that was good at dancing. Every school dance, some boy went home limping."

I’m willing to bet they didn’t mind. She doesn’t need to hear that, so I don’t tell her.

Her waist moves under my palm when she sways, my fingers reaching most of the way around to her spine, the dress thin enough it might as well not be there, and keeping my hips back off her is turning into hard work.

With every slow turn my hands want to drop lower and grip her ass and haul her up against me, instead I’m keeping them on her waist like a man being paid to behave.

I want her. No use trying to deny that. I've wanted her since she first stepped into the yard, and the wanting’s never taken so much as an hour off. I want her right here in the middle of the dancefloor, with a ferocity that scares the hell out of me.

She tips her head back. Dark eyes reflecting the lights, looking up at me longer than the song gives either of us an excuse for, and neither of us quits first.

"You're drunk," I tell her, because one of us should remember it.

"Only a little." She's warm about it. No ground given. "You're still very rude."

Then her cheek comes down against my chest like it's been invited, light as anything, and stays there.

"You were nicer the first time," she murmurs into my shirt.

The first time. The day she pulled into my lot and got nothing from me but teeth. Not a high bar, being nicer than that.

The song changes over and neither of us stops.

Then that song ends. Then another one. Nobody's keeping track, least of all me, and by the time we leave the dance floor half the party's watched the boss dance with the new office manager for three straight songs and I can't bring myself to care the way I should.

She makes her goodbye rounds, hugging Carol, promising Tommy something about pancakes I'll be hearing about for weeks. While she's busy, I settle the whole tab at the bar. Tommy's too far gone to notice and it's his birthday, so it's nobody's business.

Marcus watches us leave together with the look of a man who's just been handed unlimited gloating rights. I’ll have to nip that in the bud first thing tomorrow morning.

Outside the night's gone still and warm, the kind of July dark that makes everything feel further from reality than it is. Two blocks from here to her place. I could walk it in ninety seconds if I was in a hurry. I slow down instead, and if anybody asks, it's because she's had a few and the sidewalk's uneven.

She walks close. Closer than an empty sidewalk gives her any reason to, her shoulder brushing my arm every few steps, bare skin against my sleeve, and every single brush lands somewhere a long way south of where it touches. The top of her head doesn't clear my shoulder. She's talking with her hands about something Walt said and I'm not hearing a word of it, too busy wanting to put my arm around her so bad my hand keeps curling at my side like it's holding something already.

"I can't believe I stepped on you that many times and you kept going," she's saying. "You're going to be limping through the haul tomorrow and everyone's going to ask why."

"It won't happen again."

"That's a shame." No sting taken, warm as anything. "I was just getting better at it. Practice makes perfect and all."

It'll happen as many times as she wants it to. That's the truth, and it takes its place with everything else I don't say.

At her door she digs through her little bag for the keys, drops them, catches them against the door on the bounce, and holds them up like evidence. "See. My reflexes are great. I’m perfectly sober. I want that on record."

Then she turns around to say good night and freezes. Just staring up at me with the streetlight in her eyes, lips glossy and wet from the way she keeps licking them absently, and whatever I had ready dies somewhere on the way up.

I don't decide to kiss her. There was never a version of tonight where I got to decide anything. My hand's already at her jaw, rough palm against soft cheek, tipping her face up, giving her all the time in the world to step back and praying harder than I've prayed for anything that she doesn't.

She does the opposite. She leans closer and comes up on her toes to meet me halfway.

The first touch of her mouth is careful. Both of us barely breathing, barely moving, her lips soft and warm and a little sticky-sweet under mine. And then she makes this sound, this small helpless sound into my mouth like she's been waiting as long as I have, and careful dies right there on the doorstep.

I walk her back the one step it takes to put her against the doorframe and she goes willingly, pulling me with her by two fists in my shirt. My hands find her hair, fingers sliding deep and digging into her scalp, vaguely aware that her hair is every bit as silky as I’ve been imagining.

And when I tilt her head back to where I want it, she doesn't protest, she melts, mouth opening under mine, letting me in, kissing me back slow and deep and greedy while the last two weeks catch fire and burn with the heat of a thousand suns.

She tastes like cider and something even sweeter underneath that's nothing but her, and I chase it, licking into her mouth, swallowing every little sound she makes, learning what makes her make them. Her body's flush against mine now, soft everywhere I'm not, her belly pressed to where I'm hard as a dock post and past hiding it, and when she feels it, she doesn't pull away. She rolls her hips into me, slow and deliberate, and the groan that punches out of me goes straight into her mouth.