Kiss Her Once for Me (84)

“I’m sorry,” I quickly apologize. “We don’t have to…. I’m okay with just kissing. If you want to wait until Andrew and I have officially ended things, or…”

She clenches her jaw, thinking. “Oh, fuck it,” she says, and when she kisses me again, she’s smiling into it. I smile, too. Heat and hands, and when she shifts against me, my lower stomach tightens, pulling all the energy inside me down to my core until I feel dizzy with needing more of her touch, more of her skin. I push us across the living room until we reach the couch, and Jack falls back onto it, me halfway on top of her.

She lets me pull off her sweatshirt, and there’s something so vulnerable in the action of undressing another person. She’s not wearing a bra, so it’s a tug of fabric, then Jack’s light brown skin in the flickering firelight of the living room. Her small breasts, the ridge of her hardened nipples, which make my tongue feel thick inside my mouth. Faint stretch marks on the soft skin above her hips, the puckered skin around her belly button, the tattoos.

The tattoos. The images that tell her story in the way webcomic panels do, snapshots of a time and place. Of a moment in the life of this person. I need my mouth on all of it, and for the first time all week, there’s nothing to hold me back.

I want to kiss, so I kiss her. I straddle her, and I kiss the hard curves of her rib cage, I kiss the Mount Hood tattoo, I kiss the deliciously soft skin of her stomach. “You’re so perfect,” I tell her as I slide off the couch and onto the floor so I can tug the sweatpants down her hips to reveal unisex boxer briefs with a rainbow waistband and those motherfucking thighs.

Jack’s legs are a work of erotic art. Long and muscular, her shins are coated in soft brown hair, with three freckles above her left knee. Her thick thighs strain as she arches off the couch to help me along with the pants, and I think about those thighs under me, around me, squirming beneath my hands as I devoured her last Christmas.

I climb into her lap again, the hard mound of her pressed between my legs. “You’re so fucking perfect.”

I caress her breasts with my thumbs. I trace her flesh, touch and retreat, tease my fingers along the underside of her small breasts. Jack arches back, groans as I wind and unwind her, until she begs with a single word: “Elle.”

Here is what I know about Jack: she likes to be in charge, likes to lead; she likes to be the one who gives, the one who nurtures and nourishes, the one who makes you feel safe and protected and so goddamn precious your heart almost bursts. But one time, in her Airstream, she let me take care of her, and I learned she also likes to hand over that control sometimes. She likes to feel powerless, likes to be teased, likes to plead for what she wants and be denied it still, until the tension and promise and delayed satisfaction make her squirm.

And I love being the person who makes her feel that way. I fucking love to be in control.

So I move my lips closer to her nipple as if to take her in my mouth, but I only blow cool air across her skin before moving up to kiss her throat. Jack pants and makes all manner of desperate sounds as I kiss her throat, her shoulder, her collarbone. I kiss the crest of her right breast until she begs again with just the syllables of my name, and then I take her nipple between my teeth and tug, only for a second, making Jack loosen with relief before recoiling with longing.

It’s so damn hot, being handed this power, being allowed to turn her all weak-kneed and wanting. I’m wet and impatient with my own game, so I push myself up on my knees to get a better angle and cup my hand between her legs. Gently, I press my palm against her, my middle finger disappearing between her legs. “May I?”

Jack growls, “You fucking better,” and I think I momentarily black out. When I regain consciousness, I lift two fingers to my mouth and suck until they’re slick with my spit. Jack watches me, her pink tongue darting out of her mouth to lick the white scar.

My hand dips past the waistband of her underwear, my slick fingers finding her wet and hot and waiting. It fills me with something potent to know it’s for me, it’s all for me, these wild feelings. It’s been so long since I’ve been this close to another person, and she’s the only person I want to be close to. I refuse to think about what this is, what this means, what we’ll do tomorrow.

I sketch a finger around her, up and down the length of her, until she clenches her teeth together and doesn’t unclench them. “Goddamn you,” Jack growls. “Please. I’m not going to beg.”

But she does. She begs until I burrow through her coarse hair and rub my two fingers over her swollen clit. I’m met with a yes and a thank you and an oh my God. I swallow a litany of curses with a graceless kiss. A yes and please and yes, like that. Because of course I remember how she likes to be touched.

I remember every damn thing about that night.

“Yes, Elle, holy shit.” She grabs onto my hip for balance, and she arches into the pressure of my fingers, and she fucks herself against my hand. It’s hot and messy and quick, but I get to watch her face the whole time. I get to watch the feigned indifference melt away. There’s no shiny Airstream to hide herself away in. It’s just her and me, perfect imperfections on this ratty couch.

Her bottom lip pinned beneath two white teeth; the flutter of her thick lashes as she closes her eyes and throws back her head; the way her hair falls over her forehead and the way the heat climbs up her throat and the way her mouth wrenches open with sudden, guttural moans. She’s so pretty. “So fucking pretty.”