Making Faces(61)

“Fern?” He must have heard her coming, because his voice was soft, more welcome than question. She stopped and reaching out, felt her fingers graze his upraised knee. He clasped her fingers immediately and then slid his hand up her arm, pulling her into him and then down to the mat, where he stretched out beside her, his length creating a wall of heat on her left side.

It was a strange sensation, feeling his touch in the dark. The wrestling room had no windows, and the darkness was absolute. Her senses were heightened by her lack of sight, the sound of his breathing both erotic and chaste–erotic because she didn't know what would come next, chaste because he was simply breathing, in and out, a flutter of warmth against her cheek. Then his mouth descended and the warmth became heat that singed her parted lips. And the heat became pressure as his mouth sank into hers.

He kissed Fern like he was drowning, like she was air, like she was land beneath his feet, and maybe that was simply how he kissed, how he had always kissed, whenever he kissed whomever he kissed. Maybe that was the way he had kissed Rita. But Fern had only been kissed by Ambrose and had nothing to compare it to, no informed analysis of what was good or bad, skilled or unschooled. All she knew was that when Ambrose kissed her, he made her feel like she was going to implode, implode like one of those controlled demolitions where the building simply collapses into a neat pile of rubble, disturbing nothing and no one around it.

Nothing around Fern would collapse. The room would not burst into flame, the mats would not melt beneath her, but when Ambrose was done with her, she would be a smoldering pile of what used to be Fern Taylor all the same, and there was no way she could go back. She would be unalterably changed, ruined for anyone else. And she knew it as surely as if she'd been kissed by a thousand men.

She moaned into his mouth, the sigh wrenched from the hungry little beast inside her that longed to tear at his clothing and sink her tiny claws into him just to make sure she wouldn't be hungry for long, just to make sure he was absolutely real and absolutely hers, even if it was just for this moment. She pressed herself against him, breathing in the clean sweat that tangled with the scent of the freshly laundered cotton of his clean shirt. She licked and kissed at the salt on his skin, the ripples of his scarred cheek a contrast to the sandpapery line of his jaw. And then, just like that, a thought slid into her fevered brain, a venomous sliver of self-doubt wrapped in a moment of truth.

“Why do you only kiss me in the dark?” she whispered, her lips hovering above his.

Ambrose's hands moved restlessly, circling her hips, sliding up the slim curve of her waist and brushing by the places he most wanted to explore, and Fern trembled, straddling the need to continue and the need to be reassured.

“Are you afraid someone will see us?” she breathed, her head falling to his chest, her hair tickling his mouth and neck and wrapping around his arms.

His silence felt like ice dribbled down her back, and Fern pulled herself from him, moving away in the darkness.

“Fern?” He sounded lost.

“Why do you only kiss me in the dark?” Fern repeated, her voice small and tight, as if she were trying to prevent her feelings from leaking out around the words. “Are you ashamed to be seen with me?”

“I don't only kiss you in the dark . . . do I?”

“Yes . . . you do.” Silence again. Fern could hear Ambrose breathing, hear him thinking. “So does it? Embarrass you . . . I mean.”

“No, Fern. I'm not ashamed to be seen with you. I'm ashamed to be seen,” Ambrose choked, and his hands found her in the dark once more.

“Why?” She knew why . . . but she didn't. Not really. His hand found her jaw and his fingers traced her cheekbone lightly, moving along her face, finding her features, stopping at her mouth. She pulled away so she wouldn't pull him in.

“Not even me?” she repeated. “You don't even want me to see you?

“I don't want you to think about how I look when I kiss you.”

“Do you think about how I look when you kiss me?”

“Yes.” His voice was raspy. “I think about your long red hair and your sweet mouth, and the way your little body feels when it’s pressed up against me, and I just want to put my hands on you. Everywhere. And I forget that I am ugly and alone and confused as hell.”

Flames licked the sides of Fern's belly and she swallowed hard, trying to contain the steam that rose up and burned her throat and drenched her face in shocked heat. She'd read books about men that said things like that to the women they desired, but she didn't know people really said such things in real life. She never thought someone would say those things to her.

“You make me feel safe, Fern. You make me forget. And when I kiss you I just want to keep kissing you. Everything else falls away. It's the only peace I've found since . . . since . . .”

“Since your face was scarred?” she finished softly, still distracted by the things he’d said about her mouth and her hair and her body. Still flushed yet afraid, eager yet reluctant.

“Since my friends died, Fern!” He swore violently, a vicious verbal slap, and Fern flinched. “Since my four best friends died right in front of me! They died, I lived. They're gone, I'm here! I deserve this face!” Ambrose wasn't shouting, but his anguish was deafening, like riding a train through a tunnel, the reverberations making Fern’s head hurt and her heart stutter in her chest. His profanity was shocking, his utter, black despair more shocking still. Fern wanted to run to the door and find the light switch, ending this bizarre confrontation playing out in the pitch black. But she was disoriented and didn't want to sprint into a brick wall.