That I have to go on without him.
That I can go on without him.
He chose Nathan for me. God, only Adrian could do that. Would do that.
“Lost you,” Nathan murmurs, and I realize I’ve pulled away.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You can share it, if you want.”
I shake my head. Smile at him. “No, I was just…talking to him.” I sigh. “Hearing him. Hearing what he’s been saying all this time, and finally understanding it.”
He lets me sink back down and cradles me against his chest again. Doesn’t pressure me to talk. Doesn’t try to get me to kiss him again.
“You’re too patient,” I say.
“This is what we make of it. There’s no rush for anything.”
“So if I say I’m probably going to have to keep taking it slow…?”
“Didn’t I already tell you no apologizing or explaining is necessary?”
“Sometimes it is, though.” I take his hand where it rests heavily on my shoulders, and press mine to it, palm to palm, fingers to fingers. “I still don’t know how we do this. What it looks like. I’m still scared. But I want to try.”
He curls his fingers between mine. Brushes a thumb over my lips. “One step at a time.” He gently pinches my chin, tipping my lips to his, kisses me again, lightly, quickly. “It’s okay to be scared.”
“Are you?”
“Hell yeah.” He rests his forehead on mine. “I’ve got you, Nadia.”
It’s a comfort, hearing him say that.
I kiss him again, testing the feel of it, the taste of him. It’s as natural and easy as breathing, but still somehow unfamiliar. His lips are his own, unique and different and I have no memories of the feel and taste of his mouth. His hands on my shoulders and arms and back and cheek are new, different, rough, strong, intentionally gentle. His body and bulk are big, and that’s foreign, too. It’s all new. I have to learn him. I have to let him learn me.
The fire crackles, and its light is dull and orange and casts long shadows on the ceiling and walls.
I kiss him, and then we pull away and just sit together and breathe. And then he kisses me, and this time I let desire pull at me a little.
I twist in place, throw my leg over his hips and sit straddling him, facing him, and he lets the blanket drop and his bare broad anvil-hard chest is under my hands and his dinner-plate palms and thick strong fingers toy with my hair and trace the arch of my cheekbones and the curve of my spine, and I feel my shirt-dress riding up my thighs and the belt digging into my diaphragm and the undersides of my breasts.
I’m fully in my body. A weird thing to feel, as if I’m reinhabiting myself, reanimating my skin and muscles and nerve endings and hormones, as if until now I was a fading spark of consciousness riding along in a clockwork robot of me.
I feel his lips on mine, feel his tongue beginning to think about questing out, and I meet him halfway, and now his tongue and mine tangle, dance. This kiss isn’t so slow, isn’t so soft. His hands span my back, low.
I pull away, breathing hard. “Wow. That was…”
“Intense?”
“Yeah.” I drape against him, press my nose into his neck and breathe, wrap my arms around him; I’m trying these things on to see how they feel, and I like them. “I’m the one who said I had to take it slow, but that didn’t feel slow to me.”
“It can be what we want it to be.”
“Could we just…kiss? For now?”
He stands up with me, effortlessly, and I have to cling with arms and legs as he moves to the couch. Leans back against it, still holding me. “The floor was hurting my butt.” He grins. “Now we can just kiss as long as you want.”
He knows what I’m asking, and doesn’t need me to ask it any more explicitly. I don’t trust myself, given the sudden rush of heat within me, the way I delved into the expanses of his kiss.
Safeguard me, I’m asking.
I will, he’s answering.
33: If I Kiss You
Taking it slow means kissing on the couch by firelight until dawn. Ignore the ache of needing and wanting more burning inside, because what I want and what I need are not the same thing. Taking it slow means falling asleep on the couch, fully clothed. Waking up and having coffee, this time inside.
It means days like that, coffee and breakfast together, sometimes in my cabin, sometimes in hers. Talking all night, kissing like teenagers who’ve just discovered the art. But nothing more. Holding hands, touching faces. Learning lines and curves, learning bodies. Learning where the edge is, that line where the gunpowder of desire meets the spark of need. Skirting it.
Some nights, we sit up in the loft of her cabin, on the beanbag chair, my knees splayed wide with her back nestled to my front. Both of us reading, sometimes sharing thoughts, mostly not.
There’s as much silence as there is talk.
Taking it slow means the days grow shorter and the winds off the lake colder, and the pine trees sway and the lake produces wavelets and now making a fire in the evening is a necessity, because there’s no other heat source for these cabins. Taking it slow means kissing and kissing, knowing at some point we’ll cross into more, but still content to explore this space first.
It’s growing at ease with each other.
We become more and more comfortable in her cabin than mine. I sleep on the couch, sometimes.
We have not ventured into her bedroom.
I shower at my place, she at hers.
I’ve seen no more of her body than when I first met her.
She has days where she needs space, and I go fishing or work on carving in my cabin. Sometimes I’m the one who needs that space, and she gives it to me. And we understand.
Is it weeks? Months? I don’t know. Time just sort of slips by, unnoticed, here at these cabins on the lake.
I never finished Adrian’s book: we’re off-book, now. I will, at some point. Now, I’m following the script as we write it.
It’s fully fall, and being outside means thick sweaters and wool socks. It’s been a day where Nadia needs space, and I can tell this time it’s not because she’s missing him, but because she’s thinking. It’s the gloaming, silvery-purple autumn evening.
I find her on the dock; I can almost feel her out here, waiting to talk to me.
I sit in the chair beside hers. Wait for her.
“It’s like you knew I was going to come looking for you,” she says.
“I did.”
“Are you getting impatient?” she asks, eventually.
“With what?”
“Me. Us.” She turns in her chair to look at me. “Holding back.”
“I’m not holding back.”
“Nathan.” Her eyes are scolding, but her smile is understanding. “The truth, please, always.”
I sigh, think. “It’s not that I’m holding back. We’re taking our time exploring what it means for us to…be together. And I’m okay with that.” I reach out and take her hand. “Yeah, I’m a man, with a man’s desires and needs, and yeah, it’s been a hell of a long time. But I’ll wait. And I’m not waiting for you, I’m waiting for us.”
She rubs one of my knuckles with her thumb. “Thank you for being so patient. For understanding.”
“It’s as much for me as it is you, Nadia. I want this between us to be…right, and good. I’m not ready to rush into anything either. It’s new, for both of us.”
“But you’re still taking your cues from me as to…how far things go.”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “I’ve had more time, I guess. I know I’m as ready as I can be to be intimate with someone again. It’s a big step, and it’s not something I take lightly. I’m not gonna rush into that just because my dumb growly male hormones are being pushy. It means more to me than just something physical.”
“You are holding back what your dumb growly male hormones want, then.”
“Of course.”
She stands up, still holding my hand
. “Let’s go in. I’m hungry.” On the way up the steps to her cabin, she glances up at me. “Nathan?”
I pause with my hand on the doorknob. “Yeah.”
“You’re spinning it to be about you, but really, it’s for me.”
“Yeah, maybe a little.”
“Or a lot.” She lifts up and kisses me, a slant-wise kiss across my lips. “And I just wanted to say thank you.” She touches my lips. “Don’t say anything else. I just want you to know that I see it, and I’m thankful.”
We go in, and we have a quiet dinner which we make together, something neither of us has ever done before. There’s burgers fried in a cast iron skillet, puffy whole grain buns, a tossed salad, a bottle of wine.
We’re on the couch, and lately, this is where we kiss, and then eventually she goes to bed and I sleep here, on the couch. Better than alone, in my cabin, far away from her. And I think she likes having me near. It’s a nice couch, comfortable. But I think I’ve also been sensing her coming to a shift.
She has something on her mind, something she’s still chewing on, and I wait her out.
“So…” she trails off, starts again. “I’ve tried to come up with the best way to say this, but can’t make it sound any better. So here goes.”
I touch her cheek with my thumb. “Whatever it is, just say it.”
“I’m ready for the next step, but I want you to lead us there. I know you’ve been waiting for me, and like you said earlier, I think I’m as ready as I can be.”
“There’s no rush, Nadia.”
“I know.” She smiles, takes my hand. “I’m not rushing. I don’t feel rushed. I feel ready, even though I know some part of me will never quite be all the way ready. And I want more. I’m getting impatient with just kissing you.” Another thoughtful pause. “You make me feel beautiful, and seen, and appreciated, and safe. And I want the next step.”
“What did you mean by wanting me to lead us there? I mean, I guess I know what you mean, but…explain it anyway.”
A shrug. “Just…stop holding back your dumb growly male hormones.”
I nod. “I can do that.”
We just sit beside each other for a while. She’s waiting for me, now.
I think she was expecting me to turn half feral or something. Instead, I cup her face and I kiss her. I leave it slow, like the first kiss. Gentle. Exploring her mouth, stoking her desire.
Her hand slides up around my neck and she turns toward me, I bury my hand in her hair. Still familiar territory. Nadia slides her thigh over my legs and straddles me, and except that once, that first kiss, she’s never done that. I like her weight on me, her softness against me, in my arms. I cradle her face in both hands and hold her close, kiss her until we’re breathless, and then we trade breaths and breathe each other.
Now, I let myself explore. I let the ravening beast I’ve kept so tightly chained inside me off the leash, a little. Let my hands drift down her arms, to her hips. She lifts, sitting on her knees, and her hands are in my hair and knotted, tugging, and god I like that.
I don’t anticipate anything she does, because I’ve never done any of this with her, and not with anyone in, now, over four years. The anniversary came and went, and that was one of my quiet, solitary days out on the fishing boat, catching nothing but a day of memory and mourning, and it still hurt as it always will, but there was more to life now and it was okay to put it away again, to look to shore and see Nadia standing on the dock, waiting as I row in.
I let my hands fill themselves with her curves, coursing over the bell of her hips and pausing there, and then rounding over the swell of her backside and she moans as I clutch her butt, and her hands dig into my shoulders.
She settles to sit on me. Pulls away enough to meet my eyes. “This feels good.”
“Yeah, it does.” I hold her gaze. “More?”
She unbuttons the four buttons of my wool sweater. “Yes.” A pause, her fingers going into the open V, touching my chest over the thin cotton of my plain white T-shirt. “More, please.”
I stand up, and her legs latch around my waist, and I walk with her to her bedroom. Stop just inside, assessing her reaction. Her reaction is to reach over my shoulder and swing the door shut behind us.
Then, she slides down to stand in front of me. Pushes up the hem of my sweater, lifts up on her toes to pull it off over my head and my arms, which I raise for her. She takes my shirt with it, and I think she likes me in nothing but my jeans.
She’s wearing a cashmere sweater the same lavender as the daisy on the table at our first and only date. Under it, light wash blue jeans, low-ankle black boots. She’s watching me, waiting for me again.
“Quid pro quo,” she whispers.
I curl my fingers in the hem of her sweater, and she lifts her arms. I peel it off her, and the cashmere is downy, impossibly soft. She’s wearing only a black bra underneath. She spills out over the top of the lacy cups. I swallow hard at the vision of her.
“You’re so beautiful, Nadia,” I murmur.
Her smile is giddy, pleased. Her hands roam my bare chest.
I lean down to kiss her, but she touches my lips with one finger, stopping me. “Not yet. I like this step of the process. If I kiss you, I’ll close my eyes, and I might miss something. I don’t want to miss anything.”
I sing a few bars of “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith, and she smiles, laughs. “I love how you always have a song for the moment.” She said it, and we both realize it. Her eyes are wide, searching. “I don’t take it back.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want you to.”
She bites her lower lip. “Nathan?”
“Yeah.”
“Kiss me after all?” she breathes. “I’m nervous to go any further, but I want to. Kissing you makes me feel bold.”
I put my hands on her lower back, warm flesh under my eager palms, and she makes a sound in her throat as my lips meet hers and my hands caress her lower back, over her bra strap and across her shoulders. Her breasts press soft against my chest, and I feel everything inside me rising, expanding, wanting, needing.
She feels it, the hardness of my need standing rigid between our bodies, and she murmurs again, pressing more closely to me. Hips to hips. Chest to chest.
I feather my hands in her hair and brush it back, and I kiss her more deeply, and I hold her back in my hands, and then I grip the straps of bra in my fingers, pause for her to stop me. She doesn’t; she kisses me harder and creates space between our bodies for her hands. I feel my heart crashing in my chest like I’ve sprinted a mile. I unhook the clasps, and she breaks the kiss, and I scrape the bra down her arms. She lets it fall to the floor between us.
Reaching for me, for my jeans, she’s got her eyes dropped, on me, but also out of nerves.
I catch her hand. “Nadia, wait.” I let her go. “I want to look at you.”
She stands up straight, but crosses her arms over her chest. “Nathan…”
I pull gently at her hands. “Don’t.” I give her my eyes. “You’re so beautiful, Nadia. Please, let me see you.”
She lowers her arms, and her eyes fix on mine, nerves and need singing contrasting songs in her gaze.
I devour her body with my eyes. Lush, firm, full breasts. Small areolae, plump nipples standing on end. She stands boldly, now, seeing the adoration and the desire in my eyes, and it strengthens her.
“So fucking beautiful,” I murmur.
I run my palm up her stomach, pause at her diaphragm—I can feel her heart slamming. I cup her breast, and her eyes slide closed soaking up the sensation of being touched. Of having her body enjoyed, treasured. I take my time, and she lets me. Cup and caress, pinch and rub. And then she gasps, once, sharply, as I roll her nipple in my fingers, and she dances backward. A smile grows on her face, a sharp, hungry smile, a needful, eager smile. She stands just out of reach, chin lifted, eyes on me, on the evidence of my desire for her bulging against my zipper. She unbuttons her jeans, lowers the zipper. Hesitates
, and then inhales and holds her breath and locks her lower lip in her teeth, eyes wide and on mine, now. She lowers her jeans past her hips, but they catch at her thighs, and she does a little shimmy to loosen them past her thighs, and the shimmy sends her breasts shaking and swaying in a way that is nearly my undoing. I groan, and my hands ache to be filled with the softness of her curves.
Now she’s in a pair of underwear, black lace to match the bra. She swallows hard. I reach for her again, but she shakes her head. “Wait. Not yet.”
“Nadia…”
She hooks her thumbs in the waistband, swallows again and inhales shakily, and then does that same lush, lust-inducing, heart-stopping shimmy again and the black lace joins denim and underwire on the floor of her bedroom. I didn’t think I could feel desire any more painfully, but at the sight of Nadia, naked, for me, I do. I groan, rub my palm over my mouth.
“God…damn, Nadia.”
She seems to melt at my words. “You look at me like…like I’m the most beautiful thing there is.”
“Because you are.”
She steps forward, closer. Eyes on mine. “I hope—I hope you see the same thing in my eyes.”
“I do,” I whisper. Waiting. “Sure do.”
She frees the button of my fly, tugs down the zipper. I press out of the opening, straining against the imprisoning fabric of my underwear. She lowers both jean and underwear in the same motion, shoving them down to my knees so I can toe them off and kick them aside.
My turn to take over. I step into her, and the bed hits her knees, and she sits, abruptly. I follow her, and wrap one arm around her, under her, cradling her head as I lay her down on the bed. One knee on the mattress beside her, and then she scoots toward the head end and I go with her.
“I want to make you feel good,” I murmur.
“I already do feel good,” she says. Her hand slides from my shoulders down my back, to my butt, where she pauses to spend a while.
“Not what I meant.”
Her eyes glitter in the darkness; the only light is from the full moon through her window, and it bathes her with liquid silver light. “Take me there,” she whispers. “Show me what you mean.”
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