Page 80 of The Clinch
She moves onto her knees, the mattress dipping under her weight. The shirt rides higher on her thighs as she crawls toward me, fabric brushing skin. She wants me watching, and I don’t make it hard for her.
She stops right above me. Her knee presses into the mattress beside my hip. Then the other.
“It might be even more fun if I just show you instead.”
She swings one leg over me and settles astride my thighs like it’s her right. Her weight sinks in, real and undeniable.
That’s where the last of my restraint gives out.
My hands come up to her hips on instinct, fingers pressing into her skin. She braces her hands on my chest, palms warm and steady, and I stop thinking past the next second.
I slide a hand under the hem of the shirt, skin hot beneath my palm. She arches into the touch, the fabric riding higher as if it’s forgotten its job entirely.
Want wipes everything else out. There is only the next second and her on top of me.
She shifts again, playfully giving way to something heavier. And that’s when I lose it.
I sit up fast and catch her face between my hands, pulling her down into the kiss that’s been waiting all weekend.
She meets me instantly.
Her body moves against mine, done pretending, hands sliding up my shoulders and into my hair. I kiss her deeper, and the sound she makes goes straight through me.
I drag her closer. She rocks against me, and I groan into her mouth, discipline breaking in real time.
I can’t get enough of her.
The taste of her. The heat of her. The fact that she’s here, on top of me, finally not pushing me away.
I turn us before I think too hard about it.
Her back hits the mattress. My weight follows, caught on my forearms, barely held off. I kiss down her jaw, her throat, the line under her ear I already know wrecks her.
“Fuck, Liz,” I mutter against her skin.
My hand slides under the shirt again, over the soft line of her waist, higher. Her breathing breaks. I lift my head and look at her.
“Tell me you want this,” I rasp. “Tell me you want me.”
“I want you,” she says, breathless.
Hearing it out loud nearly undoes me.
Her gaze flicks away for a second. Not shyness. Calculation. The part of her that always reaches for terms before she lets herself feel anything.
Then she adds, lightly, “We don’t have to make it mean more than it is.”
My hands are still on her. My mouth is still at her throat. The words don’t register right away—just sound, just her voice, just the warmth of her skin under my palms.
Then they do.
Not all at once. Just enough to stop and see the offer tucked inside the easy sentence. The way she’s already making this smaller before it can ask anything real of her.
This isn’t her choosing me. This is her choosing something she thinks she can survive.
The truth of it lands, brutal and cold, and I pull back hard enough to break the spell.
“Fuck.”
