Page 52 of Crowe
“I know the timing is—”
“Jackson,” I said.
He stopped.
“I know,” I said. “I know it isn’t the perfect circumstances.” I turned my hand over on the table between us and he covered it with his, the way he’d been doing across whatever surface was between us since the cabin, and I laced my fingers through his. “Whatever comes next with Anton Corvane and all of it… I want to see where this goes.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay,” I said back.
He looked at me for a long moment across the candlelight. Then he stood, and came around the table, and tipped my face up with both hands and kissed me.
It wasn’t our first kiss. But it felt like the first one that was just us. No fear pressing in from outside, no situation to manage, no careful accounting of my fragility. Just him and the lights andthe smell of Mika’s basil and the city below, and his hands on my jaw like I was something worth being careful with.
I brought my hands up to his wrists and held on.
He pulled back just enough to look at me. The string lights caught the angles of his face. “How about if we go downstairs to bed,” he said.
“I think that’s a really good idea.”
Crowe
Truth was, I’d known since the cabin, since the morning I’d woken up with him wrapped around me and hadn’t moved for twenty minutes because I hadn’t wanted to, but it had been good to say it out loud. I wasn’t saying what we had was for forever; it was too soon for that, but I could say I wanted it to be.
I kissed him in the stairwell, then again in the common area, and by the time we reached the bedroom door, I had my hands in his hair, and he had fistfuls of my henley and neither of us was in any particular hurry, which was new. Tonight we had nothing but time and the low light from the lamp I’d left on, and I intended to use both.
I walked him back through the doorway, my mouth still on his, and felt him reach behind himself to find the edge of the bed.He sat, and I stood in front of him and looked down at him for a moment. He already looked wrecked. His lips were swollen, his hair already a mess from my hands, and his eyes were dark and hungry with need.
“You’re staring,” he said.
“I know.”
“Any particular reason?”
“I’m deciding where to start.”
“Take your time,” he said, and the slight curve of his mouth told me he knew exactly what he was doing.
I reached down and took the hem of his shirt in my hands. He lifted his arms without being asked, and I pulled it over his head and dropped it. Then I stood there and looked at him the way I hadn’t let myself look before. At the line of his shoulders, the lean muscle of his chest and stomach, the way he held himself now versus the way he’d held himself in that basement. He’d rebuilt himself, and I was in awe of his strength.
“Daddy,” he said softly.
“Mm.”
“Your shirt.”
I reached back and pulled it over my head in one movement and watched his eyes move over me the way mine had just moved over him. His expression went through several things in a short amount of time and ended somewhere that made heat pool low in my stomach.
He reached out and pressed his palm flat against my chest, right over my heart, and held it there. I covered his hand with mine.
I leaned down and kissed him, slower than before, both hands cupping his face. He made a soft sound against my mouth, and his other hand came up to my ribs, trailing along the lines of muscle there, learning them with his fingertips the way he learned things—carefully, thoroughly, like he planned to know them for a long time.
I eased him back onto the bed and came down over him, settling my weight on my forearms, and kissed him until we were both breathing hard. His hands moved over my back, my shoulders, into my hair, and I felt him everywhere, warm and solid and entirely willing.
I kissed down his jaw. His throat. The jut of his collarbone. He tilted his head back, and I felt his pulse against my lips, fast and steady, and I stayed there for a moment, just listening to it, because it meant he was here and he was mine, and I didn’t want to take that for granted.
“Daddy,” he said, hearing that come out of his mouth did something to me.
