Page 47 of Hunger

The hair on my head is thin and dark and uneven. I haven't paid attention to my hair in a long time. Her hand moves through it slowly. Her fingers come to rest at the back of my skull and they hold me there, gently, with the same kind of careful attention she's been giving me since she grabbed my wrist.

"Touch me," she says.

The words are quiet. They aren't a question. They're the simple statement of a thing she wants.

I lift my face from hers.

I look at her in the dim light from the window. Her hair dark and loose around her face. The line of her throat. The line of her collarbone above the neck of the tank top she's worn for me tonight. The soft curve of her arm where it lies against her side.

I bring my hand to her throat.

I lay my palm flat against the front of it, as I laid it against her sternum last night. The warm hollow of her throat fills my hand. Her pulse is in my palm. Steady and quick and alive.

I lower my mouth.

I set my closed lips against the soft place at the side of her throat, below her ear, where the pulse is closest to the surface. The warmth of her skin against my mouth is the warmth of a living thing, and it floods through me as the warmth of her wrist did last night, only this is more. There's more skin. There's more warmth. The smell of her — her shampoo, the clean smell of her own body — fills my senses.

I don't put my teeth against her.

I move my mouth. I press it to the corner of her jaw, to the soft place under her ear, to the warm dip above her collarbone where the bone rises beneath the skin. I move slow. I let her feel my mouth against the warmth of her skin everywhere it lands.

She tilts her head back into the pillow.

A soft sound leaves her. A breathy thing, half a sigh, the sound of a body opening up.

My hand moves.

I bring it down from her throat to the strap of the black tank top at her shoulder. The strap is thin. The cloth is soft beneath my finger. I look at her face. Her eyes are half-closed. She's watching me through her lashes.

She nods. Once. Small.

I draw the strap down her shoulder.

The cloth slides. The black fabric peels away from the soft skin of her shoulder, the soft swell of her chest. I draw it down past the curve of her breast. The cold air of the room finds her, and her nipple tightens immediately in the chill, a dark pink against the pale of her skin.

She doesn't cover herself.

She watches my face. She watches what I do to her body. She's decided to let me see her, and she's letting me see her, and she isn't flinching from any part of it.

I lower my mouth to her.

My closed lips find the warm soft skin of her breast and she gasps. Her hand tightens in my hair. The hand on my wrist tightens. Her whole body goes taut beneath me for a moment and then it softens, all at once, giving itself over.

I take her nipple between my lips. Carefully. I can't use my teeth — I won't use my teeth — and so I use the soft inside ofmy mouth, the flat of my tongue, the gentle suction of a closed mouth on warm skin. She makes a sound. A soft cry into the dark room.

Her hips move.

She doesn't mean to. The movement is slight. Her hips press up off the bed in a slight involuntary lift and I see what her body is asking for, even if she doesn't know how to ask for it in words.

I move my free hand.

It travels down her side, over the curve of her waist where the tank top has bunched, to the soft cotton of the pants she's worn tonight. I lay my palm flat against her hipbone through the cloth.

She lifts her hips again.

I push the cotton down.

I don't rush. I slide the soft fabric down her hips, her thighs, slow, like a glove eased off a hand you didn't want to bruise. She lifts her hips to help me. Her hand stays in my hair. Her other hand stays on my wrist. The pants pool at her ankles and she kicks them away.