Page 121 of Soft Flannel Hank

* * *

Then suddenly Esther found herselfclutched tightly against his chest as he lifted her off the floor and his mouth found hers. He didn’t so much kiss her as he pressed his open mouth against hers while she gasped and cried, and Esther couldn’t help but feel like he was trying to breathe it all in, all of her sadness and relief and love.

She was airborne as he lifted her higher, his hands gripping under her thighs. She wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him, feeling the hard length of him pressing against her aching, legging-covered emptiness.

She peppered his face with kisses, memorizing the scratch of his beard against her lips, the surprising softness of his cheek, the feel of his warm bulk against her body, his thick hair sliding through her fingers as she pulled out the ponytail holder and dropped it on the floor.

Esther found herself falling as he deposited her into the recliner and fell to his knees in front of her. She panted as she watched him unlace her boots with rapid precision, pulling them off and tossing them behind him carelessly. He reached up and gripped the waistband of her leggings. She braced her feet on the seat of the recliner and lifted her hips as he slid the thick spandex over her ass and down her thighs.

She dropped her feet back to the floor as he slipped the fabric off. Esther almost couldn’t believe the scene unfolding, as she sat in his recliner in a sweatshirt, underwear, and socks while he knelt in front of her with an indiscernible expression on his face.

He pulled her socks off one at a time and lifted her foot, gliding his lips against her ankle and up her calf. He skimmed his way up her leg, placing soft kisses as he went. Beneath the roundness of her calf, above her knee, along the indentation that the seam of her leggings had left in the skin of her inner thighs. His lips followed that line like a trail marker until he rested his hands on her knees and coaxed her legs wide.

Hank grabbed her ankles with gentle fingers and placed her feet back on the seat of the recliner so that she was parted and exposed as he leaned forward and pressed his mouth against her panties, nudging at her cotton-covered clit with his nose. Esther felt the tightness of her dried tears on her cheeks as she gasped, pressing her shoulders back into the overstuffed upholstery.

He did it again, nudging harder with his nose, his hot breath permeating the thin cotton and making her feel restless and shivery. Shedidshiver as Hank used a thumb to pull her panties to one side, flattening his tongue and dragging it up from stern to bow. She whimpered as it passed over her sensitive clit.

Hank lifted his head and stared at her, up the length of her torso where her lungs heaved air in and out in such a way that her ribs moved like forge bellows.

The den was dark, the only light coming from the TV wherethe Golden Girlsplayed on mute with closed captions. His face was in shadow, the tv behind him, but she could see his expression well enough. The tension in his jaw, the stab of his eyebrows together, his tightly pursed lips.

“Don’t you ever pull a goddamn stunt like that again,” he growled before diving forward and dragging his tongue against her already oversensitive center.

“What?” Esther gasped as he pulled away, wrenching her underwear down to her knees, but before she could lift her feet so he could take them off, he dove under them so that they were behind his neck, the cotton holding her knees together, her thighs clenching tightly around his ears.

Hank devoured her like she was a buffet dinner and he hadn’t eaten in weeks. He moaned as he dipped his tongue into the source of all of her wetness before dragging it back up to flicker soft and steady at her clit.

Esther didn’t recognize the wild sounds coming out of her mouth as she pressed her feet into the recliner and her cunt up against his mouth. She was gasping for air, feeling magic spark beneath her skin, skittering across her freckles like lightning. She was made of sensation. There was nothing left of her besides that.

Hank attacked her with a single-minded purpose. He had experimented—luxuriated, perhaps—but once he discovered that sliding his tongue from side to side against the hood of her clit made her sob his name, he devoted one hundred percent of his energy to it. Esther felt the orgasm barreling toward her and she felt frozen in its path, eyes wide and helpless as it crashed into her at top speed.

Hank’s mouth became gentle as he coaxed her down, his own groans softening to contented sounds as he lapped at her with great care. When she’d stopped shaking, he ducked his head out from underneath her panties, which were still at her bent knees, and slipped them off of her legs.

He kissed her inner thigh, dragging his mouth against the sensitive skin as if to wipe off some of her essence there. But there was no helping it. His beard was a mess. Even in the shadows of the soft, golden television light, Esther could see that.

His hair was wild from where she’d pulled it, her hands digging into his scalp as she’d both tried to tug him closer and push him away at the same time.

Hank rose and placed a knee on the recliner seat, resting his hand next to her head and leaning until the back reclined. He loomed over her, breathing hard and smelling like sweat and sex and everything else that was Hank.

Esther didn’t know what she’d expected from him then. Maybe for him to kiss her mouth with the same feverish desperation he’d kissed her cunt. Maybe to not kiss her at all, but instead to drive into her with all of the force and strength of his body.

What she hadn’t expected, however, was for Hank to bend his head and kiss her softly, sliding his tongue against her bottom lip until she opened her mouth wide enough for him to slip it inside, to stroke it against her own. His other hand rose to cradle her face and Esther felt the warm callouses on his palms as they abraded her cheek. She could feel the tears rising again—so much goddamn crying lately, she thought—as she tasted him, tasted herself on him.

He pulled away an inch, his eyes closed and his nose barely touching hers.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you so goddamn much.”

Esther gasped and he smiled that half smile of his. It was more of a lift of one corner of his mouth that anything, but it was a smile nonetheless.

“Say it again,” she whispered.

“I love you, Esther MacLaren. And if you ever leave me again, I will find you. There’s not a place you could run where I wouldn’t catch you. Because you’ve been tied to me since that first day. I don’t know how you did it, but I feel you. Right here.”

He pressed a hand to her ribs, just below her beating heart.

“I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I'm afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I'd take to bleeding inwardly.”

Esther remembered that first night. The diner. The Rochester quote. The feeling of bleeding inwardly without him. She smiled and pressed her hand to the same place, feeling the echo of his heart beating strongly behind her palm.