Page 8 of Soft Flannel Hank

And then, like a sudden lightning that shreds the sky, her mouth was on his again. Not gentle this time. Not a soft press of her lips against his. Hank vaguely registered the thud of her backpack hitting the floor of the truck just before her arm wrapped around his neck, pulling herself closer. His other hand dove into her hood to join the first, cradling her jaw.

Esther gasped, and Hank plunged his tongue into her open mouth, feeling the hard plastic of the console digging into his ribs and belly as he pressed closer and closer to her heat, her light. How long had he been trapped in the dark? How long since he had seen a light in that endless fog? He couldn’t get any closer to her from where he sat, yet he was wild with desperation to press as much of his body as he could against her.

A metallic click was the only warning Hank got before Esther nearly vaulted over the console and into his lap, her solid thighs spread wide over his as she straddled him. She held the collar of his jacket in tight fists and pressed the full length of her torso against his, pulling on his coat like a tow line. She deepened the kiss, licking into his mouth with her tongue, dragging a groan out of him that sounded far more animal than human.

He felt like he was on fire, coursing through his veins like crisscrossed trails of gunpowder. He could combust. He could burn. He could step from the ashes as someone new.

Hank’s hands moved on instinct, roughly trailing down her sides to wrap around and grip her ass. He pulled her closer, roughly dragging her center towards his. Her gasp in his mouth was medicine, and as she bit his bottom lip, he groaned and pulled her closer again, grinding his own hips up to meet hers. He couldn’t remember the last time these jeans were uncomfortable, and yet he was so hard he felt almost strangled by them.

Esther rocked her hips, grinding against the throbbing ache of his pelvis. And still she kissed him. Or he kissed her. He couldn’t track who was in control. It was too new, too sudden. But his body remembered the postures, the choreography of two bodies pressed together, even if his brain could barely summon the memories for having buried them so deep.

He wanted to strip her down and then ask her what magic she wove in the air around her to make a broken man feel like he’d found the manual to put himself back together again. To make him feel like he could.

He groaned again and pulled her closer. “Come home with me,” he rasped.

She changed the kiss, her tongue wrestled lazily with his for a few moments before she began to drop soft, easy, open-mouthed kisses against his lips. He heard the ragged moan inside his head.No. Please, no. Don’t stop. Don’t stop, please. I haven’t felt this much like a person in so long. Please.

She drew away, sighing. Hank waited, frozen, feeling as if his body would shatter into a million pieces from the tension if only she pushed him. But she didn’t. She smoothed the collar of his jacket with her long fingers, her breath becoming steadier.

“Come home with me,” he repeated, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Please.”

She kissed him softly. Once. Twice. Three times, holding his bearded cheeks in her warm hands, her palms hot against his skin, which felt three sizes too small all of a sudden. He wanted nothing more than to crawl out of it and run away. How had he let himself think that she would want him as much as he wanted her? How had he even presumed to ask her to go with him?Twice.She must have thought he was an absolute pig. She must—

“Okay,” she whispered against his lips.

“Okay?”

She pulled away, and he saw her smile in the dingy light coming from the parking lot. She was a shadow in his lap, the black hoodie still pulled over her head.

“I shouldn’t have asked you that, Esther. I’m not that guy. I just—”

“Hank?”

“Yeah?” he croaked.

“Take me home.”

3

Esther couldn’t have recalled a single detail about the drive back to Hank’s house. Not the road names or the distance, whether it was still raining or had stopped, or what the clock said when they pulled into the driveway of a nondescript two-story house with white siding.

What she could have described, however, was how Hank gripped the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles were white. How he obeyed the posted speed limit to the letter even though it looked as if he was about to crawl out of his skin from impatience. How very like him. She’d known him all of an hour, and she already knew that Hank Dove was a man who held himself back from everything—speed, love, recklessness—with an unwavering control.

But he wasn’t holding himself back from wanting her. Not right now. Even without magic, even without divination, even without the simmering heat that fizzled just below the surface of her skin and threatened to consume her, she could tell that Hank wanted her.

The question was, what would he allow himself to do about it? Because as much as he wanted her, Esther could tell that his desire was being crushed under the weight of his absolute disbelief that she would want him just as much.

But she did.

There was a beat after Hank turned off the truck. His hands shook as he took them off the steering wheel and rubbed his palms against his thighs.

“Hank,” Esther said. He stared straight ahead out the front windshield. “Hank?” she repeated.

He turned to look at her and whatever parts of her hadn’t already been reduced to complete liquid melted on the spot. His eyes blazed in the glow from the floodlight on the side of his house.

She bit her bottom lip, and he groaned. Before she knew it, he had thrown open his door and practically sprung out, slamming it behind him. He rounded the front of the truck and wrenched her door open, standing in the space next to her panting. Esther reached out and ran her hand down his chest, over the bulge of his stomach. She grabbed the front tail of his jacket and pulled him toward her at the same time he reached in and tried to lift her out of the seat. The seatbelt tightened and yanked her backwards.

“Goddammit,” she muttered, but then she was free, in the air and out of the cab. Hank had unbuckled her, his lips crashing down as he hauled her out of the truck and against his chest. He closed the door and took backward steps away from the truck, never breaking contact with her mouth.