Page 152 of The Lies We Play

I start at her ankles, because if I start anywhere else, I’ll lose the thread of myself. My hands drag up the backs of her calves, over the tight muscle of her thighs, learning her inch by inch. She watches me with her mouth parted, her hair a dark spill against my sheets, her hands gripping the comforter like she needs something to blame for staying still.

Her jeans are stiff with a little stretch. I thumb the button open.

Her stomach moves with one quick breath.

I slide the zipper down with care that feels obscene. Tooth by tooth. Sound by sound. Her eyes close, then open again, as if she refuses to miss what I’m becoming because of her.

She lifts her hips.

That simple offer almost ends me.

I ease the denim over her round ass, down her thighs, past her knees, and off. Then I am left with her bare legs, long and beautiful, dotted with faint freckles I would never have seen unless I was this close. Unless she lets me this close.

My hand pauses at her knee.

She notices again.

“Creed,” she says, and there’s a warning in it. A soft one. Like she knows I’m standing too near the edge of a truth and might do something reckless, such as speak.

“I know,” I say.

I don’t know what I mean.

I know I should slow down. I know I don’t want to.

I bend my head before she can ask for it.

Her panties are pink, wet at the center.

My self-control thins to almost nothing.

I run my nose over the seam and inhale.

She goes still.

The room does too.

No city noise. No air-conditioning hum. No sheets shifting beneath her. Just the broken sound of her breath, catching once, then again, as if her body has betrayed her and she doesn’t know whether to be embarrassed or proud.

I look up.

Her cheeks are flushed. Her eyes are on the ceiling. One hand covers her mouth.

That, I can’t allow.

I catch her wrist and move it aside, pressing her hand into the mattress beside her hip.

“Don’t hide from me.”

Her eyes cut to mine.

There she is. All fire, all panic, all feeling trying to pass itself off as irritation.

“I’m not hiding,” she says, breathless.

“You are.”

“I am processing.”