Page 438 of Face Off

A rough sound tears from his chest. “Fuck.”

The word vibrates against my mouth before he kisses me again. His hands move everywhere at once, gripping my ass, sliding beneath my sweater, and spanning the softer waist he has known through memory and the photographs I sent him.

His fingers press into bare skin.

Ryan breaks the kiss.

His forehead rests against mine while his chest rises violently beneath his coat. His eyes move across my face as though he is searching for the woman who existed inside letters, photographs, and a voice carried through his phone.

“You’re real,” he says.

“So are you.”

His mouth crashes back into mine.

The distance has made us greedy. I kiss every part of him I can reach while he carries me into the kitchen. My lips move across his jaw, the tattooed side of his neck, and the pulse beating hard beneath his skin.

“I missed your taste,” I breathe.

“You had seven months to tell me that.”

“I told you every Sunday.”

“You told me through a fucking phone.”

His hand closes around the back of my neck and tilts my face toward his. “Say it while I can feel your mouth move.”

“I missed your taste.”

Ryan kisses me again.

My back meets the kitchen counter, and this time he sets me down long enough to tear his gloves away. They land somewhere behind him before his bare hands return to my face, my throat, and the body he has been forced to touch through instructions instead of skin.

He cups my breasts through my sweater.

The sound I make breaks against his mouth.

“That,” he says, breathing hard. “I fucking missed feeling that instead of hearing it through a speaker.”

I catch the hem of his hoodie. “Take this off.”

He drags his coat from his shoulders and throws it toward the floor. The hoodie and shirt follow in one violent movement, leaving his tattooed chest bare and his hair disordered around his face.

I have studied those muscles in photographs and traced them through memory while his voice crossed a phone line. I have imagined the heat of his skin and the pressure of his body over mine.

Seeing isn’t touching.

My hands flatten against his chest.

Warmth, muscle, and living breath meet my palms. His heart slams beneath the ink while I trace the body that has occupied every lonely night.

Ryan watches me touch him.

“What?” I ask.

“Every time you became quiet on the phone, I knew you were reaching for me.”

My throat tightens because I hadn’t known he could hear it. “I was.”