Page 81 of Resilience

“I know. You never have.” She brushed the bandage on his neck. “I will never hurt you, either.”

“I know. You never have,” he mirrored. With that, he leaned down and kissed her again, and this time when his hand went to her belly, he pushed it under her top. She felt the warm rough of his fingers on her bare skin, and all her muscles there spasmed. As his mouth moved over hers, as his tongue explored, his hand skimmed higher, to her breast, where it rested for a moment over the lace and silk of her bra.

Athena couldn’t help but arch up to press her breast more tightly to him, and when she did, Sam broke their kiss, resting his cheek on hers as his breath stuttered over her ear and ruffled her hair. She felt his lips moving against her face and wondered what he was saying.

Then he rose up and gazed down at her, his expression intense and serious. I want to take your clothes off, he said, or at least mouthed. Athena wanted that, too, so she nodded.

She helped him get her top up and over her head, and as he tossed it away, she reached awkwardly behind her and unhooked her bra. When it was free, Sam tossed that away as well. Then Athena pushed at his kutte, dragging it off his shoulders until he took over and got it the rest of the way off.

That, he didn’t toss carelessly away. He reached to set it on the small, cheap dresser that served as a nightstand as well. As he did, Athena worked the buttons of his flannel shirt.

Finally, they were both topless and a little breathless from the contortions of undressing, and Athena registered that they were topless together. More than that, they were chest to chest, her bare breasts pressed to his bare pecs.

In one way, it wasn’t so unusual. She’d seen him in swim trunks plenty of times; very little of Sam’s body was unknown to her. And she preferred two-piece suits, so he was pretty familiar with her body as well. When they were really little, they used to run around naked all the time, and bathe together regularly. Though neither of them remembered those times, there was ample photographic and video evidence—much to their mutual chagrin.

But in another way, the most important way, this was stunningly new. Athena’s experience of Sam’s body in this moment was completely unfamiliar to her—as was her experience of her own body with him. She literally throbbed with need. Her breasts ached, her joints were liquid and restless. She could feel the heft of him inside his jeans, pressing at the point that she throbbed.

“Sam,” she signed, wanting to tell him how stuffed full of love and need and ... just ... him she already felt, but she couldn’t think of the way to form the thought so it contained everything she felt.

“I know,” he signed, and she knew it was true. He felt the same. No words required.

He scooted down a few inches, and she knew he meant to put his mouth on her breasts. Wanting that so much, Athena arched up sharply, offering herself—but where he put his mouth first was not her nipple, but a point between and below her breasts, at the nexus of her ribcage.

She had a scar there from a surgery to repair a congenital defect in her diaphragm when she was an infant. She had several scars on her abdomen and back, mementos of five surgeries before she was five, to repair defects she’d been born with or had developed shortly after birth, as her tiny, undercooked body had tried to finish cooking outside the oven.

Sam was kissing all the scars on her belly. More than kissing them—he was loving them, taking his time, tracing his tongue over each one, kissing his way to the next. Every touch was adoration, every touch was devotion, every touch was both promise and reminder. Sam knew her. He knew those scars, what they meant, and how she felt about them.

Sam knew her. Inside and out.

When he finally took a nipple into his mouth and sucked, Athena was nearly undone right then.

Her experience with men was quite limited. Some light making out with three boys during high school. A brief stretch of dating an ASL interpreter she’d met at a ‘disability resource fair,’ with whom she’d never progressed beyond some light making out before he’d taken a job in Washington D.C. And Hunter. Hunter was the only man she’d seen naked in person (discounting the many times over the years she’d seen far more of her uncles, right here in the clubhouse, than she wanted to remember), and he was the only non-medical man who’d ever seen her naked.

Until tonight. Athena was desperate to be naked with Sam now. Not only because she wanted to feel all of his long, strong, wonderful self all over her, but because she wanted to be able to supplant Hunter in her experience of sex. She wanted Sam to be the one she thought of when she remembered having sex. She wanted memories she wanted to remember. And she didn’t want to wait another second to have them.

When she tried to grab at his belt, struggling to reach it while he suckled her breast, Sam caught the scent of her urgency; he released her breast and rose enough to meet her eyes.

“I want you,” she told him. “I need you now.”

He shook his head. “I want to take my time. This is our first time, I want to savor.”

“Savor later. I want you now. I need you inside me.” To erase Hunter, she thought, but she left those words in her head.

With a smile, he relented. Again they performed a series of awkward contortions in which they ‘helped’ each other shed the rest of their clothes, eventually giving up to handle their own. Was getting naked ever truly sexy, or was that only in books and movies?

This was pretty fucking sexy, actually. What it wasn’t was graceful. Graceful was the thing for books and movies.

They were finally totally naked together, and Athena moved her legs around, delighting in the brush of the hair on his over her smooth skin. God, he was so big. She always felt like a hobbit; she was in single-digit percentiles for adult height, and Sam was tall. It wasn’t like she was surprised he was big. And yet, his big, hot, naked body felt entirely new now.

The part of him digging into her belly, twice as hot and hard as the rest of him, was not small either. Sheesh. What if she wasn’t big enough to take him?

“Okay?” he asked.

Her momentary worry must have shown on her face. She replaced it with a smile and a nod. “I’m perfect. Except we’re too far apart.”

His chuckle shook her body. Then he shifted over her, settling himself between her legs. Rocking to one side and then the other, he pulled her thighs up to his hips, urging her to keep them there. She did, and tried to wrap around him, but when she crossed her ankles, the stretch in her thighs was too much. Kind of the way she couldn’t hold hands with linked fingers for very long for more reason than her need to keep her hands free; his hands were so much bigger than hers that that hold stretched her fingers uncomfortably.

Athena stopped thinking as Sam’s hand slipped between her legs and brushed over her mound. Sparks flew through her as if a log had been kicked over in the fire building inside her. When his fingers slipped into her slit and found her clit, the sensation was an explosion, and she bucked and writhed beneath him.

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