Page 105 of Love Him Like Water

“And not just so the neighborhood knows I’m your wife,” she clarified.

“Not just,” I agreed.

“I want to know more about your family. And you. What your childhood was like, that kind of thing.”

“I can do that.” It would be like picking off barely-healed scabs. Letting that shit bleed out all over again. But I could do it for her. “What else?”

There was a long pause, like she was struggling to make herself say the next part, letting me know just how important it must have been.

“I want you to kiss me.”

“What?” I asked, jerking back, sure I misunderstood.

“You never have,” she said, looking me square in the eye. “Not at the altar… and not since. No matter… anything else that has happened. You’ve never kissed me.”

“Oh, mouse,” I said, my hand resting on the side of her neck as I leaned in, my nose brushing the side of hers.

What a simple fucking thing to want.

But she was right.

I’d never done it.

I rarely ever did with anyone in the past, honestly.

Dunno, I guess it always seemed somehow more intimate than anything else.

But if there was anyone I could let myself be intimate with, it was my own fucking wife, right?

Lore’s pulse was a frantic beat against my hand, her breathing quick and shallow as I leaned downward slightly, and sealed my lips to hers.

She gasped at the barely-there contact.

Then, fuck, she completely melted.

Into it.

Into me.

Shifting closer, sliding her leg over my hip, her arm moving under mine and up to rest on my back between my shoulder blades.

Why the fuck again had I been avoiding this?

Her lips were soft under mine as that little kitten noise she made that I loved so much escaped her.

My teeth gently nipped her lower lip until it parted, allowing my tongue to move inside and claim hers.

A shiver moved through her, making me want to press deeper, to roll her under me.

But I was far too aware of where we were. Of her brother, if not outright listening at the door, then at least aware enough to know if I started to fuck his baby sister in his own damn guest room.

Besides, this wasn’t supposed to be about sex.

Just… intimacy.

Something I, admittedly, wasn’t good at. But I was willing to learn. For her. To make her happy.

So I kept myself under control as my lips slanted over hers again and again, reveling in the feel of her, the taste of her, the sweet little noises she made and how she clung to me like a lifeboat in a restless sea.

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