Page 78 of The Pairing

Theo considers the question for all of one second.

“Now?”

We don’t have a plan; we pick a direction and hike back into the vineyard trails. I have half an idea of finding a secluded clearing or rocky alcove or even a decent-sized gap in the grapevines, but then it appears. A groundskeeper’s shed, carpeted with ivy like it’s been abandoned for some time.

We exchange a look. The door handle is rusted through. It’d only take one good push.

“Good enough?” I ask Theo.

“Good enough,” Theo declares, shoving me through the door.

Inside the shed, it’s nearly dark. A strip of sunset through one high, narrow window reveals rickety shelves of plant pots and sacks of gravel and a cluttered worktable. It smells of mulch and wet granite, and I immediately bang my elbow into two different shelves.

“Ow, fuck,” Theo swears, punting something noisy and metal out of her way. I push aside a bundle of trellis wire, and Theo knocks over a rake, and then it’s quiet. All the obstacles are gone. We’re alone, in a pocket of privacy, nothing between us but air.

As my eyes adjust, I make out the lines of Theo’s face. Herexpression is focused, her jaw working like she’s tonguing the sharp parts of her teeth.

God, I’ve missed her.

“I don’t even know where to start,” I confess.

She says, “Anywhere.”

And we crash together.

At first, it’s more a fight than anything. Two people who know each other’s bodies better than anyone else ever could, with years to think about all the weak spots. She pushes the full strength of her body against mine, and I push back, kicking dirt and pebbles across the slab floor as we scramble for purchase. She pins my thigh between hers, and I bury my face in the side of her neck and take her weight. I thought it would be harder to do this without kissing, but hands go where mouths would—her fingertips at the corner of my mouth, my thumb at the center of her lower lip. We swear, and we groan, and we fit the way we always did.

When I would dream of holding her again, I imagined taking my time, undressing her inch by inch, a kiss for every night apart. That, I realize, was the wrong fucking idea. I should have pictured us starving and delirious from consuming everything but each other, no self-control left to take it by spoonfuls. I want to rip the cloth off the table and feast. I want her to open wide like an animal and take a bite out of me. Everything I’ve held back since London was only an apéritif.

I touch her lips and think of how she took the wine into her mouth in Bordeaux and sucked the taste of cherries from it. I bite a bruise into her neck the way I wanted to under the dance floor lights in San Sebastián, swipe my tongue over her collarbone like I wanted when I saw the cut of her neckline in Paris. The fingers that grazed my skin in the water near Saint-Jean-de-Luz, the rough voice from the next balcony in Barcelona, the capable hands from that kitchen in Nice—I let myself have it all, for now.

In one violent shove, Theo clears the worktable and throws me against it. Shears and trowels clatter to the floor. A pail clangsinto the wall. My knees buckle, and then she’s straddling me. She presses the heel of her hand to the ridge of my throat, her thumb digging into the vulnerable flesh under my chin, her breath crashing through her teeth. My hands claw across her back, grabbing fistfuls of her shirt and tugging it down her shoulders.

Her teeth nearly graze my bottom lip, and I remember this, the pause before a kiss, the way she liked to wait me out until I begged or closed the gap myself. I want it more than anything—a good kiss, an intentional one, the kind of kiss Theo deserves. Instead, I tilt my hips up to show her what she’s done.

Her mouth skids sideways, close to my ear as she feels how devastatingly hard I am and swears.

“Is that for me?”

“Yes,” I tell her, and she grinds against me, giving me both the relief of friction and the agony of not enough. My voice is dark and crumbling, like butter burned into the bottom of the oven, but I can’t keep the smoke trapped when she’s easing the door open like this. I’ll give her anything she asks. I’ll turn the kitchen walls black. “You’re—you make me like this. You always do.”

“In Barcelona, that morning—” Her breath hitches, short nails nipping my neck. I slide a hand under her shirt to grip her hip for leverage. “Were you hard for me then too?”

“Yes,” I say again. I’m moving with her now, or she’s moving where my hand guides her, or maybe it’s both. Maybe we’ve only ever been this one continuous, gasping thing. “I was dreaming of you.”

“Tell me. Tell me what I did to you.”

“We—we were in the bar, in Paris. On the bed. But I was under you, and—” And she was kissing me, telling me she loved me. “—you were touching me. You had me in your hand.”

Theo snaps her hips forward. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Yes.”

“I dreamed about you that night too.”

I bite down a moan. “How? Where?”

“I dreamed we were at that last restaurant, and you ate me out on the table.”

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