Page 90 of Homebound
“Sit,” he said. “You shouldn’t be standing long.” He pointed at her right foot.
“The ground’s too cold to sit on. I’d rather stand.”
Instead of arguing, he took her gloved hand and gently tugged her towards him and kept pulling until she was forced to move closer to him, until she had no choice but to lower herself into his lap.
She perched on top of his knees, stiff as a board and a little embarrassed. “Simon, be careful. I’m too heavy for you.”
He gave her a quizzical look. “What does ‘heavy’ mean in your world?”
“You’re not yet back to your full strength. And if you overdo it…”
“So in your opinion,” he interrupted, and she heard the amusement in his voice, “someone who can fight off a pack of Perali isn’t strong enough to hold a child-sized woman in his lap?”
“I’m not child-sized!”
He didn’t smile but his mouth thinned as if he was fighting it. “Rest.”
He did just that. His eyes slowly lost focus and a charcoal film gradually desaturated them. Gemma felt him retreat into himself.
She was left sitting in his lap with her back taught as a bowstring, feeling the hard roundness of his knee joints under her buttocks. She wished she could just close her eyes and rest as Simon suggested, but she couldn't.
Memories of Simon fighting the Perali surfaced again. He could have easily died. He should've died, outnumbered, in his weakened condition.
Delayed fear for him tore at Gemma’s heart.
Overcome by tenderness, she gazed at the sharp planes of his face, so close that she could see individual pores on his fine-grained skin and each little hair making up his delicate eyebrows. His nose still weirded her out with its marked difference from her own but it did stand out a little less nowadays, with his face more filled out. By no means chubby-faced, his cheeks no longed dipped so deep that she could see his skull bones.
It suddenly registered with Gemma what a strong, well-defined jawline he had. His teeth must have come in sufficiently to restore support to facial muscles changing his expression subtly to one of stubbornness and confidence. The lips she remembered as wrinkled and sunken looked firm and more golden than white, the rims tinged with blue just enough to make them look otherworldly and different from hers.
Unable to stop herself, Gemma tugged her mittens off. She put her curled fingers to her mouth first and blew on them attempting to bring some feeling into the tips. She hesitated for a second, understanding that touching him this way would be highly inappropriate, but in the end couldn’t resist an impulse that had come out of nowhere and compelled her to make physical contact. She had to know what his lips felt like.
With the barest of touches, she traced her index finger along the outline of his upper lip. It was firm and much warmer than her hand. Simon hadn’t reacted remaining deep inside his quiet place. Emboldened, Gemma traced his upper lip again, this time with two fingers, and let them slip down to skim over his lower lip. The feel of him under her fingers and the wonder of such an intimate touch brought a powerful rush of pleasure.
Compelled by an irresistible force, she leaned down to briefly put her lips against his and retreated. She studied his face for a reaction. If he knew what she was doing, if he felt it like he surely must, he gave no sign. She hesitated in indecision but the urge to get a feel of him again gnawed at her, and she brushed her lips against his again, and kept giving him small, butterfly kisses. She nibbled along the seam of his lips, and on the outside of his mouth, and in each corner.
Instead of having her curiosity satisfied, she was suddenly filled with roaring hunger for more. Her breathing became labored under a strange sensual haze blanketing her. She pressed her lips full-on against his and rubbed back and forth loving the roughness of their chapped mouths, the friction the rubbing created, the quiet scraping sound of skin on skin. She stuck out the tip of her tongue and licked the corner of his mouth knowing she was stealing it from him, positive he’d ask her to stop when he came around, and hating the embarrassment both of them would experience any moment now.
He tasted strange, a little citrusy, and his unusual taste intoxicated Gemma. The need to feast on him was almost choking her but a persistent, still functioning part of her brain ordered her to come to her senses. She pulled away in painful withdrawal.
She looked at him and his answering unblinking stare came as a blow to the solar plexus. His eyes were fully black, liquid in their intensity. Suffocating from equal measures of desire and mortification, she made a sharp move to get off his lap but his arms surrounded her like iron bands. There was no escape, no retreat into a safe zone from the fire that was burning within her. She could only leap forward, into the flames. And that was what she did.
Twining her arms around his neck, Gemma pressed her lips to his again and closed her eyes blocking out the sun, the brick wall, Simon’s gaunt face, and the reality. She tasted him again and this time he opened up for her. Gemma touched his tongue with hers, felt sharp points of his teeth, licked the velvety lining of his mouth. He allowed her time to explore, keeping still, granting her unrestricted access to the inside of his mouth.
An agonizing thought entered Gemma’s mind that she might be violating him. What if Rix didn’t practice kissing and what she was doing horrified him?
As if sensing her inner turmoil, he slanted his head for better access and invaded her mouth. Just like that, in a sweeping, no-holds-barred assault, he was kissing her back. And he knew what he was doing.
She’d never experienced anything headier. It shocked her that she wanted him so.
Stunned by the intensity of the emotions she was experiencing, Gemma broke the kiss. Her body was resting flush against his chest, her arms locked around his shoulders.
As she stared at him from this close, she saw the slits of his three pupils on the clean shiny black surface of each eye. She should be repulsed but instead, she was delighted. His eyes were so cool.
She cleared her tight throat. “I’m sorry. It was a bad idea.”
Her mouth was wet from kissing and now the cold air bit at it without mercy as if punishing Gemma for taking the pleasure that was forbidden to her.
His fine brows twitched like he didn’t understand her. “What was a bad idea?”
