Page 178 of Falling Backwards
For a few moments, she only breathes unevenly.Then she murmurs scratchily, too, “It’s just that I wonder if—if you’d prefer not to touch me like that until I’ve been exercising for longer.I’m…not as skinny as I used to be.Not that I was everskinny-skinny, but….”
The words run in circles in my head, surprising and confusing.
I’ve had my eyes closed up to now, so I open them so I can catch her gaze.She looks back at me, but self-consciousness is all over her.She swallows hard.
My heart rate picks up not only with dislike for her being mean to herself but also from how hazily lovely she looks and from the words climbing up my throat.
I sit up on my forearm, then lean over enough to kiss the corner of her lips, and her cheek, and her jaw.Her breath catches and her fingers find better purchase on my shoulder—as I go towards her ear, I feel her body curving to mine once again like she can’t stop it.
That turnsmea little breathless.
My voice nears a whisper as I say, “I think you’ve forgotten that you’re my ten.”
She makes another quiet noise, but it doesn’t come with another withdrawal.
I slip my fingers into her hair and comb it back, following the shape of her ear.“I loved how you looked years ago and I love how you look now.I totally support you working out, but I also don’t care about a number on a scale or sizes of clothing or any of that.I don’t actually care if you exercise or don’t.None of it changes thatyou’re my ten.”
She huffs out a breath.Her hand goes from my shoulder to underneath my arm, then to my back, then up between my shoulder blades.I try to stay steady as she inches into hugging me to her, but I can feel her trembling and her soft chest and her lips dusting over the bit of my neck she can reach, and I’ve never felt any kind of kiss there from her before, and I want so badly to let all of it carry me away.I want to kiss those lips again, hold her again, be part of her breaths again.
I have one more thing to say, though, so I say it.
“Stop me from touching you ifyoudon’t want me to do it, not ’cause you thinkIdon’t wanna do it.I always wanna do it.”I feel the clumsy stamp of her lips to my neck now and I shiver, return the kiss just below her ear, then confess, “If I had my way, I’d never fucking take my hands off of you.They’dliveon your body, Maggie.”
The way she shifts and pulls and angles has me shifting, pulling, angling with her—in short seconds, her sweet mouth is taking mine and I’msofucking good with being taken.
And with being rocked by another shudder when her hand goes down my spine.
And with being partly tugged over her as she topples onto her back from lying on her side, her one leg finally curling around mine.
I have to let go of a moan.Have to brace myself not just to keep from crushing her somehow but also to be able to take her mouth right back.
After her own moan leaves her, her lips slip from mine and she says, “I always want you to touch me too.Always wanna touchyou.I don’t like how my body feels, but I…butyoumake me feel….”
When she doesn’t keep going, I whisper, “What?As beautiful as you are?”
The heat in her cheeks radiates onto mine.“I don’t know.I just know that when you touch me, it’s something so good.”
Serious satisfaction touchesme.
Still, I’ll never stop trying to get her to see herself the way I see her.I’ll never stop trying to help with her self-confidence.Everyone deserves to love the skin they’re in.And Maggie really has always been the best thing I’ve ever laid eyes on; it was true even when I was my most furious and heartbroken because of her.Her weight and shape definitely never caused that to waver.
I tell her, “Well, youshouldbe aware that you’re damn beautiful,” and then I add teasingly, “but it’s okay if you disagree with me on that for now.You can’t be rightallthe time.”
As I go in to kiss her anew, her laughter is shy and raspy against my lips, her smile uncontrollable.It makes me smile, too, before the kiss overtakes us.Her mouth presses and pulls with mine as her arm around me tightens.
A couple minutes ago when my hand started exploring her skin and started this whole conversation, I hadn’t been feeling bold.I’d just been going along with her flow,ourflow.But now a rush of boldness does come over me—I want her skin under my palm again and I want my skin under hers, so I untangle my fingers from her hair and start to invite her to get beneath my shirt and—
“Maggie?”
We start apart at the new voice and its accompanying knock on the door.
“Are you awake yet?”I think Joy asks.
My sharp exhalation collides with Maggie’s.
She turns her face towards the door and calls with remarkable composure, “Not quite.I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Okay.”
