Page 85 of At First Dance
“I’ve got you,” I tell the crown of her head, steady as I can make it. “You’re safe here.”
Her fingers bunch in the front of my shirt. “I know.”
Thunder rolls, low and long. I feel her breathe with it—inhale when it fades, exhale when the rain rushes back. I match her rhythm on purpose, counting it out like I would for a skittish colt, the way my mama taught me. A minute. Maybe two. Then she tips her head back to look at me, stormlight catching the flecks in her eyes.
“Rowan,” she says, my name soft and sure. Not a question. A choice.
Something in my chest shifts into place. I brush a damp strand from her temple and tuck it behind her ear, knuckles grazing skin warm from the dash here. “You cold?”
She shakes her head. “Not even a little.”
I mean to kiss her forehead—careful, simple, the way I’ve been telling myself I know how to be. My mouth finds the corner of hers instead. It’s barely a touch and somehow everything at once. She answers with the smallest sound and rises onto her toes, hands sliding up my chest, over my shoulders, hookingbehind my neck like she’s drawing me down where she wants me.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” I say, already lost.
“I’ll say it,” she whispers. “I won’t.”
The kiss is slow—unhurried and deep, all the honesty I’m better at with tools than words. She tastes like rain and something honey-sweet from earlier, and when my thumb skims her jaw, her whole body leans into it like the touch is a door she’s been waiting to walk through. The shed hums around us, a small world of our own making—tin roof singing, horses shifting, wind at our backs while we stand still.
I back us toward the stack of folded tarps and drag one down, throw an old canvas blanket over it. We sink together, knees brushing, thighs aligning, the coat falling open and pooling around us like a tent. She pulls me closer by the front of my shirt, mouth opening under mine, and whatever restraint I had gives up politely and steps outside.
“I want to take care of you,” I murmur against her cheek, and I mean a hundred things—warmth, water, a hand to hold when lightning trips the dark. She answers by tugging me down until my weight is something we share. Heat sparks everywhere our bodies learn a new map—her palm at the small of my back, my hand splayed over her ribs, both of us moving in the soft, uncoordinated way of people who can’t get close enough fast enough.
We don’t talk much. There isn’t room for it. The words we do manage come out as breath between kisses:
“Here.”
“Closer.”
“Don’t rush.”
Thunder answers like it’s taking requests. The rain thickens and softens by turns, and I mark time by the way her hands wander—up my spine, over my shoulders, into my hair—and the way she sighs when I learn another place that makes her go quiet and boneless. I keep one eye on the seam of light at the door, an old habit I don’t have to think about, the rest of me learning her—how she likes my mouth slower, my hands firmer; how she tips her chin to deepen a kiss like she’s been doing it with me for years.
“Rowan,” she breathes again, a little wrecked now, and I answer the only way I know—by giving her more, by letting the careful break into something hungry, by meeting every ask with the best of what I have.
When we finally ease back, it’s only far enough to breathe. I rest my forehead to hers, both of us laughing that stunned, quiet laugh people do when a storm passes and the world is still standing. My thumb finds the line of her cheekbone; her fingers trace the edge of my jaw like she’s memorizing it.
A low, constant rumble settles in my chest as I lay Ivy down on the blanket. Her hair fans out like wildfire against the dark fabric, cheeks flushed, lips kiss-bruised and parted.
She looks like temptation made real. And I’m done pretending I can resist her.
“I don’t deserve you,” I rasp, fingers dragging over her waist. “But I’m done letting that stop me.”
She shakes her head, eyes glassy. “I really wish you’d stop questioning yourself. I don’t want perfect. I wantreal.I wantyou.”
I crush my mouth to hers again, letting months of restraint finally snap. My hands find the hem of her shirt, pushing it up until she arches to help me pull it over her head. I press kisses down her neck, across the delicate slope of her collarbone, and down the line of her sternum.
She makes this soft sound—half sigh, half gasp—and it undoes me.
“You’re shaking,” I murmur.
“Fromyou,” she breathes. “Keep going.”
I obey.
I unclasp her bra slowly, reverently, letting it slide from her shoulders before I lower my mouth to one breast. I kiss the soft swell, lick around the nipple until she’s arching up into my mouth.
Her hands are in my hair, tugging, needy.
