Page 34 of Puck Daddies
“Hum. I’ll stick with that for now.” I do it again.
“That’s your range, Roc. You’re not a tenor anymore, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be something new.”
Her words hit me right in the chest. “Yeah. Maybe.”
She smiles. “This is good.”
I tuck my hands into my pockets to stop them from shaking. Relief shakes me sometimes. “It might be.”
We close the way we always do when I show up at the end. I stack chairs. She counts the drawer. I take out trash and reset the bags. She wipes the counter and resets the sugar and honey. We don’t chatter. We work. It’s quiet in a good way.
The office smells like paper and coffee and honey. We’re still for a second, the kind of still that happens when both of us need to feel where the center is. “Tell me more about the dog.”
“Skittish. Stands and then sits like he was wrong to stand. Ears always moving. Drinks when you don’t look right at him. Calmswhen I hold a low note. If I try to go higher, he flinches. Hell, so do I.”
“Then stay low.”
“I did.”
She picks at a thread on her knee and looks at my mouth. I see it. I don’t move first. I rest my hands on my thighs and wait. If she wants to walk, she will. If she wants to sit and talk about honey syrup ratios, we will. I’m good with either. I’m also not pretending that I don’t want to lean forward and put my face in her neck and breathe.
“Come here,” she says.
I cross the small space and sit next to her. Our shoulders touch. She turns her head, and we’re kissing before either of us makes a speech about it. I taste coffee and mint. I feel her hand on my jaw and my chest gets warm.
My brain was full of static and nerves a breath ago. Now, it’s full of her. I keep my mouth gentle. I run my hand up her arm and stop at her shoulder. “Here.”
“Yes.”
I slide my fingers into her hair and test the hold. “This?”
She answers without words and when she tips her head, I follow. I move over her shirt, thumb slow, palm warm. No rush. No goal I have to hit before a buzzer. Just her body telling me where to go.
I have no idea where else her body wants me to go, but right now, the only thing that matters is the next move. I run my tongue along the edge of her ear. “You did good tonight, amor.”
Her breath hitches. “I did?”
“The place is sparkly clean. You didn’t boot those people out when you had every right. You gave me the encouragement I needed. Yeah, you did good.”
I know she has a little praise kink. That makes me want to be careful with it and not throw it around to get a response. I keep my mouth on hers and hold steady.
Her hand finds the hem of my hoodie and slips under. Her palm presses to my stomach. My breath changes. She smiles mischievously. “Okay?”
“More if you want.”
“I want.”
I help her shift so she can sit on my lap with one knee on each side. I put my hands on her back under her shirt. Skin warm. Nose to nose now. Both of us are breathing like we did something hard. We might.
I kiss her again. I move to the corner of her mouth, then her jaw, then the point below her ear. I wait. “Tell me if I need to slow down.”
“Don’t stop.”
I don’t stop. Hands, mouth, small sounds. Praise in low words. I tell her she’s beautiful. I tell her she tastes like honey, because she does. I tell her I like the way she moves when I put my mouth on her neck. None of it is poetry. It’s facts. I feel her weight and her heat, and I try to memorize this with the part of my brain that doesn’t forget.
I want to tell her what that first night did to me. I want to say the wordloveout loud. But I don’t want to put a word between us that she isn’t ready for. So, I put the feeling in my hands and make sure they’re steady.
Touching her steadies me. I start for the button on her pants, but she gently shakes her head. “I’m grungy from my day. I won’t be able to relax into it.”
