Page 25 of Odin
I inhale sharp and deep, trying to drag air past my constricted throat, into my burning lungs. One gasp and I realize that it’s not my lungs at all. It’s the rest of me that’s on fire. My chest. My stomach. One more breath, and it’s allhim. Chrome and leather, oil and spice, fresh air, trees, moss, and grass.
Words scorch the back of my tongue, but I bite them back. What could I possibly say that would encapsulate the depth of my feeling?
My hands shake so badly that the camera starts to vibrate.
I tilt my head, turning to take in Odin’s face. I find him watching me with that same intense look, only this time, it’s not filtered through the camera’s lens. There’s nothing blocking his face. Just his gorgeous dark brown eye and that patch with thescarring that juts out into his brow and zigzags across his cheek to disappear into the fullness of his beard as it climbs far past his jawline.
I know the science behind eye color, but his deep brown is so much more beautiful than just a lot of melanin in the front and back of the iris. It’s more than just the way the light hits. He wears the vestiges of a hard life scarred into his skin, but the wisdom of his soul is truly there, in that soft amber.
He strokes a hand burnished to deep caramel, the ink so old it’s almost indistinguishable, over his beard. “If you don’t like them, that’s alright. I can just delete them.”
“Like them?” I’m still struggling to find words. I can’t just leave him at the mercy of my silence because my voice has failed me.
I set the camera aside, taking care that it’s perfectly balanced on the blanket, even though the ground rolls softly beneath it.
I know what I can’t do. I know there are lines and hard boundaries, but they seem to soften and blur, obliterated like a droplet of water evaporating under the hot sun. There’s none of that right now. There’s only this man and everything he’s done for me. This man and his incredible gift of sight that has nothing to do with vision.
I lean into him before I can stop. The blanket is small, and I don’t have far to go. My hand acts of its own accord, reaching out to cup the side of his face.
He jerks, but not away. A shudder rips through his body, but he doesn’t move, as though he’s as paralyzed as I am. Except that I’m not. My thumb rubs a path along his beard and cheek.The facial hair is thick, but softer than I thought it would be. It tickles the underside of my wrist, and my palm.
He lets out a strangled animal noise and finally, he can move too. His hand circles my wrist. It’s obscenely huge against my delicate bones, like a grizzly holding the tender stem of a flower. He doesn’t squeeze. Doesn’t capture me or press in, but I can still feel the warmth of his chunky metal rings and of his skin. It’s fire and lightning all the way up from that point of contact, straight into my shoulder.
My heart beats so hard that I can feel it thumping in my throat.
“I…” I try for words, but my throat is so dry. It’s aching with the need to give him all of me, the deepest parts of my soul. He already laid them bare in those photos. I might as well pour myself out to him, but all I have is the unspoken poetry connecting us where we’re touching.
I want to lean into him.
I want to taste him.
I want him to devour me, uncover me, pull the depths of my heart apart and place them back inside of me so they’re ordered in a way I can finally understand.
My hand trembles against his cheek.
“I need…” The throaty words tumble and stick. I’m so scared of telling him what I need. I don’t even know. He’s not mine to touch. I have no right to be this close. I can’t stop. That’s all I know. The only thing that makes sense right now is him. This.
I curl towards him instead of away, tipping my face closer and closer. I don’t believe in fate or destiny. It was my own actions that set me on this path to him, no big forces out there acting to bring us together. But we’re still here. I still feel whatever crazy magnetism this is. I believe in the explainable, and I know that hormones are a real thing. People are designed biologically to want other people. It’s how the species carries on. I guess I just never realized thatsciencecould feel so much likemagic.
He leans in too, like he’s also seeking warmth and goodness and wants to be carried away on that magical tide.
His lips are softer than I ever thought possible. His beard tickles my chin. I part for mouth for him, eager for the velvet glide of his lips against mine, for the scalding taste of him, for the sensual tangling. I expected an inferno, but he kisses me softly. Not without heat, but with impeccable control.
I’ve kept such a careful grasp over myself for years. I want to shatter it and lose myself.
I sweep my hand to his neck, tangling my fingers in his hair, clawing my way to the back of his neck as I draw closer. There’s no moving a granite pillar, so I churn up against him. My body crashes into his. I catch myself on his shoulder, but draw myself deeper by sweeping my arm around to his back. My breasts smash up against the edges of his leather jacket and brush against soft cotton. I angle my face, sweeping my tongue along his lower lip, begging him to open for me so I can taste him deeply.
“Please,” I whimper, the word so obscured that it’s almost more breath than anything. “I need.” Those two words again.
He groans low enough to shake the earth beneath us. He brackets the back of my head in one palm, and holds me so tightly that I can feel his rings digging in against my scalp. His tongue glides into my mouth, tangling hotly with mine. I can’t get close enough. I rub up against him. My legs are still on the blanket, but I want to be in his lap. Straddling him. Rubbing and curling and mashing against all his hard planes.
I want it even more when his hand drops down to cup my neck above my hair before he gathers a fist of the blonde strands and tugs hard enough that my head tilts back. He doesn’t just kiss me. He plunders. He takes. He licks and bites and devours the little whimpers that I can’t keep trapped inside.
I thought I was a rational person, but reason and logic have no place here.
I thought I knew a lot of things about life, but in the end, I was wrong.
If I know nothing at all, and this is my ground zero, then it’s the place I want to start. And end. No matter how wrong it might seem to the outside world, it doesn’t feel wrong to me. And the world isn’t here right now. It’s just us in this beautiful place, and I don’t want it to end.
