Title: Prompt #3 - Taste
She misses the taste of him the moment the door closes behind him.
Dinner had gone well, better than well really, and by the time they'd returned to the loft, she had convinced herself that it wouldn't hurt anything if she invited him to stay over. They'd agreed to go slow, to start over and take things one step at a time. She'd made the first move with a desperate kiss on Lian Yu before following it up by asking him to dinner on their flight home. It was a date, a real one, at a nice little Italian bistro – much like where they'd had their first disastrous date – and it couldn't have gone better. They'd both been so at ease, so relaxed, to finally be back where they both belonged. Together. But when Oliver had walked her to the front door of the loft and she had invited him in for coffee, the air between them had thickened, crackling with tension. He'd had her backed against a pillar before she could get a word out, his mouth fused with hers, his tongue begging for entry. They'd ended up stretched out on the sofa where they'd made out like unruly teenagers for close to an hour. When Oliver had finally pulled himself away and stared down at her with flushed cheeks and mussed hair, the invitation to spend the night had been on the tip of her tongue. But she hadn't gotten the chance to verbalize it. He'd sat up, taking her with him, and gave her one last kiss before backing his way to the door.
Now, as she sits curled into the corner of her sofa in front of a dwindling fire, she can still taste him on her lips. He'd tasted of bourbon and Bolognese and that distinct taste that belonged solely to him. The one she had spent more than a year craving. She'd tried to move on after the mistake they'd made in the bunker, after she'd let herself go one single time, but there was no replacing Oliver in her life. She'd come to that conclusion rather quickly.
She sighs, her head falling to the back of the couch, and closes her eyes.
She had been the one to suggest taking things slow. To easing back into their relationship one step at a time. And she knows that it's the right thing to do, that they need more time to figure out who they are separately and who they can be together. But she's not sure that she can handle slow, that she can take this snail's pace that she inadvertently subjected herself to.
Felicity snorts to herself, her head rolling along the couch.
"We just made it past first base and were well on the way to second," she says to the empty room, "I guess we're not going that slow."
But even as the words leave her lips, she finds herself longing for more. She imagines what would have happened if he'd stayed, if Oliver hadn't adhered to her request and put on the brakes. She imagines they would've ended up upstairs, in the room they used to share, a trail of clothes left in their wake. And she would've gotten more than just a taste of his lips. Because her mouth would've found his ear and slid down the column of his throat. She would've sucked a mark into his collarbone while he fisted his hands in her loose hair, drawing her closer, holding her there. She would've tasted the salt on his skin and the faint trace of his soap.
She shudders and groans and clenches her thighs as a heavy ache settles low in her belly. It's been too damn long and she knows what she needs, what she wants. She wants Oliver. She wants him in her life, in her home and in her bed, and she doesn't care about taking it slow. Not really. She'd thought, when the bombs had begun detonating on that island, that she would never see him again. That she'd never have the chance to remind him that she loved him. And she had – has – so many regrets. The most prominent being that she hadn't had the chance to marry him, to marry the love of her life. She doesn't want to live with that regret anymore.
Reaching for her phone where it lies on the coffee table, she pauses only when it's securely in her hand. Her finger hovers over the screen.
It takes all of her self-restraint not to call him and ask him to come back. She misses him, she does, but she's sure he's already home, possibly already in bed. And while she knows without a doubt that, if she did call, he'd come back to her without question, she makes the decision that what she wants to say to him can wait. She'll give herself time to cool off, to let her hormones settle to a more respectable level, before she tells Oliver what it is that she really wants. She doesn't want to go slow. She doesn't want to take things one step at a time. No, the one thing that Felicity wants more than anything, is Oliver Queen by her side. As her friend, her partner, and – hopefully soon – her husband.