Chapter 7: Intimacy
Lizzy's smile—small and sleepy but still brilliant—greeted Red the next morning as soon as he opened his eyes. For a brief moment, he doubted he was truly awake, but as he became more aware of his surroundings, the reality of it all began to sink in. He really had spent the night with Lizzy, slept in a bed next to her, and not through the purely platonic necessity borne of life on the run. They had made love—which was indeed an accurate term for what they'd done as far as he was concerned, no matter how hokey it might be.
If there was something he could do to guarantee her smiling face would be the first thing he saw when he woke every morning for the rest of his life, he would do it and die a happy man. Hell, just the once might be enough to ensure that, but he was greedy. He hoped for more, however superfluous it might be.
"Hey," she said, studying his face fondly. She had been watching him while he slept, he realized. He ignored the sudden pricking at the back of his eyes; he couldn't remember the last time he'd woken to a lover watching him sleep. It had to have been a lifetime ago. Even in his considerable experience, this kind of intimacy was rare. Not even Carla had—
"Has anyone ever told you how beautiful your eyelashes are in the sunlight?"
His eyelashes? He felt himself smile in return without trying, a faint, involuntary thing, like an invisible string tugging at his lips.
"I can't say that they have," he said, slightly perplexed, but full of wonder all the same.
In a way, he understood where Lizzy's head must be at the moment. He'd been in the infatuation stage months ago, when each tiny detail about her—every habit, every expression, every inflection—pulled at his heart, luring him farther and farther from shore and threatening to drag him under the rising tide of his own affection. So, yes, he understood the concept, but the idea that Lizzy might feel the same way about him now? He found it nearly incomprehensible.
Lazily, she carded her fingers through the hair on his chest over his heart and, in an instant, he remembered the first time she touched him there, the point of contact so piercing, it overrode the agony exploding through his side, even if only for a moment.
He felt himself stir against her thigh and she felt it, too; she stretched, a casually deliberate movement that brought her close enough to press herself against him bodily from head to toe.
"What's on the agenda for today?" she asked, and leaned down to draw her teeth across his nipple before he could answer; a sharp, twisting pleasure shot through his body and shocked a moan from his throat.
"New safe house again to start," he said. "We shouldn't stay anywhere longer than a night for the next week or so. After that, we'll have to go off the grid again for a short while, settle in and let the trail go cold."
Lizzy nodded. "Ressler was too close for comfort." She reached between them and took him into her hand just as he skimmed his own hand down her body and slipped his fingers into the slick warmth between her legs.
"My God, Lizzy." He sunk his fingers inside her to the knuckle and twitched in her hand. Smoothly, she pushed him onto his back and knelt to straddle his hips; her breathing hitched as she slid along his length, dragging him through her wetness.
Hoping conversation would keep him grounded and help fight the nearly overwhelming urge to lose himself in the feeling of her body against his, he said, "If I remember correctly, you hated being off the grid. No wifi."
She snorted. "Things have changed. I don't think I'll find it half as boring as I did last time." She lowered herself onto him with a satisfied sigh. Red watched with rapt attention as she rocked herself fluidly against him and he brought his hands up to caress her breasts, to rub and tease her tight budded nipples; she pushed herself into his touch with a drawn-out moan and he rolled his hips, thrusting up into her heat.
Dear Lord. She was… exquisite. And this was just as magnificent as the first time, if not more so. Their sleep-slow bodies gradually coming alive under each other's ministrations, their pounding hearts and gasping breaths, their voices ebbing and flowing along with their excitement… If only he could capture it, memorize and preserve it, because in their eagerness, it was over much too quickly.
