23. The Lovers
His body is all long lean limbs and hard planes against hers.
When they had got back inside the house and he had locked the door against whatever else the night could bring she had thought that this would be another long conversation but when he turned and looked at her, at every part of her, drinking her in with a reverence and a want that sent a flush along her skin she had known that there would be few words. Later, yes, on both sides, but not now.
Actions, it seemed, did mattered to him after all.
Her fingers were clumsy with the buttons on her jacket; she felt rather than heard him approach her, dropped her hands to her sides as he worked the buttons through the bindings. Like hers, there was a tremor to them.
She remembered the night at the creek and the way his wet skin had glistened in the moonlight; she remembered the surge of relief when he crept into that shack to rescue her; she remembered evenings spent out on the porch and the mornings at breakfast and sharing the paper and making him smile with silly stories she saved up from the salon and practised and embellished while she drove home from work. She remembered lying awake and fearing for him, longing for him. She put her hands over his and when he looked up there was fire in eyes.
Somehow they had made it up the stairs.
And now this.
His hands on her body are the way she had imagined them: warm and heavy and gentle and everywhere. He reads her with the same intensity he does his books, his fingers following her lines. Nerve-endings ignite under his touch, sending licks of flame across her skin. Once she had dreaded the way he would look at her, would shrink from his gaze. Now she covets it, revels in it. And revels in him, the feeling of him.
She runs her hands up his arms, across his shoulders, his chest. Feels the slide of muscle under taut skin, sleek beneath her caress. The wild, rough satin of his hair and the hard bone of cheek and jaw. She drags her teeth across the cords of his neck, feeds on the throbbing pulse.
And all the time his hands and his mouth map her body. His fingers trace lazy figures against her inner-thigh and his teeth-
She gasps, back arching-
-his teeth graze her breast, scraping the skin.
The tantalising delicacy of his touch still just beyond where she craves it the most. She pulls his head back up to hers, claims his mouth again, catches his lip between her teeth and tastes there that smoky sweetness.
Mine, she thinks, fiercely possessive, folds herself around him and the word hammers in her head, the same rhythm as his breath against her neck. She cradles his body between her legs, pushing herself up against him, pulling him closer.
When he slides into her, finally, it's like everything else in this strange dance they have performed around each other: slow, drawn-out, loaded with meaning. She bites her lip and her eyes flicker closed and she feels him, deep, during this unending moment.
His fingers lace through hers and his weight holds her, helpless, and when she opens her eyes again his are darkened and watching her. His voice is low and urgent and he needs her to know this.
She's the most beautiful woman he's ever known. He loves her, he's always loved her.
She cannot say the same for him. She hadn't loved him then, but she does love him now and she tells him this.
And he gives her everything she has ever needed.
When she wakes - not the first time, or even the second, but much much later than that - the sun is strong through the window and he's investigating the book that she's been reading. She blinks sleepily, her limbs heavy with a feeling like molasses flowing through them. She rests her fingers at the edge of the thick black lines inscribed on his skin; the ugliness is still a shock, but she doesn't ask why he keeps it, this symbol of something that he never really believed in; neither of them can pretend that the past is something different. He has changed and he hasn't; he is the better version of the man he has always been.
His fingers twist through her hair and she presses her lips against the scar in his chest.
'We had to read that in high-school,' she says eventually. 'I always loved it. I guess to you it's just chick-lit.'
He puts the book down and his eyebrows go up. 'Now, Ava, that's where you would be wrong. She's a woman who has to make her own way in the world, a woman with spunk.' His hand smoothes down her hair, rests in the curve of her neck. 'I've always admired a woman like that.'
She folds her hands under her chin, smiles up at him. 'I like the ending, when they finally come together - they're equals. He's lost everything, she's all independent. They're the same then. I like that.'
His head tilts slightly, thoughtful. 'I don't think he had lost everything: he always had her, even when he didn't know it.'
They watch each other. She pushes herself up and forward and his hands cup her face as she kisses him.