Lisa
Shit. That might not have been the right thing to say.
Jennie's expression remains flat for several more seconds before she finally cracks a smile. "It really is a dump, isn't it?"
I'm relieved she didn't take that the wrong way. "I gotta be honest—I felt bad leaving you there the first night."
"I felt bad about that too."
I laugh at her wry grin. "So you'll stay here? I don't have to worry about that roof caving in on you or the raccoons cuddling in bed with you?"
"I think mice and spiders are the more likely cuddlers." Jennie shudders. "Yes, I'll stay for now."
We sit by the fire, drinking spiked hot chocolate and talking about what it's like to grow up with four older brothers and three older sisters. I like that I can talk about my siblings and my family with her. As we share stories, I decide I should come out and tell her the truth about my job and hope that she isn't upset that I wasn't honest in the first place. I prop myself up on one arm so I can look directly at her. She's reclined against a pile of pillows, long hair spilling over her shoulders, eyes soft, cheeks pink with the heat from the fire and the spiked hot chocolate.
"I want to tell you something." I finger a lock of silky hair, nervous and second-guessing myself. I really don't want this to change things.
She smiles and bites her lip. "Okay. Sure. You can tell me anything,Lali."
I return her smile, but I doubt mine is as easy. "So you know how I said—"
A flash of lightning makes Jennie's eyes flare with panic and her face pale. "Oh no. I thought the storm was over."
An impressive crack of thunder follows that statement, and she sits up, pulling her knees to her chest so she's almost a little ball.
Obviously my truth has to wait. "Hey, it's okay. You're safe." I shift so I can put an arm around her.
"It's silly to be afraid of thunder." She turns to me, her entire body shaking.
I slip an arm under her legs and move her so she's in my lap. "Human teddy bear right here, offering safety cuddles, free of judgment."
"Thank you. I'm sorry." She presses her forehead against the side of my neck, warmth feathering across my throat with her panicked breaths.
"You don't need to apologize for being scared, Jennie. Did you have a bad experience during a storm?" It's the only reason I can come up with for her to be so freaked out.
She nods against my shoulder.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
She's quiet for long enough that I almost backtrack.
"Remember how I said I went to Seattle for college?"
"But you didn't stay long." She said she was only there a month. I assumed the city was too much for her.
"No. I didn't."
"What happened?" Now I'm trying to figure out how thunderstorms and leaving her college program fit together.
"I lived off campus in the student apartments. There was a thunderstorm one night, and the building lost power—so when I woke up, it was only about twenty minutes before class. We were getting tests back that day, and I decided I'd rather be late than miss it altogether, so I got ready and rushed to campus. I was only about five minutes late. It was still storming, lots of thunder and lightning." She shudders and curls up tight against me. "I was on my way up the stairs into the lecture hall. There was this sound, and at first I thought it was thunder."
I stroke up and down her back, hoping to soothe her, aware that this story is going nowhere good. "But it wasn't?"
"No." Her voice is so small, like she's trying to hide from her own memories.
"What happened then?"
She shifts a little so she can meet my gaze, her own swimming with ghosts and tears. "There was a boy in my class—or a man, I guess. He was kind of a loner, like me a bit. Quiet. Shy, but also . . . dark? He never really looked happy about anything. Just sort of cynical. But I always said hi to him even though he never looked very friendly, because no one really wants to be alone, you know? And he always nodded. It was never anything more, but I tried." She clears her throat. "Anyway, that day he brought a semiautomatic to class, and the sound I mistook for thunder was him firing into the lecture hall. A few people got hit before he turned the gun on himself."
"Oh God, Jennie, that must have been awful. I can't even imagine what would make a person do that." I tighten my hold on her as I consider how terrified she must have been.
Her eyes are sad and distant. "He failed the test, so maybe that set him off? I wondered if maybe—if I'd tried a little harder—he would have talked to me. Maybe, if he had a connection to someone in there, that would have stopped him? It's probably stupid to think that. I mean, clearly there was something wrong with him—he wasn't balanced—but still . . ."
I brush away her tears as they fall. "You can't take that on, Jennie. He was mentally ill. The only time a person does something that extreme is if they're not well. You're lucky you were late." I'm lucky you were late, or you might not be here.
"That's what my family kept telling me. They still do. Because I'm here—and I didn't see it happen, I just heard it and witnessed the aftermath." She looks haunted in that way only people who have experienced deep trauma can be. "This isn't . . . I haven't really talked about this with anyone but my family and my therapist. It's just . . . not good conversation. I couldn't talk about it with my mom—she couldn't handle it."
"How do you mean?"
"She worries more than I do. And the news coverage of the incident made it so much worse." Her fingers drift slowly along the collar of my T-shirt, eyes following the movement.
"I'm glad you feel safe enough with me to talk about it—and as hard as it is to do, sometimes it's better to get it out rather than keep it all locked up inside."
"I used to worry that talking about it would make the fears worse instead of better."
"Because it makes the memories fresh again?" I rub her back, not really knowing what else to do for her.
"Mm-hmm." She nods. "But it feels good not to hold on to it alone anymore."
"Good. It shouldn't be yours to hold on to."
"That boy, the shooter, he didn't survive." Jennie drags her finger along my clavicle, body jolting with the next rumble of thunder. She exhales a shaky breath before she continues. "People came rushing out of the lecture hall. Everyone was screaming." She presses her palm against the side of my neck, thumb brushing back and forth slowly along the edge of my jaw. "I was just . . . frozen on the steps. I knew I needed to move, but I couldn't make my body follow the command. By the time I turned to run, everyone was on me. I twisted my ankle on the steps, but someone grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the way before I could get trampled. I was lucky I didn't see any of it firsthand."
The last part sounds more like something she says as self-reassurance. "I'm so sorry you went through that." No wonder she was so terrified when I came to pick her up. And I realize that Jennie is far stronger than I ever could have imagined. To survive something like that and still be able to look at life with such positivity is a miracle.
"My classmates went through much worse, but now you know why I hate thunderstorms so much. I've always been anxious, but after that . . . I have a very hard time with crowds, so the airport was a challenge for me. And being on a plane with no way of escaping, that wasn't pleasant either. But I used all the strategies I have to stay calm, and I made it through just fine—and then you were on the Cessna, so that helped. I should be able to handle a thunderstorm, but the memories are hard to deal with sometimes."
"Is there anything I can do? Some way I can help now?"
"Being here with you makes me feel safer." She smooths her hand over my shoulder and down my biceps, slipping under the hem of the sleeve. "I don't like to rely too much on people to help calm me, because it's not always effective—especially if those people aren't there when the anxiety becomes intolerable—so I usually do a sensory calming exercise."
"What is that?"
"I focus on the five senses, counting down from five to one. So unless it's dark, I usually start with five things I can see." A flash of lightning startles her, and she digs her nails into my biceps.
I tuck a finger under her chin and turn her head away from the windows behind us, since she's waiting for the next rumble of thunder. "Tell me what you see right now, Jennie."
Her eyes search mine, bottom lip trembling. "I-I see flecks of blue and gold near your iris when I'm this close to you."
"That's one. What else?"
"You have a dimple high on your left cheek. It's always there, but it's more obvious when you smile or laugh." She skims my eyebrow with her fingertip. "You have a scar above your eyebrow that makes it look arched all the time."
I laugh, and she smiles. "You have a tiny freckle right here." She taps my bottom lip, then drags her finger down the side of my throat. "And this vein right here shows me exactly how calm you are right now."
"What's next? Touch? Or do I get to play this game too?"
"That depends."
"On?"
"Are you anxious?"
"Maybe a little."
She frowns as if she's concerned, which is ironic considering what she's been through and how it's affecting her right now. "About what?"
"I have a gorgeous woman that I really like who's anxious because she's been through something bad that I can't fix, even though I want to be able to. I don't want to mess this up by saying or doing the wrong thing."
She shifts, and for a moment I think she's going to move off my lap, but instead she straddles my thighs. "Everything you say is perfect, so you have nothing to worry about."
A flash of lightning has her sucking in a breath.
"Hey, hey, stay with me, right here. Focus on me. Tell me what you feel." I cup her face in my palms to keep her eyes locked with mine.
"I feel . . . my heart racing, the warmth of your palms against my skin, the heat of your body under me even through our clothes, and an ache . . ." She bites her lip and her cheeks flush.
"What kind of ache?"
"For you to touch more of me," she whispers, almost shyly.
I skim her throat lightly. "Like this?"
"Yes, please."
I drag my fingers over her collarbone and down her arms until I reach her hands. I bring one to my lips so I can kiss her knuckle. "Is taste next?"
She nods, eyes staying on mine. "It is."
"What do you want to taste, Jennie?" I run my hands up the outside of her thighs, wishing I were touching bare skin. I know what I want to taste, but I'm not exactly sure what direction we're heading, and I'd like her to lead.
"Your skin." She leans in, nose brushing along my jaw as her lips find my throat, right over the pulse point. Her soft, warm tongue strokes along my skin before she kisses her way up to my ear. "I taste salt and bitterness." Her lips travel over my cheek until they finally brush over mine. She sucks my bottom lip. "I taste mint and chocolate and marshmallows."
She angles her head, lips parting as she comes in for another kiss, this time with tongue. I keep my hands on her thighs, even though I desperately want to touch more of her. Her tongue strokes mine, and she whimpers quietly.
She slides her fingers into my hair and latches on. Jennie shimmies forward until her chest is flush with mine, and I'm sure she realizes that her calming exercise has been having the opposite effect on me. I groan into her mouth.
"I hear desire." She drops her hands and grabs the hem of her sweater. "And the soft rustle of fabric." She lifts it over her head, along with the thermal shirt under it, skin pebbling—possibly because it's cold, maybe because she's still anxious . . . or turned on.
She's gloriously topless, and my imagination has proven absolutely abysmal in concocting anything close to the reality of what this would look like, feel like, be like.
I couldn't have predicted a set of circumstances that would bring us into each other's lives like this, let alone to this point. It feels . . . different. Like there's significance in every single touch and caress, and I feel the sharp bite of guilt over not being completely honest with her about who I am. But I won't ruin it now, not when she's shared something so obviously painful for her. Not when she's here, looking for me to take it away for a while in whatever way I can.
"You're gorgeous." I smooth my hands down the sides of her neck and kiss her.
"We never got to smell," she murmurs against my lips.
"I smell mint and cucumber shampoo." I brush my nose along the column of her throat. "And the sweetness of your vanilla lotion. What about you?"
"I smell need and lust and wanting."
"We should do something about that, shouldn't we?" I settle my hands on her waist.
"Yes, please."
I kiss her again, and this time restraint becomes unnecessary. Like every other time we've kissed, it's as if someone has flicked a lighter in an ocean of gasoline. She wraps herself around me, and I have to coax her to loosen her hold. "I want to taste every inch of you, Jennie, starting right here." I touch a finger to her lips and drag it down between her breasts. "And I'll make a stop here, before I continue"—I draw a line straight down, circling her navel, and stop at the waistband of her leggings—"under here. Do you think that would be a good sensory calming exercise?"
"I guess we'll have to try it out to see if it works." She gives me a tentative, saucy grin.
And I make good on my sensory exploration promise. We undress each other slowly, savoring the experience. I kiss every bare, sweet inch of her, spending the most time between her thighs, licking and kissing until she's writhing under me and calling out my name as an orgasm rolls through her.
I'm fully prepared for that to be where it ends, but Jennie tugs me back up and wraps her legs around my waist. She's already slick from my mouth and her orgasm. "Jennie," I groan when I settle against her, warm and wet.
"I want to know what it feels like to have you inside me."
I lift my head and meet her hazy, lust-soaked gaze. "Are you sure? We don't have to—"
She looks suddenly unsure. "You don't want to know what I feel like from the inside?"
"That's not—" I have to clear my throat. "Yes. Of course I do, I just don't want you to feel pressured—"
"I don't feel pressured. I feel like I'm under pressure. Like one of those mints dropped into a bottle of soda and shaken with the top on. That's what it's like when you kiss me, so I want to know what it's like when you're in me."
"Is this . . . have you . . ." I don't know how to ask without making it awkward.
She tips her head to the side, brows furrowing for a moment until they pop back up. "Oh! You think—" She bites her lip. "I'm not that inexperienced, Lali."
There's no good way to respond, so I drop my head and kiss the side of her neck. "I just wanted to be sure, and I want this to feel good for you—for both of us. Let me grab a condom." I'm grateful that there's one in my wallet, because the box I bought the day after I met Jennie—hopeful that at some point we'd get here—is upstairs in my nightstand.
I kneel between her thighs, and Jennie sits up, taking the foil square from me. She strokes me a few times, then bends to kiss the head, wetting it with her lips before she tears the wrapper open and rolls the condom on. It's sexy and sweet and so damn hot. Especially when she straddles me, positions me at her entrance, and sinks into my lap.
This is nothing like our frantic make-out sessions. It's slow and gentle, a leisurely climb to the peak. When I feel myself getting close, I still her with my hands on her hips and kiss her as a distraction. Over and over, I balance at the edge and back off until Jennie can't stop the orgasm from stealing her breath.
I flip her over so I can keep the rhythm, chasing down my own orgasm. I try to bury my face against her neck, but she cups my face in her hands. "I want to see you," she murmurs, eyes soft and searching.
I meet her gaze, and my ego pretty much expands to fill the entire universe. Jennie's eyes hold fascinated awe, like there's nothing more enthralling than me in this moment. I come hard, eyes locked on her gorgeous face, wishing there were no end to this feeling.
I drop my forehead to hers, breathing hard. She kisses the corner of my mouth. "I would do that again and again and again just so I could see that look on your face."
"What look?"
"Pure rapture."
"That belongs to you and you alone."
Orgasm drugged, we kiss until exhaustion creeps in. I remove the used condom, tie it off, and toss it near the fireplace. I pull the blankets over us, and Jennie curls into me.
I think about how I could get used to this—not just the sex, but her. And I wish I'd started this with the truth instead of a lie, because it's too late to take it back . . . but I promise myself I'll find a way to tell her before we leave Alaska. And I hope like hell it won't ruin what we have here.