inhaled her scent, followed the sweep of her hair over her shoulder? He studied the little bumps her bra strap made under her shirt, the way the denim stretched over her backside when she bent to pull out the saucepan. The capable movements of her hands as she made hot chocolate with milk, using the stove instead of the microwave.
Listening to the sound of her voice, those breathy syllables, he wanted to close his eyes, let it soak into him. But he wanted to see her too. He liked that she could feel the intensity of his gaze. He liked seeing her get a little nervous for good reasons.
When the hot chocolate was ready, she put his mug on the table and sat down beside him with her own. She took a breath. “You look like you might want to talk about something,” she said.
“Yeah. I do.” He reached out, cupped her face, and laid his mouth on hers.
She made a surprised and pleased noise, but it was nothing next to what surged through him. The strength of it told him how much he’d thought about doing this, all night, ever since he’d kissed her throat when they left for the school. How he’d denied himself for those few hours was a miracle of deprivation. He wanted to pull her on his lap, but he didn’t. He kept it right there, elbow on the corner of the table, his hand hooked with hers on the edge.
She wanted more, was pressing into it as she made a little sound in the back of her throat. Tension shivered through her as she struggled between giving into the kiss, giving him what he seemed to be demanding from her, and leashing her natural response, reining it back. What she thought wasn’t allowed.
He wanted to tell her anything was allowed with him, anything she wanted, but he knew the dangers of going down that path with her. Daralyn never framed things in terms of her own wants and desires. Asking her what she wanted, pushing her to express that, was a sure way to send her into a panic attack. They’d all learned that the hard way.
With effort, he broke the kiss, keeping it easy but lingering, running his thumb along her delicate jaw. She was staring at him. When he dropped his hand to the table, palm up, he noted she put her braceleted wrist, not her hand, in his grasp. As he gripped it, she settled, resulting in a surge of feelings hard to describe. He just knew they were the exact right ones for the moment.
“What’s going on in your head?” he asked. “Tell me.”
“No one looks at me the way you do. Like I’m something in an art gallery, interesting and special, and almost too beautiful to touch.”
“I want to touch you. A lot. Tell me more about what you’re thinking. You can’t say anything wrong.”
She pressed her lips together. “There’s this feeling when you look at me, like I’m about to feel something I’ve never felt, and I’m scared. But excited, too. Happy. I feel like I can talk to you, say these things in my head that don’t make sense, they’re so jumbled, but when you look at me the way you’re looking at me, there’s this steady calm in your eyes that comes inside of me. It unjumbles those thoughts, makes sense of them.”
He considered himself decently experienced with girls. He’d lost his virginity as soon as he could take the beat-up truck down one of the many back roads that all the teens knew. He hadn’t been naturally smooth with females, but being a football player had helped improve his fumbling tongue-tied state. He’d learned the basics, how to navigate the often awkward signals and baffling clues men and women dropped for one another in the dating game. The things they struggled to say or not say.
Not in a million years would any of them have opened their hearts this baldly, spoken such simple, emotional truths about what they were feeling. She had no experience with playing coy or being worried about what he thought of her. Not that way. It was a humbling gift of innocent trust.
And heartbreaking that she’d managed to express it so well, without crossing into the territory they all knew was dangerous for her.
Thinking about what Marcus had said about watching for cues, Rory knew she’d taught him to do that early on. Uniquely preparing them for the direction this relationship