lotion from the bathroom, and rubbed the orange-and-ginger-scented lotion into me. Into my neck. Into my breasts. Into my belly, and into my legs. All the way to my feet. He took a foot in his hand, ran his thumb over my rose-gold toenails, and said, “I like everything about how you look, but these could be my favorite. Well, except for your thighs.” He lifted my foot, kissed the instep, and then he did the same thing with the other foot.
In the light.
I said, “I need to touch you, though. I’ve never …” I had to stop and get my breath.
His eyes were so dark. So kind. He said, “You’ve never touched a man. Not because you wanted to.”
“No.” It was hard to say, and it was good to say. “I want to do it now.”
I got a chance to kiss that scar beside his eye, to trace every single scar on his face with my fingers and my lips. The places he’d bled and healed, during all those battles when he hadn’t given up. I got a chance to kiss his neck, and to be gentle with the healing scrapes on his forearms. I got a chance to tell him, while I kissed the undamaged crook of his elbow, “I love that you did this for me. I hate that you did it, because it was so much too dangerous, but I love it, too. Isn’t that odd?”
“No,” he said, his hand in my hair. “It’s the way things should be.”
He let me do everything I wanted, even though I could tell it was so hard for him to hold back, to wait while I traced the pattern of his tattoo with my fingertips and my mouth. Over his bicep. Over his shoulder. And, finally, over his chest. I ran my hands over both his arms, from his shoulders all the way down to his hands, and he took them the same way he’d done before, threading his fingers through mine. I lowered myself over his body like that while he held me steady with all the deep-rooted strength of his outstretched arms, his chest, his core, and I thrilled at that strength, and at his restraint. I kissed his mouth, and then I moved down and touched and kissed everything else. Slow as I wanted. Hesitant as I needed to be. And he held still and let me do all of it.
I didn’t know how to be on top of a man, and I felt clumsy and awkward trying. Gray must have known that for now, I could only do this in ways I never had. That if he was over me, his weight on his elbows and me on my back, I’d panic. He must have, because he helped me. He lifted me onto him, then lowered me slowly down, and he looked into my eyes all along the way. He held my hips in his big hands and guided my movements, and when it got too exciting and I couldn’t focus on trying to do it right anymore, he took over the work from me. He showed me how, and I’d swear it was a thrill to him to do it.
When we were lying together again, our breathing finally slowing, my hand on his chest again, I said, “I shouldn’t be sleepy. This is my work time.”
“Mm,” he said, his hand lazy on my back, stroking down it and back up again. “I should be, though. I am. Wore me out, didn’t you.”
I laughed and kissed his shoulder, there where the triangles of the tattoo swirled up and over the bulge of deltoid. “I did not. I’m guessing you could do this more or less all night.”
“Nah,” he said. “Getting old, aren’t I.”
I laughed, and he did, too, his chest shaking under me. I said, “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to disparage your own sexual abilities.”
I could hear his yawn, and feel it, too. “Mm. You’d find out anyway.”
“We should ring your mum,” I said. “The girls.”
“It’s late,” he said. “They’ve noticed that we’re not back.” He reached up and flipped off the light. “Sleep with me a little. Let me hold you. Us older fellas like to cuddle.”
How could I resist that?
It might have felt odd, walking into the kitchen at eight o’clock that morning, still in my clothes from the night before. Fortunately, I didn’t have to experience it. We went home at five instead, driving into a windy dawn, the rising