wants everything she can possibly have, wants to bury herself in it and never come back.
The first one goes quickly—it’s been too long and she’s missed Jane too much for it to take much more than a hand and a few minutes—and when she’s finished shivering through it, Jane kisses her back to her senses.
“God,” August says, breaking off, “come up here.”
“I am up here,” Jane says. “I’m kissing you.”
“No.” August licks her lips and reaches up to drag one fingertip across the bottom one. “Here.”
“Oh,” Jane exhales. “Oh, okay.”
Jane kisses her once more, and then she’s moving up August’s body, shifting on her knees until she’s even with August’s shoulders, bracing herself with both hands against the wall. August can feel the heat radiating off of her like wet sunlight.
“Ready?” she asks.
“Don’t ask stupid questions,” August tells her. She’s thought about this more times than Jane can imagine.
“I just wanted—fuck, okay, stupid question, sorry—fuck, oh, fuck.”
August thinks about summertime in New Orleans, cups of ice and sugary syrup, satsuma and strawberry and honeysuckle dripping down her chin and sticking to her fingers, the familiar smother of steam and sweat. Jane rolls her hips, chasing the feeling, soft little moans falling out of her mouth faster and faster until she gives herself over. August’s fingernails dig into the flesh of her thighs right where they meet her hips, and she loves this, loves Jane, loves the velvety insides of Jane’s legs against her face, loves the way Jane feels on her lips and her tongue, loves how she moves in waves of desperate instinct without a hint of self-consciousness. August could learn how to live without breathing just to stay like this forever.
When it’s over—not over, not ever really over with them, but when Jane falls over the edge and can’t take any more—Jane kisses her sloppily, drunk and euphoric. She smells like August, and that’s a whole different revelation—her body and Jane’s and all the ways they can linger on each other.
There never seems to be a beginning or an end to this. Before, it was whatever circumstances demanded, but now it’s a mess of touching, one kiss blending into the next, an endless glide, a continuous tide. They both give and take, both have turns gasping and swearing and getting on their knees. It could be hours or days, August thinks, when she has anything in her brain still capable of thought. Jane pushes a pillow under August’s hips and hooks August’s knees over her own shoulders, and August goes under.
Jane draws her out again, deadly with her mouth and fingers. She moves like art. She finds every piece holding August together and works it loose until she feels like she’s spilling out of herself. August’s at sea, she’s clay in the hands of someone who knows how to make a life out of nothing, she’s a girl underneath a girl in a bed they both almost died to get to.
“That’s it,” Jane whispers when August can barely stand to hear the desperate, dizzy sounds coming out of her own mouth. She’s got one hand and her hips between August’s thighs, chasing blindly and relentlessly after whatever August’s body responds to. Jane fucks her like they’re the center of the universe. August is in the stars. “So gorgeous like this, angel, God, I love you—”
August comes again with her hands in Jane’s hair, eyes shut, body shaking, and it’s not just the touch. Down to her fingertips, singing through her synapses, it’s a love too big to be stopped, the unbearable, exquisite fullness of it. Impossible.
Later, when the sun is setting and the streetlights flickering on, August feels Jane’s pulse against her and imagines all the wires running over and under the street synced up with it. That isn’t how it works anymore. But it feels true anyway.
“You know what’s crazy?” Jane says. She looks like she might fall asleep soon.
“What?”
“You’re the most important person I’ve ever met,” she says. “And I should have never met you at all.”
* * *
Time, Myla explains to them later, isn’t perfect.
It’s not a straight line. It’s not neat and tidy. Things get crossed, overlap, splinter. People get lost. It’s not a precise science.
So, Jane didn’t go back to 1977. They opened a door, and August caught a glimpse through the crack, but Jane didn’t stay there. She didn’t magically snap into the exact moment of time she left August in either, though. She ended up in the general area of now,