not move. He watched, frozen on the outside while storms raged on the inside, as she slowly, decidedly, gathered the quilt, which was now scrunched up around her middle, and set it to one side.
She rolled her thighs open some more, and he loosened his grip on them. While the legs moved, his hands stayed in place—maybe he was frozen—which landed them on her inner thighs. She had a tiny web of stretch marks on either side, and painted with the warm light from the fire, they looked like delicate, golden filaments.
He wanted to put his mouth on them, and judging from the way she had splayed herself open to him—the network of gold culminated in her pretty, pink center—she wanted that, too. He moved slowly. He had been kneeling, but now he moved back, transferring his gaze from her thighs to her eyes, assessing as he went. Slowly, slowly, he extended his legs, and then his entire body, along the floor. Her pupils, which he would have said were already blown out, dilated some more.
He raised his eyebrows.
She licked her lips.
Okay, then.
His first order of business was to move the now-snoring Mick. He picked him up gently and moved him to the couch before returning to exactly where he’d been before, lying between her thighs.
He lowered his head, and forgetting about the golden, gossamer threads that had initially captured his attention, he licked her seam. Just once. It was like pressing fast-forward, he knew, doing things out of order, but he wanted her most vulnerable skin under his mouth, under his teeth, and he thought she wanted that, too. She was salty and damp and quivering, and he was so fucking sorry her grandma was dead.
He checked in with her breath. It was slow again, but shaky. He’d kept his neck tilted back so he could watch her, and she’d tilted hers forward, so their gazes had remained locked.
Without taking his mouth off her, he slid down enough so he could taste her inner thigh. As he kissed it, he stroked the creases on both sides with his thumbs. Her skin was soft, but not perfectly smooth. That was the texture he had been admiring. It was like a map. No, like a key. The secret markings that made her her.
He must have been getting too moony over her thigh, though, because she grabbed his head. Jammed her hands into his hair and made fists. He loved that. He’d missed that.
She yanked his head back up.
In another circumstance he might have chuckled. But this wasn’t that circumstance. The air between them was heavy. Serious. Shot through with grief.
But she was clearly communicating what she needed from him, so he put aside the mooniness. Enough with the gilded light and the golden filaments. He put his mouth back on her, and the way she bucked her hips at first contact and squeezed her thighs around his head told him she wanted him to get to the point. Good. He wanted her to use him for whatever she needed. So he went right for her clit, flicking his tongue over it the way he’d learned she liked. Usually he would draw things out, but she was already writhing and moaning and making fists in his hair, all signs that she was close. He switched to sucking, and she came within seconds, on a sob that sounded like it was half pleasure, half grief.
He stayed with her as she pulsed, resting his cheek on one thigh. He’d been so focused on her, first on admiring her like she was a painting and then on making her come, that he had lost touch with his own body. He was hard as iron. Of course he was. How could a man witness such a spectacle and not be? But it didn’t matter. It felt not-urgent. A by-product of letting her use him to make herself feel…better?
That probably wasn’t it. To make herself feel the way she needed to feel. He understood that.
When she loosened her hold on his hair, he glanced up at her. Her thighs were still splayed, and he was still resting his cheek on one of them.
She reached down and laid her palm on the other check, the upturned one, and something happened inside him.
He tried not to let it. He tried to swallow the tears that were suddenly there, just below the surface. This was supposed to be about her. About being an anchor for her, a place to land.