Page 20 of Theta

"Again," she whispers. "Please?"

I can't help myself. To be honest, I don't try to. Not when she's asking for more.

I twist into her, push her back against the wall with my body; she goes willingly, eagerly, her hands circling to my back, clawing at my shoulders, diving into the hair at the back of my head. I frame her face with shaky hands, not quite touching her cheeks, and then she's making a tiny shrill breathless sound in the back of her throat, and her teeth nip my bottom lip, quick and sharp and playful.

My hands cup her face, then, and I lean down and tip her face up and press my lips against hers again. That same sound, soft and faint and delicate, escapes her throat as our mouths meet. "Killy," she whispers. "Kiss me."

"I am."

“No,” she murmurs, and her hands cup the back of my head and pull me down, and her lips touch mine. "Kiss me." It's a ragged demand.

I let out a groaning sigh—this is intense, all of a sudden, no longer just a questing kiss. I slam my mouth over hers and open my lips and trace her lips with my tongue, and she makes that tiny gasping sound again, a breath of disbelief, of need, of desire.

"That sound," I breathe, breaking the kiss. "It's gonna haunt my dreams."

She says nothing in response; instead, she lifts on her tiptoes and takes a kiss, and gives me that mewling sound again, and it rockets through me, setting my blood on fire, melting my bones, liquefying my synapses in a flash flood of molten desire. A battering jolt of arousal shreds through me like a billion lightning strikes all at once, and I surge into her, tilting down to kiss her, tipping her chin up so the kiss is nearly vertical. I press Story into the wall with my body and my hips crush against hers; my hands take on a will of their own, then. One drifts down from her cheek to rest on her clavicle, and then I'm loosely clutching her throat and my tongue soars into her mouth and hers wars and tangles with mine; my other hand drops to her waist, and my thumb finds a sliver of space between scrub top and bottom, a narrow strip of hot soft skin.

Her hands are in my hair, digging through my tight curls, nails scraping my scalp in a way that makes my knees threaten to give out, and then she's clawing her nails into my chest and then she's clutching my biceps, and then she's scraping at my abs with clawed fingers and her tongue darts and retreats, teasing.

The ship rocks, then, hit by a wave, and we cling to each other for balance and I push her harder against the wall, spreading my legs wide to absorb the rocking, rolling pitch of the deck as the tick-tick-tick of rain on the container abruptly detonates into a thunderous deluge of a thousand drumming giant fingers.

She clings to my neck, arms wrapped almost double around me, and my thumb explores the sliver of silky skin at her side. Her tongue takes over, now, and she's demanding and hungry, kissing me like there's no tomorrow—because there may not be, but I don't dwell on that. There's no space for those kinds of thoughts, not when her hips push into mine as I spread my hand up under her scrub top and explore the expanse of her back, from shoulder to shoulder, over the wide bra strap and down to the small of her back and from side to side along the waist of her scrub bottoms.

At my hand's touch, Story lets out another of those tiny whimpers, and my cock pulses behind the zipper of my jeans, throbs to a renewed ache, swelling and hardening more than ever.

Story wraps a leg around the back of mine and drives her hips against mine, rubbing her core against me.

I break the kiss, forehead to forehead, panting. "Story," I breathe. "You're…fuck. You feel…"

She arches into me. "I know. You too." Her mouth moves from mine to my throat, to my shoulder, to my chest. Back to my mouth. "Kissing you is even better than I thought it'd be."

“You thought about kissing me?" I can't help but ask.

"Only every moment we're around each other," she admits.

"Every summer," I whisper, "is fucking…the most beautiful torture. Waiting for you to show up at the compound is worse than waiting for presents on Christmas." I pause. "Wait, your mom is Jewish. Do you celebrate Christmas?"

She laughs softly. "Yes, we do. We celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas—Christmas for Dad more than anything. He didn't grow up with much by way of celebrations, you might say, so Mom and I love going all out for him because he just…he loves it." Her leg slides down to brace both feet on the floor as we rock and pitch with the waves of this new storm. "Why do you call it beautiful torture?"

"Because when it's the five of us, we're together all day every day for an entire month or two, and most of that time we're all in bathing suits and nothing else except maybe a shirt or a coverup for meals," I answer. "Which means you in a bikini. And I'm so fucking attracted to you, Story. Being around you in a fucking two-piece, but I can’t touch you, and I can’t stare at you because I’m not a fucking creeper. It's fucking torture. But…you're so goddamn gorgeous and I feel lucky to just be able to be around you for those few short weeks, and I'd…I'd rather be tortured." I shrug. "I dunno, I guess that’s why it's beautiful torture—you're beautiful, and it's torture."

She lifts up and rakes her mouth over mine again, fingers driving up into my hair behind my ears and pulling me down, and her chest flattens against mine, and I find that sliver of skin and slip my hands up her back, scratch my fingernails down her shoulder blades until they catch at her bra strap. She whimpers into the kiss, arches her back to push harder into me, lifts onto her tiptoes to smash the kiss deeper, opening her mouth to mine and driving her tongue against mine.

I'm afire with an inferno of base urges—my blood boils in my veins and my heart pumps frantically behind the prison of my ribcage. I want to rip her clothes off and explore her curves. I want to find all the ways I can drag those little whimpers and mewls out of her. I just fucking want her, need her.

But this is all so much so fast. I'm still reeling from the revelation that she actually shares my feelings—all this time, all these years we’ve been harboring secret feelings for each other, hiding them so successfully neither of us realized what the other was feeling.

I want more.

I want everything.

I want to kiss her and never stop.

Here in the rocking dark, imprisoned and frightened, all I can think of is the taste of her mouth, the softness of her small, powerful body against mine.

I cup her sides, just beneath her bra strap, and then I roam the shallow hollow of the small of her back, exploring from bra strap to the waistband of her scrub bottoms, and as I kiss her I'm consumed with thoughts of how soft and taut her ass was, earlier, when I accidentally got a double handful of it.

Story pulls away from the kiss, but only an inch or two, and she traces my lower lip with delicate fingertips, and then all of her fingertips tickle over my lips and ghost along my cheekbones and I close my eyes as those cool soft gentle fingertips drift over my eyelids and she traces a long line from temple to jaw on both sides, and then she kisses me again with her fingertips steepled on my cheeks near my mouth—it's a strange, tender, intimate touch that steals my breath from my lungs and makes the iron rod behind my zipper pulse with a painfully hot ache.