Page 42 of Tracking Snow

I shove his shirt higher, greedy for skin, for muscle, for every inch of him I can get under my hands. My mouth finds his neck, and the clean cedar-and-steel taste of him hits my tongue.

His fist tightens in my hair. Not to control me.

To hold on.

One tears his mouth from mine and buries his face in my shoulder. His breath burns over my pulse. He stays braced above me, hard and heavy and shaking with restraint.

"You got hurt," he says.

I still.

One’s breath shudders over my shoulder. His fingers flex once in my hair, then loosen, like he caught himself gripping too hard.

"I'm okay."

"Your head was bleeding and you wouldn't wake up. We thought you might—" His words cut off, unable to finish.

This whole time I'd been trying to prove I was worth the tagalong. I had no idea my getting hurt could affect him this much. A hot, bubbly feeling wells up in my chest until the pressure makes it hard to breathe.

His mouth brushes the skin below my ear. Not quite a kiss. More like he can't stop checking that I'm still warm. "We didn't switch fast enough," he says.

My chest pinches.

"We should have had you."

My fingers slide under his shirt. His back muscles jump beneath my touch.

"I'm fine now. Seriously. You got me to Kiki. And I'm in one piece. Buuut," I draw the word out, "I could be in pieces...want to see my magic floating finger trick again?" The heaviness is too much, and I can't help but try to break it.

His laugh is quiet and humorless.

"Why do you make things so difficult?" he asks in exasperation.

"That's my brand," I chirp. "And I don’t think you could do easy. All of you would get bored too quickly."

My thighs tighten around his hips.

His breath catches.

"Snow," he warns.

"Stop holding back with me," I order.

As I suck and kiss along his throat, his head drops, giving me full access. His hips rock rhythmically into mine until the friction from our clothes starts to build pressure in my clit.

Though he's on top of me, there's something deeply vulnerable about how One buries his face into my neck.

Like he can't believe I'm here with him.

A wash of protectiveness comes over me. I don't want him to hurt, to always have to white-knuckle everything, to be alone anymore.

Though I suppose he's not alone. But as he shifts to deeply kiss me again, fingers tunneling into my hair to angle my head better, I realize it feels like he's giving me all his loneliness. And because of that, I give him all of mine.

All the late nights I can't sleep.

All the yearning to be more.

With him, I feel like I can be more.