Page 139

The screen door makes its familiar scrape when Rachel opens it. For an instant the porch is exactly what it has always been: the wide chaise against the back wall of the cottage, two mismatched chairs, the small table, and the dark woods pressed close beyond the screens, thick enough that the back of the property is hidden from the road and everyone else.

It’s the first place I slept, where Rachel brought me water and blankets because neither of us knew yet what I needed. It’s also where I first learned that I could let her walk away and trust that she would come back.

Rachel closes the screen door behind us and turns toward me. Then she kisses me. Whatever I was thinking disappears.

Her hands come around my neck, and mine find her waist without hesitation. I know this much now. I know the softness of her mouth and the way she leans into me when she wants more pressure. I know that when my fingers move into the hair at the back of her neck, she makes a sound I feel everywhere. I know her taste now too, and it’s nothing like water, popcorn, or salted caramel. I don’t have a word for it yet except… Rachel.

What surprises me is how fast wanting her becomes hunger.

Rachel moves backward toward the chaise and takes me with her. When the backs of her legs touch it, she stops kissing me long enough to study my face.

She brushes my face with her palm. “You’re thinking.”

“Not very well.”

I kiss her again before she can answer. The sound she makes against my mouth changes into something lower, something I recognize from the kitchen. That sound. I want every version of it.

My hands move along her sides, learning the shape I have imagined beneath her clothes. Rachel presses herself into my palms instead of making me wonder whether she wants them there, and the certainty in that movement goes through me almost as strongly as the touch itself.

I slide my hands higher. The curve beneath my palms is softer than anything I expected, and I break the kiss without meaning to.

Rachel’s cheeks are flushed. “What?”

“I’ve wanted to do that for days.”

“I know.”

“You knew?”

“Locke, you stared at my chest while I made coffee.”

“I was trying to be subtle.”

“You were terrible at it.”

Then Rachel covers one of my hands with hers and deliberately presses it closer.

Humor leaves me, not because anything is wrong but because suddenly there’s too much to feel at once: warmth through fabric, the weight of her breast against my palm, Rachel’s hand over mine, the rhythm in my chest already strengthening because she isn’t merely allowing this. She wants it. She guides my thumb where she wants it, and her breath catches the instant I get it right.

“Oh,” I say before I can stop myself.

Her eyes close briefly. “Yes. Oh.”

I brush it again, slower this time because I want to notice exactly what changes. The small peak beneath the fabric firms against my thumb. I rub over it once, then catch it lightly between my thumb and finger and give the gentlest pull.

Rachel’s back arches. Her breast presses harder into my hand as if her body is trying to give me more of it, and the sound she makes goes straight through me.

I stop only because I need to look at her. Her eyes are still closed, her lips parted, and one hand has tightened around my wrist. Not stopping me. Holding me there.

“Again?” I ask.

Her eyes open. “Yes.”

This time I pinch more deliberately, still careful, then roll the hardened tip between my fingers. Rachel lifts into my hand again, her whole body answering the touch. I understand enough now to vary it, rubbing with my thumb, then plucking lightly, then taking the weight in my palm before finding that sensitive point again. Each change gives me something different from her: a breath, a shiver, the tightening of her fingers around me.

I catch the hardened tip lightly between my fingers once more, and this time the sound she makes is deeper. I want to hear it again.

I bend to kiss her again, keeping my hand on her breast. Her mouth opens beneath mine almost immediately, and when I pluck her nipple again while my tongue meets hers, she presses hard into my hand. Pleasure hits so sharply that my mouth stills against hers. Rachel shivers against me, and the small smile she gives me says she noticed.