Page 47

He set the hat down on the little counter. Slow. The way he'd set it down on her kitchen table that morning, before the second kiss. Deliberate, so she'd see him choose it.

"Lara," he said.

And that was all the wall he had left in him, her name, and it came out the way it always came out now, stripped, the only word he had ever found that held the whole of it.

She crossed the last of the distance. Or he did. It didn't matter — it never had, not in the cold outside Harvey's, not now — it happened all at once, both of them, his hands coming up into her hair and hers fisting in his clean shirt and his mouth coming down on hers, and this time there was no bar to walk out of and no kitchen table between them and no morning to be careful about, no kids down the hall, no Helen, no county watching, nothing in the whole world but the door latched at his back and the woman in his hands and four years of not-this breaking all at once like a dam going.

He kissed her like he'd wanted to kiss her for weeks and hadn't let himself, deep and thorough and without one ounce of the care he'd been spending on her since the porch, and she gave it back the same, up on her toes against him, a sound coming out of her low in her throat that went straight through him and undid something. His hands found the hem of the soft dark thing and she lifted her arms for him without breaking the kiss, helping, and it was gone over her head and dropped somewhere, and then there was just her, warm and real under his hands in the lamplight, and he had to pull back half an inch to look at her, because he'd been imagining it for weeks and the imagining hadn't come close.

"Look at me," he said, low, and she did, her eyes gone dark, and he watched her watch him look at her, and whatever she saw in his face made her breath catch.

"Dean."

"Yeah." He got his hands on her, all of her, learning her, the warm weight and give of her, his mouth at her throat now, the line of her collarbone, lower. "Yeah. I've got you."

He walked her back toward the bed, slow, because the hurry had gone out of it the second the door latched, they had all night and nowhere to be and twelve weeks of waiting behind them, and he was not going to spend it like a man making up for lost time. Her hands went to his belt as they went, working the buckle open with that sure competence she brought to everything, and he let her. Stood there and let her unfasten the button and push the denim down off his hips, let her look at him the way he'd looked at her, and watched her eyes go over him and darken, and it did something to him there were no words for. Being wanted out loud, plainly, by a woman who gave nothing away and was giving him this.

"You've been hiding all this under flannel," she said, low, her palm flat on his stomach, sliding down. "Three months."

"You weren't supposed to be looking."

"I was always looking." Her hand closed around him and the breath went out of him rough, and she felt it, watched it move through him, the level mouth curving. "You just made it very hard to enjoy."

He stripped what was left of her off slow, kneeling to it, taking the last of it down her legs with his hands learning the skin as it came clear, the curve of her hip, the soft of her belly, the warm inside of her thigh, and got her down onto the bed and came over her, and braced there on his forearms, and let himself look at her.

And the look took the breath clean out of him. She was stretched out under him in the lamplight, flushed all down her throat and her chest, her hair a dark-gold spill across her own pillow, her lips parted, her breath coming quick — and for a moment he honestly couldn't get a word up his throat, couldn't do one thing but take her in. At her door before the dance he'd told her there wasn't a word for how she looked, that he'd only get it wrong. He'd been wrong about that, too — he just hadn't had the breath to find the word then.

"You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he said. It came out low and wrecked and barely there, and he meant every letter of it. "I mean it, Lara." His eyes went down the whole length of her, slow, and all the way back up to her face, and whatever was in his own face he didn't try to hide for once. "Look at you. You take my breath. You've taken it since the porch and I'm done pretending you don't."

She reached up for him with both hands and he caught one and pressed his mouth to the center of her palm, the worn place at the base of her fingers, and felt her go still at that, at the soft of it, more than at anything rougher.

Then he put his mouth where he'd been wanting it for weeks.

Her throat first, the pulse going hard under his lips, then lower, the line of her collarbone, the rise of her breast — he took his time over her, his mouth closing over one tight peak while his hand found the other, and she arched up into it with a sound that broke clean in the middle, her fingers going into his hair and tightening, holding him there. He stayed. He wasn't in any rush. He worked her with his mouth and his hand until the level was all the way gone out of her, until she was saying his name on every other breath, until her hips were lifting off the bed hunting something he hadn't given her yet.

"Dean—" Half a laugh, half a plea, frayed at both edges. "You're killing me."

"I know." He said it against her skin, moving down, his mouth at her ribs now, her stomach, lower. "Hang on."

He settled between her thighs and hooked an arm over each one and opened her up and put his mouth on her, and the sound she made then wasn't a word at all. He'd thought about this. He could admit it now, with the salt-warm taste of her on his tongue and her thighs trembling against his ears, he'd thought about exactly this in a parking lot in Odessa with his hands at ten and two, and the real thing burned the memory of the wanting clean out of his head. She was wet and open and his and he took her apart slow, learning her by the sounds, the long flat stroke that made her go quiet and shaking and the press of his tongue that made her loud, two fingers working into her while his mouth stayed where she needed it most, and her hand fisted in his hair hard enough to hurt and he didn't care, he'd have stayed down there the rest of the night.

"Right there — oh god — Dean, right there, don't—" Her voice came apart entirely. Her heels dug into the bed. He felt it start to take her, felt her go tight and tighter around his fingers, and he stayed dead steady through it, gave her exactly the same thing at exactly the same pace while it broke over her, and it broke hard, her back coming up off the bed and her whole body locking and a cry tearing out of her that she'd have been embarrassed about any other time, her hand white-knuckled in his hair, riding it out against his mouth until she dropped back to the mattress shaking and boneless and gasping his name like she'd run out of every other word she owned.

He came up her body, slow, kissing as he went, and she dragged his mouth to hers and kissed him deep, tasting herself on him, not shy about it, and that nearly finished him on its own.

"Now," she said against his mouth, urgent, her hands pulling at him. "Now. I need you in me, come here⁠—"

He reached down to the floor for his jeans, for the foil he'd put in his wallet earlier like a teenager, like a man who'd decided something on a drive he hadn't let himself look at too close, and her hand closed over his and took it out of it, and she was the one who rolled it down over him, watching his face the whole time she did it, deliberate, and he had to grit his teeth and breathe through the feel of her hands on him just to keep from going off right there.

Then he settled over her, and she reached between them and put him where they both wanted him, and he pushed into her slow.

He had to stop. All the way in, seated deep, his forehead dropped to hers and his whole body shaking with the effort of holding still, because it was, there was no part of him braced for how it was. Four years was a long time, and none of those four years had been one thing like this. Not the dark, not the noise, not the strangers, not the contained mechanical nothing of it driven home from clean. None of it had ever once been a woman he knew. A woman whose name was in his mouth. A woman with her arms locked around his back and her ankles crossed over his and her heart slamming against his chest, holding him inside her like she meant to keep him there.

"Look at me," he said, rough, because he needed her eyes, and she opened them, dark and wet and steady on his.

"I'm here." Her hand came up to his jaw. "I've got you. Move, Dean. I won't break."

And he moved.