Three words. The simplest sentence in the English language and the hardest one I had ever spoken. I want you. Subject, verb, object. The grammatical structure of surrender.
He crossed the four feet in two steps. His hands came up to my face, both of them, palms against my jaw, fingers in my hair. He held me there and looked at me with those blue eyes and I could see every emotion he'd been carrying for five days written across his face like a headline. Relief and want and something tender underneath it all that made my throat close.
"I don't know what I'm doing," I said. "I have never done this. Not like this. Not with someone who knows my name."
"I know."
"I might be terrible at it."
"You won't be."
"How do you know?"
"Because you just drove across the city at eleven at night and stood on my doorstep and said the bravest thing anyone has ever said to me. A man who can do that is not going to be terrible at anything."
He kissed me. Or I kissed him. It was not clear who moved first because we moved together, which was how we played hockey now and apparently how we did everything else. His mouth was warm and tasted like whatever he'd been eating, something with garlic, and I should not have found that attractive but I found everything about this man attractive in a way that had broken my ability to be rational.
The kiss deepened. His tongue touched mine and I made a sound that I would be embarrassed about later but could not control in the moment. His hands were in my hair and my hands were on his waist and we were pressed together from chest to hip and I could feel every line of him through the thin cotton of his shirt.
He pulled back just enough to speak against my mouth. "Tell me what you want. Specifically. We go at your pace."
"I want to not think. For one hour I want to not think about any of it. I want to be here with you and not be afraid."
"I can do that."
He took my hand and led me down the hallway to his bedroom, which was small and warm and unmade in a way that should have offended me but instead felt like being invited into something private. The lamp on the nightstand was on, casting everything in amber light.
He stood in front of me and pulled his shirt over his head and I saw his body for the second time, but this time I was allowed to look. The breadth of his shoulders. The scar on his collarbone. The bruise on his ribs, faded now to yellow and green. He was imperfect and beautiful and real.
"Your turn," he said.
I pulled my shirt off. I felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with skin. He looked at me and his expression softened into something almost reverent, and he reached out and touched the scar on my forearm, the one from a skate blade in Chelyabinsk, running his thumb along it lightly.
"You're shaking," he said.
"Yes."
"We can stop."
"Do not stop."
What followed was not careful or controlled or any of the things I had trained myself to be.
Cole kissed me and I kissed him back and his hands were on my skin, palms flat against my stomach, fingers spread wide like he was trying to touch as much of me as possible. The contact was a shock. Not because it was unexpected but because my body responded to it with a violence that frightened me. Every nerve ending I had spent years deadening came back online atonce, and the sensation was so overwhelming that I made a sound against his mouth that I did not recognize as my own.
"Easy," he murmured. "I've got you."
He pressed me back and we were chest to chest in the amber light of his bedroom and his skin was warm and smooth and real. I put my hands on him because I needed proof that this was happening. My palms on his ribs, feeling them expand with each breath. My fingers on the scar at his collarbone, tracing the ridge of it. His stomach tensed under my touch and I felt the muscles contract and I thought: this is what it feels like to touch someone you want. Not a body in a dark room. A person. This person.
He guided me to the bed. We fell onto it together and his weight settled over me and the pressure of him, the full length of his body against mine, was so good that my hips moved without my permission, pressing up against him, seeking friction that I needed the way I needed air.
"Tell me what you want," he said. His mouth was on my neck, my jaw, the hollow below my ear. His hand was at the waistband of my jeans and his fingers were tracing the line of skin just above it, back and forth, patient and maddening. "Anything you want. Just tell me."
"Everything." The word came out raw. "I want everything. I don't know how to do this but I want everything."
"Then we'll do everything. Slow."
He was not slow. He was thorough, which is different. He undid my jeans with steady hands and pulled them off and then his were gone and we were in our boxers and he looked at me the way a man looks at something he has been thinking about for a long time and is finally allowed to see.