Chapter 12: Slow

Wyatt's POV

She tasted like rice and salt and the lemon she'd been biting to stay calm.

I had one hand in her hair and one flat on the doorframe, and I kissed her until she made a sound against my mouth.

She dropped the spoon a second time.

I didn't hear where it landed.

"Inside," she said, against my jaw. "Wyatt, inside, the whole stairwell can hear us."

I walked her backward through the door.

The room was small, with one lamp and a slanted ceiling.

The bed sat under the window, and the smell of baking bread came up through the floor.

She pulled at the front of my shirt, and I let her pull it over my head.

Her bandaged hand stopped on my chest.

"Your heart," she said.

"I know."

"It's going to..."

"Then count it."

She laughed, a shaky happy laugh, and put her two fingers against my pulse and counted, with her forehead against mine.

Then she stopped counting and kissed me.

I got her sweatshirt off, and the shirt under it.

Then I stood there with my hands open at my sides.

I had imagined her like this a thousand times, and I did not know how to start.

She was lovelier than I'd ever dared.

Her breasts were small and round, and her nipples were already tight in the cool room.

Her skin had a faint gold in the lamp.

"Look all you want," she said, a little breathless. "I've been looking at you for eleven years."

"That's a lot of looking."

"You were slow to notice."

"I'm slow," I said. "It's well known."

She took my face in her good hand.

"Be slow," she said. "Please. Be as slow as you want. I never want you to hurry for me again."

That was the thing that undid me.

I laid her on the bed and kissed her throat, her collarbone, and the soft place under her breast.

I took my time over every one of them.

She arched when my mouth closed over her nipple.

She said my name, once, in a low raw voice I'd never heard her use.

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