And then the sheets rustled, shifted, and a lightning strike lit everything to neon. I could see the outline of Jack’s shoulders as he rolled onto his side. After a second, his fingers wrapped around my hip, and he pulled me gently onto my side, too, facing him. He brought the sheet up and over our heads. My unsteady breath echoed off the covers and our bodies, louder now than the rain pounding outside.
Not only was I in bed with Jack, I was in bed, under the sheets, so close my knees pressed into his. I felt his face tilt down to mine, and I let my lips inch closer to his.
But he didn’t kiss me. Instead, he pulled our interlaced hands up between us. He straightened my fingers with his, and ran his fingertips down my palm.
I never thought I’d forget about kissing, but just then, I did. I wanted him to do nothing but touch my hand like this for the rest of my life. And then his fingers trailed over my wrist, down the inside of my arm.
I pressed my lips together hard. Air. I needed air. But I didn’t pull back the sheets. If I moved, it might stop. Breathing wasn’t worth it.
Jack took his fingers off my arm. Before I could wonder why he’d stopped, he grasped my hand, all its nerve endings wide awake now, and pressed it to his own chest.
There was something delirious about not being able to see, about just feeling the warmth radiating from his body, hearing the soft in-and-out of his breathing, smelling the rain through the open window and on his skin. It mixed with his own scent, warm, earthy, cozy, like a fall storm, making me want to bury my face in his neck. My fingers settled into the curve over his heart, and he swept my hair off my shoulder, the strands tickling my skin. His touch was slow, cautious.
Oh. I hadn’t considered that he might not know how I’d react. When he brushed the soft patch of skin behind my ear, I let my neck arch into him, showing him just how okay this was.
I’d almost forgotten where my own hand was until I felt his heartbeat speed up. And then it hit me. After all we’d talked about outside, he thought he had to prove to me that I could trust him. That how he felt about me was real. He didn’t know how to do it with words, so he was showing me instead. He couldn’t fake the pounding pulse under my palm.
And at the same time, he was making me open up. And I was letting him. Here, in the dark, I had let down my guard without even realizing it.
All I wanted was to do the same for him.
I let my fingertips move, tentatively. I’d never touched a guy’s bare chest before. It was hard and soft at the same time, smooth skin over firm muscle.
My fingers grew more confident as I traced down his side, where a few small, round scars marred his skin. I stopped at one and he tensed, like me noticing this imperfection made him feel too exposed. Maybe I should have moved on, but I liked knowing there were imperfect parts of him. I stroked the scar with one fingertip. It took a minute, but I finally felt the tension melt out of him.
This tiny moment felt more intimate than all the kissing in the world.
Everyone kissed. I’d kissed other guys. He’d probably done a lot more than kiss with other girls. But this was different. More. I’d seen cracks in his armor. Now I felt him taking it off.
I ran my hand over his forearm, over where my memory told me his tattoo was even if my eyes didn’t. To his neck, where blood pulsed life through the surprisingly delicate skin at his throat, pushed aside a lock of still-damp hair clinging to his forehead. It had gotten warmer under the sheets, but every new bit of his skin still felt cool.
All the time, I fell closer into the kind of trance I didn’t ever want to wake up from, half asleep and wide awake all at once.
Jack traced a path down my nose, across the bow in my upper lip. Then catching on the chain of my locket. To my shoulder. Our lips still weren’t touching, but I was breathing his air and he was breathing mine.
Something in the far back of my mind told me it would be too easy, in this trance of our breath and our fingers and the rain pounding outside, to sleepwalk ourselves into something I wasn’t sure I was ready for. Jack traced my forearm.
Yes, too easy.
One fingertip stroked the inside of my palm. My body felt unfamiliar, unsteady.
His hand settled on the curve of my hip.
With considerable effort, I made myself take hold of his wrist. He froze. My eyes fluttered open, blinking in the dark. I hoped he didn’t think anything was wrong. It wasn’t that at all.
After just a second, he exhaled softly. He straightened my fingers once more and pressed a kiss to my palm, then to each of my fingertips in turn. I felt a smile tug at my lips.
Finally he pulled the sheet off our heads, and cool air rushed in. I shivered, and Jack pulled me close, until I snuggled into the crook of his arm. His lips brushed my forehead and settled in my hair, and when I pressed my palm to his chest again, his breathing fell into a steady in-and-out within minutes.
I breathed a small, contented sigh into his chest. After everything that had happened, how was it possible for me to feel this happy right now?
I didn’t know if I’d be able to sleep at all, and a part of me didn’t want to. I wasn’t ready to lose tonight to unconsciousness yet, wasn’t ready to face the real world again in the morning. But with the steady beat of Jack’s heart under my hand, and his warm skin against my cheek, I finally drifted off into dreams.
CHAPTER 35
I thought I knew what it felt like to wake up, but I’d never woken up like this. I opened my eyes to the unfamiliar and incredibly pleasant sensation of my head rising and falling to the rhythm of someone else’s breath.
For a second, I didn’t remember where I was.
My head was still nuzzled into Jack’s chest. One of his arms held me close to his side, and his other hand rested on top of mine over his heart. Only our legs had moved, tangling themselves together.
Last night had seemed like a dream, but he was here, his skin cool under my fingers, his soft breath stirring my hair.
As I watched, his brows knitted together and his eyes flicked back and forth under his lids like he was having a bad dream. I stroked his chest with one fingertip. He stirred, and his eyes fluttered open.
His heart sped up under my palm and we stared at each other silently. We were both still dressed; we hadn’t done anything, really. So why did it feel like we’d done everything?
The morning light flooding the room suddenly felt wrong. Like it was forcing us back to the real world, the world where something other than the two of us existed. Where we had to do something now besides stare at each other—where we had to either acknowledge what had happened the previous night or pretend nothing had happened at all. We already had too much to deal with. Maybe not complicating things more would be for the best.