“You might want to let me up. At least for a couple minutes,” she said. “There’s about to be a giant mess in your bed.”
“There’s already a giant mess in my bed.”
Her body jolted again with the thunder outside. I glanced at the window before I looked at her another time.
“How are you doing that?” I asked. “The thing with the weather?”
“What?”
“How are you making it storm every time I fuck you?”
“Makingit storm?” she asked and laughed. “That’s not…that isn’t a thing, Utah.”
“You sure? Your witchcraft shit doesn’t tie your emotions directly to the weather?”
“Witchcraft shit?” she repeated, still very much laughing. “Do you hear yourself right now?”
I kissed the tip of her nose in the middle of all her giggles. “I think that’s my favorite sound.”
She looked at me quietly for a while after that. Then her hand found its way to the side of my face and her thumb moved back and forth across my cheek.
“Is tomorrow going to be weird now?” she whispered.
“What?”
“With us? Does this make it weird?”
“Makeit weird? You’re suggesting that everything else about thishasn’tbeen weird for the last six months that we’ve known each other?”
“Utah.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you think too much?” I asked with a grin.
“Yeah. Think too much. Talk too much. Worry too much. Take your pick. I’m probably too much of it.”
“Memphis.”
I wasn’t sure what I expected her to say after that, but I was terribly uncomfortable with her just staring at me silently while the storm tried to blow the house apart around us.
“Where does the insecurity come from?” I asked quietly. “Why do you look like you’re all thorns and insults from a distance, just to be something else entirely inside? Who made you decide that being this way was easier for you?”
“Nobody,” she answered quickly and shook her head. She was squirming again, like she believed that I would actually just let her escape this moment if she wiggled enough. I squeezed my arms closer against hers so she couldn’t move at all.
“Would you like me to close my eyes so you can tell me the answer?” I asked.
“Utah,” she hissed.
“The only thing complicating this is your own brain, sugar. Sarcasm and sass pour out of you like a fucking waterfall, but you use that shit to hide. You’ll talk about nothing for hours, but you won’t spare a single word to discuss the things that you spend the most time justthinkingabout?”
I felt like a giant asshole when she stopped squirming just to stare back at me like I’d fucking slapped her. I sighed and shifted down her body where I could lay my head on her chest. I grabbed the hand where her index finger was already scraping at the outer edge of her thumbnail so I could kiss the back of her hand.
“I don’t want you to think you have to hide who you really are from me. I wouldn’t ask you to be something else, angel. I don’t want you to belessof you just because I’m here and you think I’ll change my mind about you if I see what’s really happening in your head. Me being here should make you feel safe enough to become even more of who you already are.”
I felt like an even bigger asshole when I heard her breathing hitch.
And a tiny sniffle followed a few seconds later.
I just wouldn’t be a proper asshole if I hadn’t made her cry right after sex.