Page 158 of The Nightmare Before Kissmas
I think about lifting him and walking us to my bed and letting us both lie together; I think about making jokes over the ghost that I am definitely going to keep.
But an energy emanates from him, an unspoken request that I consent to immediately. So I just stand there, holding him, and I think we need this simple act as much as fulfilling the desire that’s sparking at the back of my mind.
He stirs, putting his face to the side of mine. “I didn’t know if I’d see you again. It was only a few days, but I missed you so much, and I—Coal,” he whines, and it ignites that desire down my spine, “what have you done to me?”
“Nothing yet,” I say. It’s a question. An offer. Everything all in one.
But when I go to kiss him again, he pushes me back against the closed door of my suite, his hand flat on the bare part of my chest that he uncovered.
“Let me,” he whispers. His eyes flick up to mine, the lashes wet, his pupils gleaming.
I go slack against the door, compelled by his gaze on me, by his presence. It isn’t until he drops to his knees that I choke out a startled noise and lean forward like I’m going to stop him.
“Hex.” It rushes out, panicked, pleading.
He looks up at me, and holy fuck, the sight alone. Him reddened and disheveled from our frantic making out and all the emotion, lips puffy and eyes glistening. He reaches up and hooks his fingers in my belt. I rock back against the door and throw my eyes to the ceiling and breathe, slowly, in through my nose, out.
“Hex,” I say again to the white panels above us. “I—uh, believe you told me to do something. This is not that. This is—”
“This is me realizing that, in all our time together”—he undoes my belt; it tugs my attention down and his eyes lock mine in place—“I haven’t gotten to taste you.” The button slides out of my pants, the zipper rattles with metallic clicks as it lowers. “This is me getting us back to a place where you can do what I told you to do.” He curls his fingers in the edge of my pants and boxers and lowers both, eyes still on mine, wrenching my heart. “Because if I let you take me to bed right now, I know you would worship me, and I don’t want that. Yet. I want you to ravage me first.”
Holy fuck—
Then that mouth, that intentional, careful, quiet, exasperating, magical, sexy fuckingmouthis on me, and I slam back with a heavy thud, one hand scrabbling at the door above my head as if there’s something to hold on to that’s capable of keeping me from going buoyant and floating away. My other hand gropes blindly, briefly grabbing his head before retreating, and he does this thing with his tongue andhumsand I—
Hex pulls back, looks up at me, and says only, simply, “Grab my hair, please,” then he’s on me again.
Please.Fuckingplease.
I comply, fingers knotting in the strands until the whole tangle of it comes loose from its tie. He hums again, a needy little moan, and the laugh that ripples out of me is dark and heady.
Oh, he’s good. He’s very, very good. Perhaps too good because my god, if we’re just getting started and he’s already able to play me this succinctly?
Though, who are we kidding. He can play me with a single look. I think he justknowshe can now, and this really is the end of me.
I tighten my grip in his hair and his moan sharpens into something desperate, enhanced by the way he sucks harder and my vision goes to starry space. I think I see a meteor, cuts of orange and glowing scarlet.
I pull again, harder, and he repeats his own form of torture until a champagne-like tingle starts in the base of my spine.
Before it rises too high, I shove him away with a gasp, a growl, and yank him to his feet. His face flashes with a smug grin that I smother in my mouth, eating at his lips and tasting myself on him as I kick off my shoes and pants then chase him backwards until we topple in a heap on my bed.
My clothes are already mostly off and the rest fall away easily; his come apart in starts and stops until I hear a jagged rip and realize I’ve torn his shirt off him. It thrusts me into a transitory moment where I can’t remember everripping someone’s clothes offbefore, not even at my neediest, not with anyone. But I also remember whathe said once, how he was surprised when I didn’t kick things off between us by having us do just this.
The memory hazes my desire, lets me pause for a breath so I see him beneath me, half naked, looking all kinds of crushingly decadent with his hair in shadowy tendrils across my pillow and his eyelashes fanned against his pale cheekbones, arms out by his sides, chest heaving and sweat-sheened already. There is an almost jarring difference between the Hex who’d told me he was surprised I took things slow, who seemed to expect me to use him and shove him out the door, and this one, who senses my pause and looks up at me with a predatory grin.
He asked me what I’ve done to him.
But he was always this. I just get to see it now, and he’s letting me have him here, in my bed.
Fuck. He’s in my bed again.
This is what he’s done to me too, because he’s right, I absolutely would be going slow and savoring him and edging him to the limits of both our sanities—and I will. Later. But he’s the first and only person I’ve ever wanted this badly, this all-consumingly, and the reciprocal want I see in the goose bumps that walk up his long torso, the shiver that quakes the skin across his collarbone, gives me permission to meet him there.
His grin softens when I stay arched over him. “Coal?”
“I missed you too,” I say in a rush. All that sentimental poetry he inspires in me starts to bubble up, and I think I let some of it slip out as I devour him again, kisses becoming catechisms of promises and plans and apologies. But now, now, he rises up to meet me at each one, and says some of his own to me, and it’s a trade, an exchange, no secrets or worries or hesitation.
Just us.
