Page 23 of Elijah's Hope
The answer was I didn’t know. The not knowing was killing me. Just like that, I couldn’t wait any more.
“Do you want to fuck me?”
She’d been in the middle of story about how when she was young, she thought she had found a kitten- only it turned out to be a squirrel- when I dropped my bombshell of a question.
She took a sip of wine as her eyes met mine over the cup. Then she lowered the cup and looked away. “You mean right now? Here?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. I had phrased that terribly. “That wasn’t what I meant at all. I meant, are you even attracted to me that way?”
“Am I attracted to you?”
“Yes.”
She blinked. “Eli, an eighty-year-old nun would be attracted to you. A straight man with deep-seated homophobic issues would be attracted to you. That’s not really a valid question. Of course I’m attracted to you.”
It was nice to hear, but it wasn’t what I wanted. “That’s not answering the question. What I look like and you wanting me are two different things.”
Her head dipped. “Yes. I want you. Like that,” she whispered. “I just…I guess I was being shy. It’s not exactly like you were making any moves, either, mister.”
“I didn’t think you wanted me to,” I answered honestly. “I didn’t feel like there was any moment in the past few days where you looked at me and you were like, kiss me, Eli.”
“Because I wanted to get to know you first,” she said with a bit of a pout.
“Shelby, my own mother doesn’t know me as well as you do at this point. I mean, I know it’s been a short time, less than a week, but it’s been super…intense. Don’t you think?”
Slowly, she nodded. “It’s like you were here just waiting for me this whole time.”
I smiled. That was good. That meant I wasn’t alone in whatever this was. “Yeah, that’s exactly what it feels like. Like we’re two people who have known each other forever, who only now just met.”
She beamed. “I don’t think that makes much sense, but I like it anyway.”
“So, Miss Shelby Margaret Reese, may I have the honor of kissing you?”
“You may, Eli.”
I cleared our empty plates off the bed and set them on the floor. Our cups of wine, too. She was smiling at me and I felt like I was thirteen and about to kiss my first girl.
Forcefully, I blocked that memory. The first girl I had ever kissed had been a stripper.
We both got to our knees and faced each other on the bed. I leaned down toward her mouth when I felt her hand pushing against my chest.
“Wait,” she breathed out. “I want to remember this moment. Lock it inside my brain so I can never forget. No matter what. This is our first kiss.”
Suddenly I was scared. Like this moment was bigger than it should have been. We were two grown adults who liked each other and were attracted to each other. It was nothing more than a kiss.
But the way she was looking at me, like I really was some kind of angel, moved something in my chest. Something I had never felt. Like there was this space now only she could fill.
I bent my head. I heard the catch of her breath, which sounded so hot, then I was kissing her. My hands cupping her face just under her jaw so that I could direct the angle of her mouth, deepen the kiss.
It felt good and sweet and fresh. She tasted like red wine and cherries, which I think was a flavor unique to Shelby because we sure as hell didn’t get cherries very often in Hope’s Point.
When the hell had kissing felt this good? The last time I kissed a woman, I was drunk and getting ready to fuck a one-time hookup in Anchorage a couple months back. That had been sloppy and sour, and I remembered thinking how long did I have to do it until I could put my dick inside her and come?
With Shelby all I wanted was more. More of her lips, her tongue. I broke the kiss because I wanted to taste her neck. I inhaled her. Soaked her scent into the deep recesses of my soul so I would never forget what this felt like. She was unlike any other drug I had ever had.
I had no agenda. I wasn’t working toward some ultimate orgasm. I just wanted to keep her in my arms, keep breathing into her mouth. I gently brought my teeth down on her earlobe and felt her shiver.
Shiver throughout her whole body.
