I couldn’t. “I was thinking maybe I could take the frame and inlay it into a headboard.”
She nodded. “That could work. But then these would go to waste.” Again she touched a rocker. A pencil and paper sat on the table a little out of reach. She leaned, looking back for permission, and when she got it, I shifted to stand at her side, watching her sketch. “You could take the head of the frame and make it the back of the chair, like this.” She drew it to perfect scale. “Use the spindles to connect it to the seat, except … oh. They’d be too short.”
“But I could make them longer, like this.” I took the pencil and drew a spindle with a hole in the bottom and another with a peg in the top.
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “Are the rockers long enough?”
On some quick math, I answered in the affirmative. “I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it. I’d been working on how to whittle the rockers into carved flowers.”
“You didn’t think of it because you were stuck,” she said simply, softly, the layers of meaning landing on each other like feathers.
“I’ve been stuck for a long time.”
She turned, resting her hip on the table. We were still close enough that I could feel the heat of her in the chill of the night. “Me too.”
Unable to bear the look in her eyes, I busied my gaze with the lines of her face, touching her cheek with the backs of my fingers. “Today feels like the first new day I’ve had in five years.”
Her head tilted. “How do you mean?”
My hands cupped her delicate jaw, my thumb stroking her cheek. “I’ve been living in a loop, if you could call it living, ruled by the past. Every day has been the same--it felt safe there. I don’t think I even knew it was happening, that I’d been lost. And now, with you and me …” I paused. “I don’t know how to do this, Daisy.”
“Neither do I. Can we figure it out together?”
I nodded, brought my forehead to hers, closed my eyes. The tip of my nose traced the bridge of hers, then her cheek as my lips sought hers and found them.
Long and slow was the kiss, with her face resting in my hands and her hair brushing my fingertips. I found the present again in the depths of her mouth, in the warmth of her skin. We parted long enough for me to pick her up, and I found right now in the sweet sound of her laughter, in her arms around my neck and legs around my waist.
My smiling lips came together to kiss hers. My grip on her was solid enough that she didn’t need to hold on, so her hands bracketed my face. I held her close enough that her face was a little above mine, and she kissed me deep, poured herself into me. A kiss of life.
The bedroom was very, very far away. Too far.
The moan she breathed into my mouth told me she’d had the same thought.
I walked her back to the counter and set her down without breaking the kiss, grateful for free hands. Those hands wanted to taste all of her, the long column of her neck, the dip above her collarbone. The curve of her shoulder as I hooked the strap of her dress, the swell of her breast as I lowered the loose neckline to expose her. My fingertips traced the curve, eliciting a mewl and a wave of gooseflesh, her dusky pink nipple tightening to a peak. It was a feather’s touch, a teasing edge both for her sake and mine as my fingers skated that curve, and when I could stand it no longer, I held the weight of her in my hand, my thumb brushing her nipple.
I descended for her neck, and she tipped her head in supplication, her fingers in my hair and her body soft in my arms. Her pulse fluttered against my lips, her breast still in my hand, but it wasn’t enough. So I leaned her back until she was propped on her elbows and I could do with her what I would.
With heavy lids, she watched me kiss my way down her heaving chest to the breast I’d held, parting my lips for the tip, taking it into my mouth with a sweep of my tongue. Her sigh filled my ears, and she relaxed into my arm hooked under her. My free hand moved to cup her clothed breast for a moment before sliding down her ribs and to her waist where a single tie held the dress together.
I wound the tail of the bow around my index finger and pulled.
Standing, my gaze sliding down her body. A sliver of blue eyes beneath black lashes. Dark hair against pale skin. The fabric of her dress exposing half of her ribs and one naked hip. My hand looked big and clumsy as it traced a path down that bare skin, pausing just above her thigh before drawing the fabric across her stomach until the straps slid down her arms, hooking her elbows, leaving her naked, bared in fearless honesty, her thighs parting in absolute offering.
My heart thundered, hammering my sternum as I touched her, my eyes on my hands as they made their way to the fluttering flesh where her thighs met. A stroke, and her lids closed, her head falling to one shoulder. Mouth watering, I wet my bottom lip, tracing every ripple up to circle her swollen desire.
I lowered to my knees, hooking her legs on the way to pull her just off the end so I could get at every inch of her that I wanted. Those legs, I rested on my shoulders, my trembling breath against her thigh for a kiss, then another, closer, as my fingertips learned her. And then that breath exhaled against the very tip of her before taking her into my mouth.
My hands moved, sliding up her hips to hold them still, my latch on her steady, my tongue silently teasing her—her thighs jerked with each flick, gasps interchanging with moans. I pinned her to the counter to stop her from getting away from me and kept on, the flat of my tongue between her flesh. The tracing first of lines and paths learned with my hands, now known by my mouth. Then it was the drawing of flesh in a rhythm, in a pull that drew her closer to the edge. She swelled in my mouth, her hips trying without success to find pressure of her own.
This was not the long and slow fucking I’d planned for tonight. This, I decided, was foreplay, even though I reached for my belt as I released her and stood with every intention of fucking her thoroughly, right here.
She couldn’t seem to open her eyes more than a degree, her bottom lip pulled into her mouth and her body flushed. But she watched me rise, watched me reach between my shoulder blades for a fistful of jersey and pull my shirt off, tossing it aside. I unfastened my half undone belt and jeans, and reached into my pocket for a condom, more prepared than I was this afternoon. And all the while she watched me, her eyes opening more by the second as she took in the sight of me, naked to the V of my open pants, as I fisted my cock and rolled the condom on.
I couldn’t hear anything but my pulse and my breath as I stepped closer, lowered my torso to bring my lips to hers, my shaft nestled in the heat of her. Her arms wound around my neck, her mouth hard against mine, tongue seeking to return what mine had given her. Braced on one arm, I reached between us, angling my cock for her until my crown breached her. I rose, my arm threading her waist to hold her up, though she hung from her arms locked around my neck, needing no help from me. A pull, a flex, and I slid into her heat breathlessly.
For a moment, I couldn’t move, overwhelmed by feeling. The tightening of her body drew the promise of release from within me, the sweet sound of her breath in my ear, my head tucked in the curve of her neck. I shifted to kiss her as deeply as I found myself inside her, only breaking it to retreat my hips and slam into her.
A moan from her, a grunt from me, my lips pinned between my teeth and my body on fire. Time stretched long, hung still as I gave to her and she gave to me. As I took my fill of her and she took hers. I held my desire steady, tending to hers. Listening to every sound, feeling every flex from her that telegraphed what she wanted, what she needed. I followed the sound until it was nothing but shallow breath, until she tightened from every limb, every muscle, gripping me so tight from within, my jaw clenched in pleasure-pain. The moan and movement of her orgasm struck a match down my spine, my hips flexing with purpose, the tether on my own orgasm loosed.