She swallowed against a tightness in her throat, and dropped onto the bed. Her strapless bra had fallen to the floor and when she slipped her sweater over her head, his dark eyes rolled closed and his head tipped back. “Beautiful,” he whispered to the ceiling, then he fell to his knees in front of her, pressing his mouth to her stomach.
“You too,” she said, tugging at the collar of his shirt. He sat back and unbuttoned it while she kicked her jeans off her feet. When he’d stripped out of his pants, he sat down beside her and pulled her onto his lap, their chests rising and falling together.
“Why does this feel so different?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” His voice was strained, and her heart felt like it would burst as she watched him fight some sort of emotion washing over his expression.
This was the first time they’d been together since he’d said those things. Since she’d said them back. Knowing that tenderness was in there all along, and touching him again with that knowledge, it felt like walking a high wire. The fall would be disastrous, but if she could stay upright, God, it felt like flying.
She leaned back to look at him, and his hand came behind her back, holding her steady. The only light in the room was the city shining through her bedroom windows, but it was bright enough to see the tiny freckles on his chest, matching the ones on his cheeks. She trailed a shaky finger over them, letting him feel what she was thinking: This is unexpected, but I like it.
He sucked in a hard breath, watching her move over his skin. He liked this, being explored. Last week Dylan had finally given her a door into himself, and tonight it was wide open again. Tonight she wanted to touch all the places she’d neglected.
She dragged her nail over his tattoo, tracing the circle. North, then South. East, then West. Like an optical illusion, the ink turned a deep indigo where before she’d only seen black. She pressed her lips to it. The word “layers” flashed across her thoughts.
His breathing turned ragged and his hands came up to wrap around her arms, stopping her fingers. He dipped his head in the dark. “I need you.”
“Take me.”
His eyes flashed and he flipped her onto her back, sliding over her to part her legs with his knee. He kissed a trail between her breasts, down to her stomach, then pressed a sloppy, sucking kiss to her center. It was enough to make her back arch and her breath catch. Every thought dancing around her head flopped over dead.
Dylan tugged her panties down her legs and watched her—eyes wild, breath rushed. Usually they took turns, giving, taking, leading, following, but tonight she wanted him to take whatever it was he wanted. She was useless to herself anyway, caught up in this weird spell of discovering Dylan.
He stretched his body over hers, then seemed to remember something. He moved to push off the bed, but she caught his arm. “Don’t,” she said. “I want to feel all of you.”
Without a second thought, he wrapped his hand around the back of her thigh, dropping it over his waist, and pushed inside of her, groaning like a man who’d been walking for miles and finally found a place to rest. When he was buried as close as he could be—their bodies pressed against each other, fingers interlaced above her head—his face finally broke out into that sweet, dimpled smile she loved so much. Her heart swelled.
Afterward, they laid in the dark of her bedroom, their breathing slow and spent. Dani pressed her nail into the center of the compass on his chest and twisted it. She’d been resting like that, her head on his shoulder, her weight draped over his torso, for fifteen minutes now. He’d only been counting because it wasn’t like her to linger. Usually, she’d jump up and throw her hair in a bun, find something to cover up all of that pretty, golden skin. Usually, they were on her couch, or in her kitchen—that kitchen island shouldn’t be used for food prep—but tonight they were in her bed and she was still in his arms.
“I like this,” she said, still tracing.
“I could tell earlier.”
She flattened her palm, the light slap echoing in her silent bedroom. Even the traffic sounds had petered out by now. “Tell me again why you got it.”
She’d asked him this when they first met. She and Sonya were on the back of his jet ski while Josh was falling in love with Cat on another. That day, he’d given her his standard line about freedom and self-direction. The one that made him sound like some philosophical adventurer. That line always worked.
“It’s the direction I never had as a kid,” he said now. He felt her shift ever so slightly and she could feel her eyes on his chin. He swallowed hard. He’d never told anyone this, but there were a lot of things he’d never done until her. “The night my father left, he screamed at my mother till he was hoarse, packing his shit in this big dramatic scene. He always wanted it to look like he was wronged, you know? Make her believe somehow she, or we, were responsible for the things he did. Anyway, right before he walked out the door, he looked me in the eye and he said ‘you’re on your own, kid.’ It was the truest thing he’d ever said to me.”
He cleared his throat and shifted her body in his arms. “Then he was gone. My mother could barely keep herself afloat, so I had to figure out how to navigate that. That’s when I realized I needed to depend on me. The compass reminds me to be my own guide, find my own way.”
He glanced down at the top of her head to see her reaction, wondering if he would see disgust or pity. But she just tightened her arm around his waist and nodded.
“I felt that way too as a kid,” she said. “Like I was flying alone.”
“Is that why you have that little bird on the back of your neck?”
She reached back and touched the ink, nodding. “But it’s got a branch underneath it. Stability. Somewhere solid to land. That’s the difference between me and my mother. She wanted me to fly, but I just wanted a nest.”
A nest. He supposed that’s what he’d wanted too when he was a kid. But then he’d grown up and realized that only a tiny percentage of people saw that side of life. And the ones who did, put up with a lot of heartbreak to get it. It was better to fly than to settle in a nest made of straw where it’s one strong breeze and you’re falling.
Though, if this was somewhere solid to land, being warm and wrapped around Dani in this bed, maybe he could just point his compass this way for a while and see what happened.
Twenty-seven
“Thank you for meeting me here,” Mrs. Jansen said. Her white hair was pinned haphazardly around her head, and she was wearing a pair of overalls splattered in paint. Dylan followed her up the curved stairway to the top floor of the old bank, out to the balcony where Dani had won them this job.
She walked straight to the railing and leaned over.