I saw stars as our perfect alignment sparked ecstasy. His movement was experimental at first, but when my mouth fell open and my head tipped back against the rough bark, Cody gained confidence and applied more pressure on the next slow roll of his hips. The delicious friction of his hardness pressing against mine had my toes curling in my boots, the complete lack of grounding to Earth at odds with the weight of his body against mine.
Desperate to see him, I tipped my head back down and committed his ravaged expression to memory before I took his face in both of my hands and slammed my mouth against his. It was a frenzy, the likes of which I’d never experienced.
Nothing had ever been like this.
“Liem,”he breathed against my mouth, sounding both pained and awed.
Nothing had ever sounded like that.
Our movements slowed but didn’t stop. We continued to grind against each other, sinking into the pure pleasure of it, a race to nowhere with no finish line in sight. It was confirmation of our existence together.
Not a moment of it was to be missed, and stopping was unthinkable.
The unspoken words and questions rose and hovered between us as the longer we stared at each other, the more we gyrated and gasped and groaned.
A sudden sound of something slamming shut abruptly halted our movements, and then it came again, unmistakably from the door at the top of the ramp as it opened and closed violently.
The effects of those subtle, spine-tingling movements between us remained as we waited, but after several counts of Cody’s quickened heartbeats, no one appeared.
Cody slumped in relief and rested his forehead against mine as he took in a shaky breath. “I think that was our warning.”
I smoothed my hands along his broad shoulders, already mourning how much of him I’d yet to explore. “Most likely.”
He nodded against me slowly before he loosened his grip on my waist and guided me in a slow slide down his body, the sudden change in textures and the solidness of him against me sending a ripple of goose bumps up my spine.
Cody’s gaze moved down to our shoes then. We were standing toe to toe.
The metal clang of the doorknob being jiggled aggressively sounded, and I let out a forced laugh as I pried my hands off Cody’s shoulders. His hands flexed around my waist one last time and then fell away. I took a step to the side to get some distance from such temptation, and his gaze dropped to my obvious hardness.
He licked his lips, then slowly dragged his gaze to me. “I’ll go buy you some time.”
I raised an eyebrow in silent challenge at the resplendent bulge in his track pants.
He huffed but then smiled darkly as he leaned over and kissed my cheek right where the flour had been. “Don’t worry, Ti Bet,” he whispered in my ear. “There are more than twelve steps to that door. I’ve conquered more with less.”
He punctuated his words with a tug on my apron and a kiss to my other cheek before he turned to leave. Some instinct or reflex had me grabbing his hand, though, and I yanked him back to me. His eyebrows rose in surprise, but that expression melted to something heartbreakingly close to awe as I raised his hand and planted the lightest kiss to his knuckles. I held it there, letting my breath fan over his skin for a long moment before I guided his hand back down to his side and reluctantly let it go.
His hand flexed and clenched loosely at his side before he ran his thumb along his index finger as close to the kiss as he could reach. He nodded absentmindedly and took a couple of backward steps before turning completely and leaving the sanctuary of the willow, the sweeping branches swaying in his wake.
I found myself counting the thumps that marked the strides of his long legs as he ascended the ramp, and when those sounds paused, I crept forward and brushed the foliage aside. My breath caught as I found him looking at me from the top of the ramp, his expression impossible to discern at this distance.
But Ifeltit resonating with my own.
It was wonder.
It was fear.
My heart skipped as the doorknob made a riot of noise again, but before whoever was on the other side could do more—likely our shared best friend or my brother—Cody opened it, and I looked down at my boots before he disappeared inside, not keen to watch him leave.
It took all of my strength to not sink to the ground and simply evaporate.
This was exactly the reason I’d practiced emptying my mind and becoming part of the breeze when life was overwhelming—to cope with such an intense onslaught of emotion. Instead of trying to do either of those things now, I took stock of my body. My fingertips brushed and catalogued my swollen lips, then moved to my cheek, hovering over it instead of making contact for fear of replacing the feel of his touch. I then trailed my tattooed fingers down my braid, finding it as disheveled as the rest of me.
“All right there, little brother?”
Grounding relief filled my limbs at Vinh’s voice, and I dropped my wrecked braid to find him standing just outsideof the willow, his hands in his pockets and an amused smirk playing at his lips.
“Good sneaking,” I acknowledged as I exited the cocoon that still smelled of Cody. Of us.
