Forever a Soldier
Hank looked away, down to the edge of the mattress where the bed fell away. His throat worked as he swallowed.
Because he didn’t leave, because he didn’t contradict her, Late gave in to the urge and put a hand to his face.
She inhaled sharply as her skin met his. She was wrong. His cheek wasn’t soft. The bone was too prominent, his stubble too sharp—but it was still a pleasure to feel him beneath her hand.
His gaze flashed up to hers, surprised, shocked… and barely daring to be pleased. As his eyes met hers, his mouth tilted toward hers. So she pushed herself up and toward him and pressed her lips to his.
When she caught his mouth, he caught her. He set a hand at the back of her head and the other in the hollow of her back, and rose up, pulling her to her knees along with him. Her neck was craned back, her face tilted up to his. This close, she could see all the fine details of his face she’d missed before. The little notch between his brows that came from frowning too much, the crinkles around his eyes that never quite went away, which probably came from squinting into the sun too much. And the tension held in the lines just under his eyes, a question there as he searched for her answer.
She replied by closing her own eyes and closing her lips over his lower lip, testing the boundary there. His hands came up to frame her face, and his mouth was urgent against hers. He touched first one corner, then the other. Once he’d done that, he ran his mouth along the boundary of her upper lip before taking small, soft nips all along her bottom lip.
It was like no kiss she’d ever had before. It was more like a discovery, a charting of her mouth that made her feel at once cherished and thoroughly known.
She didn’t kiss him back as he did that. She let him take his time and come to her with his lips, his hands, and all the rest of him, pressed against her from her shoulders to her knees. He was already breathing roughly, his lungs sawing out a ragtime rhythm.
He lifted his mouth, severing the barest part of their connection. She couldn’t read his expression because her eyes were still shut tight. And she refused to open them, to accept that this kiss, which had only just begun, had now ended.
Instead, she closed the space between them again and found his mouth entirely by instinct.