This Sky (16 page)

    He throws his head back and laughs a little. Then he strips and sinks back to the bed. My hands make a hungry path down the middle of his chest and he hisses out a quick breath. He leans closer—caging me within his arms—and kisses me hard. “Your turn,” he says, his voice barely a whisper.

    I look down and start to work on my clothes with careful fingers. I’m not quick about it. I move slowly. For once, I put aside my insecurities and doubts and I focus on the here and now. I pay attention to the electric feeling vibrating down my spine, the slope of the mattress beneath my legs, Landon’s warm and heavy breaths moving over my hair, the gentle slide of cool cotton against my skin. 

    Shirt.

    Pants.

    Bra.

    When my thumb curves under the waist of my underwear, I look up. Landon’s eyes are burning far into mine.

    I run my hand over myself and he sucks in a choked breath.

    My hands move up to my breasts and I tip my head back, letting myself feel every strand of hair falling over my shoulder, every place where my body touches the sheets. He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth and curses.
Fuck,
he murmurs.
Fuck.

    I want this.

    I
need
it.

    I need further.

    Harder.

    Faster.

    Before my underwear are below my ankles, Landon is on me—his knee moving between my thighs and his fingertips finding my bare skin. With two strong hands, he grips my hips, capturing me beneath him, and everything becomes a whirl of touch and moving parts and things coming loose. One of his hands is cupping my face, circling behind my neck, while the other is working slowly up my inner thigh.

    He inches higher and I arch up, my middle coming off the bed and my head pushing back into the pillow.

    “You’re so beautiful, Gemma,” he says sucking my bottom lip inside of his mouth. 

    I reach for him and he takes a sharp breath. Then he’s gone and I hear a drawer pulling open and the sound of shuffling so I know he’s getting out a condom.
Good.
I’m glad he’s thinking about safety because I’m too far gone to worry.

    “You feel so good,” I tell him, rolling to my side and running my fingers over his chest. I lick the small trail of dark hair above his groin and he closes his eyes and groans.

    “Gemma, please.” He wraps my hair around his hands and strokes his thumb over my cheek. “I want this to be good, but you’re making me crazy.”

    “Who, me?” I ask, innocently batting my eyelashes as I walk my fingers across his lower abdomen.

    He laughs, takes my face between his two hands, hauls me up over him and kisses the end of my nose. In response, my eyelids fall shut.

    “Come here,” Landon says, shifting my body beneath his and pressing us together until there is nothing between us. Not even air. He kisses me carefully, then tightens his hips and slowly pushes himself inside of me.

    My pulse jumps, landing somewhere on the moon and I cry out.

    “All right there?” he asks, stilling.

    “All right,” I murmur, my hands digging into his ass.
Please…

    He dips his head into the crook between my neck and my shoulder. His breath is hot over my collarbone. His tongue burns me like a spiraling sun colliding with the earth as he pushes deeper.

    “Yes,” I breathe and feel his lips form a smile against my skin. “Yes.”

Gemma

“Morning,” The word moves over me like smooth water. “Gemma.”

    Am I asleep? Am I dreaming?

   
“Oh,” I gasp, my eyes flying open, my head working out where I am.

    The room is filled with the misty blue light of early morning. Soft grey bed sheets are tangled over my ankles, twisting up my calves and wrapping around my bent knees.

   
“Good Morning,” Landon says in a voice I haven’t heard before. It’s balmy. Like words wrapped in cool satin.

    I blink some more, adjusting to the dim light. The room is small, about the same size as Julie’s bedroom. The off-white walls are bare except for a small calendar by the desk and a poster of the ocean ove
r a low dresser. There are five surfboards of slightly different heights over by the closet. Wyatt is sleeping on a small round dog bed in the corner.

    Landon is beside me. He’s propped on his elbows and is looking down at me. His skin is still warm and glossy from sleep. Tiny pink lines are on his chest from where the sheets were crumpled and pressed beneath him. His mouth is curved up at the corners. His eyes are slanted. His forehead in puckered. His cheeks are covered in sandpaper the same brown as the roots of his rumpled hair.

     He looks unbelievable.

    “Morning,” I croak. Ugh. My voice is grating in the quiet of the room. Like squealing car brakes or metal crumpling.

    Landon lets go of a breath and sort of laughs. He lowers his face to my chest, scrapes his rough stubble against my bare skin. “I knew it was too early to wake you but I wasn’t sure—” he starts then stops himself. “You were making this sound and—”  

    “What sound?”

    Instead of answering, he lifts his head and kisses me on my collarbone.

    I don’t have time to feel self-conscious about whatever sound I was making or my terrible morning breath or how gross the inside of my mouth is because his tongue touches my skin just below my jaw and I’m back inside of the dream—the good one where we can’t get enough of each other.

    Landon’s hair is under my fingers. His hot breath is on my skin. His head is coming up and his hands are moving down.

    “I was dreaming about you,” I murmur onto his tongue.

    He peels back, looks at me with one eyebrow up. “Good I hope?”

    I sigh and close my eyes, still dazed. “Good.”

    “Good.” He lifts me until I feel the press of our bare stomachs, the place where our middles line up.

    “God, you’re beautiful,” he whispers, his chest rising, and I watch his dark eyes fall shut. “I didn’t think—”

    “
You
’re beautiful,” I whisper back.

    He laughs, a soft sound that rolls over my whole body and buries his head in the crook of my neck.

     I squeeze him with my thighs and push my hands back into his hair. The silky strands tickle my palms and fall through the thin spaces between my fingers. “You have great hair,” I tell him in a low voice.

    He chuckles again and drops his head. I feel the scratch of his teeth against my neck. His left hand moves even lower. “You have great skin.”

     “Your eyes,” I say gauzily. A low hum is starting to build deep inside of me. It’s working its way up my torso, pulling on all of the muscles in my stomach, pulling me taut like a guitar string. “And your hands aren’t so bad either.”

    Landon rises up and looks over my naked body. His dark eyes are searching and part of me wants to pull the sheet up to hide. Another part of me wants him to keep looking. 

    “Your lips,” he says, his tone almost reverent. Very carefully, he places one fingertip on the crease of my mouth. “And chin. And your jaw and neck.” The finger descends, its progress achingly slow, over my neck and my sternum, dividing me in two equal halves. “Your shoulders and your breasts and your heart.” He stops and lingers for a moment, his mouth becoming sly. “The way you hold your breath when you’re nervous.”

    I laugh, exhaling harshly.

    “Your ribs. Your belly button. That freckle right here, just above your hip.” He kisses it. “Everything about you is beautiful.”

    Every nerve ending in my body is tingling. I feel full of electricity, like lightning made into flesh.

    “You’re beautiful when you’re standing with your face tipped to the sky, when you’re sitting at the bottom of the stairs in the dark, when you’re on the beach, at work. You’re beautiful anywhere you go and I can’t seem to stop watching you.” He laughs at himself. “Did that sound as creepy as I think it sounded?”

    Now it’s my turn to laugh. “No.”

    He continues to trail his fingertip in a straight line over my stomach. I grab at his wrist with both of my hands, trying to stop him or urge him on. I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. My feet are digging into the mattress. My thighs are trembling with anticipation.

    He sees this and grins, lazy and deliberate.

    “Please,” I whimper and Landon lowers his head to my breast. His tongue makes teasing circles on my skin.

    “Please,” I say again and this time he takes me into his mouth, pulling on me, wetting me, making me crazy with wanting.

   
I can’t take it anymore.

    My head is sinking back. My eyes are falling shut.

    The room is going.

    Going.

    Gone.

    “Like this,” he says between choppy breaths. “You’re beautiful like this.”

    I am incoherent. I am nothing but the shape of this thrashing moment. I am nothing but this boy’s mouth on me and his muscles expanding and contracting and the air and the blood raging inside of both of us.

    And when he touches me, the sky and the earth switch places.

Landon

“I don’t want you to freak out,” she says.

     It’s just after ten in the morning. I should have been at the beach hours ago but I don’t feel like going anywhere. Not today. I’m pretty sure it would take a natural disaster or a full-scale military strike to get me out of this bed.

    Gemma is on top of me, the warm skin of her stomach pressing against my ribs. It’s so incredibly hot and I’m thinking about how amazing she feels and how much I love her hair like this—wild and curling over her shoulders and forehead. She’s so cute and rumpled and I can’t get enough of it. I push my thumb on the spot between her breasts where I can see the bone poking out from her skin.

    For the first time in maybe forever, I feel like I’m where I should be. “I’m not going to freak out,” I tell her, a little confused. “Not unless you tell me that all that music talk was bullshit and Nickelback is actually your favorite band.”

     She smiles, relief changing her features. “It’s not about Nickelback.”

    Laughing weakly, I run my fingers down her back, stroking her long brown hair away from her eyes. “So, what am I not freaking out about?”

    She buries her face in the crook of my elbow. In a muf
fled voice she says, “It’s just—”

    “It’s just what?”

    Eyes up. Black eyelashes flickering. “I just want you to know that I’m not under any delusions. I know what’s happening here, okay?”

    “What’s happening here, Gemma?” I run my knuckle slowly across her bottom lip, the memory of last night and earlier this morning lifting my chest.

    “I need you to know that I get it. This is sex. I don’t expect anything else from you. No strings, okay?”

    “No strings, huh?” I say, the memory crashing an
d burning to the ground like it just got lit up by a surface-to-air missile.

    Her shoulders go tense. She swallows. “No strings, no regrets.”

    “That sounds like the name of an album.” I roll away and reach to the side of the bed for my boxer briefs. I don’t want Gemma to see my face right now. I get what she’s saying; I’m just not sure how I feel about it and I don’t think I’ll be able to school my features. “It probably
is
the name of an album.”

    “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she continues awkwardly. Her fingers touch my lower back and a ripple moves through me.

    I don’t know why I’m taken off guard. She basically said this exact thing last night, but I guess I thought after—shit. I thought with the way things were between us she’d change her mind.

    It was
a stupid thought.

    She’s still talking. “You understand what I’m trying to say? I can only do non-serious right now.”

    I swivel my head. “Gemma, I know exactly what you’re saying. And trust me, it’s fine. I don’t need or want any crazy, obsessed girls hounding me to nail down a wedding date anytime soon,” I assure her. “This is good.”

    “Okay, g
ood.”

    “Good.”

    “So why do I feel like I just made things awkward? I didn’t—” She breaks off and sighs. “I guess I needed to make sure you knew that we’re on the same page.”

    “We’re on the same page,” I say, yanking the boxers up over my calves. “Non-serious. Got it.”

    “I meant everything I said last night. I like you a lot, Landon, but I think we should be careful with how far we take things. It’s not—”

    I cut her off because I really do not need to hear the
it’s not you, it’s me
speech right now. Not after last night. Not after the way I was feeling less than one minute ago.  “Gemma, you don’t have to explain anything to me, all right? This is the way things go.” I roll my neck, the tiny hairs on my back prickling.

    A few minutes ago, I’d been thinking of asking her to stay the day, the night, the week. I’d been thinking of telling her things—things I don’t tell anyone. Instead, I’m having the casual sex conversation with her. Fuck me.

    Now, I say, “I’m just glad you brought it up before I had to.”

    She sits up a little, pulling the sheet up over her bare breasts. “I’m recovering from a broken heart.”

    I laugh morosely. “I’m recovering from a broken life.”

    She frowns. “What does that mean? A broken life? You don’t seem like that to me.”

     I find myself looking away. “There are things I haven’t told you.”

     “Like what?”

     Catching my breath, I lift my head and glare at her. “Do you really want to do this part right now, Gemma? You just said you didn’t want strings and I told you I’m good with that.”

    Damn, I hate how curt I sound. I’m reverting back to that guy who was rude to her because I can’t manage to get a handle on my own shit.

    “I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t know what my problem is.”

    “No, you’re right,” she says, worrying her teeth back and forth over her bottom lip. “And Landon—” Her head goes back and her intake of air is audible. “Everything in my life is shaky at best. I feel like I’m lost at sea or something.” She shrugs her shoulders sadly. “For now, I just need one thing to be easy and uncomplicated.”  

   
Easy and uncomplicated?

    Who am I kidding? I want to push her into the mattress and kiss her until she can’t see straight, until the two of us are tangled up and sweaty.

    I want to erase the doubt and the hurt and the memory of the guy who came before me.

    I want to discover every place on her body.

    I want to know everything inside her head.

    I want to turn her inside out.

    I
want
complicated. I want to tell her the truth. I want her to know who I am and know about surfing and my failures and about Abby, but it’s obvious she’s not ready for that. The mistrust and uncertainty are etched all over her face.

    Slowly, like a cat creeping up on its prey, I say, “Fair enough.”

    She laughs. “So we’re okay?”

    If what Gemma needs right now is easy and uncomplicated—a rebound guy to fill the void—that is exactly who I’ll be. I won’t push her. I won’t besiege her with all of my pent up want. I can be patient.

    “We’re okay,” I say, smiling.

    She cocks her head to the side and taps her index finger on her chin like she’s thinking. “Should we set down ground rules?”

    “If you need them.”
Whatever you need, it’s yours.

   Her eyebrows pop. “You think I should just say it?”

   “Go for it,” I tell her.

   She releases a breath. “Sex obviously.”

    I laugh. “Obviously?”

    “Unless, you don’t want that?” Her forehead creases and the sides of her mouth fall.

    “I want,” I tell her firmly, running my hand down her arm until I’ve got her wrists circled. “I definitely want.”

    “Okay.”