fucking sucked, Amber."
He sounds so young and distraught and annoyed that she laughs high and bright before she can stop herself.
Embarrassed she buries her head into his shoulder.
Michael leans back and pulls her up to look at him, some of the color has returned to his uncharacteristically pale face and there’s a glint of life back in those eyes she loves so well. “No, don’t,” he says, “I love your laugh, don’t hide it.”
He cradles her face in his hands and she touches back, mirroring him with her own hand cupping his jaw.
"I missed you so much," she tells him. She doesn't know how to be more truthful than that. "Every single day, I missed you."
Michael bends slow to brush a soft kiss against her lips. It's all comfort and no lust and somehow the simple familiarity of it sears white-hot and she's suddenly, abruptly, desperate for him.
She's just not sure if they should add sex to the mix yet. "You really did it, huh? Just like you promised."
His fingers graze over her bare shoulder making her shiver hard and why oh why did she wear a tank top today?
"What do you mean?"
"You said you'd move out here for me and here you are." Amber swallows back bitter 'what ifs' and tries not to think about what could have been.
He must read it on her face.
"Hey, don't. We messed up, everyone does. We'll be okay." His answer is surer that even he's expected, she can tell by the way his eyebrows raise in surprise and how he freezes, so silently still, as he processes what's just fallen out of his mouth all pretty and neat and ready for forgiveness.
"I want that," Amber says. Unspoken is the 'more than anything else in the world.'
His eyes go wide, pupil eating up all that lovely green and she knows he hears that too anyway.
Hands skirt against the base of her throat and he can't stop touching, they move independently of him like her own limbs have battled for freedom and she doesn't want them to ever rediscover restraint.
Amber mirrors his every touch, pressing her own hands to his sweat-glazed flesh. He's cold and damp so she does her best to warm him up, rubs the sensitive lobe of his ear, trails down to his bobbing Adam's apple and counts the vertebrate in his throat.
"I want that too," he says like a promise whispered low.
It's the last barrier to their caution. The moment it's breathed into life they're stripping each other in tandem like his words were a secret phrase they both had understood to mean 'get as naked as you can. Quickly.'
Her tank is easy to get rid of but her jeans take a little more time. They're tightly molded to her skin and they get caught around her thighs. The matter isn't helped by Michael's sudden fascination with her pale flesh as it’s slowly revealed.
With his eyes on her he's never felt sexier than she does right now. Even looking as ridiculous as she does standing around in a thick uni-boob sports bra with her jeans stuck around her thighs.
He grapples at her ass when she finally kicks her jeans free. His palms cup her buttocks forcefully, lifting her up into his still-clothed embrace and rocking her half-naked body against his long form.
His eyes eat her up. Amber has to close her own so she doesn't get swept away in the intensity of his stare. She moans softly as his hands climb up to the base of her neck, fingers massaging at her scalp and sending rocking waves of pleasure through her. "I don't want to mess this up," the words are drawn reluctantly from her mouth, enticed into being by the direct honesty of his open stare.
"I don't either. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me." His state is so damn raw, so damn sincere she can't bare it.
"Me too," she returns and that's equally as true. Amber doesn't know how they made such a mess of things for so long but she doesn't intend to do it again.
Michael leans in and pulls her against him. His rock hard chest collides with her breasts and his lips, then his teeth, are at her jaw. "I love you," he bites fiercely
C. J. Cherryh
Learning to Kill: Stories
John O'Riley
Brenda Sinclair
Christopher George
Stephen Lloyd Jones
Karl Iagnemma
Celya Bowers
Jill Gregory
Aria Cunningham