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“You don’t need to be sorry.” He kisses the center of my palm before placing it more firmly back on him. He regards me with unblinking eyes as I learn the topography of his face, draw my index finger over his nose and along his lips, scrape over the hair on his chin and rub my knuckles over his jaw, comb my fingers up into his hair.
“My mom always used to joke that I couldn’t help myself from touching things. That’s how I learned, I had to touch it. The grass, the muddy ground, the fur of the dead animal on the side of the road…”
Humor crinkles the corners of his eyes. “Gross, Mills.”
“I had to know what it felt like. It was a compulsion.”
He skims his hand up my thigh, fingertips dipping under the heat of my shorts. “What’s your favorite? What is the best thing to touch?”
No one’s ever asked me before, and I have to think about it. Though I don’t stop touching him. “I don’t know. Maybe kinetic sand. I like how it squishes. Or anything that bounces or bends without breaking, like a balloon you can push on…Jell-O. I don’t like wet things, clothing or anything that might feel wet. This is weird, but you know how some people like cool sheets? They feel wet to me.”
“That’s not weird. That’s just what it feels like to you. What else do you like?”
“I like petting Harold. His feathers are smooth. The inside of a rabbit’s ear. A dog’s belly.”
“I don’t think I’ve petted enough animals to know.”
“You need to. Probably make you ten times happier.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s science. Petting animals makes you happier.”
“I’ll try it,” he says, then looks out of the window as the car slows. “We’re here.”
After opening the door for me, he takes my hand once again and leads me upstairs to his condo, but as soon as the door is locked, he tells me to lead. He places my hands on his neck then smooths his down my arms, over my shoulders, to my waist. “I’d be lying if I said I haven’t wanted you for a very long time. Since you fell on your ass with Flash.”
I wince. “It’s so embarrassing you saw it happen.”
“I thought it was cute, but Millie, I need you to tell me to stop. I need you to tell me that you don’t want me, and that you’ll quit because I’m making you uncomfortable. Tell me you don’t think about me like I think about you…every goddamn day of my wretched life because the only reason I love coming home, here to this place, to Philadelphia, is because you’re here. Tell me to stop thinking about you and touching you and…” He closes his eyes, rolls his forehead along mine. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”
“I can’t do that.”
He blinks his eyes open, one blue and one brown, the sky and the earth, and I’m caught in between. Never want to leave.
His words are deliciously grated. “Then put me out of my misery. Tell me what you do want.”
I clasp my arms around his neck and press up onto my toes, signaling him to pick me up. He does, his hands gripping my butt and thighs as I wrap my legs around his waist. “Take me to your bed.”
Without a word, he does, kissing me like we never left off in the museum. His tongue stroking mine, teeth lightly nipping at my lips.
But then— “Hey, dickhead!”
Losing my temper with the bird, I break away from Austin. “Shut the fuck up, Harold! You’re ruining the moment.”
Austin chuckles, a rough rumble that’s more sensation than sound. And that list of my favorite things to touch is completely different now because it includes his laugh against my chest, the strands of his hair through my fingers, the rasp of his beard against my throat when he kisses me there, and his hard length digging into my hip.
“I love when you get mad.” He gently sets me down on the bed so that he’s holding himself above me, his hands on either side of my head.
“Why?”
“Because you’re sweet and happy and perfect all the time, that little bit of anger makes you more real.”
“I’m not perfect. Not close to it.”
“You’re perfect for me.” He buries his face in my neck, kissing and licking it until I writhe underneath him, attempting to pull him down on top of me, but he doesn’t budge. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re not. I like it. I like the feel of you on top of me.”
