Leaning in, I imagined stroking the shadowed patch of skin revealed by the undone buttons of his shirt. Instead, I reached for the woven leather cord and pulled.
Tanner grabbed my wrist, his thumb sliding into my palm, applying pressure to my smaller bones. He didn’t move my hand away and the compression didn’t hurt, not a lot, but the message in the gesture was clear.
“I’m not ready to share that with you,” he whispered.
“What are you ready to share?” I kept pulling, prodded into bold behavior by the impatient layers of accumulated desire rumbling in the rich earth below. But the mine on the tip of my tongue and the laughter burbling deep in my chest were coming from me, not some ghostly entity that liked to inhabit tunnels and apple trees.
Tanner brought his face close enough I could see his individual eyelashes, the pulse at the base of his throat, and the sharply edged curve of his full lower lip—the one that looked wine-stained. Or bruised. I stared at that lip, pulled harder on the cord in my hand, until he lowered me onto a hillock of grass.
His upper body followed the arc of my descent and his mouth came into high relief. He slid one, strong hand to the back my neck and lifted, exposing my throat. “I want to share a kiss with you.”
The ground below me lifted in response, forcing my back to arch until my breasts met his chest. I unfurled my legs and nodded consent, never loosening my grip on the cord.
Tanner angled his head and kissed one corner of my mouth, and the other corner, and when the crush of his lips met mine, dark cherries ripened to perfection burst open and flooded my tongue. Bottled water slaked one kind of thirst. Tanner’s kiss invoked a wholly new need to drink and get drunk and never get up.
I invited his juiciness to pour into me and through me and feed the land at my back.
He hovered the full length of his body over mine, supporting himself on elbows and forearms planted to either side of my shoulders. His hands cupped the sides of my face, and his thumbs explored the contours of my cheekbones and eye sockets while his lips continued to conquer and cajole, offering bribes by way of an endless supply of over-ripe cherry and hints of mint.
Tanner released my lips and bit my chin, trailing his tongue from the edge of a collarbone as he followed the taut edge of a tendon, over my jaw and back to my mouth. The line he left burned below my skin, melting any residual resistance.
I bent my knees and pressed my heels into the backs of Tanner’s thighs, urging him to give me more of his weight, insisting he meld his body with mine.
When he broke the extended entanglement of our mouths, arousal connected the landscapes of our chests and bellies, leaving little room for discerning who ended where. Even the tree branches, furiously weaving a protective canopy overhead, seemed invested in us continuing to kiss.
Until Tanner suddenly peeled himself away, leaving the front of my body bandage-ripped raw. He stood like a toppled tree springing back into place.
A tremor, rising from behind me, pushed at my back. I took the hand Tanner offered and joined him, unsteady in the double whammy delivered by the unexpected kissing and the end of the unexpected kissing. He brushed the dirt and dried grass off my back, and when he finished, he grabbed my elbows and faced me.
Despite the strength of the afternoon sun, the earlier glints of golden light that radiated off his body had disappeared. A cloud settled across his eyes, the gem-like clarity disappeared, and a denseness claimed his body. He pulled me into a hug and spoke into my hair, sounding more like a government agent delivering a summons and less like a man who’d initiated and followed through on a series of succulent kisses.
“I should not have done that, Calliope. I won’t do it again, I promise.”
My voice was muffled by his armpit. “What if it’s okay with me? What if I want you to kiss me again?”
“I…”
My arms circled his waist. A few minutes earlier, the man lying between my legs had pulsed with desire, need, and sexual power. The man who helped me stand was as wooden as a coat rack. The Tanner who held me tight in this moment and nuzzled my hair was somewhere in between, and whatever was going on in his body—and maybe his heart or his soul, I didn’t know—was big enough to split him into pieces.
Mine. The voice was muffled, and I finally understood what it meant.
The voice didn’t want the old tree in the other section of the orchard or the tender green leaves popping out underground. The voice wanted Tanner.
I hugged him a little tighter and a little longer until his heart rate slowed. His arms and legs relaxed against my body.
A shout from River startled us apart.
Tanner took a step back as the other agent jogged into view.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Find anything interesting? Calli was just debriefing me on her adventure.” He squeezed my hand before he released it. Nothing in my body reassembled in its right place.
River wasn’t even breathing hard when he plopped onto the grass and helped himself to what was left in the bottle of water. “I think we need to come back with full spelunking gear, more lights, more help. The tunnel’s a marvel of engineering and magic. Or magical engineering. Anyways, count me in when you’re ready to explore further.” He drained the refillable bottle and handed it to me. “And you?”
I blew out a fast breath and shook off the sensation of Tanner’s mouth consuming mine. “I’ll frame this by confessing I’m not fond of tight, dark places.”
River
