Chapter 7: The Nectar Well
The room was quiet except for the slow, shared rhythm of their breathing. Sarah’s body felt liquefied, a warm, boneless weight sinking into the quilt. She stared at the ceiling, at a hairline crack in the plaster she’d never noticed before, her mind deliciously, utterly empty.
Matt rested his cheek against her inner thigh, his skin warmed by hers. He placed a soft, closed-mouth kiss there. A thank you. A punctuation mark.
“Wow,” Sarah finally whispered, the word scraping out of her raw throat. She let out a shaky laugh. “Okay. Yeah.”
He lifted his head, a slow, proud smile spreading across his face. His lips were slick, his chin glistening. The sight of it, the evidence of her own pleasure on him, sent a secondary, weaker shockwave through her core. He looked… triumphant. And so unbearably affectionate it made her chest ache.
“You taste like the ocean,” he murmured, his voice husky. “Salty. And like… home.”
She snorted, pushing herself up on her elbows. “Home? That’s a new one. Usually it’s just ‘good.’ You’re such a poet.” But she was smiling, reaching out to brush a stray curl from his damp forehead.
He caught her hand, turned it, and pressed his lips to her palm. The gesture was so old-fashioned, so Matt, that her teasing faltered. “I mean it,” he said simply.
He shifted, moving up the bed to lie beside her, his body aligning with hers. The comforter was bunched at their feet, the cool air of the room raising goosebumps on her sweat-damp skin. He pulled the quilt up over them both, creating a warm, linen-scented cave.
For a while, they just lay there. His fingers traced idle patterns on her bare stomach, following the dip of her navel, the curve of her hip. The light had deepened from honey to amber, painting long, dramatic shadows across the floor.
“I missed you,” he said into the quiet. It wasn’t a line. It was a fact, solid and heavy between them. “Those three weeks felt like a year. Your texts just made it worse. All those pictures from… where was it? Nebraska?”
“Iowa,” she corrected, rolling her head to look at him. His profile was sharp against the pillow. “Flat. Very, very flat. Corn and sonograms.”
“See? Torture. I was here, and you were in the corn.”
She chuckled. “You survived.”
“Barely.” He turned onto his side, propping his head on his hand. His eyes, so dark and earnest, scanned her face. “Was it… was that okay? I didn’t… I just wanted to make you feel good. After the drive, and the dunes…”
He was fishing. Seeking validation. It was endearing and, in a way she couldn’t quite name, a little nerve-wracking. His happiness seemed so tethered to her approval.
“Matt,” she said, reaching up to cup his cheek. Her thumb stroked the stubble along his jaw. “It was more than okay. It was obscene. I saw, like, religious icons in the ceiling crack.”
The tension in his shoulders melted. He laughed, a real, relieved sound, and leaned into her touch. “Good. That’s… good.”
His other hand found the hem of his own tee shirt, still on her body. He hooked a finger under it. “This is mine, you know.”
“Finder’s keepers.”
“I want it back.”
“Trade you,” she said, her voice dropping to a playful murmur.
His eyebrow quirked. “Oh yeah? What for?”
In answer, she pushed at his shoulder until he rolled onto his back. She swung a leg over him, straddling his hips, feeling the rough cotton of his shorts against her inner thighs. The position put her in charge, changed the energy. She saw the shift register in his eyes—surprise, then intense