Chapter 13: The Taste of Coffee and Skin
The scent of coffee grounds and yesterday’s burnt toast hung in the kitchen air, a familiar, comforting musk. Ethan moved through the small space with a deliberate slowness, his body humming with a new, disorienting awareness. Mia was here. In his kitchen. Wearing only his faded college t-shirt, the hem brushing her thighs. She leaned against the counter, watching him, a smile playing on her lips as she sipped water from a chipped glass.
Sunlight through the cracked window gilded the fine hairs on her arms, the curve of her neck. He couldn’t stop looking. Every glance felt stolen, even now.
“You’re staring, Bellweather,” she said, her voice still a little rough from sleep and other things.
“Can’t help it,” he said, turning to fill the carafe at the sink. The water was shockingly cold. “Still think I might wake up.”
He heard the soft pad of her feet on the linoleum. Then her arms were around his waist from behind, her cheek pressed between his shoulder blades. He froze, the water overflowing for a second before he shut it off.
“I’m real,” she murmured. Her hands splayed flat on his stomach, fingers sneaking under the waistband of his sweatpants. “See?”
He did. The evidence was pressing insistently against the soft fabric. A purely physical response to her proximity, simple and undeniable. He set the carafe down with a thud, water sloshing.
She laughed, a low, warm sound against his back. Her hands slid lower, cupping him through the material, squeezing gently. “So’s this.”
Ethan closed his eyes, bracing himself against the counter. The domestic morning shattered, replaced by a sharp, bright hunger. He turned in her grasp. Her eyes were dark, playful, sure. This new confidence of hers was the most potent thing he’d ever encountered.
He kissed her, a claiming, open-mouthed kiss that tasted of water and her. She kissed him back just as fiercely, her hands moving to his hair, fisting in the damp curls. He lifted her easily, setting her on the edge of the counter. The forgotten glass toppled, hitting the floor with a dull thud, rolling away unbroken.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him into the vee of her thighs. He could feel the heat of her, even through the layers of cotton. He ground against her, a slow, deliberate rotation of his hips that made her gasp into his mouth.
“Fuck breakfast,” she breathed, her nails scraping down his chest, catching on his nipples.
He shoved the coffee maker aside, bags of ground beans tumbling. His hands slid up her thighs, pushing the hem of the t-shirt up. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. The sight of her, bare and exposed on his kitchen counter, in the brutal morning light, was almost blasphemous. He dipped his head, his tongue laving a broad stripe through her folds.
She cried out, her head hitting the cabinet behind her with a soft thunk. “Ethan!”
He didn’t answer with words. He answered with his mouth, his tongue circling her clit, then plunging deep inside her. She was already wet, slick and salty. He feasted on her, one hand holding her hip steady, the other cupping her ass, pulling her closer to the edge of the counter, into his face. Her thighs trembled against his ears. Her sounds were uninhibited, raw, fucking beautiful.
“Yes, just like that, oh god, your tongue,” she babbled, her fingers tightening in his hair, not guiding, just holding on.
He pushed two fingers inside her, curling them, searching. When he found the spongy spot inside her, she shattered, her orgasm hitting her like a seizure. Her back arched, a sharp, choked scream tearing from her throat. He rode it out with her, drinking her in until her spasms subsided into trembling aftershocks.
Before she could even come down, he was unbinding his sweats, freeing himself. He was painfully hard, slick at the tip from her taste on his lips. He positioned himself at her entrance, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise.
“Look at me,” he growled, his voice unrecognizable.
Her blue eyes, glazed and hazy, focused on his. She was utterly ravished, hair wild, lips swollen, skin flushed from chest to forehead.
“This is mine now,” he said, the possessiveness in his words shocking them both. It wasn’t a question.
A wild, triumphant light sparked in her eyes. “Prove it.”
He drove into her in one brutal, deep thrust. The force of it knocked the breath from her lungs in a sharp gasp. He didn’t wait, didn’t gentle. He set a punishing rhythm, the kitchen filling with the raw, wet sounds of their fucking, the slap of skin, the rattling of the cabinet doors with every powerful surge of his hips.
“Harder,” she demanded, her heels digging into the small of his back. “Fucking wreck me, Ethan.”
He obliged, his thrusts becoming savage, uncontrolled. He fucked her like he was trying to climb inside her, to leave an imprint of himself so deep she’d never be free of it. One hand gripped the counter edge for leverage, the other clutched her thigh, holding it open wide.
“You feel that?” he gritted out, each word punctuated by a thrust. “That’s me. All of me. For you.”
“I feel it,” she sobbed, her pleasure mounting again, coiling tight. “I feel you in my guts, you fucker.”
The crude language from her pristine mouth detonated something in him. His control snapped. He pounded into her, a final, desperate frenzy. Her inner muscles clenched around him, milking him, and he came with a raw shout, pouring himself into her in hot, endless pulses. She followed a second later, her cry mingling with his, her body bowing off the counter as her climax ripped through her.
He collapsed forward, catching his weight on his arms, his forehead resting against her collarbone. Their sweat mingled. Their hearts hammered against each other, a frantic, discordant drumbeat slowly settling into a shared rhythm.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing. The kitchen clock ticked. A car honked outside.
Slowly, carefully, he pulled out. A shiver wracked her body. He lifted her off the counter, holding her close as her legs wobbled. He guided her to the rickety kitchen chair, then fetched a dish towel, running it under warm water. He knelt before her and gently cleaned her, his touch now reverent, an apology and a benediction in one.
She watched him, her hand resting on his head. “So,” she said, her voice soft, wrecked. “Coffee?”
He barked a laugh, the sound strange in his own ears. “Yeah. Coffee.”
He righted the coffee maker, cleaned up the spilled grounds, picked up the glass from the floor. The mundane tasks were a lifeline back to reality. A reality that now included Mia, naked under his shirt, smelling of him and sex, sitting at his table.
As the machine gurgled and dripped, he stood by the counter, looking at her. The sunlight caught the chipped teacup on the windowsill—his mother’s, the one Mia always used when she visited. It was a silent witness to a decade of friendship. It had seen their homework sessions, their break-up tears, their whispered dreams at 3 a.m. Now it had seen this.
Mia followed his gaze. A soft understanding passed between them. Everything was different. Everything was the same.
She stood, the t-shirt falling back into place. She walked to him, took his hand, and laced her fingers through his. “Don’t get lost in your head,” she said quietly. “I’m right here.”
He brought their joined hands to his lips, kissing her knuckles. The coffee pot finished its cycle with a final, definitive click.
“What do you want for breakfast?” he asked.
She smiled, leaning into him. “Surprise me.”