[ It's a mistake, she tells herself. A fluke, a brush of lips she's misconstrued as purposeful when it could very well prove accidental, a movement that's led him to nudge his mouth to the column of her neck. Allowing herself to hope it could be an unspoken proposition, an expression of want, feels — wrong. Shameful, like she's taking advantage of a man still recovering from his trauma.
Worse yet, she doesn't want to assign meaning where none exists. If she were to convince herself he sees her as desirable, the disappointment when she discovers the opposite is true would be, in some ways, crushing. She tells herself to retreat before that becomes her reality, before she acts on the impulsive surge of arousal that flares from her, but her lips part with a gasping moan and derail her attempts to pretend she's unaffected before she can rein in her dissolving self-control.
For fear of ruining the moment, she doesn't dare speak, to ask him why he's deliberately mouthing at her throat. Coherent thoughts have temporarily fled from her mind as her focus narrows to the palm cupped at the back of his skull, pressing him closer to the drumming rhythm in her neck, like her pulse is trying to leap out from its cage beneath her skin and into his mouth. ]
truer words have never been spoken
Worse yet, she doesn't want to assign meaning where none exists. If she were to convince herself he sees her as desirable, the disappointment when she discovers the opposite is true would be, in some ways, crushing. She tells herself to retreat before that becomes her reality, before she acts on the impulsive surge of arousal that flares from her, but her lips part with a gasping moan and derail her attempts to pretend she's unaffected before she can rein in her dissolving self-control.
For fear of ruining the moment, she doesn't dare speak, to ask him why he's deliberately mouthing at her throat. Coherent thoughts have temporarily fled from her mind as her focus narrows to the palm cupped at the back of his skull, pressing him closer to the drumming rhythm in her neck, like her pulse is trying to leap out from its cage beneath her skin and into his mouth. ]