6.4 — The Kiss Through the Veil

I moved, finally, closer to her — slow, unhurried, giving her every opportunity to wave me off if that was what she needed. She didn't. She simply stayed exactly as she was, gauze drawn high, hands still pressed to her own cheeks as if she could press away the embarrassment through sheer force of will, though I noticed, as I came near, that she'd angled herself just enough to keep me in the edge of her vision, not turning away entirely but not quite meeting my eyes either.

The thin fabric had slipped, somewhere along her curled shoulder, enough that the shape of her mouth was still visible through it, pressed into a small, stubborn pout even now — and I leaned down, unhurried, and kissed her there, directly through the gauze, soft and warm and deliberate, feeling the fine weave give slightly under the pressure of it, feeling her breath catch, sudden and unmistakable, beneath the thin veil of pale gold.

She went very still. Every muscle in her body seemed to hold itself rigid, as if she were afraid that any movement at all might shatter the moment or give away more than she'd already inadvertently confessed. Then, despite everything, despite the whole careful architecture of silence she'd been constructing for the last hour, I felt her mouth move beneath the fabric, answering the kiss in spite of herself, brief and helpless and entirely unplanned — a capitulation she didn't mean to make but which her body made anyway, betraying every ounce of the resolve she'd been trying so hard to build.

She pulled back a fraction, finally lowering one hand from her face just enough to look at me properly, cheeks still burning with a flush that was no longer purely physical, eyes wide and betrayed by her own body's honesty, the particular look of someone caught wanting something they'd told themselves they didn't need.

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"That wasn't fair," she said, her voice muffled slightly by the gauze still draped loose across her mouth.

"I never said I'd fight fair," I answered, and watched something low and warm move behind her eyes, something that had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with a fresh want stirring beneath the exhaustion and the ache and the stubborn, justified mortification — entirely without her permission to feel it.

"I was going to stay angry at you," she said, though her voice had already gone soft and unconvincing, and I could see her leaning, almost imperceptibly, closer rather than away. "For at least a full day. I had made plans. I was going to be very difficult."

"Were you," I said, not quite a question.

"I still might be," she said, though her eyes were already beginning to soften, the last of her earlier resolve beginning to crumble at the edges. "I mean it. I'm very cross with you."

"You can be cross with me," I said, quietly, moving closer until there was almost no space left between us, "and still want this. Both things are allowed to be true at the same time. You don't have to choose between your feelings. You're allowed to have all of them."

She didn't answer that directly. She only closed the last small distance between us and kissed me again herself this time, gauze and all, unhurried and certain in a way that put the lie to every ounce of her earlier resolve — and I felt, beneath the exhaustion and the soreness she'd earned so thoroughly over the last several hours, something else stirring low and insistent all over again, wanting, in spite of everything her body had already given, to begin once more.

What could I do. I loved her — so much, so entirely, more than I think either of us had yet found words for — and some wants, once lit, simply refuse to be reasoned with, no matter how much sense reason tries to make.

I felt it too, low and unmistakable, answering hers, patient and certain and willing to wait as long as she needed.