"Don't make it more than it is."
His hands slid down her back, teasing, testing the supple alabaster skin. Her breath hitched as she bowed into his touch. He knew he knew how to touch her skin, especially after six months together. Six months of laughter and playful evenings together. Three months of hot, sweaty sex and joyful, sweet lovemaking. He knew. He knew her body. In most cases, he knew her mind.
Pressing into the flesh between her shoulder blades, he splayed his fingers across the delicate bones under skin. Beneath his palm, her heart beat fast and steady, a reaction to his hand on her. To the potential of having his body on hers, in hers again. He knew the physical reactions of her heart.
But damned if he could figure out the emotions inside of it.
Six months and she never called him first. Never texted first. For any reason. She responded easily and quickly (most of the time) to his ringtone, to his text message tone. She laughed with him and cried with him. But never yelled at him or cried for him. He waited. Each time he had to leave her bed, her embrace, her living room sofa, he waited for her to ask him to stay. In words, in the reach of a hand.
She only ever smiled at him and asked that he be careful. She only asked questions regarding the stories he shared. Never about the who or where or what or when or why of the in-between times. He wondered at this. Did she trust him so much after such a short time?
Everything in him violently rejected this.
“There’s only you.” He felt as shocked as she looked as her head whipped around.
“Excuse me?” Staring at him over her shoulder in astonishment, she moved away from his hand.
But he refused to let her slip away so easily. “Since we met, there’s been no one else.”
Standing abruptly at the edge of the bed, she turned to him. “I didn’t ask.”
“I know.”
“Then shut up.” Naked, she stood before his lounging figure with all the dignity of a queen.
Pushing into a sitting position, he rested his arms on his knees. “Why have you never asked?”
Shoving hair from her face, she sighed. “I don’t want your promises. Your lies. If I never ask, there are no promises, no lies made.” Crawling across the bed to him, she knelt before him and held his face between her hands. “No promises, no lies. Enjoy what we have, what we do. Don’t make it more than it is.”
He stared into her sharp eyes, felt them pierce his heart.