The flicker of vulnerability in his question helped her decide.
Sorry, just needed to think a minute
FT me. Gonna answer on my laptop
Laptop = great idea
need like 2 mins
Lyra slipped from the bed. First, she locked her door. Neither Reed nor her father were home this evening, and neither was prone to barging in uninvited, but better safe than sorry. She considered putting Brutus out, but the dork was a big baby about being left on his own when his people were around, so he’d just sit against the closed door and whine to be let in. So she left him lying on the rug beside her bed.
Then she slipped off her panties, brushed her hair, folded forward, and flipped the mass back so it was nice and fluffy. She smoothed her bedding, fluffed her pillows, and stretched out again.
Five seconds after she opened her laptop, his call came through. Hoping she looked okay, she answered.
Her concern about him seeing her naked for the first time like this was immediately erased by the sight of him.
He was ... holy shit, he wasperfect.
He lay on his back, stretched out, with his head propped on pillows against his plain wood headboard. A lamp glowed on his bedside table, gilding his shoulder and that side of his chest and leaving the rest of him in faint shadow. From the angle of his image, Lyra could tell that he’d set his laptop near his hip, maybe on top of a book or pillow or something.
He was as naked as she was; in the foreground she could discern the skin of his hip and the curve of bone there. There was some kind of ink on his thigh; only the top showed, but she thought it might be the hilt of a knife or sword. Her eyes traveled up, across lean, contoured abs, higher to even more contoured pecs. His nearest arm was bent, and that hand lay on his belly, stroking himself lightly. Sensuously.
Though there was a thick trail at his belly button, he didn’t seem to have hair on his chest—if anything, a dusting so light she couldn’t make it out on the screen. What he had was a great deal of ink. She’d known about his sleeved left arm, but that piece went over his shoulder and blended with other pieces crossing his chest. At the other shoulder was another piece—she couldn’t quite make it out—that went down his other arm, ending at his elbow. It looked like some kind of medieval-looking weapon. An axe, maybe? When she’d seen him in person, the bit that showed below his sleeve had seemed like one of those faintly tribal blackwork tats, but it was way cooler than that.
He was just ... like she’d bought him online from one of those sites that let you customize your order. Perfect.
But even hotter than his amazing body was the way his chest and belly swelled and receded with each breath. He was panting. For her.
Finally, she looked up to his face. She couldn’t quite meet his eyes, because, in the strange optics of video calls, he was looking at her on his screen rather than the camera lens, and she was doing the same thing on her end, so their gazes didn’t quite sync.
Didn’t matter. She could see the intensity in his eyes. He was looking at her as if he needed her to survive.
“Fuck,” he rasped, the first of them to speak. “You’re so damn gorgeous.”
Lyra smiled. She’d thought it would be awkward, being naked together like this, but it wasn’t at all. This felt ironicallymoreintimate, as if losing the senses of taste, and scent, and shared touch enhanced the sight and sound of each other, pulled them together into this tiny private moment the size of only a screen.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” she said softly. “You’re perfect.”
He smiled. “I want to see you touch yourself. I want to watch you come.”
As he said it, he squirmed a little, arching his back, and she saw the muscles in his arm flex. He was touching himself already.
“No screencaps or recording, okay?”
“I wouldn’t without asking first. So I won’t.”
“Thank you.” She’d set her hands on her chest, her fingers at the notch at the base of her throat, when a thought occurred to her. Feeling a little shy, she asked, “Do you want to tell me what to do, like if your hands were on me?”
His head was already shaking. “Touch yourself the way you want. I want to see what you like.”
So she showed him.
With her arms crossed over her chest, her fingertips on her throat, Lyra trailed her fingers down, over her collarbones, out to slip between her arms and her sides, then in again, taking a breast in each hand. Arousal had tightened her nipples, filled them with that wonderful ache, and she rubbed her palms in light circles until the ache caught fire.
A soft moan escaped her mouth as she drew the fingertips of each hand together over each breast until she had the tips of her nipples pinched lightly. Then she tightened the touch, right to the edge of pain, and pulled. Another moan slipped from her, and she bit down on her bottom lip.
“That’s it, yeah,” he grunted, a thousand miles away, yet here on the bed with her.