She didn't plan for them to. They just did. Her face tilted very slightly upward with the pressure of his thumbs on her jaw, her lips parting on a slow exhale, her hands still resting loosely against his chest.
He cupped water in his palm and let it run over her hair.
She made a sound that had nothing sexual in it at all. Just — a girl who had been through something intense and cold and now had someone washing her hair in still desert water under a fat moon, and whose body had opinions about that.
"Don't be nice to me," she said quietly, eyes still closed.
"Why?"
"Because it makes it harder."
"What does it make harder?"
A pause.
"Hating you."
He ran his hand through her wet hair one more time, gently working out the sand, and said nothing.
His mouth found the side of her neck.
She felt it before she processed it — the warm press of lips against the wet skin below her ear, just above the collar's upper edge. Slow. Deliberate. Tasting the water and salt of her skin.
