Burn

“So,” Harry said, draping himself across a couch in Rae’s studio. She gave him a spectacle glance, as she walked across the floor. Noon sunlight flowed in through the window, illuminating the room as she picked up random things that she knew she needed. “You’re going to draw me like one of your French girls, yeah?”

Rae shook her head, ignoring his comment. Rae had not even wanted to ask the boy if she could draw him, but something had made her do it anyways. His reaction had not been what she thought it would be, though. She thought he would laugh and shrug his shoulders. Instead, he was quite eager, insisting they could do it that moment.

Why Harry was so happy to be the subject of her drawing, Rae had no idea. But when he grabbed her hand and pulled her up the stairs, practically pushing her through her own studio door, she decided to go along with it. She also wanted to get a few things off her mind through drawing.

It had been a few days, and she still had not talked to her father. He had called several times, and even called Trystan. But Rae wasn’t ready to be a grown up and face her issues with him. She still was not sure how she felt about it, and even though Harry kept pushing her to answer the phone, she never would.

Strange, that Harry wanted her to talk to her father so bad. Even though he didn’t say so, Rae knew that it was because he wished he had parents who cared for him the way Rae’s father cared about her. She felt silently guilty, but never told him so out loud. He hated pity more than most things.

Setting up by sitting in a char, Rae opened to a blank page in her sketch book. She wanted to do a simple drawing with pencils, nothing hard and nothing advanced. Harry had the kind of face that you didn’t have to get fancy with; pencils and shading were enough to make a beautiful face. Rae’s cousin Lily had the same quality.

“Can you please pulling faces, Haz?” Rae asked, sighing at him with a smile on her lips. Harry currently had his eyes crossed and his mouth open in a fearful expression. Grinning, he fell out of the face and sat up straight, crossing his legs and looking at her. “Perfect. Tilt your head a bit towards the light.”

“So I look angelic?”

“Or so I can see your face,” she supplied, smiling and looking down at her pad. She glanced back up, impressed to see that he was keeping a serious face, tilting his head just like she asked. She had been sure this would have turned into a joke. “But it’s up for interpretation.”

Moving her hand across the page, she began to draw. What came as a shock the most, was the fact that even though she looked up several times to look at Harry’s face to draw, she realized a lot of the drawing was from memory. She knew the curve of his mouth, the edge of his jaw line, and the shadow of his lashes better than anything else in the world. Harry’s face was something that she had become so familiar with.

Silence flowed between them, serene as she continued to move the pencil, turning white parchment to art. A crease formed between her brow as she concentrated, knowing that more than anything she wanted this to be perfect. More than one she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, chewing on it in concentration.

When she was almost done, she heard Harry chuckled lightly, causing her to look up and pause her work. He was trying not to smile too large towards her, but there was a prominent upturn of his lips. “What are you laughing at?”

“I wish I was good at drawing,” he murmured quietly, eyes glancing at her up and down. “Because I would draw you. Just as you are, there like that. Every day.”

Rae’s heart skipped and she felt her cheeks flush as she shook her head, speechless. Harry always caught her off guard when he said things like that. She was so accustomed to his sarcasm and wit that it made her stumble every time he said something that verge on poetic. “Just hush and be still, yeah?”

He was still grinning. “Sure thing. Make me look better than the Mona Lisa.”

“One day you will open your mouth, and something intelligent will come out.”

“A squared plus B squared equals C squared.”

“I didn’t mean the Pythagorean theorem.”

He chuckled. “I thought you were bad at math?”

“Harry! Shut up!”

Signing in both amusement and annoyance, Rae went back to drawing. Harry was very quiet throughout the rest of their drawing session, but she could hear the small chuckles and see him fighting off smiles the entire time. She decided that even though he was her favorite thing to draw already, he was absolutely infuriating.

When finished, she set her pencil down, biting her lip again and glancing back and forth rapidly between the real Harry and the drawing. They were so closely related, except the fact that real Harry was something more beautiful and tangible than the drawing could ever portray.

Before she could tell him if she was done or not, he was up and moving across the floor, taking long strides. He stood in front of her, looking down with his eyes glowing and held out his hand, a smirk on his pink lips. Rolling her eyes, she handed him the page and held her breath.

Rae was unaware when she became so worried about what Harry thought of her work. She knew that it had always set her on edge before when he was looking at it through the house, but now that he was really studying, now that he was analyzing it, she thought her heart was going to break free of her rib cage.

Instead of saying anything, though, Harry set the picture down, running his hand over his face and looking away from her for a moment. Her breathing stopped, realizing he was upset. But then he looked at her, his eyes almost glistening. Wordlessly, he picked her up slowly by the hands, staring at her the entire time.

Harry’s hands were feather light as he cradled her face, his breath smelling of mints as it hit her skin, warm as the smallest breeze of summer on a beach. Brushing his lips against hers softly at first made her react instantly, standing on her tip toes and leaning into his chest, winding her hands around the back of his neck.

As they so often did, Rae’s fingers curled around the silk hair at the nape of his neck, her breath coming in short and quick as she kissed him back fiercely. Everything about him filled her senses suddenly. He tasted like mint and something else that only belonged to him, smelled of his deep, musky aftershave and felt so solid but gentle all at once.

Rae could barely function beyond feeling blown away and shaking, as Harry picked her up and lay her on the ground, placing butterfly kisses all over her face in precise movements, as if each brush of feather light kisses meant something, as if they each had something significant behind them.

Harry’s hands were strong on her waist, running up the curve of her side under hear shirt, goose bumps exploding all over her milky skin. His entire hand covered the plane of her ribs, where he could feel her heart hammering, matching the beating heart of his own.

Small hands pulled on Harry’s shirt as Rae’s head tilted back, Harry’s lips taking a liking to the skin on her collar bone. She was like silk, there. In fact, she felt like heaven and she smelled like salvation to him. He smelled and felt like everything Rae ever wanted but never had.

Both shirts were removed, Rae wrapped a leg around Harry’s balancing him. Every single inch of Rae was on fire. Suddenly all of the books, all of the movies describing being kissed and touch as a burning sensation made sense. Every fiber, every atom that made up her being was screaming with the most heavenly fire.

Through part lips, Rae breathed rapidly. Everything was becoming so acute in her senses all of a sudden. Every kiss Harry placed on her, every inch of his chest that she touched, strong and firm, every intake of his lungs and the smell of him all over her skin. It was make her dizzy.

“Rae,” Harry’s voice was deep and raspy in a way that she had never heard it before, and it made her clutch the sides of his shoulders as he worked at the button on her jeans. “Rae, how the in blazes do you get these off?”

“Oh!”

In the heat of the moment she had forgotten there was a button on the inside of her jeans as well. Guiding his hands to it, he figured it out, making a relieved sound before attacking their lips again, kissing her hard. Her lips were already burning with swelling as he wiggled her shorts down the length of her smooth legs.

Aware that he threw them only because he knocked something over when he launched them across the room, she was too busy familiarizing herself with the warmth of his mouth to laugh, though any other time she might have giggled.

In just her bra and underwear, Rae worked at Harry’s bottoms, getting them off without a problem, tossing them to the side, he lifted his head, giving her a look and she grinned slightly, amused that his had been nothing difficult. It seemed like such a casual thing to do, but Harry rolled his eyes before slowly placing kisses down the center of her chest, his hands roaming ever section of her body.

It was getting increasingly hard to breathe and a small moan escaped Rae’s lips, though she never would have hear it if the empty room hadn’t made it sound so pronounced. Somewhere in the back of her mind, far away, she thanked God Tryst wasn’t home.

Tangled on the floor of the studio, the two of them where completely lost in one another. Rae was aware of Harry stiffing against her leg, but it was quickly eradicated by the surprise of her bra snapping off in the back. She had barely had time to register that his large, strong hands were there.

A sharp intake of breath was taken through Rae’s lips as Harry moved down, showering kisses over her breasts. Everything was a muddled mess in her brain, and she knew that’s how he worked. Harry made Rae an absolute mess without doing this to her as it was.

Finger tips ghosted across Harry’s stomach as Rae spread her hands across them, brushing them all the way to her shoulders where she squeezed tightly, another light sound of pleasure escaping her half closed lips.

Planting kisses in a deliberate trail back up to her lips, pressing them together firmly. Holding himself up with one hand, Harry used the other to brush her hair gently, something that startled her and made her feel extremely wonderful all at the same time.

It was extremely astounding to her, that he was being so soft. She had never in a million dreams imagined that he would be trailing his hand slowly down her waist, hooking a finger in the side of her underwear and gently tugging. It was a Harry she had not seen much of, but one she knew was there.

Grabbing both sides of the smooth, checkered material, Rae shimmied Harry’s boxers down as he tossed her knickers out of the way, hands spreading own and smooth down her leg slowly. She could feel calluses on his finger tips from working in the bakery and from all the time he turned pages of books countlessly.

Rae arched into Harry, pushing their chest together as he nuzzled her neck slightly, kicking his boxers off of his foot. It made her snicker slightly, but he silenced her mouth with a grinning kiss, making her tremble all over with the intensity. She could practically breathe in his feelings.

Mid kiss, he broke off, looking up slightly and arching an eyebrow. “Um, you’ve discarded my pants a bit farther than I intended, love.”

“Why.. OH.” Rae blushed deeply, and fumbled for words. And when she fumbled for words, sarcasm normally came out. “You have arms, silly. Reach.”

He grinned at her, leaning his body forward. As he did, she took the chance to liter his chest with kisses, light and filled with affection all over. She felt his muscles tense as he shivered under her touch before he leveled himself again, hoisting himself over her and placing his lips on her forehead, unwrapping the foil and discarding it when he was done, not caring where it landed.

For a moment, they both paused, looking at one another. Rae was shivering under him, but it wasn’t from the cold at all. In fact, she had never felt such heat coursing through her. Her ears were filled with his unsteady breath as he looked down at her, his emerald eyes dazzling and every shade of angelic.

“You’re sure?”

Rae’s delicate hand cupped his face, her thumb brushing over his cheek. “Harry, I have never been more sure about someone in my entire life.”

Something profound took over Harry’s face in that moment. But Rae didn’t care what it was. She took in a deep breath and sucked in air as he rolled his hips forward. He paused for a moment, making Rae rock her hips forward. In a moment, they were in sync, both breathing irregularly from the feeling washing over them like the tide on a shore.

Rae pressed herself as close to Harry as she could, their chests nearly melded together as she let out a breathy moment that lightly resembled his name. Her hands clasped his shoulders and she looked up, right into his eyes. The emotion in them was something she had never seen before, and it stole the breath from her lungs.

In that moment, they were more together than they could ever be with someone. Rae had never in her entire life felt like she was such a part of someone, and it made her quake in pleasure and shock. Harry did not look away from her, to captured by her gaze. And what she saw there, was Harry completely open, completely vulnerable.

But he didn’t need to be. He never would have to feel vulnerable with her. Rae wanted nothing more than to make him strong, to protect her. The Harry that was making Rae dig her nails into skin, the Harry that was making her gasp and let out shaky breaths with feeling, was the Harry that she had drawn in her picture. It was the Harry she had seen within him, the one no one else in the world saw.

Harry began to drop his head into her collar bone, but Rae caught his face gently, cupping his cheek. “Don’t look away from me,” she whispered between a gasp. “don’t hide from me.”

He paused before nodding, leaning his forehead against hers and keeping the eye contact. Because they weren’t just having sex. They weren’t having recreational fun. They were doing something that neither of them had truly done before, in it’s most honest form.

They were making love.