Free Where You Are by Tammara Webber Page A

stomach in knots and my face as flushed as if I had a fever.
    As he predicted, we’ve texted and talked and Skyped for the past ten days. I know so much more about him than I did a month ago. I didn’t know him at all last fall. I only knew the comfort I felt in his presence, as though he’d always been a part of my life, a part of me. Maybe this is how it feels to lose your memory—only impressions and shadowed inclinations remain, with no factual signals to back them up.
    A knock sounds at my door and my heart stops and falls to my knees, starting back up violently as I walk to the door and pull it open. For the barest moment we stand there drinking each other in, before I take a step backwards into the room and he follows as though there’s a cord attached to his chest. The door snaps closed behind him.
    Every detail about him has sharpened, my brain having played my mental pictures of him over and over. His dark hair is messy and falls over his forehead. His eyes are deep caramel in this late afternoon room, but they’ll be black in low light. Slight stubble on his chin, and across his jaw. His mouth is set—if I was a stranger to him I’d think he was angry, but I know he’s not. His nostrils flare just the slightest bit and I back up another step.
    “Is it… okay… if I lock the door?” His voice is so low, and I recognize it as the voice he uses when we’re talking late at night.
    I nod, and he turns to twist the bolt and slam the interior lock home, the sleeve of his black t-shirt drawing back to expose the taut, defined muscles of his upper arm. My mouth goes dry with a longing so strong it makes my breath catch. When he steps towards me, I’m stock still, torn between swaying towards him and taking another step back.
    His arms slip around me as he bends and buries his face in my neck. “I’ve missed you.” His voice hums along my collar bone, soaks into my shoulder.
    “I’ve missed you, too,” I say, my voice a whisper, like smoke.
    He pulls back, his arms still locked at my lower back, and grins. “I’ve missed you more.” I remember this promise from him as he walked away from me last fall in the airport, after we exchanged goodbyes and I told him I’d miss him. I’ll miss you more , he’d said.
    I give him a mock-stern look and flash my eyes to his. “I don’t believe you. I think you should have to prove a statement like that.”
    His mouth turns up on one side as he stares down at me, that expression so familiar and beautiful it impedes my breath. “Oh?” he says, one eyebrow angling up.
    My hands have been inching up his arms, which are tensed and tight around me still. He’s not loosened his hold since he slid them around me. I take fistfuls of his sleeves on both sides and revel in the feel of his shoulders, broad and solid and so different from mine that I feel soft and small.
    Pulling me closer, Graham lifts me onto my toes as his mouth crashes down on mine. The feel of his lips, insistent and giving no quarter, stuns me for a split-second, and then I’m matching his movements, opening my mouth, a restrained moan building in my throat as our tongues meet. My hands glide into his hair, the dark strands like ink spilling over my fingers as I urge him closer. “Emma,” he breathes, wrapping one arm around my lower back, his fingers stroking over the skin at my waist as his opposite hand cradles my head, thrusting through the hair at my nape. His touch gentles then, kisses shifting to slow-motion, pulling me along like a subtle current, unhurried.
    Without realizing I’ve even moved, I feel the mattress pressing into my calves, and he breaks his mouth from mine long enough to lift me onto it, rising over me in the center of the bed. “I just want to kiss you,” he murmurs, his lips tracing a path from under my chin to my ear before he rolls onto his back and pulls me across him. My knee is between both of his, anchoring him to the bed as his hands run over my back and my