136. Chapter 136

She loves Alex’s lips.

She loves Alex’s lips more than she’s every loved anyone’s, but they’re not the only part of Alex’s face she loves kissing.

So when they’re on a crime scene, Maggie can’t help it. Fellow officers be damned, when Alex makes that concentrating face, Maggie leans up on her tip toes and peppers her temples with kisses, because she knows that’s where Alex feels the tension, where Alex feels her mind buzzing, where Alex needs to be kissed.

When they’re at the bar and Alex snorts with laughter and some beer drips down her chin, James and Winn and Kara whooping in the background be damned, Maggie starts on her chin but doesn’t stop, working her way up Alex’s jawline, to her cheeks, to her nose, to her eyebrows, to the bridge of her nose, to the tip of her nose, because Alex deserves to be kissed everywhere.

And when they’re at home, just before Alex’s alarm jolts her out of sleep, Maggie will lean up on one elbow and pepper snowflake-light kisses all across Alex eyes, nose, forehead, every single centimeter of her face, because the slow, sleepy smile that blossoms on it as Alex wakes proves just how much she loves Maggie’s kisses.

And she never expects these kinds of kisses back.

Because oh, Alex kisses her. And oh, Alex has proven herself to be quite the softie. But Alex is direct and Alex is assertive and Alex doesn’t do the whole butterfly kiss thing.

Until one day, she does. Until one day, Maggie’s reading in bed and Alex crawls over her, glasses on and hair still damp from her shower, and Alex starts with Maggie’s nose. She starts with the tip of her nose and she palms her cheeks with her hands, and she traces every single contour of Maggie’s face, every dip and every dimple and every line, first with gentle fingers, then with soft, light kisses that make Maggie’s heart race, that make Maggie’s heart light, that make Maggie’s heart tremble because no one, no one, no one, has ever touched her like this, ever kissed her like this.

She splutters and she blushes and she fumbles for her words, because her knowledge of any spoken language has left her along with any lingering doubts she might have had that Alex Danvers is the woman she’s going to spend her life with.

“Maggie Sawyer, are you blushing?”

“I… it… I… no, I… Al…”

Alex beams and decides then and there to render Maggie monosyllabic as often as humanly possible.

And she does.