“Where are you staying?” she finally asked.
“Not staying, actually. Living,” he said, with a tentative smile. “I can keep traveling if I want to, but I told the magazine I want to come home for a bit. And as long as you’re here, here is home.”
“You got a place here?”
“A short-term corporate rental, near Penn Station. It’s kind of sterile, but it’s convenient.”
“And what about that offer to shoot with me again? Does that still stand?” Carly felt an intoxicating sense of possibility gathering and swelling in her chest. He was here. He wasstayinghere. For her.
“I don’t see why not. Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere. Everywhere.”
“Then let’s go anywhere and everywhere,” he said, bending down to kiss her again. “But first can we go back to your place?”
She smiled up into his stupid, handsome face, the face she’d memorized and wanted to wake up to tomorrow morning. Every morning.
“Yes, let’s go back to my place. My parents had a bottle of unbelievably expensive champagne delivered, and I can’t drink it alone.” She took the flowers from him and slipped her hand into his. He was watching her avidly, drinking her in. “Well, Icando it alone, but I don’t want to.”
“I’ll pop the champagne—make yourself at home,” Carly said as she led him into the apartment and flicked on the bright entryway light. When he didn’t move, she set her bags down and smiled at him expectantly, waiting for him to step further into the apartment. Instead, he stood a few feet away, cataloging every inch of her. Her flushed cheeks, her strong legs, her lean, freckled arms. Her incredible hair, fiery and unruly, but not nearly as fiery and unruly as she was. His breath was short in his chest, and not only because of the five flights of stairs up to her apartment. He’d felt short of breath the whole ride home, holding her hand in the back seat of the taxi, resisting the urge to release it and run his fingers up her thigh, even when she placed their clasped hands on top of her leg and arched an eyebrow at him invitingly. He’d waited months to see her again, to touch her again, he’d told himself. He could wait a few more minutes.
But he couldn’t wait now. Not when he’d spent all those weeks wishing for her. For the silk of her inner thighs, the sharp catch of her gasp. The way she kissed and came like she did everything else—with her whole body and without restraint.
Nick stepped towards her until their bodies met, and kept moving until he felt her lower back hit the wall gently and Carly’s surprised intake of breath melted into a moan.
“What are you doing?” she asked coyly, as if she wasn’t already arching against him, tipping her head up until her lips were mere inches from his.
“Making myself at home,” he murmured, and before he could say another word, she captured his mouth, kissing him slow and deep. As if they had all night, and even longer than that. And Nick let her take him, let her kiss him and pull him harder against her. Let her welcome him home.
He’d thought he’d missed her before. He had felt the ache in his gut every morning and had dragged it around with him every day. That was why he’d told the creative director he needed to stay put for a while, and he’d bought a ticket to New York, and then a ticket to tonight’s NYB performance. Even though he didn’t know if Carly would ever talk to him again, he just needed to be near her. He’d thought he’d missed her, but as she kissed him now, as she pressed her lips against his neck and he heard her breathe him in, he realized that it had been far more than mere missing. He had not truly felt like himself in his skin when she was so far away, and when he hadn’t known if she felt the same way about him. He had needed her. He was going to need her for a long, long time.
Eventually, Carly broke the kiss and leant her head against the wall, looking up at him with sparkling, mischievous eyes. “Feeling at home yet?”
“I should probably see the bedroom.”
She raised her eyebrows, then reached up to nip at his lower lip, and she might as well have run her hand over his crotch.
“It’s through there,” she tipped her head slightly, and a second later he’d scooped her up and was striding down the narrow hallway as Carly giggled and clung to his neck. He shouldered the door open and dropped her unceremoniously on the bed, relief and joy and need thundering through him.
Carly kicked her shoes off and scooted back, and Nick removed his shoes as fast as he could without falling over. A second later, he had joined her on the bed and covered her body with his, relishing the gasp she let out as he rolled his weight on top of her. She felt perfect beneath him, her muscles tightly coiled and her skin soft, and he felt himself get almost painfully hard as she wrapped one powerful leg around his lower back and pinned his hips against hers.
He propped himself up on one hand, freeing the other to snake lightly up her bare leg, loving the tiny whimpers that escaped her when his fingers brushed the satiny skin of her inner thigh. Forget champagne. He wanted to get drunk on that sound. He wanted to devour it, drown in it. He let his hand continue, pushing the hem of her shirt away and tracing the lines of muscle around her hip bones, feeling her squirm and arch beneath his teasing fingers. As his hand climbed higher, playing with the band of her bra, he lowered his face to the place where her neck met her shoulder, caressing the long slope of straining muscle with gentle presses of his lips, swirling swipes of his tongue, and tender nips with his teeth. The whimpers were louder now, more insistent, and with every one he felt his cock harden and press against the front of his briefs.
“Please,” she gasped, and he smiled against her skin. So impatient, his tiny American cyclone.
He lifted his head so he could look into her face. “Please what?” he asked, with a teasing smile.
She met his eyes, her lips parted and her breath quick.
“Please touch me before I die.”
He smiled, tracing his fingers up over the swell of her breast, tracing them lightly, slowly, over her hardened nipple, feeling it bead even tighter through the thin fabric. She gasped and then groaned, and pressed her head into the pillow until her ribs flared and her flesh pressed into his hand.
“You’re not going to die,” he murmured, repeating the movement with more pressure this time.
“Fuck,” she groaned, arching into his hand again, one hand clutching at the bed sheet and the other grabbing a fistful of his shirt. “Then please touch me before I kill you,” she growled, and he grinned. So impatient. So passionate. So imperfect, and so perfectly Carly. How could he refuse?
He ran his hand over her ribcage, feeling her muscles shift under his palm as he slid it downward until he reached the waistband of her shorts. His hand trembled slightly as he worked the button out of its hole and got hold of the zipper, and he’d just pulled it all the way down when Carly put both hands on his chest, pushed him onto his side, and kissed him hungrily. For a moment, her hand was buried in his hair, her nails scraping lightly, maddeningly, against the suddenly tight and sensitive skin of his scalp. Then it ran down his body and mimicked the motion he’d made a moment ago, unbuttoning his fly and sliding his zipper down. He moaned into her mouth as his cock throbbed and strained, desperate for her inches-away touch.
