“No, actually, I haven’t once thought about it. My brother is in sick, crazy love with her,” I said. “I know you think I’m a depraved dog and I’ll fuck anything that moves, but I’m not. You’re the only woman I’ve touched since the elevator.”
She hooked a glance over her shoulder. “Really?”
It was mostly true. All this fucking honesty was more difficult than I anticipated. “Okay, this girl grabbed my dick when I was out last Monday, but nothing happened.”
“Oh my God,” she groaned, and continued down the driveway. “I knew it. Why do you have to be such a damn whore?”
I followed, and caught her around the waist before she reached the main road. “I don’t want any of that to matter anymore.” I kissed her neck and earlobe, and she slowly relaxed into me. “I want to take you home. I want to undress you. I want to kiss every inch of you. Twice. I want you inmy bed,and I want to be inside you.”
She covered my hands with hers and nodded. “So, what? You’re finished with hook-ups? You’re just over it?”
“You’re too hilarious and gorgeous for me to want anything else,” I said, and I meant it.
“Stop it with the smooth lines,” she laughed. “I don’t buy it. That shit doesn’t work on me, player.”
“Then don’t buy it, but know this—I have a pocketful of my own jizz right now, but since I’m fucking obsessed with you, it didn’t even cross my mind to make you handle that situation. If I wanted a hook-up, I’d have you on your knees licking it off.”
“Aww,” she cooed, and shifted in my arms. “There’s the perv I know and love.”
“Never left,” I said, and kissed her. “Can I take you home now?”
“To watchPitch Perfect,right?”
There was a time in my life when I understood women, and that period ended when I met Tiel. I didn’t know whether this was a trick question or a new form of foreplay, so I nodded and guided her up the driveway. I’d untangle this when I had her behind closed doors. “Of course, Sunshine.”
I started talking the minute the car started, and didn’t stop the entire ride to her apartment. There was a furious energy burning inside me, and unloading every random thought was the only way to keep from sliding my hand under her skirt or dragging hers to my crotch.
I recounted my frustration with several architects, bemoaning their guideline-driven rigidity and refusal to consider the possibility that old techniques might not be the best techniques. I commented on everything from the host’s bowtie to the excessively large cheese spread, and passed some judgment on the early use of poinsettias and holly as decoration at the mansion.
If she only knew the power wielded by those panties.
The best parking spot was more than half a block from her apartment, but she insisted she didn’t want me dropping her off at the door. As we walked in silence, our hands linked, heavy, wet snow started falling. I held out my palm and watched the flakes dissolve against my skin.
“It isn’t quite the same as rain,” Tiel said. “But maybe you can kiss me in it anyway.”
Part of me wished she’d forget everything I’d said that sweaty night in September, but another part of me was thrilled I was the one checking off that list. I stopped and she pirouetted—she was so fucking cute when she did that—right into my arms. When my lips met hers, it was a moment that seemed to stretch on and on.
Until snow started gathering on my head, and dripped all over us.
We made it back to her apartment before getting entirely soaked. We stared at each other for a moment, shaking out of our coats, damp and breathless, not knowing what came next.
There was theshould come next,thewant to come next,and a slightly different avenue altogether.
And I only knew the different avenue. Every breath was new territory for me, and I was a dissociative blur of stress. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing here, how bed sex worked, how I’d navigate the infusion set situated on either sides of my belly button, or whether this was devolving into another friendly movie night. But my desire was winning, shoving all that shit into the background.
“You’re wet,” Tiel announced, fingering my collar. She pulled me into the tiny pink-and-maroon-tiled bathroom that screamed of the 1960s, pushed me against the sink, and rubbed a towel over my hair.
I lifted an eyebrow as she buffed my chest. I wasn’t particularly wet there, but that wasn’t her concern. “Don’t want you to catch a cold,” she murmured.
My thumb pressed her lips closed, and I said, “There are moments when I look at you, and I can’t even comprehend how beautiful you are. You really are pure wild.”
Then my mouth was on Tiel, devouring her, opening her until she was sighing for more.
“Thank you,” I murmured against her jaw. “For tonight. You were incredible.”
Her hands moved down my vest, touching and unbuttoning as she went, and she offered a quick kiss that transitioned into my tie wrapped around her fist and my tongue in her mouth. “Anytime,” she panted.
“Really? You’d do that again?”
