He pumped into me, his fingers steady on my clit while I exploded again, and then he came with a hoarse roar and his teeth on my back. I expected to find my limbs and vital organs in bits all over the room, obliterated by the force of my climax and the tension between us. We stayed there, panting, basking in the aftershocks, and I wanted this little moment to continue forever.
“Get under the covers,” Matthew said. He pulled out, and slapped my ass. “I’ll be right back.”
I climbed onto the mattress, groaning as my muscles relaxed into the marshmallow bedding. I needed to take notes and do some major redecoration at home. Rolling to my side, I smiled at Matthew’s beautiful face when he returned from the bathroom and joined me. So scrumptious.
He drew his finger down my arm, but didn’t smile back. “Be honest with me.”
I stopped admiring the pillowcases. That sounded cryptic.
“Since you’ve been traveling, the only thing you’ve wanted from me is news about your project. I want to know if that’s the only thing you’re getting out of this.”
My lips parted but no sound came out.
“I need to know why you’ve avoided me for two weeks. You don’t even acknowledge my texts most days, and I need to know if you’re over this, or I did something to piss you off.”
I couldn’t lie in our warm glowy bubble anymore. I brought the blankets to my chest and scrambled off the bed. “Did it escape your notice that I just had sex with you? Do you really think I would have done that if I was over it?”
“No, no, no, that’s not what I’m saying,” he said.
What did I get for being uninhibited with a hot architect? For doing things I’d never done, never dreamed of doing? For breaking all my rules about men and relationships and sex? All of it thrown back at me.
“Did you come here just to ask me that? And then what? You’re on the next flight to Boston?” He paused, glancing back and forth between the bed and me. “Or did you come here to fuck me and then tell me I’m a slutty, slutty whore?”
I searched for my clothes, still clutching the sheets, and refused to look at him when he walked across the suite and stepped into his boxers. He handed me his Cornell t-shirt, and I snatched it from his hands without a word, storming to the other side of the room. I couldn’t handle this swing, this violent shift from high to low, and I needed space to breathe.
“That’s not why I’m here, and that’s not what I was implying, and you know that. You know I’d never say anything like that, ever.”
“Really? How am I supposed to know that, Matthew?”
“I fucked up, and it came out all wrong.” Matthew rubbed the back of his neck and groaned. “I missed you like crazy, and you weren’t talking to me, and I didn’t know why.”
“It’s not about the goddamn project, Matthew! How about being busy? I tried to tell you I wouldn’t have time for—”
“I know all about busy, sweetness. That one’s not working on me.”
We gazed at each other across the room, and despite Matthew’s intensity, I refused to look away first. He continued staring into me as his long legs ate up the distance between us and his hands gripped my waist.
“Tell me what you want,” he begged.
I knew that request so well, but this time, the words weren’t there. When we were together with nothing but breaths and kisses between us, I understood—deep, in a tender place I couldn’t locate on a map—what we needed and wanted. Iknew. But now, with him in his unbuttoned jeans and me in his t-shirt and daylight soaking the air around us, I couldn’t reach that place. “I don’t know.”
Matthew stared at me, nodding, and shifted his focus out the window. I stood there, pantless and vibrating with fury—maybe it was hurt or indignation or even whiplash—while his hands drew small circles on my hips and anchored me in place. I understood that his words came out in the wrong combinations, but the thought that I was getting naked with him for architectural work still crossed his mind more than once, and he let it.
“You stopped talking to me, and I don’t know why,” he murmured. He tucked my hair over my ears, running his fingers through the strands and down my back. “But I do know you should stop pushing me away.”
I shouldn’t have crept out of his bed that foggy Saturday, and I shouldn’t have left town without telling him it was time to fizzle out, but maybe—just maybe—I always wanted to leave those doors slightly ajar. To find out what I was sacrificing. To sample something I shouldn’t have. To break some rules.
“Tell me whatyouwant, Matthew.”
“I want you to let me hang out with you this weekend. I want you to stop disappearing,” he said. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if he were trying to withstand a tremendous discomfort or repress a gruesome memory. “And I want to stop calling it drinks. I want you. Just…you. We’ll see what happens after that. Okay?”
I didn’t want to pretend I could find a way for this to work without my life running off the rails, but I didn’t want to say no either. My hands roamed over his chest and shoulders and I nodded. “Fine,” I said. “But you suggested I was using you, and I’m not okay with that. I hate that you entertained that thought for more than one hot second, and you entertained it so hard you came down here to ask.”
“I never believed it,” he murmured. “Never. But when you don’t talk to me I invent my own stupid explanations.”
“Just to clarify, you’renotsaying I’m a slutty whore?”
“Sweetness, you can be my slutty whore whenever you want, and I’m telling you right now, I’ll worship you for it.” His thumbs brushed under my eyes and he frowned. “I already worship you. You get that, right?”
