I watched as her fingers skittered over her clit. I felt the difference immediately, her tissues turning molten, her skin flushing, and her breaths coming rapidly.
Nothing separated us but it wasn’t enough for me. I needed more, a type ofmoreI didn’t believe I’d be able to quantify, and I lifted Lauren’s hand to my mouth. I gazed into her emerald eyes, searching for the flecks of gold while I sucked her arousal from her fingers.
“Tell me what you want,” I whispered.
“I want you to come on my—”
“No,” I said. “No. Tell me what youwant.”
She dropped her head to my shoulder, evading, rocking faster and faster until the pulses of her orgasm rolled over my shaft, her walls clamped around me, and she cried out against my neck. I lived for the soft whimpers and moans that heralded her orgasms, and I wanted them to exist in a secret place that only I knew.
“Tell me,” I repeated, and it sounded all wrong—demanding, yet desperate.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just want you.”
Pumping into her, my orgasm barreled down my spine, snapping my corded muscles and wiping every thought from my mind but one: Lauren. I spoke mindless obscenities into her lips and neck and hair, stopping just before I revealed everything else I wanted.
Lauren lifted her head, and before her lips brushed over my battered jaw, her eyes flashed to mine, anxious and confused and so fucking beautiful. She was all sweet kisses and tiny purring whimpers, and as I sensed myself hardening again, I led her to the bedroom and buried myself in her until we fell asleep.
I woke up around four-thirty, and I stared at her in the blue morning darkness, seeing everything she wouldn’t say. She slept with her head on my chest, her legs twisted between mine, and her hand over my heart, and I wanted it to be enough.
I knew it wasn’t.
Chapter Twenty-Three
LAUREN
“You think Icould pull off this look?” Shannon’s elbow grazed my arm, and she handed off the magazine featuring an assortment of long skirts. “I can rock pencil skirts every day of the week, but those are tough for me.” She gestured to her frame. “This height doesn’t work with everything.”
Too lost in my own thoughts and pedicure-induced bliss to think critically about her question, I nodded and handed the magazine back. “Yeah, definitely try.”
“Are you crazy? Those skirts are the exclusive domain of nuns and peasants,” Sam snapped. He tore the magazine from Shannon’s hands and sent me an irritable glare. “And if there’s one thing you’re not, Shan, it’s a nun.”
“What about weekends?” she asked. “I could wear one of those jersey skirts to brunch or the market, or,” she gestured to the nail salon, “out for a Saturday afternoon pedi.”
Sam shifted in his massage chair and rolled his eyes. “Who do you think you are? Stevie Nicks? Stop it with the long skirts, short girl.”
They continued arguing about skirts while I paged through a dated copy ofReal Simple.
Our regular pedicure program usually focused on the important stuff: Shannon’s disasters in dating, new fashion trends never intended for petite women, and whether high heels were actually screwing up our feet. We’d touch on the friends of our twenties who were flocking toward marriage, babies, and suburbia, and our refusal to live beyond the reach of the T subway lines, and the infrequency with which we truly unplugged from our hectic careers.
Shannon and I were built alike. We shared a bone-deep dedication to our work, the belief we’d each be unstoppable if we put in enough hours, and the fuzzy faith that we’d be able to postpone our lives—that was, the actual living portions—for a few more years.
Sam joined us occasionally, and when he wasn’t busy crafting that manwhore façade, he was comical and fascinatingly neurotic, and on his way to becoming one of my new best friends.
Shannon considered the skirts again and snapped a photo of the page with her phone. “It’s not like I have time for shopping anyway,” she mumbled.
“You’re not too busy,” Sam said. “No one is ever too busy for anything. It’s a matter of priorities.”
The world through his eyes was linear and ordered, and everything fit into proper, square compartments. It was only a matter of moving those little boxes around and making it all fit. He worked long hours but when he left the office, the office left him. Calls went to voicemail, emails waited until the next morning. It was that easy for Sam.
There was even a tidy compartment for women. He wasn’t especially forthcoming with details, but it was clear he subscribed to the ‘you sucking my dick in a bathroom stall doesn’t require me to learn your name’ dogma. Seeing him here, his jeans rolled up to his knees, an oatmeal skin treatment painted on his calves, and a heated argument about skirts underway, I couldn’t imagine the same man as a cavalier player.
He went out most nights, hitting all the see-and-be-seen spots. He received invites to the swankiest events and sipped whiskey from the comfort of VIP lounges, and his name appeared in Boston’s gossip and society pages alongside socialites and local celebrities. And yet I knew he was more insecure than most tween girls.
Shannon turned toward me with a grin. “I’m reprioritizing. Want to go shopping? No, better idea: let’s shop and then hit Bin 26 for wine. I’ve been lusting over a new white blend.”
“I am not interested in any of that,” he muttered.
