“What?”
“Conjugality,” she says. “It’s sort of like marriage, but not really.”
“Like conjugal visits in prison?”
“Sure,” she says. “I mean, we’re talking about sex without romance. Marriage without love.”
“I do love you.” The words leave my mouth before I’ve fully thought them through. “And I think you love me, too, right?”
Should I be offended by the alarm in her expression?
“Uh—”
“Not in a mushy way,” I hurry to explain. “In a friendly way. The way friends love each other or parents love their kids or—” I clear my throat. “The other kind of love—I’m not really capable of that.”
She’s back to looking at me like I’m spouting Yiddish, and she probably has a point. “All right,” she says. “How about smartnership? A cerebral partnership. A marriage of the minds.”
“Huh.” It’s not terrible. Should we be aiming higher than “not terrible,” or is that an okay place to land? “That does have a nice ring to it.”
Sarah nibbles her last carrot stick and glances toward the bar. “The line still hasn’t gone down.”
“Maybe I should.”
She turns her attention back to me. “Get in line for me?”
“No.” I hold her gaze as a jolt of lust shoots straight into my soap box. “Go down.”
“Wha—”
“On you.”
“Oh.” Her cheeks pinken just a little, but she doesn’t break eye contact.
I lean closer, wanting to be sure she understands. “I haven’t stopped thinking about tasting you,” I tell her. “Feeling you explode on my tongue.”
She gives a soft little whimper as the baby carrot drops from her fingers. I pick it up and set it on her empty plate, which I stack on top of mine and set on the bistro table beside us.
“I want to feel you clenching around my fingers again,” I whisper. “I want to bury my face between your legs and hear you screaming my name.”
There’s a flush creeping up from her chest to her throat, moving through her as my words penetrate. If I learned nothing else last night, it’s that Sarah still loves dirty talk. She told me in college, but I wasn’t sure that was still her thing.
I’m so glad it is. I may not be one for flowery prose and romantic declarations, but I can definitely deliver on that front.
The flush is creeping higher, and I can tell by the way she just licked her lips that she’s imagining my tongue on her. That she’s remembering what it feels like to have me lick my way slowly along her seam.
“Now you’re really thinking about it.” I lean close, letting my lips brush her ear. “I’m dying to swirl my tongue around that sweet little clit until you go off like a firecracker.”
“Oh my God.” Her hand finds mine under the table, and she squeezes hard. I wonder if she knows she’s doing it. “Don’t stop.”
I’m not sure if she means the dirty talk or if she’s so caught up in what I’m describing that she’s playing along. “Did you like that last night when I used my fingers?” I ask. “Or do you want it softer, just the tongue?”
Her hair brushes my lips as she nods. “Fingers,” she says, practically a groan. “I loved what you were doing last night.”
“How many? One or two?”
“Two,” she whispers. “Two and your tongue.”
A couple brushes past us wearing matching devil costumes, and I’m thankful this ridiculous soap box is hiding the growing evidence of my arousal. I’m thankful the pulse of music around us is covering the dirty words we’re whispering to each other, but the flush on Sarah’s face leaves little doubt what’s running through her mind.
