I try to soften it. “It’s not nice here. And I’m just going to be doing maths. All night. And you should get some sleep.”
“I don’t care. I like doing it.” His smile is so shy. It’s like kicking a Labrador puppy.
I need to tell him he can’t stay. I need to tell him he’s not welcome here. That I don’twanthim here. But the words are stuck like my mouth’s full of toffee.
He laughs, the way a person does when they’re swimming through mortification. He dips his head and glances back at the room. Towards his friends. Towards his old life. Towards Jon.
My finger snaps out and hooks his. “Don’t take him home.”
His eyebrows drop, like he’s having trouble processing my words. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“I don’t want you to.” Understanding sharpens the burgeoning light in his eyes. “We need to talk,” I tell him weakly.
“Yeah, we do,” he says, his voice breathy while he takes a little step closer to me. It sets my body on fire. “You could always come back with me? To my place?”
Fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
His lips are so kissable I could die. Never in a million years would I have dreamed of a man like this propositioning me. In fact, I haven’t had sex in literally years, and he’s everything my fevered daydreams could imagine. What I’d give for one night with him.
But I have to rebuff him. “I really need to do this. If I can find a way to solve this problem…”
“I understand.” He adds a shy, broken smile. “Maybe… when it’s not so late?”
I nod fiercely.
It feels like he’s just about to step away, when he scrunches his eyes shut tight and breathes out, “Maybe you could come see me tomorrow?”
The perfect solution to any problem: put it off until later.
“Yeah,” I say far too quickly. “I’ll call you.”
“Do you still remember the number?”
I rattle off the digits automatically, almost as though I meditate on them hourly, which maybe I do, and his smile grows big and real. He reaches forward, takes my other hand, and looks down at it, running small circles over my fingers with his thumb. His eyes flick up, they lock with mine for one heated moment, then he leans forward and kisses me.
August kissingme.
Not my desperate jealousy at a concert. Not hours of pent-up frustration working itself out in one rash move. It’s a sweet kiss, and a slow kiss. A kiss that says he trusts me to call, to come and see him tomorrow, and that whatever happens after that is okay.
His kiss is so unassuming it makes my black and withered soul want to crumple all around him, hold him safe inside that nasty cocoon, warding off the myriad horrors of the world that could fall all over a man like him.
A man like I used to be. When I still had my soft edges.
My hand tightens on his, and I pull it to my waist, desperate, even for this short time, for his touch on my body. Maybe it will be the last time I ever feel it. I want to keep it, burn it into my skin, think of it to keep me warm for all the empty and loveless years that I know will follow this.
“August,” he says softly, breaking the kiss, dipping his head to mine. “This is madness.”
Maybe it is. But I catch his lips the second the words escape. One kiss, two, his hands drawing up my sides as he steps backwards, pulling me, until his back hits the wall. He drops his hand down to my stomach, fingers grazing my skin with a tentative distance that makes me lean into him. That simple touch has me getting hard for him. The way I wish I could close the door on all of them, drop to my knees, enjoy him right here.
My kisses move to his neck, giving me a second to try to reassure him. “I don’t want you to think I’m sending you home because I don’t want you here.”
“I’m getting that impression,” he laughs out, moving for my lips again. “But you have science to do.”
“I do have science to do,” I protest beneath another kiss.
He bucks his hips forward, grinding into me. “And that’s fucking hot.”
