“Tap my cheek and tell me if you want me to stop or slow down,” he said instead.
“Okay.” She was still looking a little…panicked, he would say? He didn’t know what to make of the expression on her face, even if that was definitely heat in her eyes, even if her breaths were coming in quick. He took one step to her and she stiffened. “Wait! Do you have condoms?”
He showed her the pack of three he’d purchased on his way home. Lia raised a brow at him.
“Three agad?”
“They were a pack of three!”
“Okay, okay. Lube?” she asked. “This will be so much easier for me if we have it.”
He frowned, because he was sure he had…right.Cal pointed at the bedside dresser beside her bed, which had been beside his. “Bottom drawer.” She blinked at him in confusion before she retrieved the brand-new bottle. “Thatwas me being presumptuous while we were on hiatus. It hasn’t expired yet, I don’t think…”
“You’re right.” Lia said, examining the back of the bottle. “Huh. This is your nightstand?”
“I moved it here because I figured my guest needed one. So can we…” He tugged at the neck of his shirt, ready to pull it upand over his head, when Lia panicked, set the lube aside, and made a little noise.
“Lia, do you not want to have sex with me?” he asked, hands on his hips. Or, what was a less threatening pose? He couldn’t exactly cup his hands to his face like a flower. “We don’t have to. Just because we kissed doesn’t mean…we can do something else. I’ll just need ten minutes for a cold shower. Twenty?”
“Noooo.”
“No? I can’t walk around with this—” He indicated the tent in his pants, which Lia stared at a little too long, her eyes still wide. Her mouth hung open slightly.
“Oh my god!” That was definitely hunger and desire in Lia’s eyes, it flared like a firework in the middle of a song’s big finish. “Ahn Yongjin has a boner. Forme.”
But she shook her head and grabbed a pillow over her head to throw over her eyes, and he was sure he heard her groan something along the lines of “putangina,” “delulu-d too close to the sun,” and “bakit ang gwapo?”
“Bakit gwapo? I think we already talked about this?”
“No!” Lia exclaimed, sitting up suddenly in bed, her legs crossed, her cheeks still flushed, and her lips slightly swollen. “This is just…a little more surreal for me than I expected. But to be super clear. I want to do this with you. Like, not because wow, have sex with your bias?—“
“I'm your sex bias?”
“What? No, not the point! That’s the part tripping me up. You, Cal, whose house I live in and who has bougie taste in grapes, I want. More than once. Several times, actually, because you’re so?—“
She waved a hand at him and he took it as a cue to fill in the blanks. “Hot? Sexy? Fuckable?”
“Sweet,” she finally said, and if Cal could physically want her more, he would explode into a pile of kilig glitter on hisfloors, which would be hell on the carpet but so fucking worth it. “You’re sweet, and I can’t believe that you, the guy I’ve had a crush on sinceforever,is also the guy that sees me, and I never ever feel like I have ever beenseen.”
Her next breath was a shudder, and he sat next to her on the bed and took her hand. Did she need to cry?
“See?” She asked him, as if he’d asked her a question. She squeezed his hand back. “This is just a lot for me. And it’s new. Sleeping with you means something to me. It will always mean something to me, regardless of what happens between us, and I just need a second to get used to it.”
He didn’t know why anyone on this goddamn earth would think she wasn’t worth a traffic jam. Why would she feel like she wasn’t worthy of being wanted, because Cal wanted her more than anything.
He cupped his hand on her cheek. “May I kiss you?”
She nodded, and he did. Cal didn’t have the right words to say to her to fix how she felt about this. And if this night ended with him in a cold shower, he was fine with it. But he wished he knew what to say to make it better, easier for her. He could get a crowd to get up off their feet, get entire rooms to jump and sing with him, but in this, he was wholly unconfident.
“What can I do?” he asked her.
And he had to admit, even she seemed a little surprised when she said, “Take off your shirt.” If only for his cock to get even harder when she added, “Oppa, juseyo?”
Fuck. He hadn’t even known that he would be into that. But it also meant that he was finally able to take off his shirt, tossing it aside as Lia leaned back to rest her palms behind her.
“Just…unbutton your jeans and kiss me,” she said, tugging at the front of her shirt, held closed by a flimsy little linen tie. “Please.”
“Gladly.” Cal indulged her request with a deep kiss, smoothing his hand over the exposed flesh of her belly, smoothing his palm there until his hand was on her waist, and he used that as leverage to push her back higher into the bed. He slid his knee between them and used that to open her legs as he crawled higher over her, kissing as much of her as he could.
