“And I’ve walked right into your trap,” Javi says, putting both hands into his pockets, letting his fall head back. “Ohno.”
“Grr,” I say, fake-snarling, a totally normal thing to do. Javi just laughs, and I tap my foot against his, and I don’t mind feeling a little predatory right now. “I was just taking a break. Not from you,” I say quickly as he opens his mouth. “From people.”
“Should I be insulted that I’m not people?” he asks, clearly feeling anything but insulted.
“No.”
“Good. I wasn’t planning on it,” he says, and then there are footsteps around the corner. We both move our feet back as one of his cousins—Sandy?—appears.
“Is this the bathroom line?” she asks, and we both explain at once, over top of each other, that no, the bathroom is free—we’re just standing here for other reasons having to do with the pictures on the walls (me) and something to do with the architecture of this interesting prewar house (Javi). Sandy just nods and goes into the bathroom. Javi and I look at each other. He clears his throat.
“If you go down to that end of the hallway, the wainscoting is still original,” he says in what I have to assume is a Museum Tour Guide voice. “It’s beautifully painted in an interesting example of post-classical art.”
He nods toward the end of the hallway, which has no wainscoting, but which does have three doors that look like they lead to bedrooms.
“Ilovepost-classical wainscoting,” I say and follow his lead.
Javi pulls me into a bedroom,the floor crowded with two air mattresses and sleeping bags. He kicks one aside, then pushes me up against the closed door and kisses me.
I’ve been thinking about his mouth for a month, and this is somehow even better than I remembered: slow and warm and intense. One hand tilts my face up, the other spreads wide over my rib cage and presses me back.
It’s nearly silent, except for the sounds of our lips together, and those seem so loud. I try to swallow the needy little noises I want to make, though I don’t quite succeed because Javi pulls back after a bit, both of us breathing raggedly, and whispers, “Shh.”
“Youshh,” I whisper back, but he’s already got his teeth on my earlobe and I have to gasp through clenched teeth so I don’t make a noise.
“God, Madeline.” His voice is a little shaky. “I want to eat you alive.”
His hand is still cupping my face, and I grab his wrist so I can suck his thumb into my month, run my tongue over it with the knuckle between my teeth. Javi braces himself with his forearm over my head, pulls back, and stares at me with something like awe.
The blinds are down and the lights aren’t on, and with his back to the windows it’s dark enough that I can’t tell where the black of his pupil turns into the deep brown of his iris. But I can see that his hair’s in disarray and hear that he’s breathing like there’s not enough oxygen in the air. He looks down to where I’ve got his thumb in my mouth, and I suck a little harder. Javi swallows, and his breathing hitches, and slowly, gently, he pushes it in.
I take it. I tilt my head back and let my eyelids lower, the slight taste of salt on my tongue. He stops when my teeth are at the second knuckle, just hard enough tofeel, the pad of his thumb on my back of my tongue. I suck a little harder, move my tongue against it—listen to his ragged inhale—and swallow.
He groans. It’s quiet, just a few notes from deep in his chest, more of a creak than a groan, but it’s there. His eyelids flutter closed for half a second. I can feel my heart pounding through every part of my body—in mybones, I swear—so turned on my skin is heated. If he put his thigh between my legs right now, I think that friction alone might make me come.
Thankfully—his whole family is still on the other side of this door—he doesn’t. Instead, he pulls his hand back slowly, the pad of his thumb pressing on my tongue, dragging softly over my bottom lip, and without breaking eye contact he puts his thumb into his own mouth and sucks it clean.
It shouldn’t be hot. It is. We kiss one more time—so gentle it’s almost tentative, which is good because I can’t take much else—and then he steps back, kicks a sleeping bag aside, and sits in a desk chair. He scrubs his hands over his face.
I smooth my dress and my hair and go sit on the bed. Our knees are touching and nothing else, but each brush still feels electric. It’s a secret, cozy silence, just us existing in the same room for once.
Finally Javi takes a deep breath and shifts in the chair, glancing around. “I don’t think there’s wainscoting in here,” he says.
I laugh so suddenly that I snort and have to clap a hand over my mouth. “Wow,” I finally manage. “Okay, wow, that’s what we’re talking about.”
“What else would it be?” He grins, his knee knocking against mine.
“Is wainscoting when there’s fancy stuff on the lower half of the wall or fancy carvings where the wall meets the ceiling?”
We both glance up at the same time. “I thought it was the lower half of the wall, but now I’m less sure,” he admits.
“Well, this room doesn’t have either. And I should probably letpost-classicalslide, huh.”
He makes a face, twisting in the chair, our knees still touching. “I was horny and trying to remember words from my art history class last semester,” he says. “Sorry if my mind wasn’t entirely on architectural details.”
I’m tempted to ask what his mindwason. I’m also tempted to point out that inventing architectural details was his idea to begin with.
“Was this your childhood bedroom?” I ask instead. My phone buzzes again in my pocket. It’s probably Ben, and I ignore it becauseice skatingis such a…date thing, and we’ve never done date things.
