It takes me several more seconds to realize that she’s still working her clit, fingers rubbing and circling as she bites her lower lip and stares up at me while I start to go soft inside. I don’t think and barely breathe because if I do it might be too much, the way I can feel her muscles twitching around my exquisitely sensitive dick until suddenly she clenches again, her head going back. It’s just this side of painful, but I stay in her because she asked me to.
When it’s over, she takes a deep breath, moves her hand, and looks up at me.
“Thank you,” she says, and I make sure I grab the base of the condom before I pull out.
Afterward,there’s a minute. Sixty whole seconds where we lie together, in my bed, on my pillows, and don’t say anything. Madeline’s on her back, still breathing hard, her face pink and her blue hair sticking to her forehead.
And she’s grinning at me. Laughing, almost, one arm draped over her head, lazy and carefree. The winter sunlight through the blinds is bright, but she’s brighter, like I’m staring at the sun. It hurts to look at her. Breathing feels alien.
Finally she levers herself up on one elbow, still in all her naked glory, looks at my bedside clock, and collapses back into the sheets.
“I should go,” she says. “I’m already late.”
“We can’t do this again,” I tell her, and she grimaces a little, looks down at the sheets.
“I know,” she huffs. “I’m sorry. This was such stupid timing?—”
“At all, I mean.” That gets her attention. She goes still, waiting. I sit up so I don’t have to look at her. “I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s too hard.”
I swing my feet over the edge of my bed, run my hands through my hair so it’s not too wild, and stand. She hasn’t made a noise, and I think, she knows now, and that should be good enough to scare her off. Madeline never wantedmorefrom me, so that admission ought to be enough.
“Oh,” she finally says. “Right. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Good point. It’s—yeah. Too much, all this.” She clears her throat. “Do you mind if I use your bathroom?”
“No, of course. Yeah. It’s right through there,” I tell her, giving directions even though she was here for most of the day yesterday. While she’s in there, Zorro pushes past the curtain that serves as my bedroom door, sits, and sniffs the air haughtily.
“You can justaskif we fucked again. You don’t have to be a dick about it,” I say, and hemrrpsin response. I pull on boxers, then sit on my bed. Water is running in the bathroom. “I made a good choice. You proud of me?”
And as much as cats are assholes all the time, as much as I’m pretty sure Zorro would snack on my body within hours if I died, he comes over and rubs his face against my leg. He’s purring like an engine.
“Thanks, bud,” I murmur, and then Madeline comes out of the bathroom and says “Bathroom’s free!” as cheerfully as I’ve ever heard her speak, so we swap and I close the door behind me.
When I come out, she’s left. I know it doesn’t matter because I’m going to see her again—and again and again, for another whole fuckingweek, but—I wish she’d said something. I wish a lot of things.
Zorro’s sitting by the windows, majestic and green-eyed in the sunlight, so I go sit by him and stroke his back for a while. He lets me.
“I’m working on it, buddy,” I say, just to use my voice. “I’m working on it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MADELINE
I’m in the car—mydad’s Subaru—and backing out of my parking spot before I realize I still don’t have my scarf. You know, the scarf I deliberately left last night so I could go back over to Javier’s this morning and get fucked like I’ve been thinking about for months?
It’s still in his apartment. So, now I get to head back to the vacation rental where my dad, Paloma, and Bastien are waiting for me. I’ve got no explanation for the forty minutes I’ve been gone, I probably smell like sex, and I don’t even have my scarf.
For half a second I contemplate going back in, but I think I prefer the alternatives. Freezing slowly to death, for example, or getting so cold that I jump into a lake of boiling lava, or accidentally stabbing all my fingers off trying to knit a new scarf because there is absolutely nofuckingway I’m going back in unless it’s at gunpoint.
Too hard. I take a deep breath and grit my teeth and shift into Drive, ease the car out of the building’s parking lot. How could it be easier than me showing up, getting on my knees, and then leaving without a fuss? That has to be the lowest-maintenance form of sex that isn’t masturbation, and if that’s too much—if that’s somehowstilltoo much…
At the exit of the parking lot, I take a deep breath, crack a window, and press my cold fingers against my eyes because I can’t look like anything’s wrong when I get back. It’s fine. I’m fine. I don’t even know why I’m freaking out like this—it was fun, but it was never anything more.
And if I ever had any brief moments of stupidity when I thought otherwise, well, that’s my problem.
“We’re being paid off, right?”Bastien says from the passenger seat of my dad’s car. “My mom and Gerald wanted to have somealone time, and so we’re being sent off to go bowling?”
“Errgh,” Thalia and I both say, pretty much in unison.
“Sorry.” We’re all silent for a moment: Bastien and me in the front, Thalia in the back. “They did have the fireplace going, though.”
