Neither of us says a word onthe walk back.
Aiden stays close behind me, close enough that any change in my pace or gait—slowing to push a branch out of the way, turning sideways to step over a log—puts his body against mine. Brief, hot touches that make me impatient to get in the door.
But when we get there, he sets a hand at my waist and turns me away from where I’m unlocking the door, his palm pressing against the side of my stomach until I’m backed against the wood. “We start here,” he says, leaning down to press his nose against my throat, just above the notch of my collarbone. “Jesus,” he breathes. “What do you smell like?”
I blink into the darkness, realize I’ve used my free hand, the one not holding the lantern, to grab his forearm. I’m clutching it like it’s the only thing keeping me upright. “I don’t know,” I murmur, shuddering at the way his breath tickles me there. “Probably marshmallows and smoke. And pheromones.”
“No,” he says, and traces his nose up, his bottom lip dragging against my neck. “You smell like something. I don’t know what. You smell so fucking good; it drives me crazy.”
“Like how smart I am?” I whisper. He’s pressing a line of kisses from where my earlobe meets my jaw across to where my lips wait,ready for him.
“Every single thing about you,” he says, right against my mouth, and just like that,we’re kissing.
We’ve skipped the preliminaries—that much is clear. Every kiss I’ve ever had at my door, after a date, started gentle, a little searching—Is this okay? Do you think you want more?—but Aiden and I settled that out by the smoldering fire, and this kiss says so. His mouth is hot against mine, his tongue licking into my open mouth. It feels like it goes on forever, this kiss, long enough that Aiden’s brought himself closer and closer, long enough that we’ve managed to arrange our bodies so that the hardness beneath his jeans meets the space I’ve made between my legs, long enough that I feel wet and empty. My hand left his forearm as soon as our lips met—I’ve reached up to tangle it in all that gorgeous, dark hair, one of the first things I’d noticed about him, and I’m tugging at it, telling him, the only way I can, that we needtoget inside.
At first I don’t notice that my other hand is suddenly free to join in the fun, until I realize that the place where Aiden had been touching me—right at my rib cage, frustratingly short of the underside of my breast—is absent of the delicious pressure he’d put there. “I’m going to need to take this,” he says, pulling away, the lantern in his hand now. He’s breathing hard, but he takes another step back. There’s no place now where our bodies are touching, and I bite my lip to keep from whimperingin frustration.
“What?”
“I’ve got to go—” he begins, and I really do let out that whimper.
“Aiden. I’ll kill you if you leave me here right now. I’ll kill you, bring you back to life, and then kill you again.”
He grins, a particular smile I’ve never seen on him. Had I thought he was good looking before? Because that was the understatement of mylife. “Ineed supplies.”
I look down at the bulge in his jeans. “Your supplies seem fine.”
“Condoms.”
I thud my head against the door, closing my eyes. I have to take a deep breath to settle myself, to manage the ache between my legs. “What man your age doesn’t carry condoms? I’m so mad I don’t even want todo it anymore.”
He says nothing, and when I open my eyes, he’s looking at me, hisbrow furrowed.
“Oh, please,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I still want to do it.” I grab the front of his shirt, pull him toward me, and kiss him again. “Hurry.” He allows himself one nip of my lower lip, a quick pass of his tongue to soothe it.
“I’ll hurry.”
Once he’s gone and I’m in the cabin, though, I’m nervous, impatient. If he’s driving all the way to Coleville, it’ll be forty minutes until he’s back, and by then he’ll probably remember what a terrible idea this is, what a terrible ideaIam, the woman who sat across from his devastated parents at a conference table and negotiated the kind of deal that makes people hate lawyers. Even if he doesn’t remember that, he’ll probably think of all the ways I annoy him, or all the ways sleeping together could fuck up his plans to get this camp. I go to the sink, look at myself in the mirror. My cheeks are flushed, my lips swollen. My hair looks like I teased it in back. I reach up a hand to smooth it, catching the winking light of that thin gold band, the small pearl that looks far too sweet for me.
What am Idoing?I tug the ring off, setting it gently on the small metal ledge underneath the mirror. It doesn’t matter if that ring’s just a placeholder. That ring is everything I do not do. That ring is complication. That ring is strings-attached sex. I should know that better than anyone.
But it’s hard to keep that train of thought when my lips feel warm and bruised from Aiden’s firm kiss, when I can still feel the echo of his hands on me. When the cabin door bangs open, Aiden standing there with a strip of condoms in his hand and a hard, determined expression on his face, I feel a gust of relief, or maybe it’s just the cold air from outside. Either way, I’m sogladhe’s back. “That didn’t take long.”
“I broke into the infirmary,” he says, a little out of breath. “Picked the lock.”
“They keep condoms in there?”
He shrugs, tucking them into his back pocket. “Safety first.” He looks at me, eyes moving up and down my body, and I don’t know if I imagine the way his glance stutters, for the briefest of seconds, on my left hand. He steps toward me, and same as yesterday afternoon, Aiden’s hand reaches up to stroke the skin of my cheek. This time, he doesn’t trail off—he tucks his fingers into my hair, lets his palm cup the side of my face, a touch so gentle and so unlike the way the two of us are together that I drop my eyes in embarrassment. “Zo. It’s all right if you’ve changed your mind.”
“No,” I say, and then, more firmly, “No. But this”—I reach out, tuck the tips of my fingers into the waistband of his jeans, tugging him closer—“we only do this here. Only for the rest of our deal. This is sex, nothing else.” Even as I say it, I feel a pang of regret. But it’s necessary. I’m not stupid—I’msmart as fuck, in fact—and I know this thing between us can’t work in reality, not with all the baggage between us.
“Good,” he says, maybe a little too quick for my liking, but it doesn’t really matter, because half a second later we’re kissing again, my tailbone pressed against the sink, trapped by the press of Aiden’s hips against mine. My hands roam under his shirt, feeling every inch of warm skin that I can, smooth and taut over all the muscles I saw this morning. His body is deliciously unfamiliar to me—I can feel, in the way his trim waist gives way to broad, ridged planes across his back, in the way his biceps stack right up against the bunched, firm muscles of his shoulders, that this body is made forwork, lifting and carrying and hurrying, everything about it efficient.
He runs his hands down my sides, around to my lower back to pull me forward, and then he’s cupping my ass, the backs of my thighs, and with barely an effort he lifts me, my legs around his waist while he turns to walk us into the bunk room. Our kisses are messy, frantic, our teeth clicking together a little as he moves us toward his bunk. Even when it’s the moment for him to set me down, or for me to climb off and get on the bed myself, we stay like that—wrapped up in each other and kissing, our tongues tangling together in a way that almost feels like fighting, my arms tight around his neck, his big hands kneading the flesh at the backs of my legs—hard, electrifying pressure that may well bruise later. I tighten the muscles of my abdomen and curl my pelvis closer to him, a move he answers with a hot, impatient gruntof frustration.
“I’ve never had sex in a twin bed,” I murmur against his lips, and itworks, because he ducks down, lays me on his bed, the smell of his sheets all around me, his body following mine like we’ve done this ahundred times.
“Not even in college?” he asks, pressing his face against my neck, and when I don’t answer right away, he nips the skin at my collarbone, a move that makes my skin flush anewwith pleasure.
