“Nuh-uh.” I didn’t fool around in college, not until I’d met Christopher, and then it’d been—Stop thinking about him, about that fucking ring,I scold myself, gripping Aiden’s shoulders and pulling him up toward me, so I can get my mouth on his again.
“Doesn’t allow for...” He pauses, sucks in a breath when he feels my hands tuck beneath his waistband to grab his ass and pull him closer. “Much movement,” he finishes, and his voice sounds like it did this morning. Gruff and a little angry andoh, God, I want him to say everything to mein that voice.
“We’ll manage,” I whisper. He pushes himself up on one hand, careful not to hit his head on the bunk above, and uses his other hand to work at the buttons of my flannel, his eyes on the skin he’s revealing, little by little. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man so focused on a task like this, so intent on just this scrap of skin, when it’s damn near guaranteed he’s about to see thewhole package.
When he spreads the sides of it, revealing my bra—nude, no frills, because I’m atcamp, for God’s sake—he takes a deep breath, reaches out his hand, and traces the line of soft skin above the cups, watching in rapt fascination as my nipples peak underneath the fabric. Never have I so acutely wanted a man to touch me, lick me, suck me there. There’s an actual, physical ache. “Jesus Christ,” he says. “You make me feel like a teenager.”
“That’s—nice?”
“It’s not nice if I don’t settle down.” He bends his head, licks across the skin he just touched, and I arch my back in frustrated desire. “Remember that old t-shirt?” he asks, against my skin, and it’s taking me a second to do any kind of verbal processing when all I can think about is getting both of us naked. “The one you got at Goodwill?”
Right, the old camp t-shirt. I open my mouth to answer, but all that comes out is a low moan when Aiden lets his tongue dip, just a little, beneath the fabric of my bra.
“I got so fucking pissed at you about that shirt. It was almost see-through.”
“Let me guess,” I say, my voice thin, my breaths coming so fast from just this little bit of foreplay. “It drove you crazy.”
He lifts his head, pushes himself up so he can kiss me again. “It’s like that with you,” he says. “Half the time I don’t know if I want to yell at you or fuck you.”
I raise my head to kiss him, to lick across his bottom lip, to tug on it gently with my teeth—a move he answers with a thrust of his hips that’s hot, impatient, involuntary. I forget about every single complication this might introduce. I forget about everything but that hardness between his legs, the wetness between mine.
“Well,” I say, releasing his lip and letting a slow smile spread across mine, “you can yell at me later, if you want.”
But all Aiden seems to want now is our clothes off, our bodies closer, and our mouths otherwise occupied. Between desperate, hungry kisses, we strip each other—a mess of limbs, a few run-ins with the rails of the bunk above us, and one frustrated grunt—from me, unfortunately—when I struggle to push Aiden’s jeans from his hips. He smiles against my lips and hunches his way out of the bunk, standing to the side and leaving me naked, cool air from the loss of his body pebbling my skin and drawing my nipples tighter. He says nothing, only tracks his eyes over my body, top to toe, as he pushes his jeans and underwear down. For the few seconds it takes him to step out of them, I return the favor, propping myself up on my elbows to take in every gorgeous, hard inch of him—and when his eyes meet mine, they’re bright with something I’ve never seen there before, a look that’s somehow both carefree and anticipatory. The smile that curves his mouth is part playful, part predatory—in the best possible way—and for a second all I can think is,There,therehe is.
But I don’t want to dwell on that thought right now, so I reach out a hand to him, pull him by his wrist toward me, a move he has to accommodate with a quick fold of his body to fit in the space above mine, and when his naked skin meets mine, that’sit—we’re done in, more frantic than we were even on the way in here, his knee moving my legs apart, my hips thrusting up to meet his even as he pushes them back down and works his hand between us to touch right where I’ve been hot and needing him for what feels like days, weeks, months, for-fucking-ever. “Jesus, Zo,” he breathes out, his fingers deft, tracing thewetness there.
“Later,” I say again, and he laughs against my neck, a gentle rumble that sends a new shot of heat between my legs. “I’m not gonna yell at you aboutthis,” he says, and I laugh too, grabbing for the strip of condoms he tossed beside the bed. My fingers shake as I tear the packet, my head tipping back as he finds a spot between my legs that must’ve been invented in the last thirty seconds because it has certainly never feltthatgood there.
He watches me while I roll the condom down his length, closes his eyes briefly when I stroke him, and I like that small concession to vulnerability so much that I take advantage, take control. I move his busy hand away from me, move my hips up and guide him toward my entrance, and when he pushes inside me the noise he makes is more arousing than any single word he could have said—a gusting, groaning sigh of relief, a noise like he’s set down a thousand pounds of weight, and it makes mecrazy, that noise. Without thinking I’m pulling his mouth toward mine, tasting that noise, meeting every one of his deep, sure thrusts with my hips. It’s fast—I knew it’d be fast, this first time, already I hope not the only time—but he’s not impatient. He’s moving inside me in a rhythm that’s exactly right, banking a fire within me and waiting, waiting,waitingto ignite it fully.
My legs clasped tight around his hips, one of his hands on my ass, the other braced above me on the bunk frame, my skin and his already slick with sweat. “Aiden,” I say, because I can’t wait—I’m too desperate, and he’s too good at this, and he answers me with a thrust so deep and perfect andthere—there’s that explosion, that fire he’s made me wait for, and we come together, panting and relieved and probably both shocked out of our minds.
Because I can tell already. This fire is going to be hard to put out.
Chapter 10
Aiden
When I wake up the next morning, it’s almost like every other morning I’ve woken up with Zoe in the cabin. Her, up in her bunk on her stomach, arms curled above her head and around her pillow. Me, down in mine, flat on my back, with the kind of morning wood I forgot was possible. The light is low, the cabin quiet except for the sounds of our breathing. My bare arms and chest are chilled where they’re exposed to the air, the room always running cooler at night.
But there are differences, too.
Across the way and above me, Zoe’s normally silky-straight hair is mussed, a tangle of it resting against her cheek. Underneath the blanket that she’s got pulled all the way up past her shoulders, she’s not wearing her usual pajamas—loose gray pants, a fitted tank top that she covers with a matching gray hoodie until she gets up in her bunk. Instead, she’d climbed up in her panties and that squirrel t-shirt, her limbs loose and clumsy, her soft smile the last thing I saw before I shut off the light. Separate beds, we’d agreed, both of us deferring to their small size, but probably also deferring to the rules we’ve set: just sex, nothing else.
Where I’m lying in my bunk, I only have to shift slightly to feel the way the rough sheets set off a tingle against the line of faint scratches that start at my right shoulder blade and trail a few inches down, the mark from the second time Zoe came around my cock. And that morning wood I’ve got? Right now it doesn’t feel so much like the kind of useless insult I’ve been waking up to for the last two weekends. It feels like my dick is reporting for duty, like it knows that the three times I fucked Zoe last night were warm-ups, that we’ve got a lot of time and sexual tension to work off, and we might as well getstarted early.
I close my eyes, take a deep breath, try to settle down. Beneath all the desperation I feel to get inside her again, there’s a thread of unease knowing that I haven’t had that kind of sex in years, the kind of sex where your whole entire body forgets everything. I’d tried for that kind of sex, especially once I’d known Aaron was in trouble. So much of my headspace was taken up with him—where could I get him detoxed; should I move home; did my parents know what to search for in his room; what was his heart function like; how was his liver holding up—that I’d hoped sex might be a release, an empty-headed break from theconstant worry.
But it hadn’t been, not really. The feeling of relief would last only about as long as the event itself—but pretty soon after, I’d be worried and guilty again.You don’t deserve any of this,I’d think, even while I’d made my excuses for why I couldn’t stay overnight, explanations for when I’d call again.You don’t deserve this, because your brother is dying, and nothing you’ve donehas stopped it.
But with Zoe? With Zoe, there’d been nothing but the two of us. Even in this cabin, stuffed with memories I can’t look at full in the face, I hadn’t thought of anything but her. The smell of her skin. The way her body shuddered underneath mine when I teased the underside of her breast with my tongue. The thready, gasping breath she’d taken when I’d pushed inside her for the first time. When we’d finally worn ourselves out—Zoe collapsed against my chest, my hand fisted in the hair at the nape of her neck—she’d breathed a quietOh my Godagainst my neck, and I could’ve fallen asleep right then, not sparing a thought for all the reasons this was probably aterrible idea.
I hear her shift in her bunk and make the soft exhalation that means she’s waking up. On autopilot, I swing my legs from the bed, stand on wobbly, fatigued legs, and try not to laugh at the way my dick tents my shorts, so pronounced it almost looks like a gag from a bad movie. I forgot, last night, in our sleepy, delirious tumbles back to our individual beds, to put my clothes for the morning on the bunk above me, so I stumble over to the pile of them on the floor, pulling my jeans on over my shorts with a quiet groan and shoving my feet into my untied boots before I tug on my sweatshirt and head out onto the stoop to wait, same as I doevery morning.
It’s foggy this morning, but there’s sun waiting behind it—it’s the kind of soft, misty swirl that feels like nature’s cleaning crew has shown up to freshen the air before the day begins. It’s even colder than yesterday, when we’d gone out to the zip line, and my body hurts with wanting to go back inside, to pull her out of her bed and put her into mine. But I’ve got no idea where we’ll go from here. In the half-light of the day I’ve got no idea if she’s waking up and thinking it was all a mistake, that we’ve crossed a line that’s too far away from pretend. When I’d gotten back from the infirmary last night—Jesus Christ, I broke into a building so I could fuck her—I’d thought she might’ve changed her mind, a flash of hesitation in her eyes before she’d made me her offer.We only do this here.
Inside I hear the rush of the plumbing, the toilet flushing, and a few seconds later I hear that she’s started the shower. She’ll be quick about it; she always is, so I don’t have to wait out here too long. But maybe I ought to walk this off, not make it weird when we see each other the first time. If last night’s the only night we have like that, I’ll make it work. We’ll go back to the way things were before. Maybe this urge I feel to be with her (and, let’s be honest, this boner I have) will wear off naturally. One night of the best sex of my life but I’ve got to keep focused. I’ve got to make sure this camp is myfirst priority.
