Because then—then Aiden starts totake me apart.
He starts at my mouth, kissing me slow and deep—long, drugging kisses that he only interrupts when I take one of my hands from the rails to touch him. “No,” he says, thrusting his hips against mine, once, and I do what he says. He moves down, teasing the underside of my right breast with his fingers, setting his lips and tongue to my left, and he stays and stays, switching between them, touching and licking and sucking them each until they ache, until I’m straining to bring my legs together, to rub them against each other if he won’t come to me. This is what he wants, I realize, to make me crazy like this, to see how close he can get me to coming just from the hot press of his mouth against my nipple, the pulling, pressing bluntness of his fingertips—and to my surprise, heisgetting me close, closer than I thought possible from just this simple act that I’ve always thought of as a little foreplay, or a little extra incentive during the main event. “Aiden,” I whisper, “please.”
It comes out like a whimper, and his hand is gone from my breast, splayed low on my abdomen so that his fingertips fan out, his thumb crooking down over where I’m wet, where I need him—and then he presses, exactly enough, right there, and I need nothing else, no rubbing or grinding. I justcome, from all the anticipation he’s wrought in me, and it’s long, shuddering, not slow to start but slow to spread all through my limbs, even into my hands, which are gripping the bed so tightly that I can feel his ring pressing hard into my skin.
I wait, breathing hard, for him to strip, to get a condom and get inside me. But he does none of that. He pushes himself lower, not far before he encounters the other end of the metal frame, and he grunts in frustration, barely hesitating before he hooks his arms beneath my knees and lifts, moving me so I lie diagonally across both mattresses. And then he lowers himself, kneeling on the floor, and presses his mouth against me, open and searching. I’m so wet that I tilt my hips back, a shy reflex. “No,” he repeats, bringing me back to him, and it’s what I need to be able to enjoy this—his commitment to it, his moans of pleasure. When one of his hands leaves my hip, I know where it’s gone; I know he’s gripping himself, as turned on as I am. I close my eyes, picturing it, the hand he used to touch me closed over his cock, and I feel another orgasm building—and that’s what he wants. I canfeelhim wanting it, coaxing it from me, and when it comes, when I cry out, one of my heels pressing into the mattress, our pushed together beds splitting apart a little, Aiden groans in relief, licking me softly until the pulses stop.
He stands, stripping his shorts and grabbing a condom, and when he’s covered himself he climbs back onto the bed, putting his back against the wall. It can’t be comfortable—the bar from the bunk has to be cutting him right across the spine—but his jaw is set, his eyes on me as he pats one hand on his thigh. “Here,” he says, drawing me onto his lap even as I’m climbing on, settling myself over him, ready to give him whatever he needs, whatever he wants so that he can feel as good and wrung out as Ifeel right now.
I’m drawn tight from what we’ve already done, and I hold my breath as I lower myself, letting it out slowly only when he’s stretched me enough to get halfway there. He catches my exhale, kissing me, his hands in my hair, and before I know what’s happened I’m right against him, as joined as we can be, our hips moving together. He’s got to be wound up, ready to come any second. I can feel it in the way he holds himself, and I know how to make it happen, another new intimacy I’m realizing that’s between Aiden and me, how well I know his body. If I stroke my hips down, clench themuscles inside…
But he seems to know what I’m planning, and he stops kissing me, cups my jaw, and leans forward so he can whisper in my ear. “One more,” he says, part question and part plea, punctuating it with a graze of teeth over my earlobe.
I shake my head slightly, shuddering at the feel of his stubble on my neck. “I can’t,” I breathe out, tipping my head forward, resting it heavily on his shoulder, sweat on my brow meeting the slick skin that wraps tightly over his muscles.
“Need it,” he says, slowing his hips, letting me set the pace, and when I slide over him slowly, I feel the first stirrings of something new building within, so surprising that I gasp, my breath thin. “I need you,” he says, and with those three words the tension within me ratchets up. I find a new rhythm, one that getsme even closer.
“Oh,” I breathe out, and he pulses inside me, his fingertips digging into my waist harder now. “Aiden, I—” I bite down on my lip, finishing the thought in my head, saying it over and over to myself silently as I come, short and explosive—I love you, I love you, I love you.But even the words in my mind are drowned out, eventually, by Aiden’s release, the rough sawing of his breath, and mine too.
I expect a quick uncoupling. It’s so hot now between us, our skin sticking together, and I haven’t forgotten about what that bar must be doing to Aiden’s back. But before I can make a move off of him, Aiden gathers me close, his arms tightening around my waist, his face pressed against my chest.Say something,I think, to myself or to him; I don’t know which.
But he doesn’t, and after a minute of him holding me, I lean away, gently pulling off of him while he holds the condom. When he moves off the bed, heading toward the bathroom, I see the red stripe left across his back. I imagine touching it and memorizing the indentation that’s left there.
Because I know it’ll be gonein the morning.
Chapter 16
Aiden
I wake up in the crack.
Overnight I’ve pressed close to Zoe, my chest against her back, my arm around her waist, but that means I’m sleeping right where the beds are pushed together, where either my weight or our activities last night have disrupted things, and my hip and shoulder are sinking by degrees, my head cocked awkwardly to get real estate on Zoe’s pillow.
Slowly, so I don’t disturb her, I roll onto my back and move over, missing the warmth of her body and the rich, slightly musky smell of her skin. I turn my head toward her, watch the rise and fall of her body as she breathes in the deep, even pattern of a heavy sleep. At the back of her head, her hair is tousled, some of the fine strands sticking straight up, quivering slightly from the air blowing out of thevent above us.
Zoe, married?I think, as I watch her lying there. My reaction to it—to the initial revelation, and everything she had said after—had been quick, almost violent in its strength, a feeling in my body that sounded likeno. I’m not a barbarian; I don’t have any claim on Zoe’s past or future, but something about the bleak way she’d said it, and the strange, directionless way she’d talked about her past, had made me feel agitated and angry. Who was this fucking guy, fully an adult, marrying a twenty-year-old woman, still in college, dealing with the sudden death of a parent? What kind of dirtbag would take a woman’s inheritance like that? And what was Zoe like back then? Was she like she is now, controlled and sophisticated but with flashes of this irreverent, bold humor? Was she as good at reading people then? Did she chat this guy right out of his bad moods, make him forget everything that made his life feel unmanageable? Did he feel like his soul was being wrenched from his body when he wasinside of her?
Fuck,it’s an awful thought, one I hate myself for even considering. Disrespectful to her, and torturous to me.
I sit up then, swing my legs over the side of the bed. The floor is cold, and outside the sky is gray, the first day we’ve been here that fall hasn’t shown up in all its glory. I’d like to fix the beds, push them back tight together and crawl back in there with her, wake her up and get inside of her again, sleep all day next to her. But that’s ridiculous, because this is it—presentation day. This is the day where I show up for what I’ve been working toward all these months. Whether it’s gray out there or not, whether I have a warm woman beside me or not, I’m in this.
Behind me, Zoe shifts, makes a soft, sleepy noise as she turns over. I look back at her, feel a thrill of satisfaction as her palm coasts over the sheet beside her—feeling for me. I press my hand over hers, letting her know I’m here, and her eyes flutter open. Even in the dim early-morning light, I can see the gold of them, how bright they are. Sunlight against thechanging trees.
I am so fucking gone over this woman, it is ridiculous. Terrifying.
“Hi,” she says, and then she smiles up at me, and—isit terrifying? Isn’t it okay that I get to feel something for a smart, funny, gorgeous woman, a woman who makes me feel less like I’m on an island all by myself, just gathering supplies to stay alive until…until what, I don’t know.
“Hey,” I say, leaning down to kiss her on the cheek. This affection—it’s new for us, and I’m surprised at how good it feels. It’s on the tip of my tongue to say something else to her, something that’ll make clear that maybe I’ve got more in me than soft gestures for her, that maybe there’s some way she and I can work this out beyondthe campground.
But when I open my mouth to speak, it’s all business. “I’ve got to get showered. I want to get out there early, go through itone more time.”
She nods, props herself up on one elbow. “Want me there?” she asks, and I think,I always want you there. I wantyou everywhere.
After today, the hardest part of this will be over—I’ll have done all I can. It’ll be up to Paul and Lorraine. After that, I can think of what it’ll be like for Zoe and me. Whether there’s some way we can make this work in another context, whether what passed between us last night might mean there’s something for us beyond all this.
I’m smiling down at her, probably goofy looking as all hell, but then the sharp ring of my phone pierces the air. “Hang on,” I say, squeezing her hand once before standing and crossing to the desk. It’s my parents’ number and right away I know it’s not good. Even if they had in mind to talk to me outside of our usual scheduled twice-a-week calls, it’s 6:30 in the morning on a Sunday, no sane time to call anyone for casual conversation. “Mom?” I say when I pick up, noticing out of the corner of my eye the way Zoe sinks back down onto her side, her expression hidden from me now.
There’s a pause, silence on the other line, and so I say it again, more forcefully, more anxiously this time.
