* * *
Whenthey got there, he got her against the door again.
Not pressing against her, not yet, but only caging her in: one hand on either side of her tipped-back head, a papery crinkle on one side as the small bag he carried pressed against the wood. Both of them were breathing heavily—not from the trek back, but from the exertion of this interminable wait, as though all the hours between their kiss last night and this hotel room tonight had squeezed together and settled into their lungs as they walked the remaining way, as they stopped to duck through a set of glass doors beneath a lit-up green cross, as they moved quickly through the aisles to find what they needed, as they finally made it through the threshold of the hotel and crossed the lobby to the elevators.
As they rode up, side by side, staring at each other in the mirrored surface.
Her cheeks pink, her lips restless for the pressure of his mouth.
His eyes dark and roaming, as if he was making a plan.
Now that they were finally, truly alone, he leaned into her, set the right side of his face against her cheek, scraped her deliciously with his stubble, and breathed her in. He said, “I hate this shirt,” and dropped his head to catch at the high collar with his teeth, pulling it off her neck and stretching the cloth away from her skin for a cooling, freeing second before letting it snap back against her.
She thought she might slide down the door.
“I’ll take it off,” she said, but he shook his head, his forehead against her shoulder, his warm breath pulsing through the fabric of her shirt, making her nipples peak and ache. She felt strangely, unfamiliarly sensitized, like she knew now what the lightning bolt effect of him was for—to turn her into this, to change the way herskin experienced every touch, even the indirect ones. His eyes on her, his breath on her, his mouth moving while he spoke.
“I’lltake it off,” he said. “In a minute.”
Then he lifted his head and kissed her. Not soft this time: all the pressure she’d been desperate for, his tongue licking into her, his teeth back on that bottom lip sometimes in a way that told her, without words, that he loved that part of her, that he could not get enough of that part of her, that he was not yet ready to move on to all the other parts that had always seemed, before, to be the end goal of sex.
Layla Bailey, she thought as she kissed him back, triumphant and happy and more aroused than she could ever remember being in her life.
She lifted her hands, desperate to touch him—Griffin Testa, his name like an overlay of her own—but caught herself, her fingers curling into her palms. He would have to stop kissing her if he wanted this wandering to be mutual; he would have to give her enough air to askif he liked,if he wanted to try; he would need to be able to say if he needed to stop.
He noticed, even through the kiss, dropping his hands from the door, the bag from the pharmacy hitting the floor. With his right hand—was it shaking, maybe?—he circled one of her wrists, more slowly bringing up his left to take the other. She knew that now—his right hand always first to touch something, his left tentative. She wanted to say,I noticed that; you can trust me; you can tell me; I’ll make this wandering work for us both.
But he spoke first—against her lips, a soft secret.
“I need to build up my confidence first.”
She leaned her head back against the door, looked long at him. He let her do that more now—no ball cap, no turning one side of his face away, and while she wouldn’t interrupt him in this moment, she made a promise to herself to tell him later:You’re so handsome. I’ve always thought so. From the very first second I saw the whole of you.
“If you’ll let me see you. Touch you. Find out what makes you feel good, first. That’s what I need, before I—” He broke off, dropped his left hand from her to curl around the hem of his untucked shirt.
Before he lethersee him, he meant.
She searched his eyes. His gaze on her was the perfect mixture—pleading and honest, but hot and hungry, too.
“Can I touch you?” she whispered back.
“Right side, for now,” he said, against her mouth. Another kiss. A press of his hips into her, their joined hands trapped between his hardness and her stomach.
“Not too much touching this yet,” he added gruffly, pressing his length once against her hand, but when she snaked her tongue out, she could taste the shape of that Versailles quirk on one side of his mouth. “I gotta be able to focus.”
He lifted his head, looking at her again, waiting for her answer. One hand gripping hers, the other still fisted in his shirt. Intense and beautiful. A column of smoke clearing her mind, a prince bargaining for a piece of her soul, a sculpture holding out his own broken heart.
A man who’d helped her get herself back today.
“Okay,” she said.
He moved fast then—breaking his hold on her hand to grab her hip, to pull her off the door and onto his mouth. He spun her, still kissing her, backing her into the darkened room, a pale glow coming from one side, but Layla didn’t bother looking around. She had her hand on him now: right side, like he’d asked, beneath his shirt, on the warm skin of his ribs, her fingers fitting into each space, hispulse drumming insistently there, too. She had the dim sense of the room’s hugeness, of how long it took for her calves to hit the edge of a mattress, of how the sound of their breathing echoed, of how, when he gently nudged her to sit, there was an expanse on either side of her, so much larger than the bed in her room.
But dim was the extent of it, because he had his fingers curled into the hem of her shirt; he was tugging it up, her arms lifting wordlessly, her neck stretching as he pulled it over her head, her hair lifting and then falling in what was probably a disastrous, staticky tangle around her shoulders.
Except Griffin didn’t look at her like she was disastrous or tangled. He looked at her like she was the only thing worth looking at in this whole city, his eyes tracking over her collarbones, her flushed chest, her simple, beige bra that was, at the moment, no match for her tight nipples. He held the summer turtleneck between his hands like he was about to tear it in half, and honestly, she wouldn’t have minded. She hated it, too, for all the hours it’d kept him from seeing her like this.
He dropped to his knees, the shirt falling to his side, and she could admit, there was a hiccup there—her hand reaching out automatically, her voice saying “Griff,” in a sort of scolding way, her mind on the contracture scarring he told her about, his limp late in the day before they rested, his hand rubbing methodically up and down his leg as they sat on a park bench.
