“Well, you were distracted,” said Noah, closing his eyes in concentration. He almost couldn’t get the words out. “And then you told me to take a shower, so I just…took care of it.”
“Shut the fuck up, Noah,” said AJ, her muscles tightening around him, starting to spasm.
“Why do you think I slept so well after?” he said, then he met her eyes, and AJ lost it. Her neck rolled back as pleasure spilled from both of them like so many broken washing machines.
After, they sat pants-less on the tile floor watching AJ’s clothes blur through the porthole.
“That’s the same detergent my mom uses,” said AJ.
Noah stilled. “I know.”
AJ leaned her head on his shoulder.
Noah was a nightowl. AJ often awoke after midnight to find that he had wandered off in pursuit of some nerdy activity or other in various corners of the house.
One night, she saw a light on under a door down the hall. AJ pushed in to find Noah inside a time capsule from a Humphrey Bogart film—his grandfather Elijah Drew’s teenage bedroom.
Noah sat hunched over Elijah’s drop-leaf desk, constructing a model plane. In fact, the room wasfullof model planes, some hanging, others perched. Noah was mounting a balsa-wood invasion.
He looked up when he noticed her, his eyes red behind wire-rimmed glasses.
“What time is it?” he asked, clearing his throat.
“Two-thirty,” said AJ. She was wearing one of his T-shirts and nothing else. “Can I see?”
Noah stood stiffly as AJ approached the desk, littered with glue and splinters. Carefully, AJ bent down to get a better look at the intricate tail lattice he was constructing. When she straightened up, she caught Noah shifting his pants, trying to hide that her movement had aroused him.
“Ignore me,” he said.
He had been chewing on his lower lip in concentration as he worked. AJ pressed up onto her toes and kissed it, running her tongue across its plump contour.
Noah exhaled in frustration and pulled back. “My hands are covered in glue.”
AJ could feel his cock straining against his pajamas. “Then I guess you can’t use them.”
He protested as she laid him on the twin bed and slid off his pants. AJ held his gaze as she knelt between his legs. His tip was already wet; her thumb circled it, teasing.
“Age,” he breathed. “Come here.”
AJ felt her own excitement slick between her thighs; she was easily as turned on as he was.
But this wasn’t about that.
“Oh, do you not enjoy being at someone else’s mercy?” she said, running a finger along his shaft.
Noah exhaled sharply. “When have you ever been at my mercy?”
AJ rolled her eyes. “At the conventions.” She’d had to sit beside him for hours, unable to touch him. Unlike now. She kissed the skin beneath his navel, trailing her tongue down his lower abdomen. Noah groaned, his cock straining as she drew near.
“In L.A.,” she murmured. She’d wanted him so badly, she’d been afraid to even look. Unlike now. She lifted her eyes, resting her chin on his upper thigh as she met his gaze. Noah was panting.
“When we were kids,” she said softly. He’d seemed so worldly, so beautiful, so out of reach. Unlike now. Tension coiled through Noah’s legs as she grazed his full length with her lips, taunting.
“AJ. Fuck me,” he commanded. “Please.”
AJ smiled at that. But she did not relent. Instead, she lowered her mouth and tasted salt.
Noah’s office was anenormous oak room that had once belonged to his great-grandfather Erroll Drew. During the day, it got a lot of light through a wall of French doors facing the garden, but at night it became a full-on lair, complete with tapestries, an executive desk, a marble hearth, and a bearskin rug in front of it. The room also had a Noah-size leather couch and a projector screen that lowered over Errol’s mantel portrait, so this was mainly where they watched TV.
