“That doesn’t seem like a big deal. Most women can’t.”
“But you can. You did. And you’re telling me nobody has ever made you before.”
Shit, she thought.How have I started confessing my sex life issues to him?And it showed in her flustered, red-faced attempts at explaining. “Well, usually they’re not using their hands, they’re using their… you know what. And then they don’t… I mean, they never last that long, so.”
“It took you twenty fucking seconds.”
“I think that’s an exaggeration.”
“A minute, then. At most.”
Now she was the one pacing.
“It was probably just the situation,” she said, eyes flicking up to the number above the door. Seventeen, it somehow said. Even though she was fairly sure this building didn’t have that many floors. Apparently elevators weren’t satisfied anymore with just placing her in tense situations.
They had to use wizardry to trap her there.
With a man who was nowveryworked up.
“The situation was fucking nothing. Hell, the situation now is even less than that and I know you’regoing the same way. Trembling and blushing over a few touches, a kind word or two, someone talking to you the way I am now. That’s all it takes and they couldn’t even manage that much,” he said, at which point she went to scoff. The wordsI’m not tremblingwere on the tip of her tongue.
But then she realized.
She felt it. Like a kid after a hit of sugar.
And apparently ready for another one, when he shook his head, words almost muttered under his breath. “Always thought you were getting beyond what someone like me could ever give you in the sack, and instead it’s fuckingcrumbs. Assholes that can’t even fuck you right.”
Because seriously, what did thatmean?
She didn’t know. She only knew he wasn’t correct.
“But it’s different when it’s actual fucking.”
“You sure about that? Because, you know, we caneasilytest that theory out.”
“As if you’re going to do that. There’s no way you would. There’s no way you would even want to,” she said, half laughing as she did. Though she knew the laugh sounded just a little panicked. And that she was breathing way too hard now.
But even scarier:
He was breathing hard, too.
His chest was almost heaving. She watched it rise and fall underneath his denim shirt, completely mesmerized. Then she looked up and met his eyes, and oh god. The second she did, something in them just seemed to shift. The light in them sunk, and left behind a sort of soft and subtle darkness.
Realization, she wanted to call it.
But it was more than that, it was beyond that.
She felt like she was drowning in it. In fact, she was still sinking into those depths when he slowly, slowly leant to one side. Eyes still locked with hers, as he did something she couldn’t see. Something she couldn’t believe, even when her mind informed her of what it was.
And then it happened.
The elevator jolted to a stop between floors five and six.
Courtesy of a man who couldn’t even stand someone not holding the doors. She’d seen him fume over it before now. But he did it. Then, in case she was in any doubt as to what this was, he spoke. “Just say if you want me to stop,” he said, and as he did he reached forward. Eyes still on hers.
And he slid his hand directly up her dress.
All the way up, right to the elastic of her panties. The ones she’d worn thinking of the wordsensible, but now they seemed like anything but. Too sweet and too cottony for something like this. And especially when he bunched one side of them into his big fist.
