“Behave,” I say, like I’m not half the problem. “You need to eat. And we can’t just fuck every moment that we’re together.” I reach for the domes covering our dishes–grilled shrimp and chicken with a brown rice broccoli-cheese baked casserole and collard greens for me, and chicken carbonara for Jesse. Plus two bottles of sparkling water and a crustless apple pie for dessert.
“Why not?” he pouts, drawing a laugh out of me.
I kiss his neck. “I want to do things with you, and get to know you in person like we were in Dallas.”
“Between all the sex,” Jesse said, pointing at me with his fork. “I suppose we’ll have to come up for air, and we can’t have you all sore for your game on Monday. Aside from that, I fully planto be buried inside each other as much as possible for as long as possible. It’s been too long since Dallas. I miss you.”
“I know. I miss you, too.” I don’t understand it. I’ve lived alone for all these years now, and not once have I ever felt even the slightest bit lonely. Until I got back from Dallas, that is. Then suddenly I’m feeling cold without his body next to mine, missing the touch of his skin like a lost limb. My condo feels cavernous and empty. The only time I don’t feel like I’m missing something vital is when he’s on the phone. At least then I can close my eyes and pretend it’s him, or set my phone in front of me and get to see his pretty face.
We eat in comfortable silence, both of us putting away a lot of food in a short amount of time. I’ve been surprised by how much food Jesse can eat with his wiry frame, but he told me he actually has a fluctuating appetite. When he’s writing or in the studio, he tends to forget to eat for entire days sometimes. But when he’s been with me, we’ve been soactivehe’s constantly starving and eats almost as much as I do.
When we’re done, we sit back and just talk a little. These are my favorite minutes with Jesse, outside of being physically connected to him. Our conversations, no matter how long or short, are never lacking. I love hearing about his experiences, not just the rockstar parts of it, but the little detours he’s taken along the way. He gets me to download theWavesapp, even though I don’t do social media at all, and makes me a fake profile. He names me BB Smiles and giggles almost manically about it. He makes my profile picture a zoomed-in photo of my smile from one of what seems like dozens of GIFs and stills of my embarrassing camera incident.
“Are you sure they won’t be able to tell it’s me?”
Jesse gives me an amused look and types my name into the search bar. There are at least a hundred profiles that have my name and a random photo from the internet, more than 80% of which are from the stupid smiling thing.
Ugh. I’m never going to live that down.I hope Shawna never sees this, because she’s already relentless. She sent me a box of random Colgate branded items, including a vintage-looking Colgate advertisement, a “tooth bank” for little kids, a t-shirt and hat, a car magnet (just why?) and a bunch of other bullshit no one needs, especially me. Even if I did want an endorsement deal, which I don’t, it wouldn’t be with them, for multiple reasons. The first being that this is the single most embarrassing thing to ever happen to me, and the second being that the Colgate company apparently found out where my family lives and gifted them a lifetime’s worth of Colgate products. I asked my dad to burn them, but he doesn’t see what the big deal is. This is my penance for choosing football over doing something with my business degree.
I hand the phone back to Jesse with a frown.
“Oh, nooo,” he says, laughing. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” I say, having to hold back a smile at the way he crawls into my lap and cups my face, pushing the edges of my mouth up into a smile.
“You can hide this from the rest of the world if you want to, but never me.” He drops sweet, chaste kisses all around my mouth. The left corner. The right. My cupid’s bow. The tiny childhood scar just below my bottom lip on the left side of center. “I want every part of you, but especially your joy.”
Straightening my back from where it was leaning, I capture Jesse’s mouth in a slow kiss.
It never ceases to amaze me how much I love kissing Jesse Moore. The way our lips fit together so perfectly, the energy I feel buzzing between us.
Jesse presses me into the couch again, taking control of the kiss, mouth hot and hungry against mine. I get swept up in the rush of him, like I always do. His weight, his scent, the way his tongue drags over mine and makes every nerve in my body light up.
My hands wander, sliding down his sides until I brush over the bulge pressing into my stomach. I palm him over the sweatpants, massaging, and he groans into my mouth. The sound goes straight to my spine.
I slip my hand under the waistband, greedy to have more of his skin on mine, and the second my fingers close around him I remember.
Oh. Shit.
The Jewelry.Five distinct bumps slide against my skin as I stroke down the middle of the studs.
“Um, Jesse?” I ask against his mouth.
“Mmm?” he hums, eyes half-lidded as he nips at my lower lip.
I lick at his lip ring, tugging on it with my teeth.
“How do they work, exactly? How much will I be able to feel them?” I trail off, face hot.
He pulls back just enough to give me that smirk, the one that says he knows exactly what I mean. “How does what work?”
I groan, pressing my forehead to his. “You know.”
Why can’t I say it? After everything we’ve done together? After the way I held him down, gagged him with his own panties, and fucked him into the mattress earlier?
“No, I don’t.” His voice drops to a purr. “You’ll have to be more specific, baby.”
I lean my head back on the couch and cover my face with one hand, muttering, “Why are you like this?”
