The steam from the shower was catching in her hair. Droplets were beading in it like little diamonds. Her skin was damp and dewy, glowing in the bathroom lights. Therewere two worry lines between her perfect eyebrows, carved deep.
I reached out and smoothed them away. Traced the line of one of those eyebrows with my finger, like I’d been wanting to do since the moment she looked into my eyes at the First Night Party and the whole world tilted on its axis.
‘Do you know what my worst quality is?’ I asked her. ‘Worse than the fact that I cry all the time?’
‘That you shit-talk yourself?’ she said, one corner of her mouth curving up wryly.
‘That’s a pretty bad one,’ I said, ‘but this one is worse. This one gets me into all kinds of trouble.’
I leaned in. I didn’t kiss her, but I let my lips hover, just above hers. I could feel her breath, hot and uneven, against my skin.
I licked her lower lip. She made a sound in the back of her throat, a hungry, desperate little sound. I bit her lip gently. She made it again.
‘My worst quality,’ I whispered into her mouth, ‘is that I’m way too impulsive.’
‘Yeah?’ Her voice was an octave higher than normal, her eyes closed but her eyelashes fluttering.
I traced a line down her throat. I rubbed my thumb in the little hollow at the base of her neck, then pressed my lips there too. ‘Yeah,’ I said.
She made the sound again.
I pulled back. ‘Open your eyes.’
She didn’t. She was breathing fast and shallow, her breasts heaving above the neckline of her dress.
I shifted, throwing one of my legs over hers, straddling her on the floor. ‘Dylan,’ I said, cupping her face in my hands. ‘Open your eyes.’
Her hands slid up my legs, gripping my hips. ‘Mandie—’
‘Open them. Look at me.’
She did. I let my thumbs stroke her temples, the same place she dug her fingers in whenever things got too out of control for her.
Then I pulled my towel off and threw it to the floor.
It was a little awkward. My towel might have been easy access, but she was still in her Last Chance Party gown. The zipper got stuck when I foolishly tried a high-risk manoeuvre and attempted to undo it with my teeth, and it was a real two-woman operation to get it off her.
Plus, the bathroom floor? Hard! The chances of nearly concussing yourself on a cabinet? High!
On top of that, Dylan was nervous. ‘It’s been a while since I’ve done this with a woman,’ she whispered, her hands hot against my hips, her voice shaky, as I kissed my way across her collarbone in a cloud of steam. ‘You’re going to have to help me out, Mandie.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said.
I leaned up and kissed her – an earthquake of a kiss, an electrical storm – then I pushed her gently back, laying her down with her head on my discarded towel. ‘I’ve got you, baby,’ I said, kissing a line down her body. ‘I’ll take good care of you.’
17
‘I should have guessed you’d be good with your hands,’ Dylan said.
We were curled up in bed together. It was Marija’s old bunk, this time. Given that the whole bedroom technically belonged to us now, we weren’t picky about which bed we ended up in.
Kumiko was on her final four Friends and Family Date with Romeo-Dylan. Parisa was filming an ITM with Carrie. Murray and the rest of the crew weren’t around, apart from the PA in the monitor room down the hall (we’d checked, he was wearing enormous headphones and didn’t even notice us peering into the room). There weren’t a lot of times we could be alone in the Juliet Villa, but we’d made the most of every single stolen minute.
I craned my head and kissed her, running my fingers across her jaw and down the elegant curve of her neck.‘If there’s one thing I know I’m good at,’ I said, ‘it’s making things go.’
She grinned, waggling those knife-edge eyebrows I was so obsessed with. ‘Yeah, you are.’
‘You know what I’m especially good at?’
