“Can I help with anything?” I ask.
She glances around at her amp and guitar. “I guess I could use help carrying things out. Are you here with someone?”
I shake my head, frowning. “I came to see you.”
“Oh,” is all she says before she resumes packing up.
We don’t say anything else until we’re out in the parking lot at her car. After I load her things into the back, she closes the hatch and turns to face me. “Thank you.”
I restrain myself from pulling her against me and crushing my mouth to hers. Instead, I say, “I miss you.”
Her lips part, but she pauses, her eyes searching mine. Finally, she says, “I miss you, too.”
It’s not a happy thing, both of us missing each other, but I grin nonetheless. “Are you hungry?”
She smiles back at me. “I could eat.”
My fingers brush over her forearm. “Come to my place. I’ll make you something.”
When she hesitates, I think I’ve pushed too far. I exhale a relieved breath when she says, “Okay. I’ll follow you.”
The drive is short, and that’s good, because for some reason, I worry the whole way there that she’ll turn off course, but she follows me home, pulls into the driveway, and turns off her engine.
“Did you have other plans tonight?” I ask when I open her car door and she steps out.
“No. Why do you ask?”
“You seemed hesitant about coming over.”
She shrugs, not denying it, but not explaining. She was definitely ambivalent, but something made her agree to spend time with me, so I won’t question it. We parted as friends, of course, but things are different now. Maybe she can see how I feel when I look at her.
I unlock the front door and hold it open, and the enticing honey scent of her hair sends blood in my body rushing south as she moves past me.
Inside, she sets her bag on the nearest chair and turns to me. “I wasn’t sure about coming over, because I know it’s going to hurt later.”
I frown at her; this isn’t what I was expecting to hear.
“I hate to even confess this,” she says, “but I’m having a hard time forgetting about everything. It’s silly, I know. It was only a few nights — four nights with Trevor, only a couple with you — and I can’t seem to move on.”
“You’re hung up on Trevor?”
She shakes her head. “On all of you. All four of you. It’s just my inexperience … latching on to the first men I’m with —”
I don’t let her finish. I do what I wanted to do in the parking lot, and on the night I last saw her at Club Red. It’s heaven to have her body against mine again, and her lips taste even sweeter than they’ve been in my fantasies. After only a second or two of surprise, she responds, kissing me back with nearly as much fire, throwing her arms around my neck and anchoring us together.
We carry on like the long-lost lovers we are. I cup her face in one hand, and bury my other in her luxurious hair. She squeezes my shoulder and slips another hand under the bottom of my shirt. I kiss her like I’m starving, and when her tongue slides into my mouth, I groan. When she lifts a knee, trying to move her body even closer to mine, I lift her bottom and she wraps her legs around my waist as she carries on kissing me.
I carry her toward my bedroom, breaking apart only long enough to say, “It’s not silly how you’ve been feeling, and it’s not your inexperience, because I’ve been feeling the same way.”
43
Autumn
There is no thinking; only feeling — touching, tasting, holding.
I reach for his shirt as soon as he lays me on the bed, and when I start tugging it up from the bottom, he impatiently pulls it over his head, treating me to a sight that’s been featuring in my dreams. Solid muscle under smooth tan skin, decorated with beautiful inkwork that draws my eyes from his shoulders, across his chest, down over his powerful abs, to the path of dark hair that disappears beneath his belt.
As I’m feasting my eyes, he takes my shirt off, easily opens the clasp on my bra, and when my chest is bare, he buries his face between my breasts, lavishing them with kisses and licks. I cradle his head in my hands, running my fingers through his hair, leaving it in disarray as I wrap a leg around him, wanting to convey my impatience.