In answer, I gripped her chin and took her mouth in a ferocious kiss. Our tongues tangled instantly, my head tilting so I could deepen it further. The familiarity of kissing her was a stark contrast to our first night, where the novelty of her was what made it so bloody sexy. And in that familiarity, I found a haven that I hadn’t anticipated, a distraction when I’d least expected it. My hands dug into the flesh of her arse underneath her leggings, and I had to keep myself from tearing at her clothes.
Enjoy the small moments, I reminded myself, regardless of what came next.
We kissed like that, hands gripping over our clothes in a way that I hadn’t in years. She held me so tightly, her arms around my neck and fingers in my hair. Lia sucked my tongue into her mouth, and I fought the urge to grip her hands and anchor them above her head, sink myself into her like I had before, just to see if I’d imagined how good it had been.
“What else happened in this dream of yours, my naughty girl?” I whispered, pulling my mouth away from hers, keeping just out of reach when she tried to kiss me again.
Her hand slipped up the back of my shirt, and the tips of those nails dug into my flesh, making me grin. Her eyes glinted, and as the sleep cleared from them, I saw a question emerge even before she voiced it.
“Are we making a new rule?” she whispered. The doubt was tempered by the fact she couldn’t keep from touching me. From my back, her hand inched around, where she used that wicked fingertip to trace the squares of my abdomen just above the button to my trousers. “Because I wouldn’t mind knowing what we’re doing here.”
I knew what she was asking.
But quite badly, I realized I didn’t want to lose the ease of this relationship we’d stumbled into by way of a weak condom and her spotty memory at taking a few pills. Without those two things, I might never have seen Lia again, and at the moment, with her lithe body laid out like an offering, that felt like a fucking tragedy.
So I chose the wider path, the one more easily trod.
I glanced down meaningfully. “
You are roughly three centimeters away from making me very happy, it seems. And I”—my hand did some sneaking of my own, up the line of her soft stomach and to the warm, overflowing cups of her lace bra—“am about to conduct an experiment.”
Her lips curled up. “What experiment is that?”
“Size checks are now mandatory, I’m afraid.” I gently lifted the hem of her shirt and placed a kiss above her belly button. She hissed when I tugged the cups down and continued my delicious journey.
“C-careful,” she whispered. “They’re tender.”
“I can be gentle.”
“Can you?” Her hands moved down, pulling open my trousers and gripping me with unexpected strength, my back bowing in unanticipated pleasure. “Because I’m still learning that particular talent.”
I laughed into her skin.
Lia whispered just next to my ear, lifting the hairs along the back of my neck when it was paired with what she was doing to me with that clever, clever hand. “My size check is happy to report consistently above average sizes.”
With a tortured groan, I snagged her lips once again. Each kiss built upon the last, each time her tongue tangled around mine, frantic energy powered our hands, mine seeking the same intention she seemed to have for me.
“Yes.” She sighed as my fingers slid to their preferred destination. “Oh, oh, I like this rule.”
“Just this, love,” I told her. My breath hitched. I took her mouth again, deeper this time, and she tilted her head.
Lia arched her hips into my palm while I emitted harsh puffs of air against her soft, soft lips.
She found her release just before I did, in the bend of her back and the way she pinched her eyes shut, the utter relief in the sigh she allowed me to taste from her mouth.
Relief.
To me, Lia felt like sweet relief.
By the time I groaned into her neck, and I fell like a great weight on top of her, I felt like I was in high school again. Our clothes were hardly even undone, yet the satisfaction spreading like warm caramel through my veins was absolutely brilliant.
For so long, the oblivion found in nameless women, the chasing of yet another goal, another benchmark that only meant something to me did nothing to ease the disquiet clawing at the inside of my rib cage.
But now, here, was peace. And I found that I didn’t want to skip a moment of it.
LIA
TWO WEEKS LATER
Molly: Can you tell your little strawberry that I am the favorite aunt? I feel like subliminal messaging is important right now, and I don’t like the leg-up that Claire will get because of the twin thing.
Me: It is a strawberry right now. Good sleuthing.
Me: What about Isabel?
Molly: Isabel doesn’t threaten me because I have a MUCH more maternal nature than she does. She’ll be like… the cool scary aunt. Not the favorite aunt. It’s an entirely different category.
Molly: PLUS, Isabel is visiting you in a few weeks. She’ll get to plant her own subliminal messages before I get a chance.
Molly: I NEED YOUR HELP IN THIS, OKAY?
Me: I’ll get right on that after I meet with Atwood. About to listen to her eviscerate my first draft.
Me: Are you home now? Didn’t you just film something in … Georgia? Somewhere south?
Molly: Tennessee. We did a piece on the Titans. If Noah got transferred there, I wouldn’t be sad to live in Nashville. DON’T TELL LOGAN I SAID THAT.
Molly: He’d probably be more heartbroken to lose Noah from the Wolves than to have me move.
Lia: Oh, please. He would not.
Molly: I know. But he knows it’s a reality we may have to face someday. Contracts expire. Athletes change teams.
Molly: Good luck in your meeting!!
My fingers itched to ask Molly about dating an athlete. Yes, we’d grown up with Logan, and yes, I knew all the ins and outs of his life, but that was my brother. Now I found myself in an entirely different position. Most nights, I was in Oxford in my cute little flat and my cute little bed, working on my paper in various places around the city. As I’d learned, the city limits housed ten different libraries, and each had a distinct mood. The Old Library at Oxford Union was my favorite, though. Something about the curved ceilings, lined with beams, the floral-shaped windows that allowed the light to stream in, and the pre-Raphaelite murals adorning the walls, I always felt just a little bit more connected to my material. Less distracted by … well, by my entire existence.
Even the little strawberry seemed more well-behaved when I was in that building.
When I was curled up in the green leather chair that I’d claimed, I somehow managed not to think about the little piece of ever-changing fruit with its milestones and new body parts that slowly took shape.
I managed not to think about Jude and how we’d somehow slipped into a relationship with no label, the byproduct of whatever arbitrary rules we decided were acceptable. Chemistry had the wheel of that particular decision, considering it was hard for us to keep our hands off each other when we were alone. We hadn’t slept together again, not since that first night, but everything else we’d done seemed to make that a friggin’ technicality at this point.
But I still wasn’t sure how to balance it among everything else.
Or if I should even try. It was completely possible I was borrowing trouble at this point to try to force Jude to put a definition on what we were doing. Or what we weren’t.
As I approached Atwood’s office, it made me think about Charlotte Bront?, as I often did.
Conventionality is not morality, she’d written in
Jane Eyre, and it seemed like an especially appropriate quote for my situation with Jude.
Was it conventional? Hell to the no.
Very little about it was done “normally.” But what was normal anyway? My brain started spinning around that question, and I found myself pausing outside Atwood’s door long enough that she finally popped her head out.
“Are you coming in? Or are we meeting in the hallway now?”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.