Love at First

by Kate Clayborn

  “Still good?” he’d ask, every time they entered some new phase of it. He wouldn’t even look at her as he said it; he’d ask it like it was all part of the checklist. But behind it was something serious, something focused.

  Something kind.

  Now, Nora stepped over the lip of the shower, determined to alleviate any of his concern over their shared project. She reached out and grabbed the old towel rack from the counter. “I’m thrilled,” she said, holding it up. “Thrilled enough to send this thing to the garbage.”

  Probably she wouldn’t actually send it to the garbage; Nonna would hate that. But she didn’t want to say so to Will. She set it gently down on the floor between the vanity and the toilet, promising herself that she’d deal with it later. Surely someone else had need for a deeply annoying, vaguely threatening household accessory.

  When she looked back up, Will’s glasses caught the light from overhead, and she couldn’t help but laugh at the lenses.

  “What?”

  “You’ve got . . . uh.” She pointed in the direction of her own eyes, and Will furrowed his brow, then turned toward the mirror, leaning in.

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said, and she liked the laugh that came out—part amusement, part embarrassment. “It’s drywall dust. Let me clean them off real quick.”

  When he pulled them away from his face, Nora could see—small bathroom, striking again!—the pink indentations left on either side of his nose, and for some reason that felt so tender and so tempting that she moved quietly past him, stepping into the hall, conscious of her every breath as she went.

  After a few seconds he came to the doorway, leaning against the jamb with his freshly cleaned glasses back on, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans. Behind him, the leavings of their work—his toolbox, discarded packages and tags—sat tidily, ready to be taken out, and she felt absurdly disappointed that the night was almost over.

  Will cleared his throat.

  “So,” he said, something tentative in his voice. She hoped he felt the same disappointment, but then she remembered their conversation from back when he’d first arrived.

  She slapped a hand to her forehead. “Right, jeez. Let me get the money I owe you.”

  “No, no,” he said quickly. “I mean, I didn’t mean that. I wanted to mention . . .” He trailed off, dropped his eyes. “You know, never mind. I could send you an email. It’s official building business.”

  Ah, Nora thought, bracing instinctively for the shudder of anxiety she was used to feeling when they talked about the rental.

  It still came, but it wasn’t nearly as . . . shuddery. Anxious-y.

  “You listed your place?” she guessed.

  “Yeah. The day after we went to the beach. But it’s actually—” He broke off, cleared his throat again.

  She smiled across the short space of hallway, encouraging. “Might as well tell me now. I’m in such a great mood about blow-drying my hair later that I can take it.”

  He smiled back, and a different sort of shudder tried to take up residence in her body.

  But after a second, he turned serious again.

  “I didn’t expect to get so much interest so quickly, but . . . uh. I’ve got someone booked starting Tuesday.”

  Tuesday. That was so soon. She swallowed, nodded. Did not make eye contact with either of those new bathroom rods.

  “She’ll be staying for about four and a half weeks. I know the real short-term stuff isn’t the best thing. For everyone here, I mean. So I’m going to try to keep it to longer-term renters, as best I can.”

  She blinked up at him, grateful for this concession. She hoped it wasn’t four and a half weeks of a total nightmare, but it had been good of him to consider everyone.

  “The woman who’ll be staying, she and her daughter—the daughter’s about ten, I think—they need a place to stay while their condo gets some big repairs done. She’s been a homeowner for about fifteen years, so she’ll be responsible. She owns her own business, too. Consulting work, I’m pretty sure.”

  Nora cocked her head, confused. She’d been on the rental site an awful lot since Will Sterling had shown up in her life, and she knew for a fact that owners didn’t have to bother getting a bunch of information about their tenants before finalizing an arrangement. That was pretty much the whole point for property owners, so far as she could tell: to collect their money, without much inconvenience or involvement.

  Had Will . . . interviewed people?

  “After her, I think it’s possible I can get people who are doing rotations over at Northwestern. It wouldn’t be the most convenient location, but as it turns out, Sally knows the placement coordinator there, and she said she’d direct people my way. And those people, they work so much it’s likely you won’t ever see them. They probably won’t even care if you do that projector thing using the balcony down there.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “How did you—”

  “Jonah told me about it. At poetry night.”

  I believe everything you say about this place, she remembered him saying, that night in her bedroom, and back then, she didn’t know if she really, truly believed it. She believed Will when he said he was practical, responsible. She believed him when he said this building meant something different to him, something painful and permanently scarring.

  But she hadn’t really believed that he was capable of seeing it her way, too. She hadn’t really known that he’d been watching and listening so well. It made her feel warm and soft all over.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For doing that for us.”

  He looked down, and she thought he might’ve shaken his head, but the movement was so slight, she couldn’t be sure.

  “I did it for you,” he said, and her breath caught in her chest.

  For long seconds, she couldn’t speak—couldn’t think of anything at all to say. She could only watch him, the memory of the first time she’d ever seen him coming back to her. That morning, it had been from above, outlined by the light from the apartment he never even wanted. She’d seen him like this: tall and lean, his body curved, his head bowed.

  He’d looked so far away, so alone.

  So untouchable.

  She didn’t even realize she’d taken a step forward until he raised his head, and she found herself only inches away, her own face tipped up to meet his gaze. He wasn’t untouchable now: he was flesh and blood and right in front of her. But that—oh, that was too much, wasn’t it? To touch him? That was so forward; that was no way to return a favor.

  “Thank you,” she said again, almost a whisper, and had he moved closer, too? Despite her first sight of him, she had been close to him before; she knew she had. She’d been in her bed with him before. He’d touched her in her shower before.

  But this was nothing like any before. This was quiet and certain and perfect and new, everything new; her whole body felt new.

  “Nora,” he said, a whisper to match her own, and this, too, was novelty, unlike any time he’d said it in all the weeks she’d known him: not a scold or sympathy or a slow down, not anything other than the pure pleasure of saying it. It was the way you said your lover’s name, the way you sometimes softly asserted the fact of their being there, of their being yours.

  Mine, she thought, and this time, nothing felt wrong or disloyal about it. She thought about the small steps she’d taken tonight, fixing up this bathroom that had been exactly the same forever, and it was great; of course it was great. It was convenient and helpful for hair-washing and hair-drying and towel-hanging and whatever, but it wasn’t making this place well and truly hers, not in the way that really mattered.

  And at the moment, the only way that really mattered felt like it had something to do with the man right in front of her. A claim on this space that she would make entirely for herself.

  She moved again. A small step that didn’t feel small at all. She could see the pulse beat along the line of his throat, could see his chest rising and falling with his quicken
ed breaths.

  “Will,” she said, something like a question, and felt it like an echo in her heart:

  Will

  Will

  Will

  And with barely a hesitation, he gave her his wordless answer.

  He bent his head, and set his mouth to hers.

  Chapter 12

  Oh, he would surely see hell for this.

  But god, she felt like heaven.

  Only her lips right now—soft, full, giving, perfect—but he knew deep down this one touch was temporary; he knew with heart-hiccupping intensity that he didn’t want to stop there, that if she let him, he’d get his hands and mouth all over her. It felt good to fully acknowledge it, like loosening the cord in his body that had been coiling tighter and tighter since that night on the beach, since that morning on the balcony.

  Since before, some voice in his head taunted, and he clenched his fists in his pockets. He didn’t want to think about how far back this went, about how far forward it could go. He didn’t want to spend tonight like he’d spent the past three days, half angry at himself for offering to come back to this place that he knew meant trouble for him, and half hopeful that once he did, this exact thing would happen.

  So he silenced the voice, himself, everything, by sinking further into Nora, parting her lips with his own, and when she made a quiet noise of pleasure and slipped her tongue across his bottom lip, it wasn’t like having the cord loosened.

  It was like having it cut clean through.

  He might’ve groaned in relief as he brought her closer—one hand at the curve of her waist, one tucked into the cool, smooth strands of the hair she still had up—and she came to him like she’d been waiting, putting her arms around him and pressing her whole body against his. All at once it was hunger and heat, Will’s hands firm where they held her, Nora’s fisting at the back of his T-shirt as she pushed up onto her toes, opening her mouth against his, her tongue sweet and seeking. She tasted like something—mint, maybe coffee, too, like first thing in the morning even though it was the dead of night, and he could not get enough of it, could not stop kissing her, could not get over the way she tasted him back.

  When she used her teeth to tug at his lower lip he practically jolted away from the doorframe, had to clutch at her in desperate, frantic restraint—not to lift her up, not to press her against the wall, not to thrust against her. But in his haste he’d clutched at what was close, at what felt natural—that long rope of hair that was so easy to grip, that tipped her head back, and as soon as he did it she gasped, and then moaned, her hips rolling against him.

  “God,” she said, between kisses, her voice rougher and breathier than he’d ever heard it sound, and it felt like fitting a key to a lock, knowing this—that touching her this way made her move that way, sound that way, and so he left his hand where it was, gripping her hair a little tighter before he used it to tug her head back gently.

  Another pulse of her hips as he bent his head to the line of her exposed throat, and he missed her lips but he wanted his mouth on this too. The lip that still tingled from her bite, he dragged it up the side of her neck and felt her body shudder, imagined her skin flushing beneath her clothes, her nipples pebbling beneath her bra. He paid her back in kind, nipping at her skin, soothing it with his tongue, and then he started all over on the other side. Her hands were in his hair, holding him to her, and it felt so good and perfect that he didn’t care that his glasses were probably fogging up, worse and more embarrassing than having them coated in drywall dust. Up close like this it didn’t matter anyway; he could see everything he wanted to see, could see her by touching her and tasting her like this, by hearing her whimper when he sucked gently at the soft patch of skin behind her ear.

  “Oh.” Her exhalation rippled over his skin, and he got impossibly harder. Would she mind if he walked her back, if he pressed her against that wall, if he—

  “This is so . . .” she began, trailing off when he moved his lips again, back to taste her mouth; it had been a while since he tasted her mouth.

  “You’re really good at this,” she finished, when she had a second to speak again.

  He didn’t answer, couldn’t think enough to answer. He bent his head again, using the hand that wasn’t in her hair to tug at the hem of her shirt, tucking his lips against the newly exposed skin at the base of her throat, breathing her in.

  “Like,” she whispered, her breaths coming in quick, frustrated pants now, “Really good. Have you done this a lot? Kissing like this, I mean. It’s—you are . . . have you done this a lot?”

  He lifted his head again, capturing her mouth and kissing her hard, stalling for time while his poor, blood-deprived brain tried to catch up enough to process her question.

  “I don’t remember,” he said, when he finally came up for air. He caught her answering laugh with his lips, but he wasn’t really joking. At the moment he didn’t remember any kiss he’d ever had before this one, certainly couldn’t remember any kiss like this one. He couldn’t remember ever being with a woman and feeling this focused and this frantic all at once: even as he noticed, in clear, crystalline detail, every single place where he touched Nora and where Nora touched him, his mind rushed ahead, blurry images of being above her, beneath her, however she wanted it, their clothes off and their bodies intertwined.

  Something inside him seemed to strain, to twist, like the two loose ends of that cord were trying to find their way back to each other, trying to wrap their way around his chest and remind him of what he’d known about Nora all along: that he felt rash and reckless when he was around her, that she made him feel close to a part of himself he’d long kept hidden away.

  How could it feel this good?

  “Because,” she said, and for a split second he wondered if he’d said it all aloud. But then she leaned in to him, mimicked him, dragged her mouth up the side of his neck, pulling herself up higher on his body as she went.

  “Because I haven’t,” she whispered, when she got to his ear.

  He stilled, both his hands coming to her waist, and for the first time since this started they separated, at least enough to keep their lips off each other.

  “You haven’t what?”

  “Been with—been like this. With many people.”

  Don’t think about other people, he thought, instinctively tightening his hold on her. Not while you’re with me.

  But almost immediately he loosened his fingers. It wasn’t the right instinct, to be selfish like that, to be possessive like that. She was trying to tell him something, and he needed to keep his head together enough to listen.

  “I’ve only slept with two men. Only ever kissed three.”

  “Okay,” he said, even though he knew he would privately and thoroughly hate every one of them, forever. He still wasn’t sure why it was any of his business. But if she thought he cared about this number, if she thought he’d care if it was twelve or twenty or two hundred or none at all, he needed to correct that impression.

  “Nora, it doesn’t—”

  “What I mean is,” she said, before he could finish, “it’s never felt like this. To kiss. To—” She broke off and dragged her hands down his shoulders. His head tipped down to watch as they moved lower, over his chest, and when they stilled on his abdomen he wanted to finish the sentence for her. He wanted her to act it out.

  Touch, touch, touch, he wanted to say.

  But then he looked up and found her watching him, saw the question in her eyes. And he knew what she was asking; he knew that she wanted to know if it was the same for him. This was Nora, after all—careful, particular, protective. She would want to know. She would want to know if a man she was with like this was worthy of her feelings. If he returned her feelings.

  Focus, Will, he told himself, putting his hands over hers, pressing her palms flat against him. Touch, those were the feelings she was talking about. Not backyards and balconies and whole entire hearts. She was talking about how it felt to touch him, how it fel
t to be touched by him. And that was good; that was perfect.

  Touch, he could handle.

  So he did what he’d been holding himself back from doing and walked her backward, steadying her as he went, until the wall behind her did his work for him. Beneath his hands her fingertips curled against the cotton of his shirt, tugging him closer, fitting their bodies together. He let her feel it, that aching hardness beneath his jeans, and when she gasped he answered her.

  “For me, either,” he said honestly, and he watched the relieved smile spread over her kiss-swollen lips. He lowered his mouth so he could speak this next part, this truest part, right against them. “This is a first.”

  Then they were kissing again, harder now that they’d agreed on this, and it was long minutes of roaming hands and tangling tongues before she spoke again.

  “Stay tonight.”

  He would’ve stayed in the hallway, if that’s the way she’d wanted it.

  In fact they got halfway there—desperate, mismatched undressing, Nora pushing Will’s shirt up while he shoved her pants down, Nora pulling at his belt while his hands smoothed beneath her top to get to the clasp of her bra. He had her legs wrapped around his hips before he even realized the impossibility of it, before he smiled against her mouth and tucked two teasing fingers beneath the waist of her underwear, tugging to remind her of their presence. She leaned her head against the wall with a soft thud, inhaling through her nose before she breathed out the word bedroom, in a voice laced with the same quiet sort of command she’d used to tell him to stay, and it made his body turn unexpectedly harder.

  When she slid down his front and stepped away he had a brief, panicked moment of insecurity—that losing her touch would mean losing his focus, that the cut cord would reconnect and remind him why this was all a dangerous idea. But then she walked by him, her legs bare, the back of one thigh pink from where his hand had been holding her, and to him it might as well have been another command. That looked the same as having the words follow me whispered right into his ear. He’d never really thought of himself as a man who liked to be bossed around during sex, but damn if he didn’t walk toward the cool, dark quiet of Nora’s bedroom and want her to tell him every single thing she wanted him to do, exactly how she wanted him to do it.